A republican guide to surviving the World Cup

“THEY FOUND A WAY to get rich on the World Cup and they robbed the people instead.” This is the view of one-time Brazilian soccer hero and now politician Romario. He is questioning why were billions of euro spent subsidising the World Cup while the health, transport and education systems of Brazil are massively underfunded.

It is a difficult time for the ‘politically-correct’ republican soccer fan (especially when you add in GAA fans who claim they never soil their viewing habits by watching soccer). I find that one simple statement ends this pettiness. Just say repeatedly: “BSkyB money, BSkyB money.” Administer as necessary.

But still how do you put the massive slurry tank of corruption that is the upper echelons of FIFA and the exploitative commercial business venture that a soccer World Cup is to one side while at the same time you crank up the barbeque, hoover the couch, get the Fair Trade tortillas and beer ready for a month-long football feast and still not feel too guilty.

One solution is to use the An Phoblacht PC team selection algorithm. We call it Footrite ™. It is a complex equation, balancing out possible success of a team against their historical record as colonisers, monarchies, human rights abusers and other minor issues like economic, political and press freedoms.

The premium version has a British media tabloid xenophobia tracker to follow the predictable stuttering progress of England, struggling out of their group to an ignominious exit on disallowed goals or dodgy penalties. This always makes for good TV and is one for republican footballing fans’ ‘must watch’ list.

Who can forget Gazza’s tears in 1990 or the Daily Mirror’s front-page headline for Euro 1996? “Achtung! Surrender – For you, Fritz, ze Euro 96 Championship is over.” That edition also had a front-page editorial titled “Mirror declares football war on Germany.”

You can for an extra €1.99 disable all social media mentions of “plucky underdogs” that can ruin a good World Cup. Did we really want Cameroon to go all the way in 1990?

With 32 teams, eight groups and 64 matches, pacing yourself is important, and deciding whether to save matches for later viewing needs careful consideration.

Let’s start with World Cup monarchies and hereditary rulers.

Spain, Holland, England, Belgium and Japan are all on the banned list. I know there has been some slippage in recent years regarding Spain, fuelled by the dominance of Barcelona in the Champions League, leading to some comrades mistakenly considering Spain a ‘Barcelona Lite’. However, with Barca now officially “in decline” and Puyol side-lined, this nonsense must stop. 

Australia are on the ‘do not support’ list for the twin sins of not having the bottle to become a republic and being a country that prides itself on its rugged ‘earthiness’ using a silly name for their soccer team like “Socceroos”.

(Okay, they all have silly names, like England’s “Three Lions” and going on to Croatia’s “The Blazers” and Holland’s “The Clockwork Orange”.)

Similarly, former and current colonisers/military occupiers are on the naughty list.

France, Portugal, Italy, Germany, Russia and the USA all go on the ‘no cheering’ watch. There is, of course, the obvious exception when Germany are playing England. (Or when anyone is playing England, come to that – Editor.)

You might think we were narrowing things down but PC life is not that simple.

There are those of us who might take the easy way out and support Argentina.

The case for this begins with the brilliance of Messi, He alone deserves a World Cup, and yes I am a Barcelona fan, and yes I cannot bring myself to think of Ronaldo as anything more than a preening cry-baby with occasional glimpses of talent. He doesn’t deserve a World Cup. 

Also in Argentina’s favour is the Guerra de las Malvinas (‘The Falklands War’ for our Daily Torygraph readers). You can add in Diego Maradona’s ‘Hand of God’ in 1986 (on Bodenstown Sunday, if my memory serves me well) as England slumped to their inevitable ignominious exit. There was also the bonus in 1998 of Spice Boy David Beckham getting a red card for the tamest of kicks at Argentinian captain Diego Simeone. But isn’t it all too easy to follow Argentina? And we are more sophisticated than that. Aren’t we?

Personally, I quite fancied supporting Uruguay, having watched the season of Luis Suarez swashbuckling through the Premiership, not to mention the €65million Cavani’s goals for Paris Saint-Germain. To have them drawn in England’s group must be a sign from the soccer gods. Who knows, England could be the kind of team that Suarez could get his teeth into.

Imagine my surprise then to find that they were ranked 135th in terms of human rights in the world on the International Human Rights Rank Indicator. Nigeria was 197th, Chile 109th, Iran 169th. We could go on here but the results are not pretty. Australia is 3rd, the highest-ranked of the 32 World Cup states. Netherlands and Belgium are next, ranked 6th and 7th respectively.

All of this is a roundabout way to introduce you to Switzerland.

The Swiss are not a monarchy, are peace-loving, not colonising and come a sturdy 24th in the world human rights ranking and 9th in the UN human development index. (The 26 Counties is 17th in the human rights index and 7th in the UN index if you were wondering; Britain 13th and 26th respectively.)

Switzerland have qualified nine times and last made the quarter-finals in 1954 . . .

Okay, so it just might be Uruguay after all, with a little bit of Germany thrown in.

Now where did I put my vuvuzela?