Presumably it will not have escaped your attention that the World Cup starts on Friday. This is the point at which some will go mad with ecstasy and some will just get mad. I belong to the former but this article is about the latter.

I feel your pain. I really do. If something you have no interest in is being screened for about three hours at a time thrice daily for two weeks, then that’s a bit difficult. I can love football and understand that this presents a bit of a headache. There was a point a couple of evenings ago where I thought “am I really going to get excited about Greece Vs South Korea”, but then I came to my senses. If, on the other hand, Brazil versus Holland doesn’t get you going, then this next month will feel tough.

I could bang on endlessly about the world’s universal language, about the beautiful game, about how some teams can move a ball about like poetry, but I won’t. At least partly because it’s pretty patronising to assume that if you don’t like football it’s because you’re just not trying hard enough. But for some reason, I feel the need to speak up whenever I hear people say one particular phrase:

“They get all that money, get paid ludicrous sums, just to put a ball in a net.”

So here is my response, the one that I never manage to formulate when my brain gets all knotted trying to work out why I don’t have an immediate and satisfactory answer.

The money

Rather like investment bankers and their fortunes, I’m afraid the money is not the fault of football, it is the fault of capitalism. People seem to value these skills, playing football and making money, and so they are willing to pay for them (mostly because the skills create more money). You may not consider these things valuable skills, which is fair enough. I don’t consider it a skill to persuade people to go on television and then insult them, but what do I know.

The sport

I am excited about a sport that has crossed cultural boundaries, probably as no other ever will. The countries that play cricket and rugby are, on the whole, those that were very heavily influenced by the British Empire. Now I’m aware that hardly anywhere wasn’t influenced by the British Empire, but football is a game that southern Europeans consider their own, that Latin America considers its own, that Black Africa considers its own. No one forces hundreds of millions of people all over the world to love a game, to watch it or play it maybe but not to love it. This isn’t necessarily good or bad, it just makes me feel a bit positive.

The game

Ultimately yes, all the hoopla is about trying to get a round thing in a netty thing more times than the other lot within a set boundary of both time and space. But the game’s simplicity is also the thing that, I reckon, hooked so many in the first place (including me). Because once you know this one, simple aim, you’ve basically got the lot.

All the rest is largely window dressing, and in this light I'm reminded of the fun of games. Not sport, but a game, a bit of fun where people are throwing themselves into an activity that ultimately doesn’t really matter just because it’s more fun than not doing it. Think of the time you larked about with a mate in the office, throwing balls of paper in the bin from across the room, or tried to outwit each other by coming up with more elaborate jokes about what you were watching on TV, or raced each other home from the pub. There’s a hell of a lot of hoopla, of prancing and prattery about modern football and some modern footballers, but I’d rather have the game, the bit of fun, than not have it.

The end

I’m not trying to convince you to like football, I promise (I think). I just know why I’ll be watching Greece Vs South Korea, because it will see two teams of people playing their guts out trying to get a ball in a net more times than the other lot. They will consider this tournament one of the most important times of their life, but I’ll be watching because I know they will also be having the time of their lives doing it. And as a spectator, in a different but no less important way, I’ll be a part of this particular bit of fun as well.

Martin Cordiner - 9 June 2010