The Death of Football?

I can't believe Thomas Hitzlsperger is gay. Only joking, that's not what this blog is about. Hitzlsperger coming out as gay is actually a very positive thing for football, so fair play to him for that. This is actually about the other big news from the world of football that broke last week; the announcement from FIFA general secretary Jerome Valcke that the 2022 World Cup in Qatar will be held in the winter and not, as is tradition, in the summer. And this is actually one of the rare occasions where I write something quite serious, so I don't even know why I started it with a joke.

Vagina Stadium Qatar, host of the 2022 World Cup final

But anyway, the death of football. It has been clear for quite some time that the people running football do not care about the fans who follow the sport any more. Which is a shame, because without the fans football is nothing. But this latest decision, to move the 2022 World Cup to winter, is, I believe, the final nail in the coffin for the game as we know it. Let me explain my reasoning for this...

First of all, and most importantly, the whole bidding process for host nations of the FIFA World Cup has now been thrown into disrepute. Most people in this country will know how the bidding process works, as like myself you've probably seen England go through it twice in your life time. The countries involved spend a lot of money putting together a presentation for FIFA that shows why they deserve to host the World Cup. The thing is, when the country puts together the bid, they are trying to show that they are a suitable host for a tournament taking place in the summer. There's no other option, FIFA do not let them choose between summer and winter, they are under instruction that the World Cup has to take place in summer.

This means that Qatar's bid for the 2022 World Cup was based on a summer world cup. If they would have been bidding for a winter tournament, this wouldn't be such a big deal. But they weren't, so it is. In fact, I know this has gained a lot of media attention, but I don't even think it's being treated as seriously as it should be. This is where I get to the real point. Because if Qatar entered a bid for a summer World Cup, and FIFA compared that bid to the other entries, and decided that it was the best one, then surely they shouldn't have to switch the tournament to the winter? But they did. After choosing Qatar for the 2022 World Cup, they then came to the conclusion that it was not safe enough to host the tournament there in the summer. Why wasn't this picked up on during the bidding process? It can only mean that the bid wasn't considered properly in the first place, and Qatar were awarded the World Cup for different reasons...

Now I learned about liable and slander when studying journalism in uni (even though I can't remember which is which) but to be honest this is just a blog that's headed by a photo of Adam Sandler in the bath, so I'm not really bothered if what I say breaks any laws. And what I'm saying is that FIFA officials accepted money from Qatar in exchange for awarding them the 2022 World Cup. It doesn't really take a genius to work that out, they're not a suitable host nation, therefore their bid to host the World Cup was false, but they are an extremely rich country, and they were awarded the World Cup regardless of the aforementioned issues.

This may all seem obvious, but this could really spell the death of football as far as I'm concerned. I just wonder how far it could go. FIFA, and a few men at the top of the organisation, pretty much control the game of football around the globe. These few men at the top of the organisation are the ones who decide who hosts the world cup, and are the ones who have accepted payment to award it to Qatar. UEFA run football in Europe, and the European teams really make the world cup what it is. If UEFA wanted to, they could withdraw the European countries from the world cup in protest, and FIFA would have to act on this or they wouldn't have a tournament. However, UEFA have shown no concern for what has happened. Even England on it's own has a fair bit of influence on UEFA and indeed FIFA, but they have not acted at all. Initially, the FA seemed to show some defiance, but all of a sudden this changed and they seemed to accept any decision made by FIFA. And this begs the question, how far have the payments gone from Qatar to secure this World Cup for them?

"Pay me and it's yours."

This is where the end really is in sight for the real supporters in football. We've seen that the top governing body in football can award a country the World Cup just to line their own pockets. How long will it be before a country like Qatar decides it wants to host the Champions League final, and pays UEFA officials vast amounts of money for this? And can we trust them to turn it down? I don't trust anyone who is running the game any more, they're all greedy and don't care about the fans. This has been obvious for years, with poor choices of host stadiums and tiny allocations for supporters, so it wouldn't take much for them to take the next step and move the final outside of Europe.

And could it possibly go further? What if a rich country far away decided it wanted to host the FA Cup final? I wouldn't trust our FA to deny them. They're currently paying off a huge debt on Wembley stadium, and could pay that off a lot quicker with a massive pay off from abroad than they ever could just from hosting matches.

Anyway, I'm not to sure if I've been able to put into words exactly what I was thinking, but hopefully it gives people something to think about. And in all honesty I wouldn't be surprised if we see a country outside of Europe awarded the Champions League final or FA Cup final within the next few years.

@adamheath

Celebrity Big Brother

First of all, I just can't believe this still happens. They still make programmes like this, and people actually still watch them. Just in general, any show that involves celebrities and public votes, surely this should have stopped by now. Do people still actually call in to vote for people? Pay for a phone call to vote for someone to stay on or leave a TV show? If they do they need to have a serious word with themselves. If a member of my own family was on a TV show and they wanted me to vote for them I wouldn't even do that just out of principle. 

But anyway, I saw that Celebrity Big Brother was on last night just by chance, and there really wasn't anything else on so I thought I'd watch it as it might provide something decent to terror. It didn't disappoint, and that's where this blog comes in. However, it's not the same as when I was talking about the Extreme Railways show, in fact I'd even give the internet porn I talked about in a blog more credit than this. This is just utter garbage television that I can't believe still attracts viewers.

So... The show started last night, and I think they thought the reveal of the host was a massive surprise or something, because they held off on it for ages and even gave it like a little drum roll. But it was, of course, Emma Willis, because that's just like what she does. They still gave her this entrance from behind a curtain like she was fucking Elvis or something though 

There's a Davina McCall clone in my jap's eye

We can see straight away that the format of the show is going to be exactly the same as it has been for the past decade, and you know how I was saying before I couldn't believe people still watch this, even worse is the fact people still actually go and stand outside to be there for it. Look they made banners...

It does not surprise me that one of them is called Chanel

Emma Willis is just a proper Davina copy you know, it's like they've had her in training just to do this. She bores us to death with her tour of the house though. She even has to ask the crowd to cheer and that. Bad news on the opening night. A lot of the time they just do like them "wooooo" sounds that you get on 90s gameshows when they reveal the prizes as well. Emma's buzzing off the fact there's a toilet in jail, because that means they can stay longer in jail. I swear they long ago ran out of ideas on this you know. Throwing them in jail and that, I think they'd just make The Hunger Games if they were allowed. To be fair we're probably not far from that in terms of television in this country. Instead of allowing people to be creative and come up with new television shows, they just take anything and throw celebrities into it. And celebrities will do anything for money.

Speaking of which, I'll cut straight to the housemates... The first of which, is good old Jim Davidson. And you know what I was saying about anything for money? Well in Jim's introductory VT, he uses the fact he was arrested as part of Operation Yewtree to justify his celebrity status. What the fuck? It's like he's saying "well only celebrities were arrested as part of Operation Yewtree, therefore you have to believe I am one." He even uses his arrest as an excuse to why he wasn't on the show a year earlier.

Sorry I'm a year late, I was busy noncing Matilda with Rolf Harris

The scary thing is, Channel 5 were going to sign him up for Celebrity Big Brother, then he got arrested for being a nonce, then Channel 5 decided to sign him up again. Only in this country would the 'famous' part of the term 'famous paedophile' be the most important part. It's like that bit from Pirates of The Caribbean, like someone's gone to Jim Davidson "I've heard of you, you're that paedophile" and he's gone "ah, but you have heard of me". What is going on. He even repeats the fact he's a year late when they bring him onto the stage, like Yewtree is his big selling point. Snooker Loopy. 

Sound editing by me that like

The next person into the house I can't even be arsed talking about. It's one of them Nolan's. They're like rent a celeb them, turn up on everything. The only thing is we find out now the housemates are to handcuffed to someone else when they enter the house. And would you believe it, the Nolan is marketing herself as someone who hates male, chauvinistic pigs (she's aiming for the feminist vote) and she's going to be handcuffed to Jim Davidson who is, as well as a nonce, also well known for being chauvinistic, a pig, and indeed, male. Fun. 

The next person in the house is a cunt. Bit harsh that like, it's actually Dappy. He's a bit of a wrongun though. After Tulisa made a tit of herself on telly, if Dappy comes out of this badly N-Dubz will probably go down as the biggest group of bellends ever. 

That fusey is worse than the hat he used to wear

I proper hate the little promotional videos they did for each housemate, it's just them acting up as best they can to create a character to get them publicity. Dappy was just chatting wham, but the bird after him was a joke.

Liz Jones is a columnist. That's not even a celebrity. Who's blurred the lines between media and who's in the media? Oh yeah, the fucking media have. This is seen in her opening video where she basically just says all the stuff she knows people will consider controversial. Again, just acting to get more publicity. Fair play to Dappy, because she thought he'd be proper intimidated by her and he just wasn't arsed. But saying that you can't be when you're wearing a suit like this...

Please notice me

The one on the right is Liz Jones, but I'm sure you all know that with her being dead famous and everything... I'm still just fuming about her slating my Rihanna to be honest. At least she has a Wikipedia page though, unlike Jasmine Waltz who's one of the other housemates. It should be a general rule that you can't be considered for Celebrity Big Brother if you don't have a Wikipedia page, because that would tell you that the general public has not heard of this person. Jasmine Waltz does have a porno, but I talk about stuff like that in other blogs... 

Next in is Sam Faiers, who's famous for being famous. You wouldn't know she was once with Joey Essex if she hadn't mentioned it one or ten times in her opening video. They all have a proper obsession with justifying their fame, but I think Jim Davidson's paedophilia was a more convincing argument than her "once with Joey Essex" one. On a side note, whilst we're talking about Joey Essex and paedophilia (yes I have just made a genuine side note on them topics) how are people like her and Joey Essex famous? I heard someone on the radio a while back call in and say she'd been queuing for three hours so her twelve year old daughter could meet Joey Essex. If I could have spoke to that woman I would have said what's wrong with you, the only reason your daughter likes him is because she wants to have sex with him. And she's twelve. Because lets be honest, what else has he done to make people like him and want to meet him? Absolutely nothing. Just something wrong with modern society. Anyway, back to Sam...

 You can tell the angle she's going for straight away. "I'm 100% single". I've translated this into what she's actually saying, "If you keep me in the house I might have sex." That's all it is. That's a major part of celebrity culture in a nutshell, I might have sex on telly. The magazines love it. With programmes like Celebrity Big Brother the gossip magazine's are just writing about unfolding stories that everyone can see in front of their eyes anyway. I honestly don't know why people still go along with this celebrity culture.

Anyway she's definitely going for this sex angle because Emma points out the fact again that she's single. Add to that the fact her outfit shows off her knickers and you can pretty much read it like a book

For the lads

She's not even that nice. They've cuffed her to her to the bird who has a porno, thus completing the pair who will probably have sex on telly for a bit of publicity. 

Speaking of doing anything for publicity, the next one in is Lee Ryan from Blue. Straight off you can see the angle he's going for, the thick cunt angle. Like Blue have been around for years, and they used to be on SMTV live and everything back in the day, and I'm sure he wasn't like this. He's definitely putting it on. I reckon he's watched Joey Essex on I'm a Celeb and thought you know what, birds love that so I'm gonna model meself on him. How bad is it if you're modelling yourself on Joey Essex. I guarantee he'll start coming out with some proper stupid shit in the next few days like "I can't put me own socks on" or something just to try and be like him. He already says straight away though that Blue are the best band in the world, so to be honest he can already be considered thicker than Joey Essex, and that kid can't blow his nose. Honestly though, if you watch Lee Ryan's opening VT and think any of that is genuine it's you who's the thick one. Shocking telly.

Anyway, it was at this point that I got fed up. As I've already said I hate shows like this so it was killing me to watch it, and also Drive was starting on BBC and everyone knows Gosling is the boy. But there was just a few thoughts I had whilst watching, let me know what you think...

@adamheath