A Football Report

By Darshan Joshi

One week, two alleged stamps. Both assailants bad-boys of their clubs’ cities, further apart in distance than footballing heritage and seemingly now closer yet in terms of notoriety. One incident exponentially more temerarious than the other, and thus rightly so – relatively speaking –, one man went unpunished, and the other supplied with a four-match decapitation. Only, if just one of the two crime scenes were to be punished retrospectively, it was the wrong one left exonerated.

Mario Balotelli may cast more than an envious gaze at the Spanish footballing authorities, much as the English do those shores with an understandable predilection for sunnier days on a golden beach. The decision to deplete Pepe of a suspension for an ostentatious trampling on the hand of Lionel Messi was absurd. Perhaps the powers-that-be took into account, unfairly, Messi’s status as The Second Coming of Diego Maradona – karmic law suggests an equal and opposite reaction to every action – and Pepe was thus the purveyor of retrospective punishment too, of a sort. Only, Messi isn’t Maradona, and so his Hand isn’t exactly His Hand.

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By Darshan Joshi

I find it difficult to engage in schadenfreude when it comes to Fernando Torres because he’s so pretty. Sure, it was funny at first – £50m former world’s best striker looking less likely to score six yards away from goal than world’s most hideous face Steve Buscemi at a nightclub – but it’s now become a global source of depression (step aside, financial markets). It’s not easy seeing someone who at one point was such a phenomenal artist that he could easily have been the topic of ‘The Artist’ go through so much misery. Especially since he’s got such a pretty face, such a pretty face.

But Fernando isn’t alone.  Torres shares similarities with a certain Elizabeth Grant that go deeper than a fine façade, a sexy silhouette, and tantalising talent. Elizabeth Grant is the musician Lana Del Rey, but Lana Del Rey is the controversial success Elizabeth Grant wasn’t, and in the same manner, the controversial success that Lizzy Grant wasn’t. Lana Del Rey doesn’t really exist, but she is the artist behind what The Guardian have chosen as the finest piece of music in 2011.

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More a tale of life than football, by Darshan Joshi

Idiots, some might say, believe everything they’re told, mostly out of complete ignorance. Idiots learn, though. With some education, even a dunce with the propensity to behave only in a way befitting a Shakespearean jester will have in himself instilled the wit to argue a personal theory. The problem, and this, quite ironically, is a personal theory – idiots are so consumed with this release from intellectual śūnyatā, that they go on to apply their newly acquired knowledge in every situation possible. It is simply an uncontrollable libidinous necessity to overcompensate for their years of dim-wittedness, like an ex-Nickelback devotee forcing upon others his infantile love for proper music. Graphically, the IQ of an idiot on the quest for knowledge is represented by a negatively charged quadratic function. The initial results are astonishing, but the peak is no steady state and eventually, innate nature takes over again, and they start to disbelieve facts.

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By Darshan Joshi

Hype is like a phoenix. It is afforded life, it blossoms, it blooms. It peaks. It dies down; it turns to dust; yet it remains deathless. It is as immortal as it is intangible. Its hyperphysical presence experiences a ceaseless resurrection; it evades an escape from memory. Hype is a monster we create. Hype is the reality that Frankenstein’s creation wasn’t. Hype is the be all and end all of all things. Hype is the aggrandisation of the history of football, and it is thus the Brahma of modern football.

Hype, though, is not a spontaneously combusting element. It is we let it be. We impregnate hype. Money is a culprit. Technology, media, culture, history, globalisation; these are all culprits. They are what we let it be, what it is, and what we will cultivate it to be. It is infinite in size, and in potential. We have made football what it is today. Every cent, television image, chant, experience, story, every word – it is an amplification of this hype, an amplification of what we let happen. We are at fault.

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By Darshan Joshi, writing from Sydney

It is fair to say Arsenal are being unravelled.

The word ‘unravelled’ always brings me back to those Egyptian mummies. What if the hundreds of yards of linen used to wrap these Pharaohs of old acted as a way of preserving not just the bodies of these dead kings, but their lives? Imagine Akhenaten roaming the streets of New York, Tuthmosis swimming across the Thames, Tutankhamun climbing Mount Everest, announcing their plans to go after the woman of their pleasing. All it would take is one exceptionally curious archaeologist with cojones of steel to engage in a little unwrappin’, and bam!, our world is penetrated by a multitude of mummies with iPods whistling this kind of music in their ears, drinking out of Starbucks cups specially designed with hieroglyphics, sent down by Anubis and Ra and Horus et al, promising immortal life, plenty of sex, unflinching wealth and nice triangular towers.

Perhaps losing to Blackburn Rovers, then, was the best thing that could have happened to Arsenal. Now that they have been demummified, they look cadaverous. European football will feel the wrath of an uglier Bakary Sagna, a shorter Andrey Arshavin, and a skinnier Tomas Rosicky. A blinder Arsene Wenger. Doesn’t that frighten you? Arsenal are now a bunch of naked mummies. With emphasis on naked.

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By Darshan Joshi

Even stars die, eventually. There hasn’t been an observed supernova in our Milky Way for over four hundred years (Galileo hadn’t even seen the many moons of Jupiter, or confirmed that the Sun was the heart of the solar system when this had occurred), but that such timeless galactic fixtures can perish so vigorously only serves to epitomise the fleeting nature of everything associated with our universe. Exceptions do exist, if you believe in an eternal power gazing from the heavens, but such beings apart, you are left with just Sir Alex Ferguson.

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