So, Ronaldo, the Great Field Marshall, is pissed.
And with him, Ancellotti (Angelotto?) and the whole of Spain, and Portugal, and the Government of Portugal, and – well, I guess GOD and Snow-white, too. Not to mention the Seven Dwarves, Superman, Donald and Daisy Duck and Roadrunner.
Good old Sepp made a somewhat unsuccessful Swiss kind o’ joke, in Anglosaxonia’s Chambers of the Holy Grail of Debating, which created waves way beyond the Iberian Peninsula, went around the globe several times over, ended in tumultuous threats, malediction and attempted mass suicide (out of sheer empathy, of course), only to be catapulted to the top of the news heap, in a world so full of it that news has become this kind of ridiculous nonsense.
The world has a new scandal. Hail Mary, Joseph and all the other participants.
And poor old Sepp is the perpetrator, the evil-doer, the bad man and the daring renegade, who permitted himself to utter a half-funny joke, during a mostly unfunny event, and before totally not funny an audience.
A Portuguese sports paper promptly called him names, demanded that he should “shut his trap”, bow his head in shame, confess to the Gods of the Game (aka Hooligans of the World United), and go forth and sin no further.
What a load of complete and utter hogwash.
There’s a guy who earns more money per day than several of his countrymen would earn in a good month, and the followers of this young and modern-day gladiator go berserk, scream abuse, shout their heads off and are so offended that they far too quickly forget the dismal reality which surrounds them: Portugal.
So offended are they that they forget what should really offend them every minute of every day: namely that they have a rotten government, which tampered with the screws of austerity until all of their tears dried up. With a rate of unemployment so high that it pains to count the percentage, Portugal’s main problem seems to be whether Blatter is allowed to comment on Boy Wonder’s hair-do (hair-don’t?) or not.
It is amazing , how people can get worked up about a guy’s antics, hair, moves and general conduct, and go berserk when another guy speaks about the first guy’s whatever. Once the best Diver of his team (remember Premier League days?), THE MAN has earned his laurels and promptly demanded more pay when he found out that Massa Bale supposedly surpassed his pay-slip. Well done, after all, poor Ronaldo only gets a pittance for kicking the ball about, scoring goals – and losing against Barcelona (quite regularly too).
What on earth is going on here? How can a possibly rather silly comment and a tad stiff act on stage create such a whirlwind of complete ludicrousness that a club, its manager, a government and its head demand an apology. For WHAT, exactly?
For one man exercising his freedom of speech? (It used to be a right, that), or because it was Sepp Blatter who said what he did (conveniently forgetting that he continues to be an Honorary Member of the Royal Club in Madrid)? Must be the latter. Blatter is a bad apple, always said so, always knew it. And now this, on top of everything else. What else, actually? (But that’s another story).
So, here we have it: Blatter humiliates Ronaldo (Ancellotti says), whereas Ronaldo now humiliates Blatter (so the tv pictures show). One Holy-Cow Humiliation all over the place.
Yet the world still turns, gravity still holds us down to earth. It holds some so firmly that they keep falling without anybody having touched them – and then they scream, run their hands over their face and spread their fingers, and look to see whether the ref has reacted. And if so, they remain, half dead on the grass, in unspeakable pain, contorted and hurt – only to get up moments later as if nothing had happened. Nothing did. Ahh – something did: the act helped. The opposing player received a yellow. All good, then, Massa Ronaldo? All good?
Laugh if you can, cry if you need to and move on until the next ballet performance followed by a dramatic act of resurrection from the half-dead. Ronaldo-style.