Dancing Dutchies

By Mark Daniell

01/07/2014

Ah the Dutch! What’s not to love? The fine proponents of that rare, intoxicating mix of class and filth. I’ve not been to Amsterdam (Obviously, I’ve ducked in and out of Amsterdam, but I’ve not really visited the place, not if we apply the litmus test of country-visiting: ie a) get drunk b) buy the football shirt c) litter.) but I like to think if I were to go I’d be duped into helping out an unfortunate girl whose tyre needed changing, only to discover she’s a high class prostitute and one of my kidneys is missing. Class and filth. We saw this heady concoction as they put five past Spain yet picked up more cards than any other team in the group stages, and we saw it again against Mexico: Filth, in Robben’s head-snapping swallow dive reaction to the thought that a defender may have left a trailing leg somewhere in his vicinity. Class, in the clinical dispatching of Huntelaar’s penalty. Here’s a man who’s missed four of his last five penalties in the Bundesliga, played the grand total of 14 Brazilian World Cup minutes and who nonetheless slams it into the corner. Even if Ochoa had dived the right way, he wouldn’t have stopped that. 

So, despite the best efforts of Chile, Mexico, Nigeria and Algeria, the upsets have been relegated to almost-upsets. Now, I’m going to be cautious here, because as we all know Argentina play Switzerland today and we don’t want to jinx anything, so instead let’s take a look at the best World Cup tweets so far:

KLM tweet “Adios Amigos” with a photo of a Mexican in a sombrero on the departures sign. I mean… even if Mexico had been comprehensively outplayed and had nothing to say but fair enough and hats off to the Dutch, that would still be a relatively insensitive image to broadcast, but considering the last-minute nature of the victory, and the dives!, well let's just say it was an interesting PR decision.

Fortunately, Gael Garcia Bernal tweeted to his 2m followers exactly what we were all thinking, namely “Fuck You Big Time”. Unless KLM are trying to get more business in the southern States where I can only assume they find the Mexican plight hilarious, you have to wonder whether that was a sensible thing for a travel company to do. Meanwhile AeroMexico, who also operate the Mexico City Amsterdam route, quickly tweeted how proud they were of the national side, and that they were offering free nachos on all transatlantic flights. (They didn’t say that last bit, but they’re welcome to it, and my consultation fees are very reasonable.)

Another nice tweet came from everyone’s favourite maniac, Luisito, who ingeniously structured his 140 characters to remind everyone why the passive mood is so sexy: “The truth is Chiellini suffered the physical result of a bite in the collision he suffered with me”.

Now cynics might say that using the passive mood distances the agent from the action, shifting instead attention onto the object. Heck, it’s almost as if the agent were an innocent bystander and might as well remain entirely unnamed. But cynics have no place in football, nor in language; everything sounds better in the passive mood. Check out how these original movie quotes sounded before Hollywood got its active-loving grammarians on the case:

Frankly my dear, a damn is not given.

A bigger boat is gonna be needed.

Am I being talked to by you? Am I being talked to by you?

The role of king of the world is being played by me!

Suarez knows it: passive mood wins every time baby!

But angry tweets aside, we should probably remember that what might be considered as minor footballing injustices to impartial observers inevitably feel like daggers through the heart of the fans directly involved. Anyone who’s ever used the Hand of God reference to settle an argument three decades later knows what I’m talking about. And even the Argies don’t come out unscathed, after all, I very much remember this ‘penalty’. I’m not bitter….

Here’s a suggestion: give each team two referrals during the game, which they can use to challenge a refereeing decision. With only two to use over 90 minutes, they’d only call on it when they were either absolutely certain, or when there was an element of doubt over a fundamental issue, such as penalties, offside goals or red cards. We have the technology, we have the cameras in place. Surely if it can be used to reduce the sense of grotesque injustice that so many fans suffer, then it should be?

But this is football, and football is governed by FIFA, which is bossed by Sepp “Boooo” Blatter, so we can probably expect referrals to be introduced at the World Cup in Pakistan in 2026.

In the meantime, if you can’t touch Blatter financially, or threaten his power, or even prevent him from engineering a seeding system that sees his beloved Switzerland given an easy ride through the groups, then at least you can hope they get a spanking at the hands of Messi and co. It’s the only way he’ll learn.