IN case it has slipped your notice, it has been four years since the time Italy beat France to hoist the FIFA World Cup Trophy. Granted, it's not as flashy as the legendary Jules Rimet Trophy that is now a lost treasure — but it's still a gorgeous piece of art that is rightfully coveted.
Now, regular readers know that I do not like football, which is tantamount to admitting that religion is not important to you in this day and age (I wrote about it a few weeks ago in a column about fanaticism). However, there is no escaping the cheers, the betting, the stream of transmissions, replays and the sight of Frank Lampard and Lionel Messi begging a Malaysian housewife to let them play in her house (she agreed, but only if they take off their shoes). I mean, yes, it is a Malay (and now accepted as Malaysian) custom — but I wonder what the shoe sponsors would have to say about that ad?
They even got Shakira and the band Freshlyground from South Africa to sing the official song of the 2010 World Cup Waka Waka. Apparently, the song is based upon a traditional African soldiers' song named Zangalewa — but I am sure that since Shakira is involved, it could have been based on the diary of Daktari and no one would have cared. After all, with freshly ground booty shaking by the Colombian cutie at the start of a special ball season, the hips don't so much lie as commit entrapment (with an order of almost-statutory naughtiness on the side). Waka waka, indeed.
Of course, it's all about the money too, as I discovered in the course of writing this week's column. Since I am not into soccer — which is the proper name for it, even though no one bar the Yanks and Aussies call it football — I did not know that each participating team gets US$1 million (RM3.23 million) for preparation costs. Nor that the total prize money on offer for the tournament was confirmed as US$420 million, and that teams exiting at the group stage would receive US$8 million. That's way before the finals, where the winning team not only gets the ultimate triumph of holding aloft a gold statuette, they get US$30 million to boot.
We haven't even gone into the money that flows from the ticket sales (though that is merely a minor portion of the proceeds), the ads, sponsorships, merchandise nor broadcast rights. And you thought that it was only the players' salaries that were ridiculous. Honestly, any organisation would be silly to miss out on cashing in on what essentially is a modern day religion, as I have already mentioned earlier.
Being held for the first time ever in the continent of Africa, this year's World Cup is already unusual in so many ways. The matches played so far has seen some of the biggest upsets ever, with teams that were expected to perform well showing ignominious results (Robert Green will never live down the monicker of Green Fingers nor Hand of Clod, even if he lives to be as old as the late Queen Mother, while the French team proved to be a bunch of gosses gâtés who were sent home in shame).
There was also an unprecedented number of complaints about the Jabulani. Left (wing), right (wing) and centre(back), you find players of all calibres complaining about the official ball created by Adidas, which I found to be most puzzling — after all, didn't they test the ball before it became official? And didn't the teams all train before hand? Well, the question was basically settled — by the South Koreans, no less. "We trained quite a lot for the freekick and from that position, and Park Chu-young was the one for the freekick," South Korea coach Huh Jung-moo told a news conference. "Compared to other balls, if you kick it too hard, then 80% to 90% of the time it seems to go up in the air, too high. So we trained so that it would be kicked lightly, without hitting it too hard. I think we adapted well to the ball." And the results so far prove it.
Which basically means that the players of the other teams weren't doing their job: playing ball at their best. Did they think that just because they were paid more than the average citizen's lifetime salary in a few weeks that they had a right to be treated like gods of the stadium? In my humble and non-sports-interested opinion, as a football player, it is your duty to find out your opponent's strengths and weaknesses; how well you perform on a pitch; how well you dribble the ball that is given to you, and to react and adjust yourself accordingly to any such situation — after all, it is your job. Like I always say whenever I comment on political figures: we do not owe you a living, but you do owe your supporters results. Especially when your national pride is at stake, it is more than just a game, and is certainly bigger than you and your petty needs — something Les Blues seem to have forgotten.
But if there is one area in which this World Cup has made its mark, it is in the ascension of a local sound that has become the buzz heard around the world: the blaring of the vuvuzela. Typically a 65cm plastic blowing horn — which apparently is also known as the lepatata (the Tswana name) — the vuvuzela produces a loud, distinctive monotone note (B flat 3, for all those musicians out there who are curious). A similar instrument, the corneta, is used in Brazil and other Latin American countries.
Unless you are deafer than a politician pretending to listen to an opponent's valid arguments against them, you can't have missed it: a long and continuously steady drone that sounds to me like a huge horde of angry wasps escaping a fogging machine by zooming straight through an underground city train tunnel. At least that is what it sounds like to me; they have been called — at various times and by various people — "annoying", "a stampede of noisy elephants", "an elephant passing wind", "a deafening swarm of locusts", "a goat on the way to slaughter", and "satanic" (the Dutch word for it is equivalent to demon's horn, apparently). Lucifer, the poor devil, gets blamed for many things, but this is a new low.
About the only time they are silent is when the national anthems are played — which, under the circumstances, would not be surprising. Apparently first used in Mexican stadiums since the 1970s, the origin of the name vuvuzela is disputed, as some say that it may have originated from Zulu for "making a vuvu noise", vuvu being the sound it makes. Alternatively, it could be from township slang related to the word for "shower".
All that I know is that it has been called many things (mostly unpleasant and censorable), and that Portuguese telecommunications company Portugal Telecom announced an offer an alternative audio feed, in which the vuvuzela sound is edited out, to the customers of its Pay-TV service called MEO. And you know that it ain't good when there's a section in Wikipedia's vuvuzela article that has a disclaimer which goes: "The neutrality of this section is disputed. Please see the discussion on the talk page. Please do not remove this message until the dispute is resolved. (June 2010)".
Yet, as an anonymous person wrote, you cannot blame the people who sell them. Apparently, FIFA enforced a ruling (based on sponsor demands) that vendors at the stadiums were not allowed to sell food as they have always done for any other game. They are only allowed to sell two things: vuvuzelas and flags. As such, we cannot blame the poor traders for trying to get a very small slice of the very big money pie — and it should also be pointed out that the things are popular; why else would there be a constant and uninterrupted drone if not for people buying them?
Above all, I do support the argument that without the vuvuzela, you might as well not have the whole event in Africa, because you would miss out on the experience of actually being in Africa. In response to all the moaning and groaning, FIFA president Sepp Blatter made a very direct point: "I have always said that Africa has a different rhythm, a different sound. I don't see banning the music traditions of fans in their own country. Would you want to see a ban on the fan traditions in your country?"
Being the creatures of unbridled imagination that my friends and I are, we tried to think what would happen if they banned bagpipes, the didgeridoo (which, let's face it, is far less annoying and far more melodious than the vuvuzela), the rebab/rebana/kompang (the kompang is already a staple here in Malaysia), the erhu/pipa/guzheng/hendi/dagu, the sitar/veena/sarod/tambura/venu, or the violin (Italian, of course, in deference to Antonio Stradivari). Can you picture the stadium in Rome filled to the brim with thousands of Guarneri viols? Or a stadium of Stenways? What a wonderously bombastic and unwieldly cacophony that would be!
So the moral of the story — which applies equally to all aspects of life, love and the pursuit of happiness — is live and let live. As someone who is rather indifferent to blowing his own horn (and I will certainly not be taking questions about whose horn I am blowing), I am content to let the late great Freddie Mercury say it for me: any way the wind blows, doesn't really matter to me. I am fine with the fans blowing the vuvuzelas; all I ask is that you blow them somewhere (and somewhen) where I am not.
Ahmad Azrai doesn't play sports, because the only thing he plays is the piano...
Written by Ahmad Azrai
The Edge Malaysia
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