Bucharest Life » Off Topic

Make World Cup qualification global

Craig Turp — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 08:46:02 +0000

The World Cup starts tomorrow, in South Africa.

Are we bothered?

Well, yes, of course we are; we expect to watch a large number of games. But truth be told we have never been so indifferent about a major football tournament for sometime.

The reasons for that are many.

Firstly, football is in a bit of a rut right now: never has the crop of decent, genuinely brilliant star players been so small as it currently is.

Secondly, international football is now played at a much lower standard than the highest echelons of club football: the latter stages of the Champions League are where you will see the best football in the world played, not at the World Cup.

Thirdly, as Chelsea supporters, all we want is as many of our players – who have already had a long season – out of the tournament and with their feet up on the nearest beach as quickly as possible.

Perhaps most importantly though is the fact that at 32 teams, there are 16 too many taking part. A 24-team World Cup was bad enough, but 32 makes the participation of too many poor teams too easy.

Honduras? New Zealand? What exactly are they bringing to the World Cup party? Quality football it certainly isn’t.

The 32 teams in South Africa will – as the next few days go by – be proclaimed as the cream of world football, the 32 best teams in the world. Rubbish. They are in fact the 20 or so best teams plus another 16 who have qualified via a gerrymandered qualification system that ultimately harms world football.

It could be very different.

Here’s how.

Right now, the vacant places at the World Cup are divvied up amongst the continental football federations: Europe gets X number of places, Africa Y, North America Z, etc. Qualification is then played out at continental level. This means that second-rate European and South American teams miss out on the World Cup even though they would (probably) annihilate the Oceania, Central American, Asian and – some – African qualifiers.

It also means that third rate African countries like Tanzania – who will probably never, ever qualify for the World Cup – have to stump up $2.5 million to play a prestige (but ultimately meaningless) friendly against Brazil (yes, Brazil charge countries a huge fee before agreeing to play them in friendly matches).

Now, imagine if Brazil had to play Tanzania in a World Cup qualifier. Imagine the impact on Tanzanian football, on African football. Imagine Spain having to travel to play away matches in North Korea, or England in New Zealand? Germany in Mauritius?

All perfectly feasible with jet airlines: most international players are Europe-based these days, and have to travel vast distances to play for their countries anyway.

It will never happen of course. Global qualifying would rob the continental federations of their power (or much of it).

But it should.

Besides the huge impact it would have on those nations who would get drawn with big footballing names, it would also ensure that (by and large) only the world’s best teams get to play at the World Cup finals.

Volcanic tempers

Craig Turp — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 14:26:11 +0000

We really have a great deal of sympathy for anyone currently stranded by the almost total shutdown of European airspace.

Andy Hockley, a Brit who lives in Czikszerada/Miercurea Ciuc in Romania and who blogs here is one such stranded passenger. His attempts to get from Cambridge back to Romania (and now to Berlin) can be followed on Twitter.

We’ve missed enough flight connections and been snowed in too many times not to know that not getting home when you really want to, or need to, is distressing.

We once spent a day at Frankfurt airport with a six-month old baby in tow because although our flight from London arrived on time, it had to wait an hour for a parking berth at the terminal. In the meantime our connecting flight to Bucharest took off. Why is it that when you want them to be delayed, flights have an annoying tendency to take off on time?

Sod’s law.

But we have no sympathy for the increasingly prevalent idea that somebody has to be responsible, that this is somebody’s fault.

Sometimes, shit really does just happen.

Copied from Wikipedia

Craig Turp — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 14:04:09 +0000

Apparently, an Amazon.com ‘user review’ of a guidebook we wrote a few years ago claims that parts of the book were ‘lifted from Wikipedia.’

Really?

Knowing full well that they were not (we have the original words – and they were original, all god-knows-how-many thousands of them – on a hard drive somewhere), we wondered why said reviewer might have come to such a conclusion.

Then it dawned on us.

For a large number of people, Wikipedia is the be and end all of human knowledge. If a text is seen on Wikipedia and then seen somewhere else, it must mean that Wikipedia has been copied.

Wrong.

In the vast majority of cases (as, we assume, in ours) if you see a text identical or nearly identical to one on Wikipedia, it means that the reverse is in fact true: that somebody has taken the original text and dumped it on Wikipedia.

One more reason to dislike Wikipedia.

We would also point out two further things: (1) The reviewer in question hadn’t even bought the hard copy of the book (he had bought a Kindle – electronic – version); (2) Every other reviewer on Amazon.com gives the book five stars.

(If you’re remotely interested, we’ve touched on a couple of related issues before. See here, and here).

Romania, keep your lights on!

Craig Turp — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 08:51:51 +0000

That turning off the lights for an hour has become such an acceptable (and, let’s face it, painless) way of protesting says much about the top down, elitist green movement’s world view, which sees deprivation and poverty as lifestyle choices, and thinks that people in the developing world should be spared the excesses of our comfortable western lifestyles.

That the Romanian government has decided to do its bit by turning off the lights at Casa Poporului should be particularly despicable to anyone with a memory that stretches back beyond 1989.

In those days, electricity certainly couldn’t be taken for granted in Romania. Read this previous post on the subject to find out more. That today it is so cheap (relatively) – and can be wasted as we see fit – is something to celebrate.

Those people who think switching off the lights is such a good idea would do well to give away all their worldly possessions and head off to somewhere in deepest, darkest Africa where there simply is no electricity to switch off. Or, indeed, some villages in rural Romania.

Humanity’s priority now should be making sure that everyone in the world has access to cheap electricity, so that we can turn more lights on, not off.

Romania, keep the lights on!

Astrology, Witchcraft, Pseudoscience & Classic Comedy

Craig Turp — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 08:33:19 +0000

Last night, Romanian television was awash with astrologers, pyschics, energicians, homeopaths and other such quacks. All of whom were given time to explain – as if their theories had any scientific validity – the power allegedly being influenced by Traian Basescu’s Purple Flame Brigade. (Apparently, Basescu takes a chap called Aliodor Manolea – a ‘parapsychologist’ – with him everywhere).

All of which would have guaranteed massive viewing figures: many Romanians (especially young girls) are famously obsessed with astrology, witchcraft and such nonsense, which (by doing some mental, ideological gymnastics of the kind we thought only socialists were capable of) never seems to conflict with their Orthodox Christian beliefs.

Who can ever forget this terrific documentary from Al Jazeera English on the enduring appeal of witchcraft in Romania? (A part of the documentary was shown last night on Antena 3).

(As an aside, in the days before we were married, astrology was a good way of weeding out the non-starters: when meeting a girl for the first time, if the question ‘What star sign are you?’ came up in the first half-an-hour of conversation, the girl was considered a non-starter and given short-shrift. Indeed, one of the reasons we are so happily married to Mrs. Bucharest Life is because she has never, ever, in almost 10 years of marriage, asked about our horoscopes).

Anyway, we were reminded last night while watching it all, in baffled amusement, of two brilliant comedy moments. First, this routine about pseudo-science from Dara O’Brien:

Secondly, the short, yet to-the-point letter Kelvin MacKenzie, legendary Editor of The Sun in the 1980s, wrote to the paper’s astrologer to tell him he was sacked:

“As you have no doubt foreseen, you’re fired.”

Oh, and you might like this initiative: a mass, homeopathic ‘overdose’ to raise public awareness about the fact that homeopathic remedies have nothing in them.