GOL?

by Azmi Sharom

“I don’t want clever… conversation

I never want to work that hard

Oooooooooooo

I just want someone… that I can talk to

I want you just the way you are…..”

Not exactly the soundtrack I had in mind when watching the Argentina Germany game, but then neither was I in a place where I thought I’d be watching the game.

Bangi: the centre of… nothing really.

A posh hotel in Bangi to be exact.

One of the perks of being a poor academic is that once in a while you get to stay in high-class places for free when organisations with more money than your own hire you to speak or teach or train or whatever. So, you take the opportunity to roll around on large hotel beds, make a mess with no guilt, wear a shower cap, use the high tech gym, sit in the steam room and generally behave like the bumpkin that you are. For free. Whee.

However, fun aside, I was stuck in the middle of nowhere and had no choice but to watch the game in the hotel bar; a bar which overlooked the hotel garden within which was a wedding with your obligatory wedding singer crooning easy listening mush. This explains the “Billy Joel at his most sappy” soundtrack.

It was totally wrong music. For this particular game, it should have been Wagner’s “Flight of the Valkyries”. In fact it should have been “Flight of the Valkyries” as heard on Apocalypse Now except with Robert Duvall’s lines changed to “I love the smell of four goals in the morning. It smells of….victory”.

Watching the match was quite an interesting experience. I had to sit far, far away from the screen and my myopic eyes had to strain to see the action. So I looked at the spectators instead. A very mixed bunch of people I must say.

There were government servant types in their shiny, shiny, pretty, pretty, silky, silky batik shirts; obviously attending some “Seminar Mencapai Kualiti”. There were the crew of a European airline on their stopover; tall balding pilots and tall flight attendants who all reminded me of my matron in school. And once in a while a few wedding guests would trot in to peek at the score.

There were also quite a large number of young Malaysians, all supporting Argentina. I don’t know what exactly they were doing there, but there they were. Poor fellows, they were so bitterly disappointed. As the goals poured in, you can see them leaving. One young chap practically dragged his tiny girlfriend away as he stomped up the stairs in disgust after the fourth one went in.

Personally, I didn’t feel very much.  It was quite fun to see so many goals, but for me the World Cup ended when the pathetic English got spanked and sent home with their WAGs between their tails. Still, it has been an interesting couple of days. First Holland knock out Brazil and now the other mighty South American team get shown the door.

Actually I blame Maradona for the defeat.  Diego should not have said he would go running around Buenos Aires in the nude if Argentina won the World Cup. Even at his peak of fitness it would have been unseemly, but the way he looks now, it would have been an offence against nature. And I think the Universe knew this and the Universe made sure that it would not happen.

How else can you explain the hammering that the Argentinians received from a team, which admittedly is well organised and motivated, but young and not nearly as talented as themselves.  The Universe must have intervened so that the Balance of the Cosmos will not be disturbed by the Dangling of the Diego.

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