I don’t mind. I actually don’t mind. It’s completely fine. Sure, in mid-March, when Ireland were actually vying for a place at this year’s World Cup, I might have said, out loud and possibly several times in print, that our getting a place in the tournament was “the most important single thing in my life”. A glance at me after our dispiriting exit to Czechia on penalties, face red, mood sour, may have led you to believe my cries of my life being over and all hope being lost. It’s just that, then, I spoke with the fecklessness of youth. As an older, wiser man, I see my folly now.
The true, pure joy of any feast of football is really revealed only once any sense of personal or national propriety is removed, and the difficult business of caring too much has been extracted from the process. Only then can you acknowledge, and revel in, the true hidden form of any football tournament: a grotesque, Heath Robinson-esque contraption designed to deliver misery to every single nation but one, across a protracted series of cruel and unusual debasements.
Just as the cover for the special-edition DVD of Hostel boasted “27 seconds of extra eye goo”, this year’s World Cup has expanded the horror from 32 to 48 teams, meaning 47 teams – 47 proud, glorious nations – will each have their turn at some point in the next five and a half weeks. To experience failure at different speeds, to taste it in every conceivable flavour, for 38 straight days of spent hope and mulched aspirations. When my nation, with the brave cunning for which we are so rightly and routinely lauded, decided we’d rather not go through the wretched rigmarole one more time, I doffed my large, green floppy hat to them. It was the right thing, the smart thing to do. So, no, I don’t mind. I actually don’t mind. It’s completely fine.
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