Football

The Fiver | Sinful, repressed football-following folk looking to have a good time


AT LEAST IT’S NOT KEYESEY ON QATAR

There are many ways Qatar could have acted to allay fears that the Human Rights World Cup might be the most joyless event since José Mourinho, Graeme Souness and Roy Keane appeared in a TV studio together. It could have announced that the nation has banned the death sentence; it could have said it’s not a crime to be homosexual; or it could have just told someone else to host it because it’s a sorry farce the tournament is being held there in the first place. But instead, Qatar did what The Fiver often does when it wants people to like us – it announced that booze will be freely available!

“Alcohol is not part of our culture. However, hospitality is,” cheered Qatar’s official Fun Tsar, Nasser al-Khater. “Alcohol is not as readily available here as in other parts of the world but for the World Cup we want to ensure it is accessible for fans who want to have a drink.” With England having a half-decent side these days and likely to qualify, Doha cafe owners might want to ready themselves for a winter influx of thirsty red-faced folk, including $exually Repressed Morris Dancing Fiver and That Effing Brass Band.

Though whether they will ever get close to drinking enough Tin to get moody is debatable. The price of raising your blood pressure with the frothy stuff in Qatar is an eye-popping £10 a pint. Ordinarily, The Fiver’s advice would be to find an old piece of hosepipe and mainline some petrol from the nearest taxi to lift your spirits, but the word is that Qatar will look to relax the sin tax on alcohol in order to reduce prices to something similar to having a tipple in a trendy London boozer.

So, that’s one potential hurdle cleared for sinful, repressed football-following folk looking to have a good time. The other is whether their behaviour once they’ve refreshed themselves is acceptable: public drunkenness is a crime that can be punishable by flogging. To be fair to Khater, he did say that security staff would be trained to accept behaviour they wouldn’t normally put up with, though given that he added that public shows of affection from anyone are “frowned upon” in Qatar, we’re guessing the tolerance threshold won’t be particularly high. “As long as people are happy, that’s fine,” honked Dr Fun, who might want to be asked again when he sees a dozen flabby fellas doing a drunken conga through the Mirqab Mall’s luxury fountains while singing Vindaloo.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“Pumping out cold air is a bit crude and then God will just make that disappear. So, we pump the exact amount of cold air in the exact place and then recycle it all the time. We never throw it away. There are grills on the floor. We take it from the top and recycle it back” – Saud Abdul Ghani, aka ‘Dr Cool’, on Qatar 2022’s cooling technology dealing with temperatures of up to 100F.

Dr Cool giving it out.



Dr Cool giving it out. Photograph: Ibraheem Al Omari/Reuters

RECOMMENDED LISTENING

The pod squad are here, with Football Weekly Extra.

FIVER LETTERS

“Your reference to Jimmy Corkhill from Brookside (yesterday’s Fiver) made me wonder how old your youngest reader is (and therefore how many, if any, you alienated with that reference). I’m 46 and willing to bet I’m one of the youngest. Keep up the good, if outdated, work” – Paul Buller.

“One can only assume from Admir Pajic’s letter on the speeded-up simulation of post-Invincibles Arsenal by modern Spurs (yesterday’s Fiver letters) that he’s managed to forget the dire Big Cup final from a few months ago. Good for him” – Christopher Smith.

“‘Max Rushden on VAR and an alternate universe’ (yesterday’s Still Want More?) sounds like a plot for football’s first psychological-horror movie. VAR is challenging enough already, without it constantly flipping between this universe and some other, appearing and disappearing over and over again ad infinitum, like some dodgy electrical appliance on the perpetual blink. Thankfully Mr Rushden’s subject transpired to be a case of some harmless alternative universe: a universe without VAR as opposed to one with VAR. Then it occurred to me that alternative universes might not be so harmless after all, as some of them could be pairs of alternate universes. At which point it occurred to me that I ought to roll all this multiverse stuff into an email and send it straight back to its source” – Tony Thulborn.

Send your letters to the.boss@theguardian.com. And you can always tweet The Fiver via @guardian_sport. Today’s winner of our prizeless letter o’the day is … Tony Thulborn.

BITS AND BOBS

Perhaps inspired by Homer the Vigilante, Pep Guardiola keeps on digging when it comes to Bernardo Silva and that tweet to Benjamin Mendy. “The people who judge Bernardo don’t know him,” parped Pep. “He is an exceptional person. They judge him on one joke, I judge him on three years working with him every single day.”

Granit Xhaka is the new Arsenal captain after a vote among their squad for a five-man senior group. Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang is vice-captain, followed by Héctor Bellerín, Alexandre Lacazette and Leadership’s Mesut Özil.

The skipper.



The skipper. Photograph: TF-Images/Getty Images

Football League clubs are insisting that teams be docked points for failing to pay their players. “Clubs are fed up with this,” sniffed one chairman. “Fines and player embargoes are useless. So is trying to stop bad owners.”

While it may be unravelling at speed again for Ole Gunnar Solskjær, the Manchester United manager is keeping positive. “I never said it was going be easy this season,” he cooed. “There are going to be ups and downs, highs and lows. And when we lose a game we have to trust ourselves and what we’re doing.”

And the build-up to next week’s all-Brazilian Copa Libertadores semi between Grêmio and Flamengo is being overshadowed by some dismal rhetoric from the former’s Renato Portaluppi about opposite number Jorge Jesus. “He’s never trained a big European side outside Portugal, he’s never won anything and he’s 65 years old,” belched Portaluppi about the three-time Primeira Liga winner.

STILL WANT MORE?

David Hytner hears from an embattled Big Mo’ Pochettino and dissects the club’s current malaise.

Supporting Manchester United has become far more exasperating and yet arguably far more interesting, writes Tim de Lisle with glass half-full.

“I had to become my own role model.” Turkey women’s captain Didem Karagenç on why she considered quitting football.

Didem Karagenç, there.



Didem Karagenç, there. Photograph: Eren Sarigul/Turkish Football

Dani Alves reflects on … 17 years in Europe, what he learned from Pep Guardiola, his experiences of racism and why he’s back in Brazil.

Vicky Jepson on aiming to take her Liverpool team back to the top of women’s football.

In Russia, but want to watch the likes of Jack Wilshere and Phil Jones? You are likely to be bang out of luck, warns Artur Petrosyan.

Oh, and if it’s your thing … you can follow Big Website on Big Social FaceSpace. And INSTACHAT, TOO!





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