COMMENT: We need to ban this sick Fortnite filth before it ruins both our youth and our national team

Won’t somebody think of the children?

Before Antoine Griezmann put his forefinger and thumb to his head in celebration during Wednesday night’s Europa League final, you might not have heard of ‘Fortnite’. But it is time to be worried about it. The ‘battle royale’ online video game takes influence from the vile, violent Japanese movie of the same name, and involves 100 players being dropped onto an island and murdering each other, one by one, until a victor remains. Sounds disgusting, doesn’t it? But Fortnite is estimated to have more than 45 million players, and brought in revenue for publishers Epic Games exceeding US$223 million in March 2018 alone. What is happening to this country? The crippling effects of Fortnite addiction are plain to see. Antoine Griezmann is one of the top strikers in the world. He should be playing for a top club, like Manchester United or PSG, competing in the Champions League. Instead, his obsession with Fortnite has made him a husk of his former self, reduced to playing in the Europa League, a competition far below his standard. It is heartbreaking to see how far he has fallen since Fortnite: Battle Royale was released in September 2017. You might think this scourge is just limited to Europe - but the plague is now effecting Our Boys as well. The World Cup is just a few short weeks away, and our lads should be knuckling down and getting their heads in the game to bring back the Jules Rimet. Instead Dele Alli and Harry Kane are on ‘Twitch’ – whatever that is – streaming Fortnite to millions of impressionable kids. This would never have happened in the glory days of the Golden Generation. Frank Lampard, John Terry and Ashley Cole would never have done this – they would have been content to have a few games of GoldenEye on the N64, then go out on the piss. Even national treasures like Stacy Solomon are addicted. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NReIF3PdK4U Some younger members of the JOE staff are stumbling into the office late, bleary-eyed, muttering about "no scopes" and "slurp juice," and doing that stupid L thing. Attempts to find out more were only met with calls of "Shut up, granddad." Instead of enjoying the sunshine, our kids’ role models are telling them to sit in dark rooms and shoot each other. Most online games at least let well-off kids buy their way to victory by purchasing endless FIFA packs. In Fortnite however, all you can buy are ludicrous dances and purely cosmetic costumes that offer no gameplay advantage. Everyone is on a level playing field. Yet again, the liberal media is forcing their cultural Marxist beliefs onto the youth, presenting a completely fantasist, unachievable, utopian view of the world. We need to take a stand against this abomination. If we don’t do something now, in a few years we could have a generation of footballers that are better at flossing than they are hoofing a ball out of their own box up to an average playmaker. We need to get back to the days where we made friends with the kids up the road and weren’t able to be exposed to progressive new ideas online. When we looked up to light entertainers like Noel Edmonds and Bill Odie, not people with names like "Ninja" or "Drake" Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Gareth Southgate, we need you to do something about this. Now. Don't email me. I'm on holiday.