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28th June 2018
04:27pm BST
The World Cup isn't for that. The World Cup is an event you wait four long years for, which happens to feature football. What makes it so special is the clash of cultures and coming together of disparate nations in competition. The nominal medium is football, sure, but the biggest draw - on and off the pitch - is the sheer amount of shithousery abound.
In that sense, it is not dissimilar to the Eurovision Song Contest, in that everyone knows that the singing competition has fuck all to do with singing. You watch to take the piss, enjoy the over-the-top campness, and settle down to some seriously scandalous political voting. It's great fun. The World Cup is the same - it's one big messy bitch that lives for drama.
There is a long and proud history of World Cup shithousery - the Battle Of Santiago, the Disgrace of Gijón, the Hand of God, and the Forehead of Zidane to name just a few. But this year's tournament is shaping up to be the cuntiest one yet. We've not even reached the knockout stage yet and the sheer level of twatty behaviour has been an absolute joy to behold.
Of course shithousery takes many forms, and they've all been evident in the past two weeks in Russia. If you're ever in doubt as to whether something qualifies, here's a helpful tip: any time any poe-faced broadsheet scribe or furrow-browed football pundit claims that 'no one wants to see such behaviour on a football pitch' - that's solid gold shithousery!
What's been so impressive about this year's tournament is the sheer variety of bastardry. You've got your old classics, such as Pepe going down like a bag of spuds at the merest touch against Morocco; Neymar rolling around the pitch like a turd on a hill versus Costa Rica; and Mathias Jorgensen performing the most professional of fouls on Antoine Griezmann.
But a number of innovative new acts of cuntitude have advanced shithousery no end. Perhaps the most spectacular was Milad Mohammadi's needlessly acrobatic and ultimately abandoned somersault throw-in for Iran against Spain. It takes a special kind of shithouse to attempt such look-at-me antics with only 30 seconds left to salvage a draw. What a legend.
Thanks to VAR, miming shithouses can add pointing to the replay screen and tracing out TV outlines in the air to holding up imaginary cards to the referee. Although that pales into insignificance after Morocco’s Nordin Amrabat told the viewers at home that "VAR is bullshit" after Iago Aspas' late goal denied his country a famous victory against Spain.
Of course the VAR system was meant to help eradicate grappling inside the area after the officials were told to clamp down on such behaviour. In the most part it has worked, with a number of penalties awarded from over-amorous marking. But that didn't stop Stephan Lichtsteiner and Fabian Schar getting away with WWE antics on Aleksandar Mitrovic.
What is perhaps most heartwarming about the skullduggery on show is the emerging nations of nastiness. Of course you've got your old-school experts like Argentina, Portugal and Uruguay, but developing bastards are rapidly catching up. South Korea have been joyously twatty, whilst Iran and Tunisia have been wonderful discredits to their people.
It would be remiss of me not to mention Panama at this juncture, after their breathtaking behaviour against England. Gareth Southgate's side may have won the game emphatically, but Los Canaleros were a breath of rancid air throughout - and more power to their sharpened elbows. A favourite moment was attempting to score whilst England celebrated another goal.
Of course the shithousery hasn't been confined to the pitch. We all witnessed Vladimir Putin having a good old banter with Prince Mohammed bin Salman during the opening game, with Fifa president Gianni Infantino providing the filling in the cunt sandwich. A few days later, banned former president Sepp Blatter rocked up - a personal guest of...Vladimir Putin.
In the cheap seats too there's been rum goings-on. The most ruthless of which was when Socceroos legend Tim Cahill did everything in his power to pass his match-worn shirt to a group of excited Aussie youngsters...only for a brutish Peru fan to snatch it from their grasp. What's more, he had the brass neck to look annoyed at them for getting in his way!
When all is said and done, we always turn to the greatest exponents of the craft - the shithouse's shithouses. And there was a beautiful moment when arguably the two biggest twats in the game - Pepe and Diego Costa - clashed. It was the irresistible prick meeting the immoveable arsehole, and a tit-for-twat exchange of epic proportions.
A long ball was launched in Costa's direction. With his side one-nil down, he knew this was a great opportunity to level the scores. But first, he had to do his duty and do a shithouse. With Pepe in close quarters, he smacked a forearm into the Portuguese's throat; Pepe, responding in twatty kind, pretended he'd been struck in the forehead.
Costa still had a lot of do if he was going to tie the scores, and Pepe had ample time to get up from his fake head injury and save the day, but such is his dedication to being a nobhead that he stayed down for far too long and Costa went on to score. It was a great finish in fairness, but who gives a shit about that? What had gone before was simply mesmerising.
Here's to more shithousery to come. There's far more at stake in the knockout stages, so the higher stakes promise a bonanza of bastardness. It's been such a shitshow that I didn't even mention Sergio Ramos or Diego Maradona. But I'll leave your with some of your favourite moments of supreme skullduggery. Viva shithousery - we really do want to see that in football...
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