Futbol Shutbol Hai Rabba

I was reading about the Football World Cup qualifier results and that reminded me of the coverage of the Euro 2008 coverage by ESPN Star.

The prematch show was led by Harsha Bhogle. Now I usually like this guy. But I am not too sure covering football is his cup of tea. Cricket he does fine but in the football briefings he looked a bit dazed. It almost looked like he had been up all night mugging up all he could about football.

And then there were the panellists:

One of them was an Indian, a Goan to be more specific. He supported the Portugal team whole-heartedly. Why? Goa was once a colony of Portugal. Now this happened a very long time ago but that did not deter this guy. He was so biased about his opinions that even the Portugal national team’s coach and players had a more unbiased view about the games.

The second was Steve McManaman (pronounced Steve MicMaan). This is another wierd guy. The only team he loves, being an Englishman, is England. He compared all the playing teams to England and whichever was closer to England ‘statistically’ would win the match, although, England did not feature in the final 32.

Now the thing with England is, although they did not qualify, they’re a pretty decent team. In fact, even in India they enjoy a lot of fan following. Now why would a lot of people support the team representing the country which had an oppressive rule over us for almost a century and a half is beyond my understanding. But then, I too am a fan of the England football team. So something’s are just the way they are. Our freedom fighters, most of who are looking down upon us from the heavens, must literally be looking down on us.

Back to the coverage, the thing is, we can miss the preshow if we don’t like it. But what would you do if the local cable-guy decides to show you the match in hindi. I’m not against hindi but then the hindi commentators do get such emotions out of me. The channel had 2 commentators: Ghaus Mohammad and Roshan Taneja. Now this Roshan Taneja was decent at best but the other guy got to my nerves. Not only did he have a very limited knowledge of football, but he compared everything with cricket. He actually kept referring to the main stars of the teams as being Sachin Tendulkars of their team. Fortunately enough, and to my sheer surprise he din’t blurt out ‘wicket-keeper’ instead of ‘goal-keeper’.

The worst statement of all was when he was referring to Michael Ballack of Germany. He said, “Yeh baalak (child) koi baalak nahi yeh toh maharathi hain”

We expect better, much better.