Omer Golan's got a brand new £50K Merc courtesy of English bookmaker Fred Done after scoring the winning goal for Israel at the weekend.
Spectacular society salvation comes in many forms.
Even by the standards of the English media where fact and spun disinformation were long ago divorced from one another, the reality presented to us as the Israel versus Russia football match stands out like a beacon.
David Platt, when not working alongside Michael Owen training racehorses in Cheshire, is the brain who Sky Television wheel out when it is considered that real-time intellectual evaluations will need to be made as a corrupt piece of theatre unfolds in front of our eyes. On Friday night, Platt was in Vienna bemoaning the Russian-Israeli conspiracy against Albion, that scion of moral rectitude. The going-through-the-motions-prior-to-Wembley-oblivion slant to Platt's input weighed heavily on a nation's collective conscience. Thirty three minutes in and Michael Owen feigns injury to further depress the mood - even in the incredibly remote likelihood that England would have something to play for against Croatia next Wednesday, how can they win without Rooney and the talismanic (sic) Owen?
You can outbid the Russians in the buying of Israeli motivation. That's how...
The Israeli/Russian football match was perfect for a broad xenophobic pre-match media campaign. The English right still despises Russia based on a Soviet-era template while the English left despises Israel for their geopolitical zionism in the Middle East. Perfect. Additionally, pure xenophobes of all political hues across the nation were able to dust off the anti-semitism which seemingly still exists everywhere. The mock moral high ground taken by the media against this conspiratorial event perpetrated by people that we have never really trusted anyway was duplicitous in the extreme.
As Saturday morning dawns and we all receive our free Israeli flag courtesy of The Sun - these people may be below us on all levels but we require their assistance today so get out there and do the fake support thing - the national mood is resigned and sombre. Imagine the fate both of these flags and a nation's attitude if Israel had palpably sold out to the Russians instead...
Last week, we posted about the range of options which might allow England to compete (initially, at least) in this summer's Euro 2008. Option vii) was the corruption of choice (unless, unbelievably, our "One final option" gets the nod). On this particular occasion, we have no structural evidence of the mechanism whereby England (and those who require for England to reach the Finals) outbid the Russians for the affections of the Israeli team. We do, however, have the betting market patterns to analyse and bookmakers who are known to be closely linked to the Jewish money in the marketplace knew the outcome on Friday and traded the position with chutzpah to high liquidity (and massive profit) on the day of the match. Rumours of this corruption were circulating the trading rooms in late October and it would require excessive naivety to believe that such newsworthy inside information wouldn't have been in the knowledge of the likes of Platt and the wider mainstream media.
Anyway, back to script, Sky has jetted Platt from Vienna to Tel Aviv to maintain the wall-to-wall theatre of the alleged-great-nation failing ignominiously type of event. After the game the Sky brain waxed lyrical but not about the outcome which sees English qualification virtually assured. Instead, Platt was after the conspiracy theorists who had predicted that the game would be "bought". This was a triumph of doublespeak. The game was "bought" but it was us that did the buying. So, that's okay then.
The British (like the Americans) rely on perfidy and violence abroad and cruelty and inequality at home while corruption is omnipresent. This template covers all international affairs be they politics, business, war or sport. Perfidious corruption won the day on Saturday but such machinations hardly merited the fuelled-up/doped-up excesses of celebration that followed this magnificent national achievement. Lets examine this "achievement". The England football team, with several team members creatively betting against themselves and deliberately underperforming early in the campaign, have eventually managed to qualify for the Euro 2008 Finals - via bribery and corruption, they have bought their way out of an incredibly weak group.
And this is a prompt for a countrywide party? Weird place...
So UEFA, the FA, the bookmakers and the media have moulded the finalists after the pretence of a democratic competitive qualifying phase. Shame. Although there are some things to look forward to in the tournament - the underrated Romanians and England's timely demise being just two - Euro 2008 will be cheapened by the presence of the top tier corrupt nations like England, Spain, Italy and France who have purchased their right to proceed away from glare of the floodlights.
From one angle, this charade at least has claims of meritocracy. After all, if Roman hadn't roubled the ref...
Is this how we should expect our sport to develop?
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
