Let it come down

I sat down to watch South Korea v Togo wanting Togo to win—and that rather selflessly, too, since it would have disproved yesterday’s Footynomics hypothesis. As I was watching the less-than-gripping first half, with Togo a goal ahead, I picked up the Thinking Fan’s Guide again, began reading Binyavanga Wainaina’s brilliant piece about Togo, and found myself changing my mind. I have to admit I knew absolutely fuck-all about Togo and didn’t know that the former dictator’s one son Faure Gnassingbé ran the country and his brother Rock ran the football association. There were democracy protests in Togo last year. But Faure ‘had good fortune on his side: amid all the unrest his younger brother delivered the best gift his family has ever received: qualification for the World Cup’.

Musing on this, I found that I wasn’t wanting Togo to win any more. Just as well, too, since Jean-Paul Abalo gave away a free kick from which the Koreans scored, and was sent off in the process. Togo went on to lose 2-1. So f it’s bad news for the Gnassingbé family that’s a good thing, right? Leaving 5.4 million Togans, citizens of one of the poorest countries in the World Cup, the only one of the 32 currently getting poorer every year, even more depressed than they were when they woke up this morning. Well, when you put it like that...Football has questionable links with nationalisms and governments everywhere on earth, so surely it’s a type of cant to think that the Togans aren’t quite miserable enough to deserve a cheering World Cup run. And yet anything that’s good news for the Gnassingbés...

Hmmph. Better to keep it simple. I think I’ll stick to a clear-cut view of who I want to win for the rest of the tournament.

As I write, it’s started to chuck it down, and the air has that distinctive London smell of diesel fumes and pollution brought down to ground level by the rain. The smell of rain. It occurs to me that this would make a brilliant title for either a bad novel or crappy film. From the trailer: ‘He was a something something. She was a something something else. Together—they smelt the rain.’

Comments

[Michael]

This query is not strictly football-related, so forgive the imposture:

Will you be coming to Oz for the Ashes?

It's not simply low-rent nationalism to say that the smell of rain on eucalypt-rich humus is superior to the smell of rain-driven diesel and pollution.

Interestingly, Jocelyn Moorhouse did try to make a film about a man, a woman, eucalypts and, perhaps, rain. It died in the arse.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/Film/Crowe-scuttles-Eucalyptus-film/2005/02/11/1108061866965.html

[John]

I'd love to go to Australia for the Ashes but I suspect I'll be watching/listening to it on this very same sofa. As for the smell of Eucalyptus, agreed. As for Eucalyptus the film, well it's a pity, but since they never make a good movie from a good book, and since Eucalyptus the novel is such a good book, perhaps it's better this way. If they made the Nicole Kidman character 15 years older, as that linked article suggests, how could the story make sense, since the whole point is she's only just old enough to marry?

[Nene Dakai]

Togoan? No, Togolese. You've got to be able to get at least that right.