The World Goes Wacky During the World Cup

June 18th, 2006 | by: WC Bob |

Once every four years the world takes a break for normalcy and falls into the abyss of World Cup madness. This year is no exception. In Denmark, police are investigating their own ranks after they failed to investigate a crime against a 14-year-old boy because they were too busy watching Italy play Ghana. Seems like a legitimate excuse to me. Watching that game was much more entertaining than protecting the public’s welfare could ever be.

In nearby Holland, Dutch insurance companies are reporting massive numbers of claims related to World Cup injuries and damages. My favorite is the story about the people who filed a claim because their furniture was ruined after they had guests over to watch Netherlands play. The guests were wearing body and face paint and no matter how hard you scrub it is difficult to remove that from your couch. I speak from experience.

In Bangkok, civil servants who help to run the city have been told that they either need to stop gambling on World Cup matches or risk being fired from their jobs. Gambling is illegal, but apparently that isn’t stopping Thais from betting like crazy and making their notoriously inefficient bureaucracy even more inefficient because people are distracted with the World Cup.

Also in Thailand, a man has been arrested after he killed two football fans because they were cheering too loudly during a World Cup match. Again it was the Italy-Ghana game that was the match involved. Simply a horrible story.

And the World Cup wouldn’t be complete with a story involving angry rioting following power blackouts during the matches. This year’s rioting story comes courtesy of Bangladesh. I think FIFA would contribute to world peace if they would distribute extra generators to countries before the competition starts so no one has to worry about the lights going out in the 75th minute of a tied game.

We still have three more weeks of the madness. More stories to come…

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Laura

Oh, what’s a little killing and robbing gonna do to them? World Cup is once in 4 years…! Insensitive people! :P
Jen in Boston

Bob – if you think that’s wacky, you haven’t read the US-Italy LiveBlog thread yet. We have the US and Australia in fisticuffs over there ;)

Yes, people get a bit passionate at times, don’t they?
http://ecuador.worldcupblog.org/ Trent

Good point, Jen. The USA-ITA LiveBlog comments must have set several records of varying degrees of decorum.

For the most part, I thought it was fun to see. I mean, over 880 comments! Whoa!
Raybron

Matches where blood is involved from an intentional act tend to have that kind of an effect (though surprisingly there isn’t that much discussion about that, the lowlight of the tournament for me so far). I also think that match really sparked the interest of the US, the ESPN poll says:

Which is the most interesting event?

USA in the World Cup- 50%
NBA Finals- 38%
US Open- 12%

Making strides indeed.
Jen in Boston

Yeah, Trent, it was fun. A very exciting game, and a very exciting Group E, no matter who advances.

Ooh, Raybron, I like that poll. It seems like the World Cup is slowly but surely creeping on to Americans’ radar.
dirk

Let’s hope holliganism doesn’t spread to the US; just the nthusiasm for the game. By the way, Great Job USA (from a German living in the US – and yes, I have my green card)