RIFLE RANGE BOY

FIFA Uncovered (2022) Miniseries (Netflix; 4 episodes) Direction: Daniel Gordon. It is the same story all the time. Something starts small with noble intentions but ends up filled with filth so much that it hits the ceiling so high that its stench fills up to high heaven. We are aware of the Indian Congress Party, which the British Raj established to give the natives a false sense of control of their administration, who steered the nation towards self-rule and have, over the decades, become a self-destructive political party. In the 21st century, its place in society is suspect.  In the same vein, UMNO (United Malay National Organisation), which had a pivotal role in claiming independence from the British, is now a power-hungry, corruption-ridden tyrant out to mill the country.  Of course, naysayers would insist that these parties were connivingly handed the rein of the country purposefully. The British still wanted to hold the purse strings of their former colonies and exert ...

I used to be fascinated with the term 'money laundering'. At face value, it looked simple enough - to cleanse money obtained via unsavoury means and to put them in circulation whilst giving them a legitimate source of origin. Was it a coincidence that Al Capone used a laundromat to store and 'cleanse' his ill-gotten gains during Prohibition?   As the Qatar 2022 FIFA World Cup is in progress, another word frequently mentioned is 'sports washing'. Traditionally sports have been utilised to cement friendships between nations. It has also been used to spur nationalism among its own citizens. For years despotic regimes whitewash their sins with the glamour of sports. During the 1936 Olympics, Hitler tried to paint a new image of a rejuvenated Germany after the humiliating defeat in the trench War and to prove his supremacist Aryan race theory. Sadly, Jesse Owen's achievement simply threw dirt on Hitler's face. Then it was the Argentinan junta who tried to whi...

© FIFA Almost like a ritual, it turns up regularly every four years in the Northern summer. Nobody bothers about the Southern hemisphere anyway. One says that games are on this summer, it refers to summer in the Northern hemisphere, not South. Many a couch potato who had seen better times at running after a ball, all turn out to be expert football pundits and fantastic football strategist; many times over than the world's highest paid football managers. These podgy characters start their day in the afternoon with puffy red eyes and husky voices after staying up the whole night to the wee hours of the morning at nightspots cheering for teams whose players would not even be able to place our country on the globe. My exposure to this most loved started way back in 1978 when Argentina hosted this quadrennial fiesta. My mathematics teacher, Mr Chang, besides teaching us probabilities and possibilities, he also exposed us to some of the FIFA world cup related trivia. Brazil, at th...

The question is whether an occurrence can solely be put on one event is questionable. It appears that our national pastime is playing the blame game and to shame the alleged perpetrator(s) in the hope that if someone can be pinpointed to have caused the gaffe, we can put closure to a catastrophe. And they hope to prevent the shortcomings in future. It all sounds noble but unfortunately life is not so simple. Not every bad incident has a simple etiology. Most often than not it is multi factorial. Like in Murphy's Law, when something is doomed to go wrong, it will go wrong. Airline industry have considered a 'no blame' policy but to identify the precipitating events and to take a collective approach to improve safety. On the other hand, is a leader culpable to take the brickbats if his subordinates faltered? Should he be made to answer or just take the easy way of saying, "it wasn't me. It is not easy to control so many people's actions, you know!"? ...

A Brazilian soccer fan cries as she watches her team  get beat during a live telecast of the semifinals  World Cup soccer match between Brazil and Germany,  in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, Tuesday, July 08, 2014 Now that the nights are spent in slumber land, the eyes are becoming less congested and the mush in the brain is slowly clearing up, I can write. It is amazing how a game, after all a game, can exert so much effect on events around the world. Perhaps, it was meant to be thus. Average Joe being side-tracked by events that are clearly not going to determine the fate of mankind, as, they, the capitalists create a sense of urgency and fascination amongst the lay people and laugh all the way to the bank. If not, how would you expect a supposedly non profit organisation like FIFA to have 5 billion USD in their account, leaving a trail of heartaches as they count their loot. And the money is development of world football, really? Soccer is just another tool f...

Life lessons learnt from FIFA World Cup 2010 (under the hypnotizing hum of the vuvuzelas..) A living day is a learning day in the voyage of life. We all sail, somewhere. Some wade along aimlessly, some claim to know the way whilst others follow blindly but there is no Google map to follow.... The destination may be variable but endpoint is the same! Now, what can we learn from the FIFA World Cup 2010. France: if there is no mutual respect between coach (leader) and player (citizens), the team (country) is bound to go nowhere. Just like that, the 1998 world champions fizzled out after the first round with dismal performances. Argentina: do not write off people too easily. Everybody deserves a second chance. In the qualifying stage, Argentina just managed to scrape through as a representative of South America. In the first and second match, they showed the world the  real way to play football, shutting up their critics. Primadonnas never shine: Look at Italy (the last WC winner...

11.6.2010 FIFA World Cup 2010 (# denotes FIFA ranking as per 24 th May 2010) In the spirit of FIFA World Cup, we Malaysians (#147), can only contribute by sucking up all the World Cup merchandise and memorabilia by paying exorbitant prices and rejoicing by seeing other teams which were below or at most at par with us showing their prowl at world football rankings. South Korea(#47) who were our arch rivals in the 70s at our Merdeka tournaments have been consistently representing Asia in the 8 world cups and even emerged semifinalists in 2002 when they co-hosted the finals with Japan (#45), who were many rungs below us in the 70s! What can we do but stare blankly in to sky and blame everybody else (except ourselves) whilst others leap by bounds over the moon! We (the dumb cows) can run with the spoon. And you can reminisce the fine Malaysian footballers of the yesteryears. Maxis, in their effort to promote their 3G phones to view the soccer matches, are hitting on this sentiment ...