Having spent most of the last week watching asphalt roll under my butt and wondering why they don't just charge a couple of bucks for the "Free Continental Breakfast" so that they can afford to include actual food, I haven't had much time to check back on the comments from my last couple of posts.
When I first started out doing this blogging thing I never read any of them on the theory that I didn't need to any compliments and thereby raise my already substantial level of arrogance and neither did I need to read the "You're a mean old poopiehead" remarks and spend my afternoons engaged in the internet equivalent of "I know you are but what am I?" flame wars with a bunch of mouthbreathing twatwaffles from North of the Ice Curtain.
But my esteemed friend Beau Dure convinced me that it was part of the deal, and so now I dutifully read each and every one. Even the really really stupid ones.
So while I have set aside some time this afternoon for perusing the now 126 post long comment thread which followed my theorizing on the Russia 2018/Qatar 2022 piece, I have not yet read a single one.
Nonetheless, for all of you who responded by telling me how truly insane, painfully imbecilic and/or thoroughly drunk I must have been when I wrote it, I would like to respectfully and in the true spirit of intelligent discourse reply:
Neener, neener, neener.
!
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you THE END OF ENGLANDS' BID
(With appropriate hat tip to Andy Mead who was the first one to point me to the story. He's not just another pretty face.)
Now I want to say at the outset that I have felt nothing but pity for poor Lord Triesman (actually, if I'm not mistaken he's actually a Baron, making him not "Sir David" but rather "Baron Triesman"; I'm not just another pretty face either).
Triesman has been the main guy responsible for bending over and dropping his pants whenever Jack Warner felt like growling about the England bid. As head of the FA and Chairman of the England World Cup committee, he of course signed up for the job but even he must surely have been shocked at the level of personal debasement he's had to engage in.
So when, for example, Warner told reporters that "England has never done anything in World football" and that he would personally stop them from getting a World Cup, it was Triesman who had to fly out to Port of Spain and arrange for Jack to get a bribe, in the form of the England/T&T match of last summer.
The players were furious (it was scheduled for the week after the EPL season concluded), but Warner got to sell tickets to both the game and various "parties" (the main one costing 75 a head) and pocket all the money.
The England players had barely gotten airborne again when Warner was grumping that Triesman had "disrespected" him by not personally attending the game. So as an "apology" Triesman agreed to come to the gala TTFF celebration-cum-Jack-Warner-worship ceremony they held last summer, sitting in the front row in abject humiliation.
All for England. All for nothing.
Not that Warner didn't hold up his end of the bargain. No indeed.
After lining his pockets (the match was officially "sold out" for weeks but traveling fans were directed to Daryan Warners' Dive Shop, conveniently located right around the corner from Hasely Crawford Stadium, where tall stacks of tickets were readily available for a mere 5 times face value.) and graciously accepting Triesmans' groveling obeisance, Warner announced that England was "worthy" of a World Cup and could count on his support.
Then came last weekend when, mere hours after Triesman, Beckham and Co. had appeared in Zurich at the throne of Fairest Lord Blatter to hand over their official "bid books"the story broke that the Baron has most likely blown it for England.
It seems the 60 year old Triesman has been straying off the reservation with a milk-skinned 37 year old English doxy named Melissa Jacobs who, for reasons of her own, met him for lunch and taped their conversation.
The tape (available at the link) has the FA chief waxing on about how Russia has agreed to help Spain bribe the referees in South Africa next month, and in return Spain will drop their 2018 bid and vote for Russia to get World Cup 2018.
(Let it be noted that individual federations do not have votes in this matter. Only the 24 members of the Executive Committee do. However, both Russia (Dr Viacheslav Kosloskov) and Spain (Ángel Mar