The magic of football…

Life: funny old thing, really. Just the other day, for instance, I found myself stuck in a traffic jam, and…

Really? You too, huh? And everyone else reading this article, by the look of things. My, what a coincidence…

But so much the better: at least, you all know perfectly well what is meant by that expression. That sinking feeling, as you turn a corner to suddenly a face a sea of stationary vehicles, all shimmering uncertainly in a heat-haze; that pointless effort of craning your neck outside the window, to try and figure out what’s actually causing the problem this time… and then, inevitably… the beeping.

First one horn, then another, then another… until an entire barrage of ear-splitting beeps suddenly erupts from all directions, as every single driver instinctively slams the horn at once (because ‘being stuck in traffic’, during a record heatwave, is clearly not enough of a nuisance in itself.

No, we could always use a little extra assault on our ear-drums: you know, just to maximise the inconvenience as much as possible…)

So there I was, sitting at the wheel, thinking (not for the first time): but guys – seriously, though – how many times do we have to actually go through this? ‘Hooting your horn’ will not make traffic move any faster, you know…

Yes, yes, I am perfectly aware that ‘Joshua used trumpets to bring down the walls of Jericho’, and all that; but let’s face it: that was a long time ago. Today, the kinetic effect of sound-waves on solid matter tends to work out a little… um... differently.

Hate to break it to you, but: your chances of actually propelling the combined weight of all those cars forward, through the sheer force of decibels and soundwave frequencies alone… sorry, guys, but: forget it. It will just never... ever… happen.

Nor, for that matter, will ‘hooting your horn’ do very much to address all the root causes of Malta’s congestion problem to begin with: the ever-growing number of licensed vehicles on the road, for instance; or the 121 infrastructural projects, and counting, all going on at the same time…

Still less, will all this infernal din ever compensate for the lack of any mass-transit systems on the island: you know: trains, trams, subways, monorails… anything that might provide an alternative to actually driving one’s car (and thus contributing to the traffic we all love to complain about) in the first place.

Besides: in this particular instance… no amount of ‘horn-hooting’ will ever alter the physical dimensions of those two buses that – having craned my neck out far enough – I can now see are the cause of all this traffic: by trying to squeeze through the same (narrow) junction at the same time…

… actually, now that I think about it: all this hooting might even considerably lengthen the time we end up stuck in this very jam. (After all, how can those two bus drivers possibly hear themselves insulting each other’s mothers, over and above all this racket? At this rate, they’ll be arguing all day…)

Even at the best of times, though: ‘hooting your horn’ will not actually achieve very much at all: other than, perhaps, irritate the living crap out of everyone within a radius of five kilometres (which, let’s face it, is probably the real intention anyway...)

And yet, and yet… not only is it pretty much everybody’s gut-reaction to that sort of situation anyway (despite being no doubt perfectly aware of the sheer irrationality of it all…) but even as all those thoughts went through my mind, I suddenly realized – to my utter horror – that…

I was hooting my own horn, too…

That’s right, folks: even as I contemplated the sheer futility of attempting to accelerate the flow of traffic, through purely auditory means – and to be fair to myself: it’s not as though there was very much else I could actually do, at the time - my subconscious mind eventually must have said, ‘Screw this shit!’, and simply jumped into the driver’s seat instead.

Just like that, before I could do anything to stop it…

And if that wasn’t weird enough: I soon found myself thinking – just as the traffic starting slowly inching forwards again (so who knows? Maybe that wall of sound did make a difference, in the end…) that all this just happened to take place a couple of days before tonight’s scheduled European Cup Final between England and Italy….

At which point: well, you’re probably all seeing the connection already. But to spell it out anyway: it is, like I said, an ‘England-Italy’ football match. In Malta.

And – notwithstanding any personal impression I may have myself: that this old, bitter and ancestral rivalry seems to be slowly dying out over time… just like all the ancient political squabbles that originally caused it: all dead, and (almost) completely faded from living memory…

… ah, but let’s just say that there’s a teenie-weenie difference between ‘slowing dying out’, and being… um… DEAD. (Just look at England’s optimism ahead of tonight’s match, for example…)

And part of this difference also means that – even if a much smaller contingent of Malta’s football-potty population (a large enough demographic, on its own) still identifies with those two footballing nations today, than ever before…. there will still be good a few tens of thousands – give or take – who will no doubt feel they have ‘double cause’ to celebrate tonight’s result… regardless of who actually wins the game.

Heck, if the winners do turn out to be England, in the end… it might even be a ‘triple’ cause. For 55 years is, after all, a rather long time to wait for ‘football to come home’.  (Almost makes you wonder, in fact: what’s actually taking it so long? Did football get lost? Or did it just get too comfortable where it was, and eventually decided that: ‘Home? England? Me? When I could be sipping Pina Coladas on a Brazilian beach, any time I like? Thanks, but… erm… Nah…’)

But you know what I mean: whatever the final score, the result itself will automatically represent the glorious, triumphant (and, of course, ‘thoroughly deserved’) victory of roughly half the country’s preferred team… as well as, more significantly, the suitably humiliating (and equally deserved) defeat of their detested rivals…

And how, pray tell, will the lucky winners of tonight’s European Cup Final celebrate this double (if not triple) whammy of a win? Why… by all jumping into their cars, of course; by hooting their horns, and enthusiastically participating in precisely the same thing they had all complained about (and so loudly, too!) just two days before…

Yes, indeed: another traffic jam. Only in this case, a traffic jam created by themselves, quite intentionally (and also at a time when, as a rule, traffic is actually quite free-flowing… you know, just to make darn sure that there are no remaining slots, on the entire 24-hour clock, when you can actually drive on traffic-free Maltese roads…); and one in which they will most likely find themselves stuck for a very great deal longer…

… without, of course, ever complaining about it at all. Quite the contrary, in fact: heck, you could even take those self-same two buses I mentioned earlier, and stick them in precisely the same situation they were stuck in (and the rest of us with them) just a couple of days ago…

…and just by adding a couple of England [or Italy] flags in the windows, and playing ‘It’s coming home!’ [or… erm… actually, I have no idea: what is the equivalent Italian football anthem, anyway? Ah, yes, of course: ‘Vaffanculo!’…]

Anyway: just by adding those simple little audio-visual touches… hey presto! The same situation miraculously transforms into the cause of an instant street-party (instead of what it would have been just yesterday: i.e., the cause of an instant, road-rage induced punch-up…)

It is, I suppose why they call it the ‘magic of football’: just by replacing the expression ‘traffic jam’ with ‘carcade’ (and as far as I’m aware: in football, you’re allowed to make at least three substitutions) suddenly, the exact same phenomenon transforms, from the agonizingly frustrating inconvenience we all know (and love to hate) so much …

…into a perfectly natural expression of all things associated with ‘merriment’ ‘festivity’, and ‘jubilation’ (including - just to add to all the other auditory inconveniences – that incredibly annoying Cliff Richard song: ‘Congratulations, and celebrations’…)

I mean… not to stress to fine a point on it, or anything, but… none of that is exactly what you would call ‘logical’, is it? And most (if not all) of it, could very easily be put down to a collective case of precisely happened to me just the other day. Our subconscious avails of the opportunity to simply ‘jump into the driver’s seat’… and, at moments such as this, our reaction is, ‘Screw this shit! Who the hell cares, anyway…?’

Besides: just as I myself had both criticized, and unwittingly participated in, the same pointless ‘horn-hooting’ ritual… maybe it’s the sort of ‘irrationality’ we all willingly accept, and buy into, precisely because it is in our own interest to do so. Because maybe… just maybe… the only alternative to ‘hooting your horn’, when stuck in traffic, is – deep, deep down – to ‘pull a trigger’…

The bottom line, I suppose, is… well, that’s football for you, I suppose. A game which exists solely so that supposedly mature adults can carry behaving like little children… and keep getting away with it.

So here goes: damn right that was a penalty! And clear as daylight, too…! So come on England! ‘Here we go, here we go, here we go!’ (and all that…)