Do I have to endure a month of relentless ball kicking?

This may seem like the sort of piece of writing that solely serves to complain about something, but I assure you it isn't. These words serve as a complaint about the sheer amount of football paraphernalia that explodes across our country every couple of Summers. It's as if football only occours during the Summer of every even numbered year, rather than over 40 games being played every weekend for nine months of every twelve. There is simply no escaping football or the idea that I should be more patriotic and have an insane amount of BBQs to celebrate this fact.

My distaste for these 'Summers of Football' don't stem from an outright hatred of the sport though. Whilst personally I don't closely 'follow' a team or watch matches, I'm happy to let football take place throughout the year, so long as it doesn't particularly inconvinience me, such as change the sheduling of Doctor Who or whatever. In my opinion, football serves a great purpose in giving the working classes something to distract them from doing wrong, similar to how you would present a crying baby with a balloon. There is a perfect equalibrium between myself and football for nine months of the year, but like anything it does need a rest once in a while. It's when football's rest is disturbed by a Summer tournament I get angry. We've spent the last nine months finding out (yet again) who the best team in this country is, must we now see which team is the best in the world? It's sort of like one of those poor international 'Champion of Champions' specials you'd find on Gladiators or Robot Wars, no-one gives a toss how good Sweeden are compared to us.

Since the World Cup is happening, however, whether I like it or not, I guess I could just try and aviod it. Surely just switching to Channel 4 whenever a match is on would suffice? Apparently not, it seems. Everywhere we turn there seems to be cries of 'Come on England!' and an amount of England flags on display to make you think the BNP were in power. Even Kit Kat and Mars have re-designed packaging with the St George's Cross on the front. No thanks, I'd rather have a Swastika emblasoned Toffee Crisp. It appears that every business going as ditched whatever their normal operations are in an effort to be more football and England-centric. Walkers have decided that crisps with a worse flavour than Tomato Ketchup can be made after all and Tesco are wheeling-out their 'Football Roadshow' around the country. I can imagine the latter being essentially Antiques Roadshow just toned down a social class. A point to add here is, since only official sponsors can use the words 'World Cup' in adverts, it's rather funny to see what generic terms other un-offical companies use when promoting something that's obviously refering to the football. For example Morrison's currently have a special Meal Deal for the 'Big Match'. Big Match?!? That's a term so generic you'd be mistaken for thinking they were refering to an extra long match of the fire lighting kind. Everyone out there seems to go crazy to jump on the football bandwagon, to the extent that it seems like you'd be accused of treason if you didn't have little England flags on your car and go round shouting 'Come on England" morning, noon and night at the top of your voice.

Cue, for me at least, a whole month of pointlessly having to try and fit in when forced to watch the football, complete with no-doubt having to eat one of these so-called Big Match Meal Deals. Luckily though, I've developed a coping tatic to help me blend in: use those seeming generic terms to feign enthusiasm. You'd be surprised how far a few cries of 'Come on Rooney!' and 'Kick that ball!" go. Ball, ball, ball, footy, footy, footy...