World Soccer, Incomprehensible Blatter and I Make it Big

Just picked up the August issue of World Soccer (it comes late to these poor colonial parts - in countries with an actual footballing culture, the September issue has been out for a week already). Three things of note:

1) The editorial re-vamp is really quite good, isn't it? Much more readable than it used to be.

2) Blatter has another idiotic proposal. This one is perhaps not new, but I tend to lose track of the multitude of idiocies emanating from Zurich. Anyways, in an interview, he talks about trying to implement a rule in which clubs must field at least six home-grown players and a maximum of five foreign players. And by foreign, he does not mean the post-Bosman all-Europeans-are-domestic definition: he means from a different country, period.

I quote from FIFA's mission statement: "FIFA has a huge responsibility to reach out and touch the world, using football as a symbol of hope and integration."

If football is such a symbol of hope and integration, why limit the number of people of different nationalities in a single team? Does hope and integration stop at national boundaries?

I quote from FIFA's mission statement: "We believe it is FIFA´s responsibility to foster unity within the football world and to use football to promote solidarity, regardless of gender, ethnic background, faith or culture".

How can football promote solidarity if it limits the ability of people of different nationalities to play together? How is solidarity promoted by limiting the ability of people from poorer nations to earn a living playing football in richer nations?

3) I also noticed that I actually made it into World Soccer this month. Not because of any of my writing, but rather as an innocent by-stander. Page 28, directly beneath the CN tower, eleven rows down, two seats over from my nephew Camillo, who is in the yellow Brazil shirt. The Mulroney-like appearance of my chin is no doubt due to the effects of the plastic slice of Pizza Pizza pepperoni I was chewing at the time.