A hug is just a hug, a sigh is just a sigh

Congratulations to France on winning the World Cup!

As I said before the tournament began, they were who I wanted to win, largely because they have the dishiest squad, but also because two of their starting XI, N’Golo Kanté (the happiest man ever) and Olivier Giroud, are Chelsea players, so Chelsea can claim 18.2% of the victory.

Part of me wanted France to win for vengeful Gone Girlish reasons: England football fans love to sing that intolerable ‘it’s coming home’ song, and it would put their backs up something awful seeing the trophy ‘come home’ to their Gallic neighbours, instead. 

And, as I’ve mentioned, I feel English football fans don’t deserve to be rewarded, given the no small part they play in normalising racism against my people. The BBC presenter Gary Lineker making excuses for Jamie Vardy’s usage of ‘Jap’ is a shining example of how racism against east Asians in this country is considered fair game.

But yes, congratulations to France! I’m delighted that Hugo Lloris, who has been toiling endlessly to no fruition at White Hart Lane, finally gets to experience glory!

My last World Cup-related blog that I will do before reverting to my status quo of pedantic BBFC blogs and throwing shade at restaurants, is ten adorable bromantic intra-club moments from the tournament this year. 

This World Cup has been absolutely immense, the Banter World Cup, if you will, featuring sensational goals (my personal favourite was Benjamin Chalamet’s one against Argentina), thrilling games, hilarious moments and memes and general WTF-ery arising from the use of VAR on margin calls. And I’ve loved every minute of it.

But my favourite thing about the World Cup, and all international football tournaments, for that matter, remains the lovely display of fraternity between footballers from the same team (but opposing countries) at the end of the game.

Remember, before the World Cup started, the thing I was most excited for was some manlove between Chelsea club-mates Gary Cahill and Eden Hazard. Did my expectation get fulfilled? Read on to see!

A disclaimer, that these are just ten bromances that involved players who I like.

Needless to say, there were a plenty more than just ten displays of intra-club fraternity throughout the World Cup, such as, for example, Sergio Ramos (the Spain and Real Madrid captain) hugging  his club-mate Cristiano Ronaldo (Portugal captain and general showboater) after Spain v Portugal in the group stages. But I don’t like either of them (the fact that I put both in my World Cup Ugly XI may be somewhat of a giveaway...), so I didn’t think it was worth chasing pictures of the moment, aha.

In chronological order…

Guess the Footballer: Easy

So, England are out of the World Cup, getting beaten by a Croatia side who simply had more guile and experience than them.

As predicted, I am ambivalent about this loss, largely because my main draw for supporting England spent the majority of the tournament warming the bench (at least Gaz had Phil Jones to keep him company).

Also, I despise Jamie Vardy and will never quite forgive the British press (especially a certain football journalist who I used to be on quite good terms with #cryptic) for affording Vardy a free pass for racially abusing a Japanese man.

These same football journalists wrote mini-tomes about racism when Suarez and Terry did it. And to me, an east Asian, the silence from the hacks after Vardy’s choice word selection is a pretty clear sign that the British media don’t think racism against east Asians is problematic.

By not acting, the British press was complicit in the racism that I have suffered and continue to suffer.

That being said, there was a certain spark in the England side of the 2018 World Cup that was a joy to watch at times, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t get swept up in the momentous occasion of us winning our first penalty shoot-out in an international tournament since 1996. There's also something to be said for seeing the country unify over a common cause, especially when the weather was so gorgeous too.

In the final, I’ll be supporting France, a decision that I'm not ashamed to admit that is largely driven by aesthetic reasons.