Football Mania

Football and Parenting

Wow. The wife of WC final referee Howard Webb said she was amazed her husband was taking charge of the most important game in football given how he struggles to keep control of their children, Jack (son), Holly and Lucy (daughters).

Surely, taking charge of children isn’t similar to football. Football itself is a game. A family is totally not a game. It’s life full of dynamic, mystic and paradox at times. I like she uses struggle as life is a struggle with purpose. Football game is an hour and the half’s struggle but life is a struggle for the rest of your life.

How are we to compare football game and parenting?

Ironically, most parents think as some of them are good human resource managers, they shouldn’t have problem managing their kids. They would bring back all human resource theories that they had been practicing in their office just to find out that the theories are practically different.

Sure it is different. They should know by now why the employees and children are different…
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Update:

This is taken from Newsweek (recent publication). Judge yourself.

The Link between Football and Jihad.

Osama BL is just one of the many jihadists who have used football to bring recruits into the fold. When he was in Sudan, it had its own league with regular practices and weekly matches between the squads. When Islamists flocked to Afghanistan to fight the Russians, Mujahiddin played mini WC on teams representing countries of origin. After the jihadists returned home, football was a way to keep in touch, particularly for Indonesians who formed the core of JI.

Indeed the link between football and militancy has been well documented as a ‘reliable indicator of whether or not someone joins the jihad’ as antropologist told a senate committee in March. Most of the participants in 2004 Madrid bombings played together [so what if they ate and played together? – ed]

One exception to this football mania. Somalia where militants have deemed the sport ‘ungodly’ and killed fans watching the WC.