Fitba Hell

HIGH-PROFILE staff members are despatched at Hearts with the grim inevitability of teenage slayings in a slasher flick. No sooner do the Tynecastle faithful bask in the glory of their Champions League-bound team than Mr Romanov wields his indiscriminate axe. Andy Webster is the latest to feel the impact, and the fans' responses echo that which followed the departures of John Robertson, George Burley, Phil Anderton, George Foulkes and Graham Rix: instant widespread condemnation on the phone-ins, then, after a glance at the league table, a reining in of the criticism. They may cringe at Romanov's methods, but without his backing they'd not be enjoying this season's success.

The fans know deep down that it might not last, that Romanov's erratic and ruthless treatment of those on the wage bill might one day be applied to the club itself. You can't blame them for enjoying the moment - what Scottish fan outside the Old Firm doesn't hanker after even a glimpse at glory? But it's like staring into an abyss then comforting yourself with the pretty flowers on the cliff's edge.

IBROX never used to be much fun. As an Aberdeen fan, you would be exposed in the lower deck of the Broomloan Road end, bracing yourself for the splat of half-eaten pies and the splash of Bovril and urine cocktails. All around your little enclave, braying Bluenoses extolled the virtue of wading through Catholic blood. Then, just as you started to tut from the comfort of the moral high ground, some of your compadres would start to postulate that the 66 deaths in the 1971 Ibrox disaster was a memory to cherish. One day the obvious dawned on me: I derived little enjoyment from my trips to Ibrox, so why go?

Saturday was my first time at Ibrox in three years, and it was a changed place. After years of tacit acceptance, the powers that be have finally started scrutinising the Rangers songbook. The recent investigation into chants at the Villareal Champions League games may have found - subject to an appeal - that UEFA needn't do anything about the Billy Boys, but the international focus on Rangers seems to have made the Ibrox hordes think twice about the words that tumble out of their mouths. On Saturday, I heard only one muted rendition of the line "We're up to our knees in Fenian blood." What's more, the lack of negative energy to feed on appeared to affect the away end: I heard not one reference to the Ibrox disaster, albeit there were a few choruses of the mean-spirited song about Iain Durrant's injury at Pittodrie in 1988.

Oh, and we're in a new corner bit next to the Broomloan End now, with no upper tier hanging over us. So no pie-and-pee showers. And I witnessed Aberdeen avoid defeat at Ibrox for the first time in 14 years. Ibrox was fun. I might even go back.

NIKE has been peddling the myth of Samba Soccer once again. Where once the boys from Brazil juggled and pirouetted their way through an airport terminal, now we have grainy footage of a pre-pubescent Ronaldinho and his precocious skills, intercut with feints and dribbles performed by the world’s best player as he is now.

Ronaldinho, though, is the exception to the rule. Brazil hasn’t produced a team worthy of its reputation for devil-may-care brilliance since the peak of Zico, Socrates and Eder in 1982. In the run-up to every World Cup, pundits salivate about audacious skills honed on the Copacabana, but it’s a lazy stereotype. Even in their most recent World Cup victories, Brazil achieved success thanks to European-style restraint as much as the explosive skills of lore; Dunga, the prosaic midfielder who held together the 1994 team, is the defining Brazilian player of the last 20 years, not Romario or Ronaldo.

The romantic clichés are undermined further by ruthless cynicism. Rivaldo’s calculated – not to say embarrassingly incompetent – feigning of injury against Turkey in 2002 forever tarnished his reputation. But the gushing pundits find it hard to reconcile cheating and Samba Soccer. In 1994, Kevin Keegan was ITV’s guest pundit for the second-round match between the USA and Brazil. Leonardo, one of Brazil’s most vaunted players, was sent off for swinging an elbow at American midfielder Tab Ramos. Keegan had been hyping the Brazilians the whole game – they eventually ground out a 1-0 win – and spluttered at the injustice; he could not fathom that a Brazilian was capable of a red-card offence. He was made to look even more foolish when Ramos was diagnosed with a fractured cheekbone.

Television coverage of Brazil’s first match at this year’s World Cup, as ever, will be preceded by a montage of swashbuckling dribbles and banana-like free kicks. But it’s discipline and dirty tricks that are just as likely to land them the trophy.

THERE'S a curious breed of football fan at Pittodrie, usually found populating the Main Stand. They're defined by their pensionable age and utter joylessness; they thrive in failure. Each misplaced pass and ballooned shot is met by spluttered choruses of told-you-so disdain for the players' efforts. When Aberdeen score, they struggle to muster a limp clap and mutter that "They'll still throw it awa'." The most animated they get is in moments of real footballing ineptidude, when they lean back, then lurch forward and deliver a spittle-festooned "CRAP!" As Aberdeen completed a staggering comeback against Bayern Munich in 1983, their instant reaction was probably to complain about the noise that greeted John Hewitt's winner.

But then football fans in general are a peculiarly sour bunch. You only have to visit internet message boards to see more Main Stand moaners in the making. The tedium of the SPL in the last 10 years has been enough to make any non-Old Firm grind their teeth to stumps, so you'd have thought Hearts' attempts to split Celtic and Rangers would be meet by some enthusiasm across the land; not so. I'll stick to my own team's fans, but their reaction is not entirely untypical. Here's a selection of comments on the BBC website sent the way of Hearts fans today (some of whom, it has to be admitted, stir things up with their newly discovered brand of Old Firm-like triumphalism): "Dear god i really hope Hearts end up 3rd in the League"; "Typical arrogant jambo"; "Hearts are well known throughout the world...for being crap and losing".

The fans of most teams have to put up with years of failure interspersed with tantalising glimpses of glory. Decades of curdled hope can reduce even the most cheery of personalities into mean-spirited carping.

FOOTBALL'S attraction is its simplicity: two sets of posts; knock the ball into your opponents' posts more than they do; win. No arcane scoring system or restrictions on where you can shoot; a lack of complexity that has made for a beguiling sport. It's played by more people than any other because shoeless boys in shanty towns need only a tin can to practise their skills, yet it's capable of moments of transcendent beauty.

These facts seem lost on the producers of the stultifying 'magazine format' increasingly favoured in football highlights programmes. When I switched on Match of the Day 2 last night I had no desire to watch Lee Sharpe shambling around the Midlands, feigning interest in the relegation battles of Birmingham City and West Brom. The low-rent recognition of Celebrity Love Island wasn't such a bad idea after all, his disbelieving smile seemed to say. At least Sharpe has a soupçon of rogueish charm; not so Kevin Day, a comedian (so his CV says) whose half-baked monologues are so mind-numbing they have me clawing at my flesh.

English football doesn't need all this padding: it's a genuinely exciting league. Thierry Henry scored two sublime goals at the weekend. This was all I needed to witness, but afterwards I had to put up with Garth Crooks's supercilious fizzog; a lurch in tone that explains better than any dictionary the meaning of bathos.

You'd think we might have learned in Scotland not to make the same mistake. Alas, no: the producers of Scotsport SPL not only aspire to Match of the Day 2's format, they want to surpass it for brainless japery and a dearth of actual football. I've tried to defend Scotsport SPL in the past, as I suspect the regular pannings dealt out to the programme are as much to do with the Scottish cringe as actual ineptitude, an affliction that that also affects homegrown soap River City. But there's no excuse for making a 10-year-old Livingston fan sit through piss-poor banter to see a minute's worth of badly edited action of their team as the clock ticks past midnight.

Match of the Day 2 and Scotsport SPL could earn some belated respect simply by showing more football. Just don't hold your breath - as with any vanity project, those responsible will be loath to admit the error of their ways.