Football sticker boycott - 2026 edition

For the second World Cup in a row I have decided to boycott it in my own small way - by not collecting the official football stickers. I boycotted the Qatar World Cup stickers, along with all other merch, because I didn't like the way FIFA was enabling 'sportswashing' on an international stage. 

And since then FIFA have gone even more grotesque, giving a "peace prize" to Donald Trump just before he started an utterly mindless war in the Middle East. It physically disgusts me.

The profiteering and price-gouging on tickets is more blatant bastardry, and I just don't want to be even a passive consumer of it any more. By not qualifying, Wales have made it easy for me not to watch any games, unlike in Qatar, where I wanted to watch at least their matches. But now I can tune the whole thing out.

However, when it comes to unofficial stickers, the boycott doesn't apply. On my recent cruise holiday, I went into a Croatian supermarket that was running a promotion of a free packet if we spent 10 euros. 

So these are the free stickers from Konzum in Dubrovnik.

There are no official markings on this or references to FIFA. The trophy is a playful cartoon that doesn't look like the World Cup. This is boycott-legal.

There are two cards or stickers in each packet. I got a shiny card in each one, with the following players: Senegal's Kalidou Koulibaly, Columbia's James Rodriguez, Switzerland's Manuel Akanji and, er, a kangaroo. 

One of these things is not like the others 

The marsupial may be representing Australia. Here's a photo of the sticker back to show it is from the right set. 

Meanwhile, back at home, another shop is running a football sticker promotion, tied into the home nations. Technically, these Cymru stickers from Marks & Spencer aren't official World Cup stickers so I've decided they would count as boycott-legal

However, when I went into M&S and did a small shop that qualified for a free packet, I was told they had run out of stock! So I may as well have decided to boycott them anyway.

Improving the World Cup

We are now at the sharp end of the World Cup. In my blog post summing up November I mentioned that I'm not fully engaging with it. There are several reasons, but the overarching theme is that it's an egregious example of "sportswashing" by an undemocratic authoritarian regime. 

My personal protest about the World Cup is boycotting collecting the football stickers, although I have been given a sticker of the Wales team (thanks Clare!)

So, obviously a major improvement would be less corruption, no more blatant profiteering by the grifters in charge at FIFA, and a tournament where football comes first instead of being co-opted into a crass money-making scheme. Well, I can dream.

But away from the institutional level changes, what about the way the World Cup is structured? 

This World Cup was weakened from the start by having a laughably uncompetitive host nation playing in it. My fellow Barry fan, John, suggested a solution to me last week as we prepared to watch Barry play Cwmbran Celtic. (I'm not sure whether this was John's own idea or if he heard it from someone else, but I heard it from him so I'm going to give him the credit.)

John's suggestion was to introduce a team composed of players from teams that didn't qualify for the World Cup. The all-star team would play off against the host nation for the right to compete in the World Cup as the "FIFA World XI". I think Qatar would have struggled to beat such a team. 

I like this idea. Having the wild card World XI would mean that incredibly talented players who just happen to play for smaller nations who rarely or never qualify could appear in a World Cup. There are plenty of players for whom this would have been a great opportunity. Wales have had several world class talents over the years who never had the privilege of playing at a World Cup. 

A different possibility would be for each team to start the competition with a smaller squad, say just 18 players. After the group stages, half the teams are eliminated. The players from the eliminated teams get put into a "draft". The qualifying teams pick players in order of the teams' world ranking prior to the tournament. They pick 3 players each and can use them in the next round. Meanwhile, the rest of the players go home.

After the round of 16, the players from the eight eliminated squads go into a draft and are eligible to be picked again, with teams picking two players each. After the quarter-finals, players from the four eliminated teams are put into the draft again and the semi-finalists can all pick one extra player to take their squad up to 24 for the semi-final and final.

This means that stand-out players from smaller nations have a realistic chance of a winners medal. Admittedly a player could play for a team that was eliminated in the group stages, get drafted to a team that lose in the round of 16, get picked again for the quarter-finals and play in a losing team again, and then get picked by one of the semi-finalists. 

As long as the fourth team the player played for won a semi-final and the final, they would be a World Cup winner, despite potentially being on the losing side five times in the competition. I would find that darkly amusing, which makes it worth doing.

It would also benefit weaker nations that get out of the group stages and progress - imagine if Australia had been able to add Kevin de Bruyne to their team, or if Croatia had been able to draft Richarlison after they knocked Brazil out. 

I think it would also break down some of the nationalistic hubris surrounding international football. FIFA makes a big thing about the 'football family' and how football brings people together. Turning international football into intra-national football would really bring that about. 

Well done England - Women's World Cup 2015 review

I watched more of the Women's World Cup than I expected to, mainly because England did better than expected. I started the tournament wanting Germany to win (as with the men's tournament last year), but England gradually won me round. (And of course, they have a Welsh manager so really their success is success for Wales too.) So, when England beat Germany for the first time in 20 attempts to win the third place play-off, I felt pretty happy.


I'll pretty much watch any football (as my season review for 2014-2015 shows), but this wasn't watching football for the sake of it. There was some good stuff being played and most of the time without the gamesmanship and injury-feigning that bedevils the men's international game.

I have some criticisms though. For one thing, the use of astroturf seriously damaged the aesthetic. Balls bounced oddly, or not at all, or fair flew across the surface at untrappable speeds. Clouds of black rubber bits were kicked up by the players. They were awful surfaces and didn't help enhance the image of the women's side of the game.

There were some duff referees as well. This happens in the men's tournaments as well because they want to include refs from all the FIFA federations. But, frankly, there is a world of difference between refereeing in a top European league and reffing in Oceania or central Asia. Some of the refereeing teams were out of their depth here, and this was possibly exacerbated by the use of female refereeing teams only. As with football, women's officiating is some steps behind the men's game, so the inequity between countries with professional leagues and countries that barely have a competition is even more marked in the women's game.

Finally, broadcasting-wise, it was great having mainly female pundits and anchors. But why they needed to ship male commentators (including the incredibly annoying Jonathan Pearce) out to Canada is beyond me. It could be argued that putting it's regular commentators on duty showed the BBC's commitment to treating the women;s game equally. But it felt like the BBC lacked faith in its audience. We'll watch women play football, but we won't listen to women talk about it. One thing I do hope is that the BBC will now use some of the very talented and knowledgeable women players from the world cup studios on shows like Match of the Day. They were so much better than the usual rent-a-gobs.

Laura Bassett is my favourite England player at the moment - in both the men and women's games. In the match against France she got elbowed in the face, got up and carried on, developing a black eye as the game progressed. She was very focussed, almost frighteningly serious during matches, so it was lovely seeing her smiling with her third place medal, especially after she had conceded the last-gasp own goal in the semi-final to gift Japan the victory. Anyone who can go out and play straight after that deserves a medal and she got one.

Lucy Bronze's goal that won the game against Norway was my favourite goals in all the games I saw. Not just because it was England, but because it was a 'worldie'. You don't see many worldies at World Cups, so this was a genuine rarity.



So that was the FIFA World Cup for 2015. We had one last year too. I can get used to this. What's happening next Summer?

World Cup controversial viewpoint: Brazil are over-rated

I'm not sure when I first realised how much I disagreed with the mainstream view that Brazil are the kings of world football, playing the game beautifully in a 'samba style'. Brazil is everybody's 'second team', we are told by the media and the football pundits.

But they aren't my second team. In fact, I was gutted Chile didn't knock them out a couple of nights ago.

So, why am I less than enamoured with Brazil. Here's a few reasons.

The sense of entitlement bugs me. I know it's being played in Brazil but the way the commentators talk about Brazil playing in 'their World Cup' irks me. It's the sense that Brazil somehow has a greater claim on the World Cup than any other nation. It's as annoying as the Arsenal fans bleating on about 8 years without a trophy (thank the maker that's over!) or Manchester United fans carrying on about finishing seventh.

The entitlement overflows in the way they get treated by referees. The opening game of this world cup was notable for the blatant favoritism shown to the host nation. Croatia were unjustly denied the chance to compete on an equal footing with Brazil because the refs were over-awed by the occasion.

I'm annoyed at the way the cloggers get overlooked. Yes, Brazil often have flair players who they give free rein to and that can be excting, but for every genuine world star they always have a colleciton of cloggers backing them up. Ramires is the same sneaky thug for Brazil as he is for Chelsea. David Luiz wouldn't look out of place hacking people down as part of a Uruguay team. Even Neymar got away with a blatant elbow to an opponent's face in the game against Croatia. (Which goes back to the referee's reluctance to take action against Brazil.)

People also overlook the play-acting. Hulk is one of the most guilty of the current crop of players. He seems to be wearing the slippiest boots on the planet given how many times he ends up on the floor. Athough the classic bit of Brazillian cheating was Rivaldo playing against Turkey in the 2002 World Cup. A Turkish player kicked the ball at him. It bounced off Rivaldo's knee and he went down clutching his face, getting the Turkey player red carded as a result. What a toe-rag. (He also made history as the first ever player to be fined by FIFA for simulation - yes, that's right, the first official diving cheat was a Brazilian.)

And finally, there's the simple fact that often Brazil are incredibly boring to watch. The 1994 World Cup Final in the USA is the prime example of this. I remember being told it was going to be the best game ever as Brazil faced Italy. Instead it was a turgid defensive affair that ended 0-0 after 120 minutes. One of those five stars on the Brazil badge is down to Roberto Baggio missing a penalty in the shoot out, not because Brazil were any great shakes.

So, there you go. They win with dodgy penalties gifted by awe-struck referees. They kick and elbow and dive their way to narrow wins and no one cares because of the stars on the shirt above the badge. After all, they are Brazil.