Euro 2012 - Are you watching?

I don't know about you but I just don't get why people like football. It's such an inaccurate game. Ninety-nine percent of the plays end in failure. Now take tennis for example; once a point has started someone is going to win it and someone is going to lose it. Same with a game, a sett, a match. Football, however, sees 22 guys run around a pitch for 90+ minutes and still manufacture a 0-0 draw. I've tried to watch - alone and with friends, at home and in a pub. But I still don't understand the allure of the game.

Am I missing something? Can anyone tell me just what is so interesting about it?

Football....well, it's just, well....

I've been sitting and thinking about football. Now I don't normally do this. You could give me tickets to the World Cup final and I'd likely as not forget when it was on and miss the game. That changed a couple of weeks ago when my young nephew came down to stay with me for a week and insisted on watching every footy game there was on TV. Wanting to be the generous and "trendy" uncle, I relented and sat through quite a number of games.

Now what got me was just how inaccurate the game is. They put some statistics up on the screen which showed that only 30% of passes were successful. Good grief!! If you don't know how to pass a ball, what are you doing being paid £100,000 a week! And because you need a good pass to string together a bit of possession which leads to goal attempts and goals, the goals were few and far betweeen; and when they did come most were scrambled and deflected and basically slightly silly.

So, here we have a game loved by billions, played by millions and abused by one or two which consists of 22 men not doing what they should be doing the majority of the time and basically screwing up, leading to a flawed, messy spectacle full of fouls and yellow cards rather than graceful play and spectacular goals.

They call football the "Beautiful Game". Must have been blind.

In this day and age when everyone wants instant satisfaction; in this "I want that and I want it NOW!!" culture, I'm surprised football has survived. It is so 70s!

My nephew has gone back home. I've already forgotton which channels the football was on.

Bliss.

I've never been interested in football.....

.....until now!

I get bored very easily. So having to watch 22 men kick a ball about in what seems to me to be a wholly uncoordinated way bores the heck out of me. I can usually last until half time IF it is a World Cup and IF England is playing. Anything other than that and I'm distraced before the first set piece.

But no longer. I'm hooked. I didn't know football could be so interesting! OK, I'm not talking about that knock about on the pitch, but the intrigue at FIFA. Sepp Blatter seems to be inhabiting a different universe to everyone else. I saw his press conference - the "crisis? what crisis?" one. He should head to Libya and join forces with the only other rather delusional totalitarian who's desparately clinging to power right now.

And to think that this association governs the rules of the game and organises what is credibly the most watched world event, the World Cup. The odd footballer playing away with a model or two pales into insignificance compared to this.

I have no sympathy for the FIFA members - they deserve what is coming to them.

I have no sympathy with professional footballers - they're overpaid prima donna thugs who seem to think that the normal rules of decency and decorum don't apply to them. How wrong they are.

I have sympathy for the 7 year-old child who plays his heart out on the school pitch in the middle of winter and for the proud Mum and Dad who stand there cheering him on. How can the members of FIFA show their faces without shame knowing that they have let down people like that.