How I tried, and failed, to boycott the World Cup

Having watched almost every kick of the previous 11 World Cups, my family and friends were sceptical about my ability to boycott the 2018 competition (see polemics passim). Having ignored the qualifiers over the preceding two years, though, I was more optimistic. Wrapped only in abstract but righteous armour, I sat out the first round of group games at Russia 2018 with barely a glance at the screen. Soon after that, I left Germany for a French hamlet in Burgundy where - thanks to the generosity of friends - I stayed alone in a farm house with thick stone walls, uneven floors, and neither a TV nor an internet connection.

2002: the innocent age of pre-HD television

The night before I left, though, my wife and youngest daughter were watching Croatia v Argentina while I packed, and their yelps and yells were impossible to ignore. I thought back to when I was watching Senegal v France, the opening game of the 2002 World Cup. I had loudly exclaimed throughout that astonishing match, but at one point found the whole family - wife and two daughters, then aged 6 and 3 - standing next to me and asking, "Jesus, is this what it's going to be like for the next four weeks?"

We've come a long way. They shout, emote and cuss now too, and they claim to have learnt it from the best. Now here I was, 16 years later, wishing that they would keep the noise down. I was wishing even more that I could sit beside them on the
sofa and cheer along as the goals flew in to the Argentine net. Who doesn't want to spring aboard the bandwagon when a small nation's whupping a former world champion? I may have even inadvertently seen the replay of Luka Modric's goal on the pretence of urgently needing to adjust a cushion on the couch.

It was a curt aberration. The next morning my wife waved me off. "I'll miss you, and I miss watching the games with you," she said. I now agreed that this was the hardest part of this stupid fucking self-imposed boycott - it's not really the football you miss, it's the act of communal watching. Out in Gallic rural exile, though, and with my phone company informing me that I'd already maxed out my monthly data, things would be easier.

Untainted by Putin - chilling
where Fifa's sun don't shine

At first, they were. The weather was beautiful, and the obvious positives of being offline for two and a half weeks can not be overstated. Sometimes, though, despite my data being "throttled" (as my phone company put it), messages and results sporadically leaked through. The (German) in-laws were especially active during their nation's infamous failure, and I offered wise and empathetic counselling as a Scotland fan whose team had never progressed beyond the group stage. The result? My youngest daughter deleted me from the extended family's WhatsApp group.

I was still sanguine as the group stages came to an end, and I merely observed the scores of the Last 16 stage as they came in, even if I did - when my throttled data stream allowed - perhaps read some quite detailed match reports. On the day of the quarter-finals, though, one of the neighbours came around to discuss a water issue. We'd chatted a few times and she knew about my boycott. She asked me how it was going, and I said I was holding out well, that I'd still not watched a single second (unless you want to count that Modric goal, but it was only the replay). "Very good," she said. "And you haven't even turned on the radio?"

A radio: an old school
 medium for righteous old farts

The radio? Yes, there was an old radio in the kitchen. It had genuinely never occurred to me to turn it on during the past two weeks. "Of course not," I said, truthfully at that point, and waved her off. And then, a few hours later when France were playing Uruguay, I turned it on and located the live commentary. My French isn't great, but I soon worked out that it was "deux à zéro" for Les Bleus. In a defence more brittle than Panama's, I can only say that I've always loved listening to football on the radio way more than watching it on television. I didn't switch off until the final whistle.

That night, I tuned in again for Belgium v Brazil, telling myself that listening to games was somehow not the same as watching them. My boycott was merely a visual one. The chauvinistic French station, however, wasn't broadcasting any games that didn't involve its own nation. I fiddled with the dial. And somewhere out of the white noise from distant London, with dubious but at times lucid reception, emerged an excitable English-language commentary via Talksport. 

I should confess that, after two weeks on my own, I was beginning to crave contact with the outside world. Picking up the signal was not exactly the lost explorer making contact with base camp after six months surviving on roast squirrel and blackberry juice. But for someone who'd vowed to not pay attention to the tournament at all, I was disproportionately happy. And although I couldn't pick up England v Sweden (the signal only came through as dusk approached), I tuned in just as eagerly the next night for Croatia v Russia, all the way through extra-time and penalty kicks.

Normally by this stage of a major tournament I'm burnt out through over-exposure. This time, starved of the first 60 games, the semi-final line-ups seemed especially intriguing. No Germany, Brazil, Italy or Argentina. And, by the time they were played, I would be back home again, ahead of my younger sister-in-law's 50th birthday on the Sunday of the final. A weekend of celebration was planned, and viewing the final was factored in. It would be rude to sit in a separate room.

"Apparently some bloke no one's heard
of is boycotting the whole thing!"

And so I caved. Expecting a barrage of abuse, I announced to the WhatsApp group (I'd been reinstated) that the boycott was over just in time for the semis. I'd tried to make my point, and I was sick of hearing myself justify it. I resented the malevolent gnomes Putin and Infantino spoiling my quadrennial pleasure due to their crimes and corruption. Why should they get to see all the games while I didn't? Plus, I added, I needed to cheer on Croatia against England (though in fact I didn't really care who won either way).

Feeble reasoning, and we all knew it. "Pseudo-martyr!" my older sister-in-law scoffed. My daughter, not content with having banished me to the WhatsApp wilderness, mercilessly mocked and savaged my selling out. Beyond the family, though, judgments were generally kinder. Most people were surprised that I'd made it so far, or had even bothered at all.

Indeed, what was the point? The games happened, the whole world watched, and Putin's not been removed from power. Russia is still supporting Assad, illegally occupying the Crimea, suppressing opposition and LGBTQ rights, and imprisoning or murdering dissenters and journalists. In that sense, my passive protest at little personal cost or sacrifice made no difference. When I read one morning that 22.4 million people in the UK had watched the previous night's England game, it only served to magnify my sense of impotence, and a feeling that all I'd done was bore people to tears with my posturing.

Krestovsky Stadium in St. Petersburg -  thanks
to $1 billion from the Russian tax-payer. 

The handful of articles and papers I wrote or presented before the tournament did promote some discussion about the issue, both online and, so to speak, down the pub. However, I had neither the time, the money nor the motivation to follow through and build that up into any kind of lobby or political movement. A lot of Russia's human rights issues and abuses were discussed during the World Cup anyway, as far as I could gather, so in a way the tournament - massive waste of the Russian people's money that it was in the usual rush to meet Fifa's excessive stadium construction demands - did more than I ever could to raise awareness of state power, lies, murder and malfeasance.

One piffling discovery as a fan, though. Ignoring the group phase of a major tournament really whets your appetite for the knockout stages. Yay. 

The Quiet Fan, out August 23rd (Unbound).