Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1391768
10 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 11 JULY 2021 OPINION Raphael Vassallo The magic of football… LIFE: funny old thing, really. Just the other day, for instance, I found myself stuck in a traffic jam, and… Really? You too, huh? And everyone else reading this arti- cle, by the look of things. My, what a coincidence… But so much the better: at least, you all know perfectly well what is meant by that ex- pression. That sinking feeling, as you turn a corner to sud- denly a face a sea of stationary vehicles, all shimmering un- certainly in a heat-haze; that pointless effort of craning your neck outside the window, to try and figure out what's actu- ally causing the problem this time… and then, inevitably… the beeping. First one horn, then another, then another… until an entire barrage of ear-splitting beeps suddenly erupts from all di- rections, as every single driver instinctively slams the horn at once (because 'being stuck in traffic', during a record heat- wave, is clearly not enough of a nuisance in itself. No, we could always use a little extra assault on our ear- drums: you know, just to max- imise the inconvenience as much as possible…) So there I was, sitting at the wheel, thinking (not for the first time): but guys – seriously, though – how many times do we have to actually go through this? 'Hooting your horn' will not make traffic move any fast- er, you know… Yes, yes, I am perfectly aware that 'Joshua used trumpets to bring down the walls of Jeri- cho', and all that; but let's face it: that was a long time ago. To- day, the kinetic effect of sound- waves on solid matter tends to work out a little… um... differ- ently. Hate to break it to you, but: your chances of actually pro- pelling the combined weight of all those cars forward, through the sheer force of decibels and soundwave frequencies alone… sorry, guys, but: forget it. It will just never... ever… happen. Nor, for that matter, will 'hooting your horn' do very much to address all the root causes of Malta's congestion problem to begin with: the ev- er-growing number of licensed vehicles on the road, for in- stance; or the 121 infrastruc- tural projects, and counting, all going on at the same time… Still less, will all this infernal din ever compensate for the lack of any mass-transit sys- tems on the island: you know: trains, trams, subways, mon- orails… anything that might provide an alternative to actu- ally driving one's car (and thus contributing to the traffic we all love to complain about) in the first place. Besides: in this particu- lar instance… no amount of 'horn-hooting' will ever alter the physical dimensions of those two buses that – having craned my neck out far enough – I can now see are the cause of all this traffic: by trying to squeeze through the same (narrow) junction at the same time… … actually, now that I think about it: all this hooting might even considerably lengthen the time we end up stuck in this very jam. (After all, how can those two bus drivers possi- bly hear themselves insulting each other's mothers, over and above all this racket? At this rate, they'll be arguing all day…) Even at the best of times, though: 'hooting your horn' will not actually achieve very much at all: other than, per- haps, irritate the living crap out of everyone within a radius of five kilometres (which, let's face it, is probably the real in- tention anyway...) And yet, and yet… not only is it pretty much everybody's gut-reaction to that sort of sit- uation anyway (despite being no doubt perfectly aware of the sheer irrationality of it all…) but even as all those thoughts went through my mind, I sud- denly realized – to my utter horror – that… I was hooting my own horn, too… That's right, folks: even as I contemplated the sheer futility of attempting to accelerate the flow of traffic, through pure- ly auditory means – and to be fair to myself: it's not as though there was very much else I could actually do, at the time - my subconscious mind eventu- ally must have said, 'Screw this shit!', and simply jumped into the driver's seat instead. Just like that, before I could do anything to stop it… And if that wasn't weird enough: I soon found myself thinking – just as the traffic starting slowly inching for- wards again (so who knows? Maybe that wall of sound did make a difference, in the end…) that all this just hap- pened to take place a couple of days before tonight's scheduled European Cup Final between England and Italy…. At which point: well, you're probably all seeing the con- nection already. But to spell it out anyway: it is, like I said, an 'England-Italy' football match. In Malta. And – notwithstanding any personal impression I may have myself: that this old, bitter and ancestral rivalry seems to be slowly dying out over time… just like all the ancient polit- ical squabbles that originally caused it: all dead, and (almost) completely faded from living memory… … ah, but let's just say that there's a teenie-weenie differ- ence between 'slowing dying out', and being… um… DEAD. (Just look at England's opti- mism ahead of tonight's match, for example…) And part of this difference al- so means that – even if a much smaller contingent of Malta's football-potty population (a large enough demographic, on its own) still identifies with those two footballing nations today, than ever before…. there will still be good a few tens of thousands – give or take – who will no doubt feel they have 'double cause' to celebrate to- night's result… regardless of who actually wins the game. Heck, if the winners do turn out to be England, in the end… it might even be a 'triple' cause. For 55 years is, after all, a rath- er long time to wait for 'football to come home'. (Almost makes you wonder, in fact: what's ac- tually taking it so long? Did football get lost? Or did it just get too comfortable where it was, and eventually decided that: 'Home? England? Me? When I could be sipping Pina Coladas on a Brazilian beach, any time I like? Thanks, but… erm… Nah…') But you know what I mean: whatever the final score, the result itself will automati- cally represent the glorious, triumphant (and, of course, 'thoroughly deserved') victory of roughly half the country's preferred team… as well as, more significantly, the suitably humiliating (and equally de- served) defeat of their detested rivals… And how, pray tell, will the lucky winners of tonight's Eu- ropean Cup Final celebrate this double (if not triple) whammy of a win? Why… by all jumping into their cars, of course; by hooting their horns, and en- thusiastically participating in precisely the same thing they had all complained about (and so loudly, too!) just two days before… Yes, indeed: another traffic jam. Only in this case, a traf- fic jam created by themselves, quite intentionally (and also at a time when, as a rule, traffic is actually quite free-flowing… you know, just to make darn sure that there are no remain- ing slots, on the entire 24-hour clock, when you can actually drive on traffic-free Maltese roads…); and one in which they will most likely find themselves stuck for a very great deal longer… … without, of course, ev- er complaining about it at all. Quite the contrary, in fact: heck, you could even take