About the dangers of hookah

I didn’t think about returning to the football topic. The season is over. The national team lost, and he himself wrote that after that “football will again become just football.” But not everything is simple for us.

Since last Friday, every day the scandal surrounding the plot in the “Man and the Law” program on Channel One is becoming louder and louder. Pimanov and Co. told us how, before the first play-off match with Slovenia, our players drank, smoked hookah with suspicious “mixes” until late, or whatever, almost until the morning. About girls and “literball”, about players forgotten in a hotel due to drunkenness. The plot turned out to be remarkable. The Duma demands an investigation. The RFU demands an explanation. Football players demand a trial and an apology. So I, as the self-proclaimed person responsible for sports on these pages, will have to insert my two cents on one bill.

First of all, I want to say that this is funny. It’s funny to reproach someone for drunkenness in a drunken country. It is no less ridiculous to talk about morality in a country where morality is not a value for anyone - from top to bottom. It is equally ridiculous to talk in our country about some kind of “responsibility” when we raking away mountains of corpses every Saturday. And it’s also funny to talk about observing a “sports regime” as an integral part of professionalism, especially for us journalists. Because only someone who has never gone on air drunk or hungover, who has never been late with a text due to a hangover, can blame anyone for drinking all night before an important task. There are such people among us. But there are few of them. These “little” could blame the football players. But something seems to me that this is not quite the case.

And before getting to the heart of the matter, I’ll say one more thing. I have written more than once about the fact that on days of victories the public willingly identifies itself with the winners - with the same national team players. Let's be with them in the days of defeat. There is no need to disdain them, even if they cause trouble. Still, we are not talking about criminality, betrayal of the Motherland and other abominations. We are talking about “violation of the sports regime.” And in this case, they are just “flesh of the flesh” of the people.

And about responsibility to the fans. Don't flatter yourself. Athletes do not play for the public. And the artists do not play for the public. My sports and artistic acquaintances, in any case, did not even try to convince me otherwise. They play for themselves. Well, even for relatives. For teammates and coach. But not for the public. For them, the public is a mirror in which their ambitions should be reflected. When your audience enthusiastically greets you, it is as satisfying as sex. And when a hostile audience goes wild, it’s often even more exciting, because you’re no longer just playing against 11 opponents on the field, but also against thousands of people around. And you defeat this whole crowd. That’s why athletes always say that they are happy to play in a full stadium and it doesn’t matter who they support.

Well, the moral and lyrical part is over, let's move on to the essence of the matter. First of all, I’ll state: I have no idea whether the football players drank or didn’t drink that night, smoked or didn’t smoke. To talk about this with confidence, you had to either sit next to him in a restaurant, or, conversely, simultaneously spend the night in twenty rooms on a doormat in order to absolutely confirm that the players complied with the “lights out”. I cannot give such guarantees. And none of those who are now writing pros and cons will give them either.

But the plot in the ChiZ program was a bit strange. What confused me? Look here. The team lives on Tverskaya for almost a week, goes to restaurants on Tverskaya, the football players are now famous people. Moreover, such important games are coming up, which will be watched by millions of fellow citizens. What do you think, the guys weren’t followed by the paparazzi? We are full of publications and websites that report on the slightest sneeze and fart of the most shabby characters, and dozens of eyes were watching the football players. The life of stars is their job! And what? Nothing! Nothing at all appeared in any yellow newspaper or website during all this time before the release of ChiZ. If there was something there, there would be no way to hide it. I repeat: a week on Tverskaya, in full view of everyone, is a great place to get drunk and debauched without fear of being caught, right? Moreover, there are 20 people in the company!

In the plot itself, upon careful examination, you will not find a single football player, not a single exact date, not a single document. Some people from hotel and restaurant service, allegedly filmed with a hidden camera, are talking (somehow too smoothly) about football revelry. Pimanov immediately apologizes for the secret filming, because otherwise the citizens would hardly have spoken. But the same Pimanov now claims that he is ready for trial, and, as I understand, all the characters in the plot are ready to confirm what has been said. So why was the garden fenced in with a hidden camera and altered voices?

The very next day, the restaurant’s history revealed unpleasant inconsistencies: it turned out that the restaurant was not physically open at the indicated time, and that the players closed the account in their “children’s time.” And nothing criminal was found in the account. It was funny to hear that the players were buzzing even before the game with Germany, celebrating Pogrebnyak’s birthday. Because before the game with Germany, Pogrebnyak had more than a month left until his birthday.

A separate song is about a perky bartender who, in response to the question of what kind of filling was in the hookah, grinningly says that he made “DIFFERENT mixes.” After this, the public has no doubt that the football players smoked “dope.” Fine. That is, the bartender openly reports to us that he is engaged in the distribution of drugs? He prepared the “mixes”. Have the restaurant owners obtained a license to distribute drugs? What interesting confessions, don’t you think?

As you already understand, I decided to express doubts about the verisimilitude of the TV plot. Does this mean that our football players are angels and never violate their sports regime? No, my friends. I'm not ready to say such nonsense. Not angels. Violate. They drink. And they date girls. But, by the way, they do this much more carefully than their legendary predecessors, the Soviet champions, who during the course of this scandal were repeatedly held up as an example of love for the Motherland and a responsible approach to business. Just as our Soviet athletes fermented, modern youth simply cannot ferment, even if they want to!

The question is different. Could something like this happen just before the main match? If it could, then our guys must be complete, clinical idiots. Because football is the meaning of their life, no matter how you look at it. The World Championship is the pinnacle of a career, and most of them have never had such championships, and now, again, most probably won’t. And before such a game, they drink until five in the morning, and then smoke, and then talk to women, and then on the field? Look, then we have a super team. Because in this state she ran well for almost the entire game and confidently went to victory, if only she hadn’t played the fool at the end. True, “Chiz” explains the loss of strength at the end of the match precisely by the copious libations. But I repeat once again: in this state, the players should have “stopped” not 10 minutes before the final whistle, but 10 minutes after the starting whistle.

And besides, I don’t really understand: according to the plot, it seems that the players led such an obscene lifestyle at the national team’s training camps all the time. But before Slovenia, this did not stop them from winning bronze at the European Championship, and even after the Euro the team played quite decently. So, it’s not about the hookahs, if they didn’t interfere with business before? Or, on the contrary, before Slovenia everything was decent, but before the main match the team suddenly “unleashed”?

But I understand that the public will not go into details. This is her property. I think Pimanov could, without any hidden cameras, simply go and say that the football players got drunk and drove naked girls around Tverskaya. People will gladly eat up any crap, especially since athletes have never been considered the standard of intelligence and spiritual subtlety.

Well, what’s the point, you ask? What joy is there in defaming “immaculate” people? So the elections are just around the corner! Mutko has left, and the RFU will have a new president. And here again football turns out to be not just football. The decision will be made at the very, very top. They're scratching their heads there right now. Immediately after the loss in Maribor, it seemed that football would go to Gazprom and the gas general and former Zenit president Sergei Fursenko would become the president of the Union. But the enemy is strong - Abramovich, who has been the breadwinner of our football in the last, most successful years. It was Abramovich who brought Hiddink. And it turned out that, even despite the heavy defeat, Gus’s popularity is very great. The entire team went to ask him to stay - this has never happened in our history! Nor did the majority of experts support the losing coach. And the outcome of the elections became unclear. Moreover, Gazprom does not have an equally powerful alternative to Hiddink. Well, the shit started pouring out. And then it will be like in the joke: “But there’s a lot of crap.”