Where we are not

The absence of the Russian team at the World Championships in South Africa has created a miracle: broadcasting of matches and discussion of the championship in various programs look with particular pleasure. Commentators and experts, freed from the need to stigmatize opponents and sing praises to their native team, are engaged in pure football, without patriotic admixtures, and this fact makes the current World Cup especially attractive to fans.

Only in the absence of patriotism do you understand what a disgusting thing it is - patriotism.
We are not there, which means that there are no Russophobic conspiracies, no judicial lawlessness and political confrontation. We are not there - which means that there are no patriotic demonstrative telehysterics and heart-rending cries of the telemass crowd “Ros-si-ya! Russia!" We are not there, which means that Andrei Malakhov and Maxim Shevchenko do not gather former athletes and current sports functionaries in their festively decorated studios, and Yana Churikova does not squeal into the camera: “We will tear everyone!” We are not there - which means that the glorious city of Johannesburg, which is not too calm anyway, is not shaken by the songs of Zhanna Friske and the dances of the Pyatnitsky choir, and vodka does not flow like a river in the notorious Russian House, because there is no house either. We are not there - and neither Nikita Mikhalkov, nor Patriarch Kirill, nor Dmitry Medvedev, nor Mikhail Leontiev give football forecasts and parting words. We are not there - and football remains only football with all its unpredictability, expectations and disappointments.
Football commentators do not need to look for our potential ideological enemy in every opponent, deliberately distort foreign names in order to demonstrate all their contempt, and confess their eternal love for sports officials who provided Russian athletes with unprecedented conditions for victories. „

We are not there - which means there are no patriotic

telehysterics and heart-rending screams of TV extras

"Russia! Ros-si-ya!”, no Russophobic conspiracies,

no judicial lawlessness and political

confrontation

” And only Channel One commentator Viktor Gusev, accustomed to working in a rigidly patriotic regime, instinctively gropes for salutary great-power hooks in his reports, but even his bold statement that there are several Russians in the “Nigerian team” (meaning athletes playing in Russian clubs) , causes only an annoying smile from the fans.
There are no professional patriots among the fans of the 2010 World Cup: gopniks from the Young Guard and other "Nashi" this summer have to be content with the Day of Russia and the Day of the Airborne Forces, the national project "football" has been postponed indefinitely.
Therefore, the current championship completely uncontrollably given at the mercy of those who are primarily interested in the game. Citizens who are not accustomed to live broadcasting, far from sports, are surprised to see how time frames are moving apart and pushing aside the usual on-air grid, how serials, talk shows and, it’s scary to say, news break up into fragments. In addition to daily live broadcasts, the Russia 2 channel arranges live discussions with the participation of top media figures - athletes, politicians, artists, who, before our eyes, completely uncontrollably admire Argentines and Spaniards, are outraged by the French and Portuguese, and DO NOT remember Russian football at all - as if it never existed.
The magic of live broadcast does not let go: the living breath of television freedom, possible only during major sports competitions, is consumed by the audience enthusiastically. And those who do not understand its value are incapable of cherishing any other freedoms.