We at the Fix like football as much as the next man but we hanker for the days when major football tournaments were decided by blatant hand balls and teams preparations for them involved sitting around the swimming pool in ill fitting swimming trunks smoking and drinking. On the eve of the world cup we reflect on the passing of degeneracy in football.

90s football saw the difficult transition from grass roots-based kickaround to multinational commercial brand marketplace with the commercialisation of the game. Out went the sheepskin jacket, twelve-pints-before-a-match mentality, and hooliganism; and in came the Armani suits, complex sports psychology, and panini eating fans of the ’beautiful game’. As the game struggled with its metamorphosis, the glory age of football degeneracy was virtually over by France ’98, a tournament so dull that all footage except that of Dennis Berkamp’s goal against Argentina, had to be buried under the Avenue Montaigne following a decree from FIFA head Sep Blatter.

Degeneracy at major tournaments reached it’s zenith at USA ’94, FIFA’s  failed attempt to sell soccer to the Americans - although the highest attended tournament in history, it left no legacy: not one American citizen has watched a soccer game before or after the tournament finished. The last hurrah was Euro ’96, held in the spiritual home of degeneracy, as Gazza and co eked out the final last breaths of degenerate life from football before the men in grey suits came in to protect the global soccer brand.  As The Fix mourns the golden age of football degeneracy, we present some of the highlights of the metaphorical last days of Rome - and we don’t mean Italia ’90, a soulless tournament characterised by its mascot: a faceless football stuck on top of a man-shaped red, white, and green Rubik’s Cube.

Diana Ross
Infamous diva Diana Ross was chosen as the musician most appropriate to open USA ’94. It was simple on paper: during the opening ceremony, Ross would kick a football into an open net, which would see the goal ‘open up’. As it happened, Diana possessed all the footballing abilities, no, movement abilities, of a wheelchair-bound octopus. Her ‘penalty’ trickled wide of the goal, which then fell to pieces anyway. The show must go on, and it did. But a global audience collectively winced, turned away, and wished they’d chosen Tina Turner instead.

Showcase match
True aficionados of degeneracy know that the veritable exhibition match of degeneracy was the Group B tussle between Cameroon and Russia, starring the two contenders for biggest degenerate stars of the tournament Roger Milla and Oleg Salenko*. Notable for two reasons: Salenko scored five goals in this match, sending him on the way to winning the Golden Boot for the tournament - this despite Russia not even qualifying from the group stages, and Salenko not scoring one goal for his national team before or after this tournament. However, this game was not content with just setting the record for the most goals scored in a game: 42-year old Milla, the oldest man ever to appear at a World Cup, was called up to the national team by the Cameroonian parliament as a matter of national importance, despite having been retired from football for at least three years. Chipping in a goal when his side were 3–0 down, despite being outplayed at the time and the goal being nothing more than a consolation in a match they had all but lost, he still did his trademark dance. Perhaps if he had conserved some of that energy for playing football, they might have got back in the game.

*Impressed by Salenko’s skill at dismantalling a Cameroon defence with an average age of 86, Glasgow Rangers - showing a skill for financial foresight that sits nicely with their current place on the precipice of bankruptcy - wasted no time at all in signing the erstwhile striker. Sadly this didn’t work out and Salenko ended up finishing his career at Polish team Pogo Szczecin, where he was fired after one game for “huge problems with weight and physical condition”.

Hair
Occasionally players opt for special World Cup haircuts. It’s like buying a new hat for a wedding. Alexi Lalas (USA) rocked a Californian hippy look, Roberto Baggio (Italy) went for a YTS apprentice rat tail, while Boris Mikhailov (Bulgaria) openly sported a disastrous wig. Following the tournament, all realised how unbelievably stupid they looked, and in a case of ‘Reverse-Samsonism’ shed their locks and went on to far greater glories. Lalas became Chairman of LA Galaxy. Baggio recovered from his penalty miss in the final to have further success at club and national level. Mikhailov, however, was less fortunate - he joined Reading FC after he mistakenly believed Wembley Stadium to be their home ground. He retired from football shortly after.

Drugs
Maradona. Once one of the world’s greatest players, the now veteran and current Argentina national manager scored in Argentina’s group game against Greece, and in celebration spent a large portion of time screaming at a television camera. Needless to say, the sight of an angry, red-faced South American led a few people to ponder whether the legend was maaaaaybe on drugs. And he was. He was expelled from the tournament. But hey, in 2006 he got to line-up against the likes of Jonathan Wilkes and various members of Westlife in the England vs. Rest of the World Soccer Aid football match.

Andre Escobar
We’ve all had bad days at work, but it’s not like your going to get shot for making a mistake. That is unless your job involves being a defender for the Columbian national side. This is the fate that befell Columbian defender Andre Escobar after he scored an own goal against mortal enemies, USA. As a mark of respect, Alan Hansen refrained from using the clichéd phrase, “he should be shot for that defending”, for a whole month, before finally breaking during Tottenham’s 5-3 League Cup demolishion of Southampton, where he ran out of clichés for bad defending

Wonder goal
The World Cup is where the best players and the best managers meet to showcase the best tactics and best skills that the footballing world has to offer, so USA ’94 was hardly a tournament you would expect to see a goal like what your annoying mate in the park tries to score every week. Step forward Al Owarian from Saudi Arabia, whose wonder goal against Belgium - running from one end of the pitch to the other whilst team mates frantically shouted at him to pass to them - set progress back in park football by 15 years, the ramifications of which are only being felt now.

Euro ’96

Alcohol
What with Euro ’96 being held in the UK, it was always going to be a good tournament for alcohol. Several of England’s high-profile players were photographed shortly before the campaign looking like a group of lairy sales reps on a stag do. The tabloids had a field day but, in a show of solidarity, English fans decided to support their team in the only way they knew how, by getting equally pissed and fighting lots of foreigners. Rule Britannia.

Baddiel and Skinner
Comedy and music combined here to create the surprisingly catchy terrace anthem ‘Three Lions’ (though it would later be bettered with ‘Three Lions ’98′). English fans embraced the song like it was a baby made out of crisps and lager, belting it out whenever the opportunity arose. It became massive, but in doing so only served to cruelly remind David Baddiel that he used to play Wembley all the time.

Germany
Who won the thing, and did so with a player called Kuntz. Hilarious.

Qualification

But thankfully there are a handful of nations who are determined to kick the spirit of football degeneracy into the new millennium, taking the full burden of misbehaviour on their slender shoulders. And their chosen field of play tends to be the qualifiers - not only because they often don’t make it to major tournament finals, either through being banned or being rubbish, but also because they know that once a team has qualified for a major tournament like the World Cup, it now has millions of the world’s eyes on them. It is a lot harder for the average player or team to get away with the degenerate behaviour that would be standard in any other situation, and is unfortunately often the time teams choose to be on their best behaviour for fear of disciplinary action from the world’s most degenerate sporting (near) octogenarian, FIFA chief Sep Blatter. Keen football degenerate watchers know that qualifying tournaments - where pockets of qualifying zones (Asia, Europe, Americas) that no one outside those continents really care about contain competing national teams who, like kids in a classroom when the teacher pops out, take this opportunity to purge themselves of all degenerate urges before the tournament proper - is where the last of the action is. It helps that teams in these qualifying groups are often deadly rivals, either from past football games, politics, or from bloody historical battles. Here are two recent examples of note.

Egypt v Algeria
At the end of qualifying for South Africa 2010, the two were inseperable by points, goal difference, or head-to-head, and so a playoff game was arranged, in which fans rioted, stoning and taking three Algerian players out of the game before it had even started. This game had to be played on neutral territory (in Sudan - a strange choice given that the majority of tickets give to the Sudanese, one of who was quoted as saying, “Ninety-eight per cent of us will support Algeria, because we don’t like Egypt”), due to experience of past encounters, most notably their game in the qualifier for Italia ‘90, which Egypt won. With nothing left to lose, Algerian players and officials ransacked the stadium, bringing out furniture and plants still in their plant pots, and throwing them at fans in the crowd. Algerian striker Lakhdar Balloumi went one step further and broke into a post-match press conference, starting a brawl in which he bottled the Egyptian team doctor, blinding him in one eye, for which after his escape he was placed on Interpol’s most wanted list, and consequently unable to leave Algeria for 20 years, until Interpol dropped charges just prior to the game last year when authorities misguidedly attempted to create a peaceful atmosphere prior to the aforementioned qualifying games for 2010.

Turkey v Switzerland
Turkey were forced to play all their Euro 2008 qualifying games behind closed doors and in a neutral country, following the violence in their World Cup 2006 qualifying game against the Swiss. Coming down heavily on the side of Switzerland, Swiss FIFA chief Sepp Blatter handed Turkey the most severe punishment ever given to a European country, which also included monetary fines to many players and officials. After a major bust-up in the tunnel at the end of the game, which knocked Turkey out on away goals and saw Swiss defender Stephane Grichting taken to hospital covered in blood, highlight punishments include Turkey’s assistant coach Mehmet Ozdilek being ordered to “stay away” from football for 12 months.

As the weather starts to improve, Brits as usual get ready to head to Europe en masse. Make sure you make the most of your trip with The Fix’s Degenerate Holiday Guide, brought to you in conjunction with the world’s most degenerate airline*…
*which will remain nameless

The transport

There are a million ways to reach a holiday destination and by a million we mean about four. Forget hiking and cycling for starters, too wholesome and too much hard work. A car ride or ‘road trip’ can certainly have it’s degenerate moments however any reader who saw the film Road Trip will know just how unfunny they are. Trains are fairly tedious but do allow for easy alcohol consumption. There’s also the much-maligned ferry, a must for the cheap, the elderly and killers escaping the country with their latest victim in their car boot.

Despite these options, the true degenerate will go with a budget airline. Why not support entrepreneurs like Michael O’Leary, CEO of Ryanair, who has, amongst other things, (jokingly) suggested first class passengers should get on-board blowjobs and once purchased a Hackney carriage license plate so he could register his private car as a taxi in order to make use of Dublin’s bus/taxi lanes.

The location

Destinations like Ibiza, Ayia Napa and Malia are, by now, a little tame. Paddling pools for junior degenerates. The Fix has, in the past, pointed readers in the direction of Eastern European former warzones. However currently very popular are places that are still warzones. Iraq and Afghanistan can provide beautiful weather and needless to say there’s always something going on – like military skirmishes. At the time of going to print, North Korea and Iran (with its regular parades, marches and demonstrations it’s perfect for kids!) were also good up-and-comers.

Settling in

So you’ve arrived. What to do? Immerse yourself in culture? Connect with the locals? Treat your holiday destination as if it were your home. Many British people like to drink, piss, vomit, shit and shag in their homes though when abroad the streets are a good enough place as any to do these things.

Research prior to your trip is essential. Ensure your destination has a nearby Irish bar (these establishments will normally provide full English breakfasts and Sky Sports), a nightspot with lax restrictions around ‘lewd’ behaviour in toilets and a sexual health clinic. For the more refined, or gay, amongst you, you can usually find museums and art galleries but ultimately if you were going to be doing any of those things you wouldn’t be reading this magazine.

What to pack

Empty sun cream bottle – No degenerate holidaymaker would be complete without peeling red raw skin.

Item of clothing with a St George cross on it – T-shirts are preferable though a baseball cap is also acceptable. Show the people you’re beating up where you’re from and where you’re going back to with the help of your clothes.

Pounds – Foreign currency is an unnecessary hassle, most countries accept Pound Stirling if you shout loud enough.

English dictionary – Foreign languages are an unnecessary hassle, most countries understand English if you shout loud enough.

Mankini – Remind people of a film that came out several years ago by wandering around with your parted arse cheeks on full display. Why not award yourself points for every time you shout ‘it’s niiiiicceeee’ and don’t get punched in the face?

Mosquito repellent – Not only will this potentially help you avoid malaria but it also doubles as an originally scented deodorant.

Porn – Absolve yourself of the tedium of flights/beach trips/visits to historical landmarks with some light reading material. As a fun cultural game why not compare it to local erotica.

Secret compartment – More important for the flight back, ensure you have an area to stash any illegal drugs, pirate DVDs or samurai swords (there’s always somewhere selling them).

Sandals and socks – Some say clichéd but can you really argue with the look? The breezy freshness provided by sandals coupled with the practicality of the white knee length sport sock is a must.

Kanye West-style sunglasses – Tell foreigners all about Topman with these wacky, vision-impairing, hipster shades.

Alcohol – Because you can’t get White Lightning on the continent.

Jean Paul Sartre said that hell is other people. Clearly he was the tenant before me in my new flat in Camden. My building consists of three flats. I live on the top floor. I knew someone lived in the bottom flat, I had met her on the 2nd or 3rd night after I had moved in. A blotchy faced woman. Late 30’s, the type of woman I imagine wouldn’t agree with anything I said. She had introduced herself to me by angrily opening her door to tell me to stop slamming the front door when I came in at night. A lovely welcome for a new tenant. I made sure to slam it extra hard until she moved out a week later.

I now lived in my block of flats completely alone, or so I thought until the other week when there was a knock on my door late one Thursday evening.
“Hello”
“Hello,Who is there?”
In a voice that sounded like a gas leak “It’s your neighbour”
“What do you want?”
“I want to say hello” I opened the door to reveal one of the fattest drunkest women I have ever seen, swaying with a redder face than St Nick.
“ Welcome” She belched.
“ I’ve been living here for 6 weeks” I replied.
“I haven’t, don’t tell the council”
“Ok”
“if Julian Short rings on the bell don’t let him in as he is very dangerous”
“Right”
“Can I borrow your trolley I do removals?”
“Not really I’m using it, anyway nice to meet you” I shut the door. You had to admire my neighbours, first impressions are very important and they had certainly made one.

I’ve moved out of home a couple of times before, both times ended in disaster. Flat number 1 I returned home one day to find my flat mate on the floor of the living room passed out unconscious with a knife in his hand whilst his mother was crying down the end of the phone, he’d complained about me being messy a few times but I didn’t think I was that bad. Second house I lived in I was voted out like some episode of big brother for not behaving in a socially acceptable manner, I didn’t realise I was moving into an episode of Friends where we had to have dinner together, sleep with each other’s sisters and take an interest in each other’s personal lives. It was one evening when I realized that I’d lived at home with my parents longer than some people serve for murder that I decided it was time to get out at any cost. It’s a nice flat, but saying that when you’ve lived under the rule of your parents (Who are very nice by the way, good rulers) for 30 years sleeping under a bridge on the motorway would feel nice, for the more experienced independent livers of us it’s a shit hole, but it’s my shit hole. (It’s my shit hole, what a lovely turn of phrase)

It seems that the cost apart from £700 a month is that I am going to have to exist with someone who is clearly mentally unwell, most neighbours knock on your door to borrow a cup of sugar mine knocked on my door to borrow 45p for a mothers day card last week. Her new game is to keep her door open so when I come in to the flat she can corner me and start talking to me
“ Do you like cats?”
“I don’t Mind them” As I continue to walk up the stairs
“ My cats coming back today”
“Lovely” I say  as I frantically look for my keys on the landing
“What about dogs?”
“Yup, very loyal I shout down” the last thing I hear as I shut the door is
“My boyfriend had a dangerous dog that’s why he moved out.”
That must be Julian Short who we heard about earlier. Her other habit is to call the ambulance on most evenings. Every time I hear them at 1 in the morning I pray that they are finally coming to section her and I will be put out of my misery but every time they leave her here. In fact the other day outside the flat we had two police cars, two ambulances and an Ice cream van. Not sure if the ice cream van was related to the other two vehicles. I spose I shouldn’t complain it could be worse I could be living above the mother and daughter I heard having this conversation on the street last Sunday evening -”Mum give me my phone or I will smash a bottle in your face!”
“Nooooo!!!!”
“You of all people should know how many times I’ve been arrested for beating people up in the street, give it back!”

So Sartre said hell is other people but from what I heard he was no picnic himself and with my track record of social ostracization, awkwardness and emotional distress causing I spose I should just be grateful that I’ve finally met someone who makes my behaviour seem acceptable.

Nick Helm’s BHS Hell

Wood Green High Street is a true example of a 22^nd century high street. Not only does it have a McDonalds, an HMV, a Cancer Research, and a Mr. Bagel, but there’s also a multi-screen multiplex and another McDonalds. The only thing that remains firmly stuck in the bad old days is the BHS shop front. It sits sadly on the High Street, with its authentic early-1990s logo faded by the sun. It’s bewildering to me that in today’s competitive markets, where you can buy pants from anywhere, a business can let itself slip into an apathetic state of branding like this.

I went in to talk to the manager to ask him what he thought. “Why haven’t you updated the shop front?” I asked.

“Oh that? That’s been like that for years”, he snorted.

I explained that every other BHS in the country had updated their logo. It’s a brand. It’s an emblem. To be worn with pride. People shouldn’t have to read the ‘B’, the ‘H’, and the ‘S’ on the bag and then re-read the ‘B’, the ‘H’, and the ‘S’ on the sign to work out where people had been shopping. They should be able to match it up subliminally through shapes and colours.

He laughed cruelly, spraying my face with saliva and crumbs.

My eyes filled with tears of rage. “British Home Stores used to mean something!” I cried. “There’ll be an M&S opened on every street corner and tram station with their neatly-matching fonts and logos. You’ll never compete!”

But there was no getting through to him. He just didn’t care…

Nick Helm

Bob Slayer - Fix live nights compere, amongst other things - counts down the most degenerate countries in Scandinavia…

Slayer’s Scandinavia

Scandinavia is a beautiful part of the world that I like to visit as often as possible. However, it is also very expensive, and so I highly recommend that you get someone else to pay for the booze. My way of having booze on tap is to tour with rock bands, but you could take a rich friend along or you could become a bar slut and prostitute yourself that way. Either way, the question you will be asking is which country is top of the Scandinavian debauchery tree?

5th = Denmark

The entry point to Scandinavia is Denmark, a country that is a little like Germany, only with slightly less porn and more bacon. Spend any time in Denmark and you will soon be whispering, “I see lesbians everywhere”, as they enjoy the highest per capita ladies that love ladies of any country in the world. This may go some way to explaining why Sild is not only a type of fish, but is also the Danish word for “kiss”.

4th = SWEDEN

Next stop is Sweden, a country which could move up the rankings if it was not held back by the bible belt towns of Jonkoping, Linkoping, and Shopping, that run down the centre of the country. However, get up into the north and you can find the wild, free Sweden. After one night drinking Brännvin (a schnapps that literally means ‘Burn Wine’), I was invited to play the national drinking game of Kubb in the way the vikings intended: by seeing who can throw the bones of their victims around the best. 

3rd = ICELAND

You may have expected Iceland to have ranked higher, but in Scandinavia the debauchery competition is high. Many Icelanders are certainly not wired up right, but in 2007, Iceland was ranked as the most developed country in the world by the United Nations’ Human Development Index, and they could not have achieved that if everyone had been like Björk. That said, her and her wayward son - whose dreadful heavy metal band once supported a band I toured with - do certainly contribute to keeping their country above Sweden. Johanna Sigurdardottir is the world’s first openly gay head of government, which is nice.

2nd = FINLAND

Has got naked saunas, vodka, and Eurovision-winning monster rockers Lordi. But Finland also has my favourite island in the world: Aland is in the Baltic Sea, midway between Stockholm and Helsinki. For some strange reason, the island is duty free and is the only place in Scandinavia that booze is cheap! After one show, I got on the wrong side of a particular local nutter who picked up a shovel and vehemently declared, “Michael Jackson is the King of Pop!” while angrily trying to chase me via the means of a moonwalk.

1st = Norway 

Back in the middle ages, in an effort to stop public drunkenness, Norway was the first country in the world to impose taxes on booze, but this hasn’t deterred them: those crazy Norwegians are shit-faced 24/7. At the 2004 Quart Festival I was stood on the side of the main stage clutching a mug of Karsk (moonshine and coffee) when Norwegian band The Cumshots announced a young couple on to the stage in the middle of their gig with the words, “How far are you willing to go to save the planet?” The pair immediately stripped naked and proceeded to have sex on the stage. A large banner declared that they were “Fuck for Forests” - this eco-debauchery is part of what puts Norway top of the tree in my book. 

Shhhh!

Michael Hutchence, singer and extreme masturbator

Despite being easy to mock the manner in which Michael Hutchence died, it is overlooked what a truly amazing feat it is to die wanking. One of the easiest skills for a human or monkey to master, it is also impossibly hard to die fromp.

Found dead in a hotel with a belt round his neck, a lot is made of what a great lover Michael was; a fact that - for those of us who were unlucky enough not to have been bedded by the pockmarked lothario - is easy to believe. If he paid that level of attention to his own self-abuse, imagine how elaborate the experience would have been for another human being.

Celebrities through the ages are famous for having people on their payroll whose job it is to make sure that - if they should mistakenly die - any evidence of their seedy life is covered up: wiping the porn off their hard drive, paying off their underage lovers, hiding their illegitimate children. It is likely Hutchence employed one of these shadowy servants, but their once-only role would probably have involved wiping clean and tucking his likely-huge pecker away, and breaking his stiff fingers out of their claw-like grip. A job which they quite royally fucked up.

Comedy is always claimed to be the new rock and roll, and the two disciplines rarely merge so seamlessly. His death echoed hauntingly with masturbation metaphors. Bono kindly wrote Stuck In A Moment You Can’t Get Out Of about him, which was played on MOTD and Big Brother best bits, so that we - and his mum - would always be reminded that he wanked himself to death. A film of his life, Slide Away, is in pre-production. Surprisingly, it currently has no major male star attached.

Michael Hutchence, 38, died on November 22, 1997.

Degeneracy Across The British Isles, as witnessed by Carl Donnelly

Espionage Night Club, Edinburgh

It’s said that Dante spent years training in the art of meditation to research and then document the journey between hell, purgatory, and paradise. He could have saved himself a lot of time had he spent an evening in the multi-floored Espionage on Cowgate - although he would have had to skip the part about paradise. Once inside, it is like Bruce Lee’s game of death, where you have to fight your way to the top before getting out alive. It’s worth the visit just for the challenge!

Copper Face Jacks Pub, Dublin

Mentioning the name of this pub to any right-minded Dubliner is similar I imagine to bringing up the My Lai Massacre to a Vietnam veteran. They may have been there, but will die never having spoken of the horrors they witnessed. Its reputation as a meat market does not do it justice, as it is easy when walking in to be taken aback by the overwhelming smell of Calvin Klein and semen. One visit made me see the positives of Sharia Law.

National Express Service 425, from London to Newcastle

Have you ever woken up and thought, “I’ve got seven hours to kill and what I’d most like to do with that time is sit with a bunch of borderline mentally ill people in a hot confined space?” If so, then this is the experience for you. The random shouts and smells of the people around you are only broken up by stops in such beautiful locations as Milton Keynes and Darlington. They should issue valium as you board this torture bus!