More Footie

Axonsax has done an interesting post about watching footie in public places. I've been very fortunate up until now-ish, in that Dubaibilly has thrown open his doors and we can get a front-row seat in front of his quite large telly. But it's 20 clicks up the SZR to his place, and this evening I thought I ought to try out Jebel Ali Cloob as a viewing venue. The Cloob has a pretty good offer going for non-members (c'est moi). Dhs 50 gets you in, and Dhs 50's worth of booze or food. Very clever it is, methinks: they are guaranteed a minimum spend per head, and thereby can afford to pay the extortionate rates for public showing of the World Cup that monopoly provider ART demands.

The match I watched was Germany v Argentina, and it was a bit of a thriller that ended in one of those horrible penalty shootouts. Germany won. I can't say I enjoyed watching the match at the Cloob: I got there a bit too late to secure a table in the room of my choice (the ever-expanding Cloob has about 5 interconnected rooms, all containing a massive screen) and finished up sharing a table in the Red Room with a couple of strange guys - an Indian and a local who had apparently never watched football in his life. So there was a constant stream of explanation going on. In front of us was a large table full of Germans, all face-paint and flags. Surprisingly there were also people shouting for Argentina.

The view was periodically obscured by large opaque Germans jumping up and down, opaque everybody else heading off to the loo, and opaque, but small, waitresses doing their job.

So tomorrow is the last chance I get in this tournament to sit on DubaiBilly's sofa, hopefully watching Engerland thrash Portugal, because he and Mrs DubaiBilly are whizzing off to Greece a couple of days later.

If I watch any more games in this tournament (and I'm sure I will), it will either be at the Cloob or a secret venure that somebody told me about. Watch this blog...