‘In support of Fifa’s campaign to stamp out racism in football, I, the representative of my national team, hereby pledge myself and my teammates to the eradication of all forms of discrimination in the beautiful game, a game that is almost as beautiful as my girlfriend’s new knockers, but not quite, because there is nothing quite like a pair of 36Fs, even though my mates say they make her look matronly, and even when they have been done by a dodgy surgeon in Kiev who put the nipples back on the wrong way around, and now they sort of look at you cross-eyes where before they had that natural horny divergent squint.
‘In the spirit of these great championships, I call on my team to remember the wisdom of a great family man and groundbreaking anthro-entomologist, Uncle Ben, who helped raise Spiderman. Or else it was Batman’s butler Alfred. But I don’t read much so I could be wrong. Whatever. He said, ‘With great power comes great responsibility,’ and I accept this without reservation.
‘However, I also accept without reservation that with great cardiovascular work comes a great ass, and given the choice between stamping my authority on my opponent, and stamping on his ass, I may choose the latter, just because I am feeling particularly good-looking today; and when the chickies are given a choice between an ass like mine, and an ass like his, especially after my cleats have left his looking like rare beef stroganov, I think it is clear who will be getting what tonight, if you get my musky blinged-up drift.
‘Racism is the scourge of our times. This is evidenced by that large banner over there, which reads ‘Say No To Racism’. They wouldn’t have made a banner if it wasn’t a problem. Which is why I pledge myself and my team to working tirelessly towards its eradication. Before you all, we will say a resounding ‘No!’ to racism. Granted, in the next 40 minutes we will say a resounding ‘Fuck off!’ to the ref, but that’s not really racist, innit? Unless he’s a darkie or a towel-head or a spick, in which case we will say something like ‘Up yours, brother-man’, because it is ugly to disrespect minorities.
‘I vow also to treat my competitors with the respect they deserve as fellow human beings. Some of them is cheating greasemonkey Dago café-owning sardine-mongering cheats from Portugal, which isn’t even a real country but is rather like Spain Lite, but I will remember that not everybody has had the opportunities I have had, like being given a foopball when I was one, and being taken out of school when I was nine because it was stunting my sense of self-worth. I will pity these people, because pity is noble, like lust. It’s religion. You can look it up. The pope said it. I shit you not.
‘Fair play will be my watchword, apart from ‘With great power comes great responsibility’ and ‘Fuck off’, which are obviously more important watchwords, but fair play is up there, maybe fourth after ‘Who yo’ daddy, sweet-ass?’ which is a phrase I find vulgar, but it seems to be only thing the waitresses in Ibiza understand. When Wayne Rooney tells the press that he will split Cristiano Ronaldo in two, I will understand that it was all said in fun, and what seems like petulance on Wayne’s part is just his bolt needing tightening, and his cerebral membranes oxidising a little, like what always happens when he has been left to lie for too long in wet nappies.
‘I will play like a tiger, like a warrior-prince, like a seraph. Grace will inhabit my feet, hope and courage my heart. However, I want to state for the record that if any wanker so much as tugs on my sleeve, I will be forced to collapse in a writhing heap of bitterly wronged prepubescent spinelessness. It’s really sore, you know. I’m not a machine. My girlfriend once slapped me because she walked in on me and her sister and her mum and her mum’s mute masseuse, and so I hit her, like you do, and my hand was really sore for a few days. I’ve got feelings. So don’t yank on me, or I’ll go down like a sack of horse manure and get you sent off, and if I ever meet you in a club in Monaco I’ll pour tomato juice into your hair and completely cock up your highlights. That’s not a threat. It’s just how it is.
‘Now let us exchange the scrolls of international camaraderie, you and I. Give it, dickhead.”