Moving the Goalposts
Nepali Times ईspecial 12 - 18 June 2026 #1315
People are falling asleep at work. Productivity is down. Road traffic accidents are up.
All because western hemisphere FIFA World Cup matches are dragging on into the wee hours (so named because that is when boys apparently wet their beds in boarding school).
Me, I tried watching Canada vs Bosnia & Herzegovina and fell asleep at injury time. USA vs Paraguay was slightly more scintillating, but only because the wild cheering every time there was a goal woke me up.
What I am about to say may sound sacrilegious to soccer fans, but how about making football more fast-paced? Why are the goals so few and far between? OK, football (or soccer for Moms out there) is still better than test cricket in terms of action and the lack thereof, but here are a few pointers for FIFA to change the rules of the game when the next Third World Cup is held in Nepal:
1. Allow handling. God gave us hands, let’s use them. The Americans have much more fun because they turned soccer into hand-to-hand combat. (Yet, why do they still call it “football”?) The other thing we can learn from the Americans is to change the shape of the ball into something that looks like a buff momo, so that it bounces crazily.
2. Don’t level the playing field. Incline the football pitch at 15 degrees and let gravity do its trick.
3. Move goalposts. Increase the width from the standard 9m to 24m so there will be more goals. More goals means more commercial breaks, and more money for FIFA.
4. Legalise offsides. This rule just slows down the game unnecessarily. Sack linesmen, and allow strikers to loiter at the enemy goal post waiting for a long pass.
5. Allow fouls. Why stop play for free kicks? It is a waste of time. Karate, Muay Thai and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu techniques would spice things up, and can also be used against the referee if players take a violent dislike to his decisions.
6. OK to dive. The best pretend dive during a game will be eligible for an Oscar in the Best Supporting Role Category.
7. No groin protection. Defenders at the wall facing a free kick will no longer be allowed to protect their crown jewels with their hands. It’s a disgusting habit.
8. Why only 11 players? Up number of players on each side from 11 to 52. Mix teams with men and women players, and allow them to take off jerseys when they score goals.
My guess is that the prime minister will not be doing any nocturnal posts on FB in the coming weeks because of the FIFA matches. The cartoon on page 1 by the talented Anup Tamu encapsulates the state of the state, and accompanies a digital forensic by Nobel Rimal of his FB posts and the phenomenal likes and shares he gets from among his 5 million followers (The PM’s PM Fiesta).
In this week’s Editorial, Sonia Awale wants to give the RSP government the chance to prove itself, but concludes that the signs have not been good (Giving the Government the Benefit of Doubt, page 2).
And in the rest of the news, Chungla Sherpa visits her native Kangchenjunga region and is worried about what all the infrastructure and ‘development’ is doing to the fragile landscape below the world’s third highest mountain (Protecting Kangchenjunga’s Natural Heritage, pages 4-5).
From natural heritage to cultural heritage. In the centrefold this week are two book reviews by Sonia Awale. The heftier one by Niels Gutschow and Rohit Ranjitkar looks at post-2015 earthquake reconstruction of Patan and how heritage architects improvised (Where Gods and People Mingle).
The second slimmer book by A G Menon and Eric Theophile is also on the same theme, and concludes that heritage conservation in Nepal is completely different from protecting the pyramids in Egypt or Grecian ruins (Balancing Conservation Conservatives with Pragmatism, page 6-7).
Go to page 10-11 for two more episodes of Diaspora Diaries. The first one is the story of four Nepali migrant workers and their successful struggle to provide for their families. The second one is by Ganesh Bahadur Gharti Magar from the mountains of remote Rolpa who migrates to Belarus and is working in a mushroom farm to send money home.
Enjoy this weekend’s readings, and go online for longer versions of the articles mentioned here with more illustrations and videos.
I will be back next week with the monsoon update.
Kunda Dixit