This so-called “football” features very little use of the feet, with players instead controlling the ball – itself small and green and allegedly fuzzy – with a long-handled bat or racket, similar to those used in ping-pong or lacrosse.
Football aficionado Ben Wyatt said: “I turned on the telly to watch the latest action from Brazil, but they were showing some weird match with players and teams I didn’t recognize, and everyone looked like they were playing for Real Madrid.
“There were constant handballs and stoppages while they used goal-line technology, and hardly anyone was swearing at the big referee in the chair. If this is the future I want no part of it.”
FourFourTwo spoke to Spanish star Rafael Nadal, who seems to believe he still has a chance of winning the competition despite his country’s elimination in the group stages.
“It’s always tough to play against Lukas,” said Nadal, in an apparent reference to Lucas Neill, “But I’m expecting an equally tough challenge against Kukushkin,” he added, using a Spanish figure of speech that is not translatable into English.
