Three souls have shuffled off this mortal coil in Mexico City, crushed not by geopolitical angst but by the sheer, unadulterated joy of the World Cup. Yes, folks, the beautiful game has claimed another blood tithe. Three fans, literally love-bombed to death by a wall of humanity celebrating a goal. The Foreign Office, in its infinite, groggy wisdom, has now advised British nationals to 'avoid crowds'. What a crackerjack insight. It took the International Criminal Court of Pandemonium to issue this bulletin, did it? I can picture the mandarin now, squinting at a map of Mexico City, saying 'I say, it appears there are people there. Lots of them. Perhaps we should warn the chaps off.' Too late, you absolute cabbages. The chaps are already floating facedown in a fountain of their own hilarity.
Let us parse this magnificent advice. 'Avoid crowds.' As if the tens of thousands of giddy, beer-soaked Brits already draped in flags and singing 'Ten Green Bottles' off-key will suddenly think, 'Oh, dash it all, the Foreign Office said no crowds, I shall pop off to a quiet desert and watch the match on my iPad.' The entire sport of football is built on the notion of crowds. Without crowds, it's just a load of overpaid man-children kicking a bag of wind around a field. The FA might as well advise against using air in footballs. 'Caution: deflated spheres can cause unscheduled naps.'
And what of the dead? Three people, squashed into eternity. Their last thought: 'Hooray! We won!' Quickly followed by 'We can't breathe.' The Mexican authorities will cluck and shake their heads, the UK will issue more brilliantly tardy advice, and the next match will happen. And another goal. And another surge. It's the human centipede of celebration: joy, excitement, suffocation, death. Rinse and repeat.
I've celebrated goals myself. Once, in a pub in Wolverhampton, I hugged a man so enthusiastically that my gin and tonic executed a perfect arc onto his combover. He didn't die, but his dignity certainly did. That's the proper way to celebrate: by mildly inconveniencing someone, not by compressing their ribcage to the consistency of a crushed beer can.
So here is my advice, free of charge: if you are in a crowd that feels like a rugby scrum with singing, leave. Do not wait for the Foreign Office to tell you. They are still figuring out how to advise you to avoid breathing air. The three dead should be a monument not just to football fervour but to the idiocy of officialdom. 'Avoid crowds,' they say. How about 'We are profoundly sorry we didn't think of this before you left for your holiday and assumed that a World Cup celebration would be like a vicar's tea party.'
But no, we must soldier on. The next match is in three days. Tickets are sold out. The crowds will be worse. And somewhere, in a Whitehall office, a civil servant is drafting the next masterpiece of advice: 'The Foreign Office recommends avoiding any situation in which your lungs might unexpectedly become a decorative feature of someone else's ribcage.' Too late for three, but better late than never, I suppose.
God save the goal-scorers. And God help the foreign office. They need it.
