World Cup commentaries: Peru is making progress

Although I'm not a big fan of watching football on a screen, the World Cup is an exception. On the watch for nice samba football and spectacular goals, I do enjoy the games, the enthusiasm that surrounds the event and the sudden surge in nationalism that goes with it.

I'm definitely not your football expert, nor the greatest of all commentators. I was quite happy with the commentaries I got on the Belgian tv channels - filling in the boring passes with random anecdotes on the players' stats, where they've been playing for the last ten years, their average number of goals per season, injuries and whatever else you can come up with.

Not so here in Peru. Whenever a team manages to cross the line in the middle of the field in a somewhat organised attacking kind of way, they start raising their voice as if they were about to score the most unbelievable goal of the WC, even though they're so not close to scoring anything. And when they do score, you can plug your ears for a minute or two to overcome the tremendous GOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL GOAL GOAL GOAL (ctd.)!!!!!!!

Those niceties aside, another curious phenomenon takes place when the commentator becomes an advertisement reader. While you're watching the game, hearing names pass by as they're eternally passing the ball to one another, all of a sudden the same voice starts promoting the tv channel you're watching ('the WC channel' - el canál del mundiál), a construction firm or whoever else is an 'official' WC sponsor. These announcements interchange with the tv programme of the night, including a brief summary of a popular soap. To make it even weirder, they also make publicity for the government (propa...ganda?) with statements such as 'With a three-fold increase of the regional governments' budget, Peru is making progress!'. 'El Perú Avanza' just so happens to be the slogan of the government's ruling party...