During the first Club World Championship, FIFA president Joseph Sepp Blatter was asked about his opinion in the Saudi team al-Nassr, which was representing Asia at the tournament. Being the diplomatic guy that he is, Blatter praised al-Nassr, saying it was a good team. Al-Nassr went out of the tournament at the first round after losing two matches out of three. The thing is, Blatter was just being nice, but al-Nassr have taken it seriously and came back to the Kingdom bragging about the so-called endorsement they got from the president of the highest football authority in the world.

The same thing has just happened this week, when the Brazilian football legend Pele was in Jeddah as an ambassador for MasterCard, to launch a campaign for the National Commercial Bank. “It is my expectation that Brazil will meet Saudi Arabia in the World Cup final,” he said in a press conference. He either was joking, or simply just being nice, but the Saudi sports media, as idiotic as usual, carried that statement as the main headline the next day. I don’t think that the disaster of 2002 will be repeated this year, but with this kind of idiotic media that we have here every possibility must be taken seriously. Seriously? I’m afraid our media have no idea what that word means.