Euro 2004 Fever and Vices

Euro 2004 has started for a few weeks. During these weeks I'm sure a big majority of the viewers in our country will be glued to the television set from 11:45 PM to 4:00 AM nearly everyday watching the live broadcast from Portugal. As being a football player myself (Captain Football Team in the Sports Day in HighSchool Grade 10-11, Left Back/Winger at my Faculty at the University Level, and currently playing as a GoalKeeper), I am naturally interested in seeing football games, though I've been rather selective in my matches. This Euro competition I've been cheering mostly the underdogs - Latvia and Greece which are the team I've been looking on. Greece is an interesting team, and if you noticed they qualified ahead of Spain in the qualification making them a probabaly dark horse that could proceed to the later rounds. At the time of this blog, Greece has already proceeded to the next round. Regarding Latvia, I know a few players in their team, with Marian Pahars being the most famous - as I remember distinctively during the Saints (Southampton FC which I'm a fan) great escape. Latvia plays a defense and completely counterattack team. Though I don't think their team is technically the weakest team in the competition they have produced a few shocking results by nearly winning Czech (though losing at the end), and should have won against the fangless German (Latvia had 2 good penalty situations turned down).

Anyway back from all this, I wanted to go back and review a few things in perspective before ending this rant.

Gambling

Just a few days ago, my little brother, who was supposed to meet up with me in the Ratchada area, told me about a story that reminded me when I was in HighSchool. He said he say a student handing in an envelop a wade of cash to a group of people at a garage of a famous department store in the Ratchada area. That is a very typical scene at this Euro Fever. People gambling and losing. In this case my brother recalled that the mechanics were angry with the money - as it seems that the student that gambled did not pay all his dues - and own them some more money. As we know, Euro 2004 has produced numerous upsets which is an ideal situation for the bet receivers.

As we see here, this is a social problem. I know alot of my friends how have fallen to the vices of gambling - as they see it as an easy way to make money. Many of them engage in this type of activity, "Gamble with what they have not" assuming they would win and get cash for free. Now this is a problem, once they lose, they don't have any money to pay the dues and have to resort to different measures - such as loaning money from close friends. Some students intentionally withdraw subjects they register from University to pay gambling dues. Some students resort to worse things such as stealing. As we see the lack of self-discipline and the illusion of get-rich-soon by gambling is a big social problem.

Though it would be easy to say let's make gambling illegal, we see that gambling is part of human nature and it would never be possible.