Maybe Belgium should boycott the Football World Cup this year.

Maybe we as Belgium (or EU) should just start with it boycott of the FIFA World Cup in the USACanada & Mexico in de Winter Paralympics. And probably a lot of other international sporting events. Let me be very clear: this is not a rant against sports. If you want to crawl onto a field every weekend with 10 friends and kick a ball, be my guest. If you want to decide for yourself that from now on a half only lasts thirty minutes, a match has three halves and you suddenly play rugby after blowing the whistle twice, then that is completely okay. If you want to ride around Flanders by bike, please go ahead; maybe I’ll join in myself.

This is a plea against ‘organized sports’, sports that require an international organization highly paid executives die remain in office for far too long to keep that sport on track. If your first reaction is like "this goes too far" in "So what should professional athletes do?" then I would like to immediately refer to my first point. I don’t want to stop anyone from participating in sports (that is not necessary and cannot be done), but I do want to refer to the personal dramas within top sport. We pay teenagers tens of millions to run after a ball and then be shocked that they reverse parking cars on the third floor of a sports hallif it’s not even worse and they really make victims, of itself of innocent bystanders. TSports is also a real overexploitation of your body i don’t and some sports must come with a warning label (causes serious damage to health, oh irony) and I’m not even talking about the implications van doping. Top sport is also mentally overexploited mentally. Not just for those who just don’t make itbecause of injuries or simply because they are just not the fastest. There are plenty of top coaches around who take advantage of the bodies of the people they have to take care of girls as guys. Wouldn’t everyone benefit from those sports becoming more fun again?

If we look at the business and geopolitical nature of top sport, it certainly becomes problematic. Historically, it was not so long ago that dictatorships used top sport and their top athletes as a showcase: Hitler in the 1930s (which, by the way, the IOC still celebrates), East Germany in the 1980s in China even more recently. The extent to which IOC in FIFA being corrupt is so well known that it would be a joke if it weren’t so tragic. Formula 1 is currently more of a circus for the super rich than a sport such as car rallying. Organized gambling is not always a problem for fans, but also for the sport itself.

I’m going to end where I started. This is not a plea against sports. This is an encouragement to all runners, swimmers, indoor athletes, curlers, bowlers, chess players, boxers, darts players, cyclists, mountain bikers, motocrossers, skydivers, rally pilots, cross-country skiers, figure skaters, hurdlers, steeplechasers, orienteers, gymnasts, volleyball and other ballers (I’m sure I’m forgetting a few). This is a plea for fun sport. Maybe like the World Games? Swedish football proves that it is possible. And if the darts players really want to have a beer again, go nuts, guys and girls.