Contents
Cover
About the Book
Title Page
Dedication
‘They think it’s all over not starting’
‘You don’t know what you’re doing!’
‘He kicked it hard on purpose’
All’s fair in love, war and the World Cup bidding process
Ultimate team
Foundation myths
I’ve seen ’em given
The twelfth man
What position would Jesus have played in?
‘No easy games at this level …’
What is the point of the shot-put?
‘You’ll win nothing with kids’
Chess with athletes
In the zone
‘Look away now’
Love versus Duty (away win)
Own goal
By far the greatest team the world has ever seen …
Winners
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Also by John O’Farrell
Copyright
For the Snakepit Strollers
(The team of true gents I’ve played football with, every Tuesday night, for the last twenty-five years.)
Back when I was at school, the careers advisor asked me if I had any private hopes or dreams.
‘Definitely!’ I said. ‘England winning the World Cup.’
‘No, I mean like personal ambitions, something you could achieve yourself, through your own efforts?’
‘Oh sorry, I see what you mean. Yeah; be there when England win the World Cup.’
I had considered this dream to be a rather mature one. My previous fantasy had featured me scoring the winning goal; I used to kick a plastic ball against the garage door while improvising TV commentary in which I was the hero of the ultimate game; ‘And here comes Alfie Baker on the edge of the box! He beats a defender, he beats another, he shoots, he misses, he breaks the greenhouse window!’
When I realized I would never be England’s greatest player, I resolved to be their greatest fan; I would get a job where I could follow the national team around the world and write about how consistently fantastic England were. What could possibly go wrong with this plan? But then of course, after so many decades of disappointment, England finally did reach their second-ever World Cup final.
So much has been written about the most outrageous month in the history of football, the bizarre twists and turns of that scandalous tournament, that you might think there’s nothing you don’t already know about Qatar ’22. My own account may not win the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction like John Terry’s did.fn1 But I was right there in the middle of it all; from England’s failure at Russia 2018, through their unconventional qualification for the tournament and the incredible story that exploded on the day of the final. This is what really happened back in 2022.
Just as I’d always hoped, I was indeed seated in the stadium at three o’clock, though it was not quite the perfect view I’d always pictured for myself during all those sleepless nights that I’d worried this day might never come. At the time of the scheduled kick-off, I found myself staring at the coat hook on the back of a toilet door. There are certain times when you desperately want to be alone. This one came along when I was in a packed 80,000 all-seater football stadium.
Earlier that day, I had taken my allocated press seat along with all the other sports reporters from around the world, watching the Lusail Iconic Stadium gradually fill up and wondering how they could have grown such perfect green grass in the middle of a desert. (Answer: they didn’t, they had it flown in from Poland.) The facilities were lavish, the technology was state of the art, the atmosphere was – well, air-conditioned. Even the food laid on for us had been carefully planned to cater for all nationalities, with haute cuisine prepared by a Michelin-starred French chef, fresh lobsters flown in from Canada and probably some reheated meat pies somewhere for the English. No luxury had been overlooked in the furnishing of this hi-tech temple to sport in the middle of nowhere. Built specifically to host the 2022 World Cup final, it would never be this full again. So it was a shame that the match it was built for might not actually go ahead.
Around the world in bars and cafés, a billion football fans had been really looking forward to watching the dream final. And back home in towns and villages from Cornwall to Cumbria, St George’s flags were hanging out of bedroom windows; kitchen chairs had been carried into living rooms to accommodate the extra viewers gathered round especially purchased wide-screen TVs. Parents and their children had pulled on replica England shirts, roads had cleared, shops had closed, Scottish people were pointedly taking their dogs for a walk.
Those of us in the press pack had got wind of FIFA’s announcement before it reached the crowd and TV viewers around the world. Initially, the game was to be put back by one hour, pending an emergency board meeting. Rumours began flying around the stadium that the World Cup final was secretly already cancelled, but they just hadn’t announced it yet to avoid starting a riot. The official statement referred to ‘suspected irregularities’; and if FIFA thought something was a bit dodgy, then everyone understood it must be way off the scale.
Of course the whole world knew what they were referring to; the incredible scandal had broken overnight. ‘How typical of the British tabloids …’ said one pundit, ‘to release a story timed to do maximum damage to their own team’s chances of winning the ultimate prize.’ With no idea whether the game would go ahead or not, live TV coverage had continued and commentators had been forced to keep talking, while cameramen desperately scanned the stadium, trying to find anything of interest to keep the viewers’ attention.
‘And there we see the players’ water bottles, lined up and filled … with … water. Water of course, very much a precious commodity in this part of the world; the peninsula, being as it is, very much … a desert. Barry?’
‘Very much so Ron, and all credit to the ground staff here in Qatar, because the pitch looks very well watered; no brown patches or indeed vast areas of barren sand with nothing but cacti; despite as you say, the very desert-y conditions that are typical of this part of the Saudi peninsula – um – so, yes, let’s have another look at highlights of that third-place play-off …’
Qatar 2022 was always going to be a controversial tournament, long before members of the USA team started feigning injury for exactly five minutes in the middle of each half to allow for commercial breaks back home. It was the first World Cup which saw a few players changing their names to well-known global brands for advertising purposes (though this rather backfired when iPhone was sent off for head-butting Pepsi). But all of these aberrations had been reported in England with an amused tolerance, as if these eccentric incidents were merely a quirky sideshow to the main story of the Three Lions’ triumphant progress. Because, as so often, any sense of moral outrage at a sporting scandal soon dissipates if your own team is doing well. In fact, the closer we got to the final, the more we became convinced that this was possibly the fairest and most impeccably hosted World Cup ever.
But all that changed with one British newspaper’s front page on the morning of the final. After all the scandals leading up to Qatar 2022, it seemed that somehow the greatest controversy had been saved until last. The final itself might be cancelled. The England team looked like they would be disqualified and sent home in disgrace. The very country that had invented the game might be about to finally kill it off at the worst possible moment.
The air-conditioning in the toilet gave out a constant gentle hum; it was the only noise I could hear in a stadium still packed with football fans. I looked at the time on my phone – fifteen minutes had passed since the match was supposed to have started. I pressed the screen to check the news; of course it was all about the scandal and the resulting uncertainty. For the sake of trade relations with this oil-rich state, major world leaders had accepted invitations to Qatar and were here for the showpiece final. Even President Clinton was in the stadium and said how disappointed she was. ‘I really hope this situation can be resolved and we see Great Britain play-off in the Soccer Games World Series …’
I rang my eleven-year-old son’s mobile; I could picture him sitting at home, still hoping to watch the match. He dropped my call. I stared at the bowl of potpourri next to the scented soap dispenser. That’s not a detail you see very often in toilets of the football grounds of England. And then I put my head in my hands. I wondered if I might just hide out here until everyone had gone back home and completely forgotten about the 2022 World Cup.
Thinking over the events that had led me here, I realized I had actually had two personal ambitions in my life. One was to see England win the World Cup. The other was to make it as a football reporter for a national newspaper. I had never imagined that one day I would have to choose between the two.
fn1 At least I’m pretty sure John Terry won it. He was certainly in the photo.
Suzanne left me for an MK Dons fan. I support AFC Wimbledon. If you cannot appreciate why this breakup was more painful than most, you are probably reading the wrong memoir. Now her boyfriend takes my son to watch MK Dons. On my weekends, I take him to watch AFC. In decades to come, I fear he will be recounting all of this to his therapist.
I should admit, however, that Suzanne was not the first to have an affair. I had been in an emotionally abusive relationship with football since long before we met. Mistress Football had promised me excitement, romance, even ecstasy on occasion. In reality it was all tense between us; there were raised voices, mood swings and extended sulks. Like so many supporters of lower division clubs, I kept hoping to compensate for the lack of quality and glory at club level by slavishly following the national team. All around Wembley you see our flags draped over the hoardings; ‘Dover Athletic’, ‘Gateshead FC’, ‘Stalybridge Celtic’. We go to more internationals than Premiership fans because all we ever get in lower league football is ungainly kick-and-run and continual disappointment. Whereas with the England team – well you can finish that joke off yourself.
I had first met Suzanne on a sunny Saturday in June between the end of the play-offs and the beginning of the European Championship. It was an unbelievable year; Greece won Euro 2004 and AFC Wimbledon won their first promotion and the Premier Challenge Cup. Suzanne was quite into sport herself; in her youth she had played hockey for her county despite the ball being much too small and the players being allowed to carry sticks.
We were together for six seasons on and off. Suzanne and I didn’t fight because she felt I loved football more than her, or anything clichéd like that. But finally she said she wasn’t sure she wanted to spend the rest of her life with someone ‘so passive’ which, looking back, I probably should have responded to in some way. ‘It’s like you use being a fan as an excuse not to take responsibility for your own life. You leave it to twenty-two football players to dictate your mood.’
‘Not true!’ I said. ‘There’s also substitutes, the officials, two managers plus all the fans …’
That didn’t get a smile either.
‘You always follow the path of least resistance, Alfie. Maybe it’s because you let yourself be consumed by something completely outside your control. But just once in your life, I’d like to see you make one difficult, definitive decision.’
‘OK, well maybe we should split up,’ I said, which was the only example I could think of.
‘I agree. I think you’re right.’
‘No, I only said maybe. I don’t really think we should split up …’
‘See, there you go again. Putting off the hard choices. Well, I’ll make this one for you. It’s over!’
A couple of months later she got back in touch to tell me she was having a baby and that I was the father. I suggested that was a good reason for us to get back together; to get married even? That’s when she told me about the new man in her life.
I said if she’d let me, I would like to play an active role as the baby’s real dad. And that turns out to have been the best decision I ever made. Pretty soon I realized I would do anything in the world for my son; I would lie in front of a train for him, I would fight a great white shark; even if he asked me to support another football club – well, obviously I’d never do that, but I was constantly thinking about him, saving him football souvenirs and freebies, always thinking ‘Tom would love this’.
Soon after he was born, I did a postgraduate sports journalism course, I started writing stuff for fanzines and websites, I wrote non-league match reports for local papers. And in the years that followed I rose steadily, from the lower leagues to the very top, like Wimbledon FC, though thankfully I wasn’t forced to change my name or move to Milton bloody Keynes. Back then, I had believed that football had integrity. I aspired to write about it with integrity, always hoping that one day I might get to cover that ultimate game.
I had not had another proper relationship since I had split up with Tom’s mother; and in recent years even my love affair with football had become tarnished. Of course we all change over the years, but the beautiful game had transformed beyond recognition since we’d first become hitched. It felt like a sport in crisis, a bubble that was about to burst.
Nothing illustrated this more clearly than the infamous Norwich versus West Bromwich Albion game on the last day of the 2018 season. On the face of it this had seemed an ordinary game at the lower end of the table. For a couple of years in a row both clubs had barely avoided the drop into the abyss; the ultimate catastrophe that is being cast into the second tier. For these two clubs, like most in the Premiership, there was never any chance of winning it; the purpose of every season was simply to try and stay where you were. It was as if the only ambition for the yachts in the America’s Cup was not to sink.
Fortunately these two particular sides were already safe by the final Saturday and so Norwich and West Brom could play out this match knowing that they had survived another year. Except a terrible misfortune had crept up on both teams without them realizing until now. They were joint top of the Fair Play League. Disaster! Whichever side came out of this afternoon’s match with the best disciplinary record would have to enter the qualifying rounds of the Europa League at the end of June. Neither club could afford the squad for this sort of campaign; the team would be crocked and knackered by Christmas and relegated in May. Thus it suddenly became absolutely essential to the survival of both clubs that they allow their opponent to finish above them in the abstract league no one had been watching. In short, this final match of the season was now about getting more red and yellow cards than your opponents.
With the players still warming up, I wandered over to the buffet in the press hospitality section. The chicken curry was stone cold. Strange? The rice was floating in tepid water. There was nothing even remotely edible on offer. ‘Of course …’ I thought. The Fair Play League also takes other factors into account such as the professionalism of the non-playing staff and the welcome at the ground; there were dozens of ways for a club to lose points and slip down the table.
‘Erm … excuse me, is there anything else to eat?’ I asked politely.
‘Fuck off!’ barked the catering manager.
She could see I was a little taken aback.
‘Are you from UEFA?’ she whispered.
‘No – press. The Mirror.’
‘Oh, OK, sorry. We’re under strict orders. I’ll bring you something out of the kitchen if you promise not to write that it was nice.’
All credit to the Norwich manager – he really had thought of everything.
It was an unusual game from the outset. Never before had I seen a club captain celebrate winning the toss by removing his shirt and running to embrace the fans. The perplexed referee was forced to show the Albion captain a yellow card before the game had even kicked off. The Norwich players looked annoyed, but I think this was only because they hadn’t thought of that. The match got underway and from the centre circle, the ball was passed back to their big centre back who launched it into the air. Two opposing midfielders leapt to win the ball, but only one thought to give himself an extra advantage by raising his arms into the air and catching the ball with both hands.
‘Handball!’ went the shout. Except the appeal came from all the offender’s teammates. The referee had blown his whistle and looked ready to reach for the yellow card. But the opposing midfielder was arguing with the ref: ‘You can’t book him for that, ref – that was just ball-to-hand, it was totally accidental!’
‘He caught it and was still holding on to it when he landed …’
‘No way, you can’t book him for that, ref! You … you fucking bald shithead!’
And so the first red card of the game was issued with less than a minute on the clock.
The game continued in this vein for ninety minutes, with twenty-one yellow cards, three sendings-off on either side, red cards for both managers and a particularly foul-mouthed Norwich ball boy. It was the most entertaining 0-0 draw I have ever witnessed. Pundits sometimes talk about doing dangerous tackles right under the referee’s nose, but this was the first time I had ever seen a player go flying in with a two-footed tackle on the ref himself. The Norwich physio came rushing on for the injured man in black, and to huge cheers from the Carrow Road faithful, stood above him squirting the water bottle in his face. He got a yellow card as well, to more cheers from both sets of fans.
While everyone else on the pitch seemed to be experimenting with other sports such as rugby, kung fu and kick-boxing, one tenacious West Brom player stood out by still managing to play some creative and intelligent football. He reminded me of a young Bryan Robson, with an incredible work-rate and great movement on and off the ball. Unfortunately, like Bryan Robson, he also seemed particularly prone to injury. Running up to take a throw-in, he was tripped up by the giant canary mascot and dislocated his shoulder. He simply got the physio to pop it back into the socket and ran back on to the pitch. But then he stumbled and twisted his ankle and had to limp off. A Norwich defender was mistakenly booked for causing this second injury; initially outraged at the injustice of it, he suddenly remembered he was supposed to be getting booked and got high fives from all his teammates for his extreme good fortune.
At the full-time whistle there was a mass brawl; police attempted to separate the two managers while Delia Smith was detained for throwing eggs at the linesman. They were of course free-range organic eggs; you could tell from the deep orange colour of the yolk in the linesman’s hair.fn1
Like all the other hacks present, Bill Butler from the Sun was already well into his piece and barely looked up from where he was already furiously typing: Disgrace! Shame of overpaid thugs as football hits a new low. He bemoaned what sort of role models these violent cheats could possibly be to our youngsters and demanded that the players should be forced to donate a whole year’s wages to charities for ‘British kids’.
It pained me to know that he was being paid to go to Russia 2018 while I’d be forced to write my match reports from in front of the TV back home. I hated the way Bill wrote about football. If there was a breakdown of acceptable conduct on the pitch, he was certain about the amount of tolerance that should be afforded this sort of behaviour – ‘Zero’. No other number was ever mentioned, I could never have haggled him up to ‘three tolerance’, maybe ending up somewhere about ‘1.5 tolerance’. It was ‘zero’ right from the outset, that’s how strongly he felt about it. He was 110 per cent sure of that. Not 73 per cent sure like me.
If a game was being played somewhere around the end of October, you could guarantee his match report would say something like: Halloween came early to The Hawthorns where Albion’s defence was a horror show for the home fans. It was trick or treat all night with the visitors tricking the West Brom goalie, and treating themselves to a couple of goals before the break, after which, horror of horrors, the Albion centre back ghosted the ball into his own net. His match reports were created automatically by a special sports writers’ word processing software called Microsoft Hack. You simply fed in the teams, the scorers and the date and the software wrote the article for you. The Liverpool defence seemed to think it was still Christmas Day as they gift-wrapped two goals for the next-door neighbours in this ding-dong not-so-merry derby. It was a case of the post-Christmas blues for the reds, who’d clearly had too much pudding – the turkeys were well and truly stuffed here today. With the summer break approaching, Liverpool already had their mind on the beach, (‘Help, the software is malfunctioning!’) though there were plenty of fireworks and this fifth of November won’t be a night to remember as they made a bonfire of the record books (‘Help, it’s jumping all over the place!’) while there was no love lost between these two teams in this Valentine’s Day massacre.
Norwich versus West Bromwich Albion was a match at which Bill fed the clichés ‘Rated 18’, ‘Ugly Scenes’ and ‘Disgrace to the Game’ into his computer, and the morally outraged match report reliably wrote itself.
But for me, that farce of a match crystallized the crisis of the modern game. All the FIFA corruption scandals, the establishment of the Premier League, ordinary fans priced out of the stadiums, Qatar; it all came down to one obvious thing. The world of finance, or profit and loss, or put simply ‘money’ had engineered a hostile takeover of football and stripped out the unpredictable ‘sporting’ element. Here, for example, was a European cup competition that both sides desperately didn’t want to play in. The black hole of the Premiership sucked everything else out of their football universe. It wasn’t just the money; the meaning of other competitions disappeared, the self-respect of the lower leagues was destroyed.
There was no worse fate in sport than a football team being cast into the oubliette of the Championship, probably to face debt, dwindling crowds and the ignominy of getting just twenty seconds on The Football League Show when everyone’s falling asleep on the sofa. ‘Charlton scored first at the Valley with a penalty scored by that blonde Polish girl you fancy from the sandwich shop – yes, you are having a dream, you should have gone to bed when Match of the Day finished.’fn2 It remained a mystery to me why victorious players were still given medals, that Premiership winners were presented with a cup. They should have held aloft an enormous cheque, their players should have done a lap of honour waving wads of cash.
So that is what I said in my write-up of Norwich City v WBA. That the sport had sold its soul; that most clubs outside the Champions League elite were only there to make up the numbers. Like the team of white guys who played the Harlem Globetrotters, they only existed so that the rich superstars had someone to beat. I wrote that this was the true meaning of ‘football violence’; the slow asphyxiation of our national game. I pressed ‘send’ and waited for the reaction back at the office.
My boss at the paper had not been sports’ editor for very long and was perfect for the job apart from the minor detail that he knew nothing whatsoever about sport. Hugo had been thoughtlessly promoted into this job when the shrinking newspaper had merged its showbiz supplement with sport. He would regularly say things like ‘Could you file some copy during the interval?’
‘The “interval”? You mean “half-time”?’
‘Half-time, yes. And lots of colour, you know: what the audience are saying, things like that …’
‘The audience? You mean, the crowd?’
Surely a man of the arts such as Hugo would welcome such a philosophical piece, even in the Daily Mirror? I paced up and down in the hospitality suite at Carrow Road, which was just as well because the staff were still not taking any chances and had loosened the screws on all the chairs. Delia Smith had taken the trouble to learn all the German swear words and was now directing them at UEFA’s Swiss observer. He was actually a French speaker, but she probably knew that too. Still no word from the office, so I thought I would begin my journey home. I passed the referee seated on the stairs, his head in his hands, still only halfway through his match report.
On the walk back to the car I felt my phone vibrate in my inside jacket pocket.
‘Alfred, it’s Hugo.’ He always called me ‘Alfred’ instead of ‘Alfie’. It’s one of the things they teach you at journalism school; always get everything slightly wrong. ‘Everyone here is talking about your piece. Your writing is like no one else’s.’
That could mean anything I thought. I was still expecting him to explain why they couldn’t run it.
‘We’re giving it a double spread. It’s knocked the Manchester v Derby game off the back two pages.’
This wasn’t the time to tell him the other game was a Manchester derby, not Manchester v Derby. County were still in the Championship.
‘Wow – thanks,’ I said.
‘So, listen, have you ever fancied going to the World Cup finals to cover England?’
He said that like it was a totally left-field idea that might never have occurred to me.
‘You really mean that? Me going to the World Cup to follow England?’
‘I’m filling out your credentials right now. Your writing is a breath of fresh air, Alfred.’
I punched the air like I had just scored the winner at Wembley. The next day I worked out England’s likely route to the final and researched all the Russian stadiums and cities I would be visiting if the optimistic predictions on my home-made wallchart came true. Suddenly I was feeling less disillusioned about the beautiful game. Of course, my take on the controversial match had not precluded someone else back at the news desk knocking out a back page under the headline ‘Animals!’ which declared that it was time to show zero tolerance to the overpaid soccer thugs. But I was gratified that the Mirror had published my rant in full on the inside pages, word for word. Or almost word for word; the reference to West Brom’s number 7 reminding me of a young Bryan Robson had been cut.
It struck me as curious that more obvious edits hadn’t been made. I didn’t mind particularly, I was too experienced a hack to be indignant about a little trim like that. But just out of curiosity I mentioned it to Hugo, and then to the subeditors, and they were quite insistent that none of them had made this edit themselves.
Maybe it was some sort of computer glitch, I told myself …
fn1 For the record, the two teams recorded so many cards that they were both overtaken in the Fair Play League by Stoke. The Potters played their first Europa qualifying game on 30 June in Latvia, and during July flew to Moldova, Cyprus and the Faroe Islands. They were relegated the following season at an estimated cost to the club of around £60 million. And all because their captain had neglected to punch a single opponent.
fn2 They briefly tried putting lower league football on before Match of the Day. But people still couldn’t stay awake watching Crawley 0 Barnet 0.
‘Oi, Alfie, what would be your All-Time Greatest England XI?’
I looked up to see my flatmate arranging old football cards on the kitchen table in a manner clearly designed to stop me doing any work on a Saturday.
‘Mark, I’m trying to get this World Cup piece finished here actually … Did I mention that I’m going to the World Cup to cover England?’
‘Yeah, but help me out here; if you could select the greatest ever England football players and put them all in the same team … who would you pick?’
‘No.’
‘What do you mean, “No”?’
‘I’m not getting into this again. It’s one of those pointless discussions that wastes hours and hours going round in circles with no bearing on anything real or meaningful. Like what would you do if you won the lottery, or what would’ve happened if Hitler invaded Britain?’
‘Well we’d all be German and we might win a few more penalty shoot-outs. OK. We won’t talk about it …’ he said, looking a little hurt. ‘I’ll just do my selection in private …’
Mark had hundreds of old football cards that he had collected down the years and was clearly pleased to have found a new excuse to dig them out. He sometimes mocked the fact that I had kept my old Panini sticker album, despite the fact it only had two cards in it, both of them David Beckham.
‘There’s Only Two David Beckhams!’ he had sung all day when he’d first discovered it.
Now he took his own David Beckham card off the table and replaced it with a player I struggled to recognize.
‘Right, if I put Carlton Palmer there …’ he mumbled to himself.
‘Carlton Palmer?’
‘Sorry?’
‘You can’t have Carlton Palmer as one of the greatest ever England players.’
‘I thought you didn’t want to talk about it.’
‘I don’t. I’m just saying. You’re only picking Carlton Palmer because you’re a Sheffield Wednesday fan. There is no objective measure by which Carlton Palmer ever qualifies to be in the All-Time England XI …’
‘So who would you put in that position then?’
‘I wouldn’t. Because I am not taking part in this discussion. Just not Palmer – Steven Gerrard? Or Frank Lampard maybe?’
‘In the same team? Wouldn’t they overlap?’
‘No, because I’d play Gerrard deep, to release Lampard as a goal-scoring midfielder. If I was designing this team. Which I am not.’
‘OK, fine.’ Mark affected an air of private study again. ‘So let me see … left-midfield. Ryan Giggs …’
‘I know what you are doing.’
‘What?’
‘Trying to get me to respond. We both know Giggs is Welsh.’
‘He played for England Schoolboys …’
‘Because his school was in England. He got like sixty-something caps for Wales. You can’t have Ryan Giggs. Who’ve you got up front? Pelé?’
‘So who would you put at left midfield?’
‘Well-it’s-traditionally-a-problem-position-for-England-but-I-have-to-say-that-I-think-you-could-play-Bobby-Charlton-there-ahead-of-Tom-Finney-with-Ashley-Cole-at-left-back-giving-you-good-cover-if-Charlton-drifted-towards-Lineker-in-the centre …’
And that was it – Mark had me hooked, just as he had intended. The next two hours mysteriously disappeared into a sinister time vortex in which a pointlessly academic conundrum with no correct answer was debated back and forth and no work was done for the rest of the morning.
The two of us had moved in together as a temporary stopgap arrangement about a decade earlier. Mark’s girlfriend Jenny always complained about the smell and had bought him a bowl of pot-pourri, which contained dried petals and pine shavings, and more latterly old cigarette butts. Perhaps we should have talked about whether we were both a bit too old to be sharing a messy flat with a World Cup wallchart pinned above the telly, or whether I was seeing enough of my seven-year-old son. But first we had to get to the bottom of this important business of who should be captain of the All-Time England XI: Bobby Moore, Billy Wright or Kevin Keegan.fn1
It was just a few days until England’s first match in the 2018 World Cup, and the subtext to this seemingly pointless conversation was ‘I am really worried about our first game …’ and my subtitles would have read, ‘Me too, I really think we can start with a win, but I don’t want to tempt fate by talking about it.’ According to the wallchart on our fridge, three points against Morocco and then we’d end up topping the group and avoid meeting our bogey-team Germany in the round of 16.
‘So who would you have in goal?’
‘Gordon Banks; got to be.’
‘No, see I’d go for Seaman.’
‘Why on earth would you pick David Seaman over Gordon Banks?’
‘Well because Banks is eighty-something and half-blind. That’s going to be a problem in a penalty shootout.’
‘Ha ha.’
In fact, I was anxious about two football games that Saturday. The advent of the World Cup had fired up the enthusiasm of Tom’s classmates, and today was the day he and his friends would play their first ever competitive football match. Every weekend, I had come up to the common with my excited son, and for a chaotic hour or so lads and dads had played together; passing, running, dribbling, with each of the fathers doing their very best to demonstrate fair play and good sportsmanship while madly competing with each other to set up their own sons for an easy tap-in. The game required the adults to pull off the difficult balancing act of letting the little boys beat them in tackles and shots, but never allowing it to appear so obvious that the boys felt patronized. ‘You let that in on purpose!’ was expressed with the same outrage as ‘You never let us score’.
And now some of the dads decided this World Cup might be a good time for the boys to form themselves into a proper team and play against other kids of their own age. This proposal had been greeted with universal enthusiasm and the boys all wanted to wear their brand-new replica England kits. I had to stop myself objecting on the grounds of negative symbolism. Was it only me who felt privately panic-stricken about starting this World Cup by watching lots of little England shirts running around chasing the ball with no idea what they were supposed to be doing?
I think father and son could sense one another’s nerves as we headed up to the common together. Tom said nothing, his head down; concentrating, worrying, maybe even silently praying. I was nervous because I so wanted him to love it. We lived apart, he was growing up away from me; I was counting on football to be the bridge between us. Finally as we spotted his teammates, he shared his private thought with me.
‘I really hope I get a goal.’
It’s hard to find that balance between encouragement and realism.
‘Well, no, Tom, you’re playing goalkeeper …’
‘I know, but sometimes goalkeepers get goals?’
‘Er, well sometimes. But your job is to stop goals. As a rule, the very best keepers don’t keep going all the way up to the other goalmouth during the game.’
He looked a little disappointed about this. As it turns out, he did score a goal. You want to support children at each stage of their journey. Step one, they score a goal. Step two, they try and score it at the correct end.
I had started the day by working out the all-time greatest eleven players ever to pull on an England shirt. Now I was watching the team that was surely the all-time worst. You watch a seven-year-olds’ football match with a different set of anxieties. For example, at no point when ‘1966 England’ got a goal kick did anyone worry that Gordon Banks would struggle to kick the ball hard enough for it to roll out of his penalty area. At which point one of several burly opposition strikers would be waiting like coiled predators to blast the ball straight back into the net. Unlike the World Cup winners, Junction Juniors FC conceded quite a few of their goals like this. It was a set piece that Bellevue Boyz had obviously been working on in training. ‘Listen, when their puny keeper passes the ball straight to you from a goal kick, just boot it as hard as you can back in the direction of his goal.’