Articles of Faith Page 3
I’m not suggesting that Mourinho and Roman Abramovich were having a big, saucy, gay love affair that has ended in recrimination and unfulfilled potential but the fact that it would be impossible to allocate who would be passive and who the aggressor in such a tryst is perhaps central to this saga. Whilst I acknowledge that most homosexuals chuckle at the antiquated, heterosexual assumption that gay relationships have a ‘man’ and ‘wife’ dynamic, partnerships the world over are defined by status, and the inability of these powerful men to find professional harmony, to me, resembles two randy stags, nostrils flared, bristling, with angry erections, locking horns over which one is going to bite on a branch and be Bambi’s mummy.
‘Mourinho provoked a kind of neutered lust. I enjoyed his manipulative interviews and eccentric outbursts’
Ultimately Chelsea are Abramovich’s club and there could be only one winner but as a result we, the English nation, the Premier League and the media, have lost an intriguing and charismatic figure.
Like most people I became aware of Mourinho when he darted down the touchline arms aloft in that coat, at Old Trafford, having engineered Porto’s victory over United. ‘What a twit,’ I remember thinking. The fact that the coat became independently famous is a testimony to the unique place he attained in the firmament of top-flight bosses. What other garments have secured such cachet? Brian Clough’s green sweatshirt? Arsène Wenger’s specs? Fergie’s gum? Unless Roy Keane starts turning up to matches in cowboy boots it’ll be a while until personal style makes such an impression from the dugout.
His departure is significant enough to prompt comment from figures as diverse as Gordon Brown and my mum – ‘He made a huge impact in such a short time’ and ‘That dishy manager’ respectively. Neither of them cared when Alan Pardew left West Ham.
We can glean from this momentous event several things: Abramovich will be satisfied with nothing less than immediate success in Europe, he wants attractive football and he wants to stick his oar in whenever he fancies and put his mates in the team. One of the difficulties is that most of the great footballing dynasties have achieved success with practical, as opposed to flamboyant, football. Milan, Juventus and recent Real Madrid sides have prioritised winning over all else whereas teams like Barcelona or Arsenal always have moments of vulnerability and but two European Cup wins between them.
Personally, I’m sad about it. I’ve mentioned in this column before that Mourinho’s presence at Chelsea prevented me from harbouring the hatred expected of a West Ham fan for our rivals across the capital because he provoked in me a kind of neutered lust. I enjoyed his aloof, snooty, manipulative interviews and eccentric outbursts; calling dear Wenger a voyeur and Frank Rijkaard a pervert. What about when he fled from police with his unquarantined lapdog? That’s berserk, I can’t imagine any other manager embarking on such a mad quest.
Sam Allardyce would not try to sneak his cat into a disco, David Moyes would never ride a cow to work and Alex Ferguson wouldn’t squabble with cider tycoons over the ownership of a gee-gee. Actually he would because he too is a genius in the business of football management and in exchange for that bedazzling gift we’ll tolerate his refusal to speak to the BBC, his hurling of boots at national treasures and his insistence on absolute authority at his club. But Abramovich wouldn’t tolerate that, which is why when Chelsea visit Sir Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United tomorrow it’ll be under the stewardship of Avram Grant of whom I know little but suspect if Abramovich demanded his yacht play in goal and his wife on the wing would offer little resistance.
Like many a spurned lover before him Mourinho said he was going to take time off to unwind and wait for the phone to ring. I don’t imagine he’ll have long to wait till he gets optimistic tinklings from north and possibly east London and whatever he chooses to do I don’t suppose it’ll be long before he’s back at the Bridge with a new paramour and then I suspect it’ll be Abramovich who ends up heartbroken.
8
His Grace Arsène, the shaman of our football
‘I consider him a mystic, a shaman, an alchemist, speaking from somewhere far behind his inky eyes’
Six or seven games in we are able to ascertain the flavour of the season, we have savoured the first giddy sips and can now assess whether this shall be a vintage year. It’ll be some time till we rinse away the spectacular taste of that swoonsome, dark rascal José Mourinho, probably we’ll dispatch into the spittoon far sooner the bitter tang of Martin Jol, the poor sod, like a cuckolded father putting a brave face on for his bewildered kids, while Daniel Levy capers around Europe in a push-up bra with his knickers showing.
Fernando Torres is reckoned to be the new Ian Rush by Steven Gerrard and the arrival of the cartoonishly pretty Spaniard does seem significant. His input could ensure a realistic challenge from Merseyside for the first time in a decade-and-a-half and who but the blue faction of that city would begrudge them?
There is much to ponder in this richly evolving drama but my attention is drawn currently to Arsène Wenger, whose beautiful, more ‘royal’ than ever, Arsenal visit Upton Park tomorrow. Last season West Ham bested the Gunners twice, a feat that is unlikely to be repeated as Arsenal appear to have several teams playing with a grace, confidence and joy that is almost transcendental.
Given the concern that many expressed pre-season about post-Henry Arsenal this is a surprising and exciting development and one that can only really be attributed to Wenger, who to me seems to be vibrating above the frequency typically associated with our national game. I consider him a mystic, a shaman, an alchemist, speaking from somewhere far behind his inky eyes, issuing spiritual sermons on the game’s decline and our obligation to nurture English talent.
‘English football’s responsibility is to continue raising quality without losing its soul,’ he says, talking of foreign money and bare terraces as potential symbols of an atheistic erosion of our holy essence. Ten years ago Wenger came over here, taking our jobs, recruited a clutch of Gallics and Latinos and picked up the Double with the insouciance of a gent collecting a baguette and an espresso. The debate continues to this day as to whether the influx of foreign talent has harmed our national team; I feel that if the game is elevated and standards raised that will ultimately be positive across all strata and few would dispute the contribution made by ‘the professor’ unless they are actual racists or Spurs fans.
Now that Wenger has expressed concern about the development of young English players it does seem more serious. But aside from his new ecclesiastical role he has no duty to anyone other than the fans and board of Arsenal and that doesn’t run to positive discrimination in favour of Anglo-Saxons.
He spoke of fans as ‘the keepers of the game’ which is a further nod to the civic, if not sacred nature of the sport, which makes me query the new directive to referees to regard with renewed positivity ‘hard to call’ offside decisions, the reasoning being that ‘a dodgy goal is preferable to a dodgy offside’. Is that an edict with which most fans would concur? Obviously that would be contingent on whether it was scored or conceded.
For me the relative scarcity of goals, perhaps the factor that has prevented football enchanting America, enhances their sanctity. Gary Lineker and his sexy, brown legs would never put the ball in the net in a pre-match kick-about so as not to tarnish the magic of that rarely achieved objective and in midweek I saw, in a match against Real Zaragoza, that paragon of the footballer as divine, Thierry Henry, on sighting a raised flag, curtail his magisterial canter towards goal with the despondency of a man abruptly woken from a beautiful dream.
It was as if, in that moment, meaning itself had been suspended, the ball with trickling inertia departed from its master, who himself was left to wonder, when would come his first goal in La Liga. Amidst the swirl of the scandals, the rumours, the ignoble chatter and limitless tainted money something chaste and sacred remains and it belongs to us, the fans and cannot be bought, sold or branded. Wenger is aware of this, which is why one can overlook the
paucity of Englishmen in his side; he could field a team of ravens and be closer to the game’s essence than most, and I hope, for West Ham’s sake, that tomorrow he does.
9
Whatever next? Joe Cole on stilts?
I’m in Tuscany. I’ve been sent here by my publishers to finish my autobiography. Usually, this column is the only writing obligation I have to fulfil and is rattishly indulged, today it must vie with literary siblings and is being produced during a hiatus of the solipsistic, caffeinated torrent that has consumed my every waking hour. Goethe wrote here, I am informed, and Auden too, so expectations are justifiably high and this voluptuous, rolling land ought to be sufficient muse for any man.
‘Mourinho has the appearance of a gigolo assassin, Grant looks like Herman Munster’s butler’
I went into town on Wednesday night to watch Chelsea vs Valencia, initially to gloat but as usual when abroad, was seduced by patriotism. My hopes that post-Mourinho Chelsea would fall apart looked likely to be fulfilled before a ball had been kicked, with John Terry in his see-through mask (there’s a baffling concept, see-through masks. What’s next? Cuddly daggers?) and Petr Cech in his stupid bonnet, they look like they’re disintegrating as individuals let alone as a team. For future matches I want Joe Cole to be on stilts and Didier Drogba to wear fake boobies. Let Chelsea field a team of prosthetically enhanced oddities, it’ll be good for morale.
After David Villa’s opener I felt the first nationalistic twinge, the Italians that were watching were hardly vociferous, they indifferently sipped beer, but I took their silent boozing to be a slur upon Her Majesty and all her fleets and became enraged. ‘How dare you!’ I thought, after everything we’ve done for you. I began to crave a Chelsea revival, not in a profound way, just in a ‘I drew them in a sweepstake at work’ way. Then thanks to the skill and persistence of Drogba and Joe Cole, or Johkohl as he’s known on Italian telly, Britannia triumphed.
Were Chelsea more flamboyant under Avram Grant? It seems ridiculous that they could be, using the judge-a-book-by-its-cover method, Mourinho has the appearance of a Latino, gigolo assassin, Grant looks like Herman Munster’s butler. There’s a word that oughtn’t to be bandied about so profligately, butler. Butler means a devoted, Woodhousian gentleman’s gentleman. The lunatic who bears that title and has come as part of the package with this Tuscan villa would have seen Bertie Wooster starved and raped within an hour of his employment. I know that complaining about the quality of your butler is a lament unlikely to elicit much sympathy outside of Kensington but this fella, Sam, could no more butter me the perfect crumpet than take flight over the olive groves that surround me.
It was Sam who took us to the bar where we, me and my mate Nik (who’s also my agent here to force me to write the booky wook), watched Wednesday’s match and let me complain about the coffee and the light reflecting off the TV screen before telling me on the way home that the premises were run by the Mafia. I suppose I should be grateful he didn’t wait till my funeral before mentioning it to my weeping mother.
Had I been aware that I was drinking in the Café Cosa Nostra I might not have been so cheeky with the waitresses, nor would I have sung the national anthem at the final whistle. The problem may be due to linguistic difficulties rather than incompetence – he did yesterday speak the sentence ‘Marijuana Michelangelo my brother Italy.’ I’ve been thinking about it ever since and am no closer to unravelling its mysteries.
What could it mean? It’s almost entirely made of nouns, there’s not a verb to be had. Could it mean that marijuana influenced the sculpture of Michelangelo and in turn inspired Sam and his brother to come to Italy? Whatever he said, it’s better than my Italian, all I can say is ‘grazi’, I say it in different accents to deal with every situation. I just hope that I can intone ‘grazi’ in such a charming fashion that I can avoid being murdered in the plaza by a disgruntled Godfather.
Interview between Russell Brand and David Baddiel
DB: Y’know, I did have this complicated thing that I was going to talk to you about, but we’re just going to talk about football, right?
RB: We can talk about the complicated thing as well as football if you want.
DB: Well, yeah, can you include in that complicated thing the creation of comedy as rock and roll in Britain, that has led directly to your career?
RB: I will – you may have noticed there is a rock and roll element in my persona. That is in no small part owing to David Baddiel, very much the John the Baptist to my Christ. Not only did you plant the seed for this comedy as the new rock and roll revolution, but this is a very specific favour you’re doing me now, as it was you who suggested that we talk about the time we went to the England Croatia game where England famously lost and they didn’t qualify for the European Championship.
DB: Yeah, we have to talk about that although obviously my abiding memory is depression exacerbated by the amount of very attractive women in the area that we were in who came up and offered you their phone numbers at a time when you were supposed to be celibate as well, you’d made a public statement about your celibacy and yet in the…what’s it called…the corporate section of Wembley, not really a hotbed of sexual activity, still I would say about eight women came up, all of them very attractive, and offered you their phone numbers, some of whom you may or may not have slept with, we probably can’t go into that.
RB: It was the only way I could heal the scars of that horrific defeat.
DB: I probably wouldn’t have minded on some level because obviously I was aware that going out into the open air with you that might happen but it was a particularly bad time for it to happen because I get genuinely depressed when England don’t qualify or go out of major tournaments. So I feel I was particularly more indignant towards it than I might have been.
RB: And to heighten this sense of defeat and failure, here’s a man enjoying the spoils of an idea of comedy that you’ve set up, right in front of your defeated face.
DB: I tell you though, because when England, I’m trying to keep it to football…when England went out of Euro 96, when I was at perhaps the very height of my fame in England because everyone was singing my football song, one of the things I particularly remember, being with my then girlfriend and Frank Skinner being there with his then girlfriend, who was half German, and Frank Skinner basically in his relationship with her never really recovered from Germany defeating England on that day. So I suppose a small part of me might have been thinking, how can he be thinking about sex at a time like this when he should be full of rage, that you can’t possibly be doing that. But you were doing that. I mean it’s all rubbish because I would’ve been thinking about sex had the women been coming up to me but…
RB: Yeah.
DB: I’m just following the line of thought really.
RB: (Laughter) I was particularly proud to be at that England Croatia match with you and the defeat for me was all the more bitter on account of it meaning there wouldn’t be a chorus of Football’s Coming Home. Oh, that would be amazing if that happened, oh they’ll see David and it will be really really exciting.
DB: Yeah, there was actually a small chance of that I think because it was a very important game, the England fans don’t really sing it anymore. I’m not entirely sure why. Well one reason is because England never play well enough. It’s a strange football song in that respect in that it is only sung when England do well because Football’s Coming Home implies that we are doing well, that the trophy is coming literally to our house, and if England aren’t doing well it can’t really be sung. And England haven’t done well really for a long time and the only time I have heard it sung recently was when Germany played us and the German fans were singing it. Someone was with me and they said, ‘Oh, they’re singing your song,’ and I feel hollow inside because I didn’t actually put him right, I knew it was a German fan because Germany were doing well, and they said to me they’re singing it, but I just left it because I wanted him to think that people still sung our s
ong all the time.
RB: That’s heartbreaking. I’ve always thought that that song has a flaw in that it’s too triumphant thus restricting it to occasions of triumph, perhaps it could have done with a little more nuance…
DB: That’s right, one of the strange things about the song is the reason it became a very big hit is that it was written in the spirit of melancholy because most other songs, England songs up to that point were, ‘We’re going to win it, we’re coming home, we’re off there to win it.’
RB: Yeah.
DB: When me and Frank talked about it we said, ‘Let’s write a song about what it’s really like being an England fan which is, oh we’re probably not going to win it but we sort of hope we are anyway.’
RB: That is four more years of hurt.