Articles of Faith Page 6

  That big, lovely, bald Honey Monster of a man Martin Jol apparently experienced similar duress when at the Lane, he endured Damien Comolli giving him an unwelcome reach-round while he was trying to bring his squad to climax. Jol revealed that he planned to bring Manchester City hits Elano and Martin Petrov (it’s easy to say that now, I’ve always loved Sven myself, never once suggesting that he joined England players in the post-match bath wearing soggy knickers) to Spurs but Comolli brought in players that would have long-term commercial re-sale value like Darren Bent (we’ll all be rich, I tells ya) and Adel Taarabt.

  It can’t be much fun trying to manage a Premier League team of teenage millionaires while the club chairman and director of football (which is a job title to undermine a manager’s control if ever I heard one – ‘Don’t mind me, I’ll just be here directing the football’) stand just behind you pulling ‘spaz’ faces and doing ‘wanker’ signs. Why not just turn up at first-team training sessions and stick Post-its on Martin’s back reading ‘I want my Mummy’ or put cards in phone boxes with his mobile number and ‘I will bend over for cash’ written on them.

  The only way to run a Premier League club is as a dictatorship. Witness the top flight’s own Stalin and Mao, Ferguson and Wenger, answerable to no one, sat beyond reproach atop the power pyramid of their respective clubs, Titans answerable only to God and their own consciences. May I just point out that I’m not implying that either man is genocidal, it’s simply not called for in their line of work, but I can’t imagine Sir Alex would take kindly to anybody abbreviating his autobiography – although his life isn’t littered with evidence of instability, unless he really did throw that shoe at David Beckham and even that’s not as bad as the ice pick that Trotsky had to contend with just for trying his hardest.

  So, try and use EAST EAST East London as often as you can till it’s as popular an idiom as Whassup! Or Milf. Make sure you find an appropriate situation, though, or people will think you’re nuts.

  14

  My view from afar of Fergie’s flirtatious feuding

  I’m in Morocco and no matter how completely my senses are flooded with the mystery of the souks and the nobility of the Atlas mountains this will always be to me the nation that in Mexico ’86 fielded a player called Mustafa Merry (I remember the Panini sticker book representation rather than the individual). I liked that name as a child as it seemed like a joke, and also pre-empted by a decade my mate Matt’s nickname for me as an Arabic tunic-wearing junkie, Mustafa Skagfix.

  The other prejudice I’ve been carting about was learned from the Joe Orton biopic Prick Up Your Ears where Joe and his murderous lover Kenneth Halliwell briefly holidayed here and copped off with loads of rent-boys. I don’t know why that stayed with me, it just seemed so jolly, bathing costumes, giggling and Alfred Molina and Gary Oldman enjoying tense frissons. The memory of the pair of them, and Mustafa Merry, skipped through my mind while I was on the phone to the travel agent.

  ‘It’s like flirting a bit, or any form of seduction: one must destabilise the target to make them suggestible to new ideas’

  I’ve not encountered Mustafa or a single rent-boy the whole time I’ve been here and am thinking of demanding a discount. I’ve kept my eye on things in Albion though and here’s my round-up of football news, not to mention my ‘wacky, sideways’ view of it all: Chris Hutchings’s sacking; oh. I liked him, he was a friendly peep-eyed, thin-lipped, gel-haired uncle and I don’t think Dave Whelan has given him long enough. Also talk of Paul Jewell returning to Wigan seems barmy because Hutchings was formerly his first-team coach.

  What if Jewell does return and offers Hutchings his old job back? It’ll be uncomfortable, Hutchings won’t be able to tell the players anything – he’ll be like a castrated step-dad. ‘Run round them cones lads,’ he might shout; ‘Eff off, you’re not my real coach,’ Heskey’ll respond. It’ll be awful. It doesn’t do to go backwards, unless you’re an old lady descending stairs, then it’s de rigueur.

  West Ham have always been keen on the ol’ ‘sell players then bring ‘em back’ technique and it’s always a bit disappointing. Julian Dicks, Tony Cottee and Frank McAvennie all came back for less successful second spells and whilst it’s romantic I don’t know that it’s good business. Though who wouldn’t welcome dear Harry Redknapp back to the Boleyn in an instant? Why, only the loopy and the indifferent.

  There was talk of Nicolas Anelka returning to Arsenal but I imagine Arsène Wenger is not one given to nostalgia, and it seems improbable that any of Fergie’s former charges would be welcome back at Old Trafford – they usually seem to be kicked out from ‘neath the protection of his coarse petticoats like incestuous toddlers.

  I admire Sir Alex Ferguson’s need for conflict as much as his appetite for success, and his remarks this week about Sepp Blatter’s proposed cap on foreign players were tremendous fun; implying that Arsenal and Liverpool would suffer most under such a ruling then nonchalantly awaiting the protestations from the Emirates.

  Wenger was of course unable to resist retaliating and I thought his riposte was a good one: ‘His own foreign players must feel undervalued by that.’ I enjoyed this particularly as I was following this minor dispute as if it were a soap opera and after Ferguson’s initial dig I knew Wenger would respond but was unable to anticipate the quality of his parry. It’s like flirting a bit, or any form of seduction: one must destabilise the target to make them suggestible to new ideas, like bumming.

  Not that I’m suggesting that this was Ferguson’s ulterior motive although the chemistry between them is exciting. The cursory, eye-contact-free handshake that followed last Saturday’s clash, whilst brief, must have felt enormous to either man. Like having a fingernail traced up the nape of your neck or sweet breath blown into your ear, how could it not engender an electric shudder? I wonder if they think about each other much when they’re alone, initially angry – ‘the security was a bloody joke’ – but lapsing into the whimsical – ‘he has such inviting lips, ever wet and puckered, each rebuke a prelude to a vicious kiss’ – almost certainly.

  Actually Yossi Benayoun would be carried shoulder high along the Barking Road should he ever return. His hat-trick against Besiktas, like every ball Joe Cole has ever kicked whilst clad in blue, induced a gut-pang, and now as a nation we must hope that he uses his much missed and lamented skills to give England a chance of qualifying for the European Championship perhaps, if the mischievous deities of nostalgia have their way, under the stewardship of Terry Venables.

  15

  I need a new way to feed my England habit

  When organising warm-up gigs for the forthcoming, final leg of my current tour my tour manager, Ian (City), and manager, Nik (United), asked if I wanted to keep Wednesday night free for the England match. Whether the game against Croatia is of any relevance will be determined tonight in Tel Aviv when Israel play Russia – if Russia don’t win then England can still qualify for the European Championship with a victory against the group leaders at Wembley.

  In effect, my response to this inquiry will define me either as a patriotic optimist or an indifferent pessimist. Or, as is often the case in these times, there is a third way: I could remain essentially optimistic but affiliate myself only with the claret and blue corner of England where Bow Bells chime and bubbles blow, like a Cornish separatist imagining new borders around a principality of the heart.

  ‘Only 38 Englishmen played in the Premiership. I don’t want to get all Oswald Mosley but is that enough?’

  We all know of the pledge, of course, where we swear to never again be seduced by a national side that only ever lets us down, an oath that is easier to remain faithful to if you’re a fan of Manchester United or Arsenal and have a happy and successful domestic football life than if you follow Huddersfield, no disrespect, or even West Ham. But perhaps that constituency is now being diminished. Fans of the MK Dons could find more joy and triumph following their local team than by going to all the bother of daubing a St George’s
Cross with Milton Keynes and traipsing off to Vienna.

  I can’t seem to give up my England habit: although I’ve never seen them play I have been inveigled by the trappings. Esso World Cup coins, for example, which bore the faces of the Italia 90 squad were as prized as richly as golden doubloons by my teenage self and while people fret and query the benefits of adopting the euro I campaign tirelessly in my mind to have them made our sole legal tender – a Peter Beardsley for a loaf of bread, a Chris Waddle for a day pass at Thorpe Park and a weeping Gazza for unlimited lap dances at Spearmint Rhino (they were very rare).

  Last week only 38 Englishmen played in the Premiership. Now I don’t want to get all Oswald Mosley but is that enough? We’re approaching the point where if you are a top-flight English footballer you can assume you’ll be in the squad, just turn up at the airport in your PE kit and demand a chance. So perhaps Michel Platini and the brave Steven Gerrard are right, that there ought to be a cap on foreign players or players should run out for the nation in which they earn their money.

  That might be quite good actually, not just because then ‘England’ would be bloody brilliant but also David Beckham would have to play for the United States, probably as skipper, affording me the delightful opportunity to write an article entitled ‘Captain America to the rescue’ which would be a breeze. It might even help to loosen the stranglehold that nationalism still has upon us, and our atavistic tribal instincts, to the point where we abandon the concept of the individual and gather in stadiums just to cheer the idea of collective consciousness – it would be much harder to tell who’d won or when the game had finished and some people would still struggle with the offside rule but it might herald an age of global peace.

  When I was a lad and Liverpool won everything, folk would harp on about Sammy Lee being the only English player because that side was made up largely of home nations players. Others would say he was like a little barrel that had come to life in a Disney film set in a brewery but they contribute nought to this argument and can just eff off.

  I suppose what I’m saying is that England will always underachieve, and it doesn’t seem to be something we can correlate to club football in a direct way. If we don’t qualify there is talk of having a home nations tournament, presuming that Scotland are also available, and some of my mates are more into that idea. ‘Four meaningful matches,’ said John (Liverpool) and I’d be interested to watch such a tourney, but it might feel a bit like the third-place matches in the World Cup where two teams of disillusioned failures vie for mediocrity.

  We’d be pretending to care about our mini-matches but actually in our heart of hearts we’d know we were watching a consolation cup, for little girls in their mum’s high-heels tottering around, fancying themselves all adult but not contributing to the gas bill.

  I’m doing my warm-up gigs on Monday and Tuesday night and keeping Wednesday free because I make decisions with my heart (especially now my goolies are out of action) so Wednesday I’ll be watching England and I hope it’ll be consequential. I know it’ll be a lot more relaxed than the front room in Yarm where Steve McClaren will watch tonight’s other group matches with his sons and a loudly ticking clock.

  16

  This crimson blot will take three years to fade

  I first became anxious when I realised that beneath the twirling, hypnotic umbrella seeking shelter from the lightly drizzling rain permitted by the broken roof at Wembley stood the manager of our national team, Steve McClaren. I was at the match in incredible seats with my mate Nik and David Baddiel and his brother Ivor.

  We were right behind the dugout in posh leather-look seats having enjoyed the delightful hospitality of one of the lounges which was a bit embarrassing for us all in the sense that it’s quite far removed from the authentic trudge and bilge that’s synonymous with the football of our youth. Actually though I do like a bit of luxurious nosh and privilege in this the final flush of capitalism before the revolution levels us all, a revolution that seems all the more attractive now the beautiful distraction of Euro 2008 has been smashed to bits.

  ‘I bumped into a Croat in the lavvy and was unready for good-natured prittle-prattle so I neglected to ablute’

  It seems daft to harp on about the subsidiary consequences of England’s failure to qualify because the immediate effects are so upsetting; after a knife wound to the heart one is unlikely to lament the blood stains on your T-shirt and this crimson blot will take at least three years to rinse away. I wonder if Brian Barwick’ll feel embarrassed in South Africa at the World Cup qualifiers draw? If he’ll avoid the pitying glare and condemnation from his counterparts?

  I bumped into a Croat in the lavvy straight after the match and was still unready for good-natured prittle-prattle so I neglected to ablute to avoid handshakes. I bore them ill-will even before the final whistle because of what I perceived to be a needlessly fascistic form of chanting throughout the match. Perhaps this says more about my prejudices than the philosophy of those fans but it did seem terribly well organised – two huge, adjacent sections of the stadium spent the entirety of the match indulging in a terrifyingly simplistic call-and-response mantra that unnerved me as much as the sharp, acerbic presence of Slaven Bilić on the touchline first in a woolly hat and an awful off-white coat that the whole Croatian operation had been forced to wear, then when he re-emerged for the second half, assured of victory, in a shoddy suit.

  Why I’ve reserved my vituperation for this obviously talented manager and former West Ham centre-half is a mystery when a more fitting candidate for wrath stood like Gene Kelly or more latterly Rihanna meekly concealed beneath his brolly awaiting a holiday in the Bahamas that it turns out he’d already booked. I was distracted in that fabulous stadium. David was agitated by the fact that the roof hadn’t been closed and queried whether it was a misjudged tactical flooding under the assumption that the Croatians would never have encountered a ‘greasy surface’ before.

  When we later discovered that the bloody thing simply doesn’t work it was merely added to the list of heartbreaking metaphors that cluttered up the abominable evening. I was transfixed by Bilić – he has menace in his eyes, and in my nervous mind I likened him to an Eastern bloc pimp masquerading as a mini cab operator in Soho. I berated myself for being so racist, whilst my head still hung; ashamed by the comical escapades occurring on the pitch and my own misuse of stereotypes the Croatian fans again brimmed over into their regimented yawp.

  Poor Scott Carson looked all daft in his yellow costume. After his initial error, so ludicrous that all present paused to establish that it had actually happened and was not just a big stupid David Copperfield-style illusion before letting the nausea kick in, he became from then on merely some matter filling an outfit standing in a goalmouth. Every time the Croatians surged forwards, mostly on the break, a goal appeared likely and Ivor’s remark that England seemed not to have prepared in any way for the specificity of playing Croatia and their ability to inflict punishing counter attacks but simply assumed that a side, already qualified would be happy for an evening out, was judged to be the most perspicacious of the evening.

  Though it received little in the way of competition from me I confined myself to attacking the Croatian team’s coats which I judged to be rubbish, particularly in comparison with the rather dapper England attire – in my mind a sartorial competition became the only kind of encounter in which we could triumph.

  In the second half David Beckham, dear derided, adored David Beckham offered hope, he knew it was him alone who could offer it. Eighty thousand people scanned the pitch searching for something to be optimistic about and it wasn’t till his arrival that that need found a destination. It was for him alone that I remained to applaud as he left the field, dignified still, saluting the crowd, teased to the precipice of a century. Who knows what will occupy this wasteland when, if he ever surpasses his 99th cap?

  McClaren had already sought sanctuary in the dressing room knowing his holiday was already assured along w
ith his severance. Better to be abroad – his umbrella can offer little protection from the current storm.

  17

  José makes my day…in another dimension

  Having José Mourinho as England manager would almost make up for our failure to qualify for next year’s tournament. In a pointlessly constructed parallel European Championship where England qualified one can only assume that we would be attending a competition rife with potential embarrassment and eventual disappointment, although it seems a bit stupid to go to all the bother of manufacturing an alternative reality which is also disappointing so we might just as well imagine one where we triumph.

  In fact, I’ll be in the team as player-manager, in goal will be Robert Green of West Ham United, Morrissey will partner me up front and at half-time of our opening game (at Upton Park) Daniel Craig and Lindsey Dawn McKenzie will do a live sex show.

  ‘I bet if you went out with Mourinho he’d never call hack when you wanted him to, he’d flirt with other people and sometimes just broodily stare off into the distance’