“Those last minutes contained a distillation of their football,
its beauty and elan and almost undiluted joy. Other teams thrill us and
make us respect them. The Brazilians at their finest gave us pleasure so
natural and deep as to be a vivid physical experience… it was the
apogee of football.”
Hugh Milvanney, 1970, in his match report of Brazil-Italy, World Cup Final 1970
"Of course, we should give to Spain all that is their due.......But
not at the cost of the truth, not because of some collective lapse of
memory concerning the meaning of a team (Brazil) which won arguably the
greatest World Cup of all (1970) with quite unanswerable brilliance…’
‘Spain
may have become the owners, at least for a while, of today’s football,
but that should not mean the disinheritance of a nation (Brazil) that
which won three World Cups in 12 years and created such a sense of
futility in their opponents…"
James Lawton, The Independent, after Spain's win at Euro 2012.
As much as Zico, Socrates, Falcao and the rest of
that team gave me a love for football, so did Hugh McIlvanney, Michael Parkinson and James Lawton give me a massive appreciation for the art of writing. Football was my school teacher of history, geography and world politics and these three were the university professors.
Many years ago The Daily Express and Sunday Express were regulars in our house. My mum liked the Express above all the other English newspapers. I assumed it was her newspaper of choice back home. She came to Malta in the early sixties, so not sure how much attachment she had to it twenty years later. We got the early evening edition British newspapers. One striking feature of this edition was that the mid-week football match reports only covered the first half. It was pretty much like watching a movie where you get drawn into the action, but then the VHS tape got stuck in the VCR, and then somebody told you how it ended. The Express still had the final result listed, just not the how and why of the second half. To add to the difference of what normality was back then, and despite it being the early edition, they still only arrived at our local newsagent at about five o' clock that afternoon.
James Lawton was the Chief Football Writer, or something to that effect, in the Express. I loved the way he described the action, how he brought in so much more to the match then what there was to be seen on the pitch; the background, what it meant for the team, the fans, the way a player moved. He created unseen emotions. I looked forward to Lawton's views on the troubles that were affecting English football at the time, rampant hooliganism and all the social problems surrounding it. At some point I learned of the differences between the tabloid newspapers and the broadsheets. Don't believe everything you read in the tabloids, I was told. But I knew that everything James Lawton wrote was true.
Awareness of the more serious newspapers led to more sports pages, more football reports. Somewhere Hugh McIlvanney appeared. I cannot remember where, but he didn't compete with Lawton, but complemented him. I do remember that Michael Parkinson entered my consciousness through his weekly column in the Telegraph. Parkinson wrote about his two loves repeatedly, cricket in Yorkshire and Barnsley FC. He had a way of finding comedic passion in both.When the seemingly helpless, luckless Barnsley played in their promotion season to the Premier League, I felt like I lived it through Parkinson.
In my life that started in 1982, and for a few years after, I had the dream, the one where I would hit free kicks like Platini, dribble like Socrates and save like Nigel Spink. Later, I lived in the pages of Lawton, Parkinson and McIlvanney and as much as I wished I had the skillful feet, I now wished I had the magic of the brain that could put sentences together like they could.
And here I am, three hundred and sixty four days after I decided to start my own countdown to the World Cup. I have used my own words to explain memories which were special to me, or to attempt to share my opinion on a World Cup related subject, and to occasionally add my humour to a story I had come across. Iran, Team Melli, became an easy target. But most of the time, I called on the professionals. I used their writings to explain my feelings. If I picked a story, it was almost always because it was something that I wanted to put out there, and somebody had written about it.
Day -1 brings me to South Africa 2010. Could Spain really be that good and win a second consecutive major tournament. They were a revelation with their style: pass, move, pass, move, until the other team broke down mentally and physically. They were not Brazil 1982, but there was something poetic and athletically graceful in the way they played. It was a revelation because since Brazil '82, no team had found such a different way to play the game and do it consistently. I was drawn in and willed them to win. Finally, Spain, with their Tika Tika play, had found a way to win after years of inexplicably under performing.
By the time, Euro 2012 came about, Tika Tika was beginning to look a bit tick-tock, when is this going to end. The problem was that there is only so long you can watch a team pass the ball around every blade of grass on the pitch, without actually achieving the objective of scoring very often. I started to yearn for the days of direct German football, as seen on TV(instead of Big League Soccer), where getting to the goal quickly and repeatedly was the target. Or, even more simply, Brazil '82.
Spain won in 2010. It was hardly a classic final, but of course Spain liked it that way. The irony, of which I was surely not alone in being aware of, was that their opponents, Holland, had been the proponents of a revolutionary style themselves in the seventies. Their Total Football was a little more exciting then Tika Tika. But now, in 2002, Holland were the hard tackling negative tactics team against the artists from Spain. To add to the irony, Tika Tika originated from one of the best Total Footballers of all time, Johan Cruyff, when he managed Barcelona.
The only positive from that final was that Spain scored the only goal late in extra time, so we were spared another World Cup decided by penalties. The down side was that we had to watch an extra 28 minutes to get a winner. After another wonderful month of football, if this is how these teams were going to play, then I was happy to be done with it. The high point of the final in our house was my four year old daughter throwing up on me sometime in the second half. It had more oohs and aahs then anything the football gave us.
In the earlier rounds, Italy couldn't beat New Zealand and were eliminated in the first round; Spain lost it's opening match to Switzerland, Spain made the second round, Switzerland didn't; France were back to early implosion mode; Argentina, under Diego Maradona dazzled but were then completely outclassed by Germany, to the point of making you wonder what tactics Maradona had dreamed up; and England couldn't beat Algeria but made it through to face humiliation at the hands of the Germans.
England-Germany had the goal that was but wasn't, from Frank Lampard. His shot which rebounded off the crossbar and landed well inside the goal before bouncing was missed by the assistant referee, formerly known as a linesman. Not by name anymore, but still the man to watch the lines. If that goal had been seen, England would have come back to 2-2, right at half time, after being 2-0 down. Talk about momentum and all that. Instead of starting off even in the second half, England had to chase the game. Afterwards, the English media ridiculed another terrible performance as Germany broke away to score twice more. Frank Lampard and the ghost goal could have meant a very different outlook the next day.
For the second World Cup in a row, I was recently into a new job. Time off was not an option very often. But I did have the luxury of some flexibility, and the advent of complete online coverage. And, a new boss who was happy to have me and keep me happy. So, our IT guy was dispatched to fix my software issues which were preventing me from watching on my computer. Admittedly, I asked for help, discretely, but Mr IT mentioned in front of the big boss that he was on his way to help me and there was no opposition.
Brazil 2014, I am now ready for you. Are you? Your President says you are. The people don't seem too convinced. What will I write about four years from now. What will the memories be? Will they be about beautiful football, or will they even be about the football?
My dream is a Brazil-Argentina final, a blockbuster final, the two big rivals doing battle with Brazil wanting to overcome the ghost of 1950 and Argentina loving to step into the shoes of Uruguay.
"Na hora da onça beber a água" has arrived. Let it be a good long drink.
