"I tend to hear them as I am drifting off to sleep. They are spoken to me, I’m not sure by whom. By myself, I know, though the source feels independent, recondite, especially at the start"
"They are pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, handed to me in no particular order, with no discernible logic. I only sense that they are part of the thing."
(Pulitzer Prize winning author Jhumpa Lahiri).
"Everybody does have a book in them, but in most cases that's where it should stay."
Christopher Hitchens
If I wrote out all the World Cup sentences in my head then you may get what Mr. Hitchens thinks shouldn't happen. Every memory I think of, each bit in my jigsaw, is anchored by whether it was a World Cup or European Championships year, or a 'dead' year, the odd numbered years where the Copa America would attempt to feed my craving for football in the summer.
Sometime before 1982, Dino Zoff saved a penalty for Italy. It happened on tv. Maybe he didn't save it, but somehow the ball flew up into the air. Who took the penalty, I don't know. Italy's opponents, the tournament, the final result, I have no idea. But what I do remember is that somebody else sitting around the little tv in my parents' bedroom turned to me and said "you're so lucky". Me? Lucky? Sure. Great.
For some reason, again beyond my full memory capabilities at the time since it was pre-1982, I had taken a liking to the look of the Italian team. It was not the look of their defensive system, it was really the look. It may have come from a poster in a magazine that had England and Italy on either sides.The England players were standing in line, haphazardly, pre-kickoff. The Italians were in the standard two rows team photo formation in their shiny blue shirts. And the goalkeeper, in his shiny grey shirt and thick dark hair looked like the school teacher you would listen to, because even though he was grumpy and mean, you know he could also teach you something really cool. So I declared, at some point around this time, that I was a fan of Italy, to the disapproval of my England supporting family. Why this was an issue would need me to delve into a separate sociological analysis of life in Malta. It wasn't long before I was made to see the light. How long is hard to tell because I don't know the starting point of this story. And the light that I came to appreciate? Well, it came in the form of plucky old England being eliminated too early and Italy going on to become World Champions in 1982. But I had already become Dino to my family, and never switched to Pete or Shilts.
There were nine years of my life before Spain '82, June 1982 in an ordinary calender. And I could put sentences together describing events that occupied my childhood. We went on a family trip to Sicily, on the ferry, and one morning our car had to be lifted (yes, by hand) out of it's bad parking spot. I hated the long life milk in Sicily. I played football with my Dad after lunch at home in the living room with the scrunched up wrapper of the made in Malta chocolate bar I was allowed to have. I had what was probably a terribly ugly Starsky and Hutch t-shirt which I loved. And I watched the bungling Frank Spencer on Some Mothers do Ave 'Em and thought he was hilarious, even though it is safe to say that Frank Spencer didn't expect me to understand most of what wasn't obvious. And, somewhere around this time period Brian Moore and Big League Soccer entered my life, every Tuesday evening. The disappointment at hearing the lady come on the tv and announce that this week Big League Soccer "didn't arrive", was forgotten when instead we got a match from the Bundesliga. It always seemed to be Borussia Moncengladbach and they had a knack of either scoring a lot of goals or conceding more than the normal Big League Soccer team.
All this happened some time around 1982, an undetermined time period. But things were happening for me. Maybe it was Brian Moore and his calm voice mixed in with the wild joy from the fans in the stadium every time a goal was scored. A lot of goals are scored in a one hour highlights programme. Amongst these non-time specific memories were events that happened as a few stand-out moments. Years later the dates would become relevant. At around 5pm on a Saturday in May 1981 I became an Aston Villa fan, because the man listening to his radio in the sports shop my mum took me into told her that Aston Villa had just won the league and I should own a Villa jersey. A year later I tried to figure out the weird looking results of a two-legged (?) aggregate score in the newspaper of the semi-finals of the European Cup where Aston Villa had beaten Anderlecht and were to face Bayern Munich in the final. Anderlecht, Bayern Munich? What happened to Ipswich and Arsenal and Liverpool? But Bayern Munich it was. My wise father told me there was no hope for Villa. After an evening of Nigel Spink's heroics and Tony Morley crossing to Peter Withe to score the only goal, I was well and truly hooked.
A month or so later, the fascination with this game exploded. World Cup 1982 was on tv every evening. There was excitement which I wanted to be a part of. There were fans from countries I had never heard of, they wore funny things on their heads, they had drums and they sang and danced. Teams played for draws, or won but were still eliminated. Bryan Robson scored after 27 seconds and England were good, even without the much talked about Kevin Keegan. Belgium and their Vans beat Argentina who were supposed to be good. Hungary scored 10 goals in one match. This was a party, it was amazing.
Above everything there was Brazil. They were colourful, they were fun and they scored goals in a way unlike the other teams scored.What Zico and Falcao and Socrates did captivated me like nothing else. That it was football may have been immaterial, it was that wonderful.
Post 1982 my memories become ordered. School teachers, friends, holidays. They are all there, wrapped around the many two year intervals to follow. And football not only became a constant on a Saturday afternoon at 4.45, listening to the results on BBC World Service. It also developed into one of my best teachers, primarily of Geography and History. There were simple things: Bayern Munich are from Munich, in Germany; Birmingham, Leicester, Derby, Nottingham, and more, are in the Midlands; El Salvador is in Central America, Brazil in South America. I'm sure I was ahead of all my friends at school with this knowledge. And there were the more complicated lessons, not only of history but maybe the sad state of the world. There was pretty bad stuff happening in El Salvador. Argentina and England had been in a horrible war with each other. England supporters sang songs not only about the Falklands but also about the Germans and the War.
I wish I had a Jhumpa Lahiri-esque sentence here. It will come. Brazil 2014 will bring a few. But before that there is life, Mexico '86 to South Africa 2010, to cover.
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