Articles of Faith (14 page)

It all looks a bit barmy from here, let me tell you, your country, your customs and national sport. I’m in America making a film and keep up to date in the following ways:

1. The internet, especially the
Guardian
and BBC websites, which as well as providing information act as a kind of spiritual sorbet cleansing my soul after the inevitable porn trawl that occurs whenever a laptop is flipped open.

2. Photocopied English newspapers from a company called Newspaper Direct which, while excellent, do not carry, for reasons incomprehensible to me, my column; meaning I cannot use it as a platform to attack or praise people that enter my life in the most trivial of ways.

3. An invention called ‘slingbox’ which enables you to access your TV at home through your laptop so you can record
Sunday Supplement
and watch it, as I have just done, on Thursday.

The aforementioned lunacy of your country, England, is further exacerbated by hindsight. In last Sunday’s show when discussing Wednesday’s Champions League fixtures the assembled journalists – Brian Woolnough, Patrick Barclay, Oliver Holt and Ian Ridley – were still reeling from Liverpool’s defeat to Barnsley in the previous day’s FA Cup tie and deduced that Internazionale would annihilate the Reds.

‘It’s been a macabre descent, his ever-juvenile mind racing to keep up with his peculiarly evolved sporting ability’

I watched safe in the knowledge that Liverpool would triumph 2–0 and, might I say, that in spite of the fact I was regarding their predictions retrospectively, I allowed a superior smirk to play upon my lips. ‘You poor naive fools – Liverpool will bounce back. Also you might like to avoid the
Newcastle Malmaison, I sense Gazza might have a turn in there.’

This was one of the stories that led me to conclude that the Isles had gone wild in my absence: Gazza has been sectioned after ‘playing up’ in a hotel. I hope both he and the hotel are OK – Gazza I adore and I seem to remember that the hotel in question is quite pleasant an’ all.

His descent has been macabre, his ever-juvenile mind racing to keep up with his peculiarly evolved sporting ability. When he was the world’s best footballer all the tics and gurning and outbursts were an interesting complement. Now, with his gift departed, he has just become an annoying hotel guest. How unfair that his talent could not be reallocated across the narrative of his life so that in times of distress and despair he could whip out a ball and juggle his way through the lobby to freedom – assuming all his transgressions occur in hotels.

Nani looked, for a moment, in Manchester United’s Cup match against Arsenal, that he might retain possession, ignore gravity and dash off into
the streets. This Gazza-like display of brilliance, far from earning him plaudits, led to chastisement from Arsène Wenger who thought he was showing off and his own manager who also thought it unnecessary.

Well I thought it was terrific, at least the pixellated version of it I witnessed through my laptop was. I don’t know why he was scolded for that. The charge appears to be that he was showboating – good. He didn’t do it in a ward for terminally ill children, which would be a cruel venue for feats of physical prowess, he did it on a football pitch during a football match, many would say the ideal situation for such an absorbing display. I also enjoyed his scissor-kick, somersault celebration although I’d be the first to condemn him if he did it in a refuge for battered women.

Perhaps one day Nani will have cause to rue the imbalance brought into his life by his talent. In 20 years’ time he may find himself alone and broken in a Holiday Inn and have no magical resource with which to hypnotise a disgruntled night manager but I doubt it.

Gascoigne was ever a unique case belonging to a time before footballers became superstar athletes. He had a natural affinity with fans and was so iconic because he seemed like a normal bloke in possession of an unearthly gift. Only in hindsight is it apparent that it was also an unbearable curse.

When you watch a foreign game on TV in England, like Barcelona versus Real Madrid at Camp Nou, it looks a bit odd, there is a filter, a lens. It seems somehow alien and, well, foreign. The noise of the crowd is qualitatively different. The screech, while as loud as usual, through the speakers sounds further away and everything, to quote Coldplay, is all yellow; a contemporary sepia hue.

When we are shown a clip of American news on English telly it too looks abstracted and, again, all yellow. When I watched the Carling Cup Final (other beers are available) it had, perhaps due to my current exile, adopted the appearance of foreign football. Wembley rang out with a shrill San Siro tenor, the commentary was baffling and Jonathan Woodgate looked like he did when you’d see him play for Real – all far away in a headband.

‘A dinner lady needed to stroll over to Robbie and offer to hold his hand till his melancholy subsided’

It was confusing to regard the familiar through the eyes of a stranger, like when you come home off holiday and your house seems a bit different and the cat doesn’t love you any more. All the more confusing as my friend Nik had mistakenly scheduled our viewing based around east-coast times and when we settled down to watch the game it was already into extra-time.

I don’t really approve of Spurs winning anything; they are in fact the only Premier League side I feel innate dislike for. Well perhaps not innate. It is unlikely that the feelings of disdain are inborn and that if by way of some bizarre mix-up I’d been raised in Nepal I still would think, ‘Oh they’re so arrogant. They aren’t a big club. Bill Nic, Blanchflower and Greavsie are names so distantly glorious that they might as well be monikers of Snow White’s minions.’

The likely truth of my antipathy is that Tottenham are West Ham’s nearest rivals in the misunderstood terms of an ability-meets-geography Venn diagram. Arsenal are too good to get worked up about as, of late, are Chelsea. Fulham don’t have the support to appear truly threatening and most other London clubs are an inconsistent top-flight presence so, with the obvious exception of Millwall, the feuds aren’t perpetual.

I’m an only child myself but I gather that in large families the siblings that are closest in age are more likely to indulge in conflict – whenever I was frustrated as a lad I had to cook up some spurious quarrel with a spider-plant or an ironing board. It is in this spirit of fraternity towards botanic life and domestic appliances that I’d like to extend my heartfelt congratulations to fans of the Lilywhites. It’s been a long time coming but even the lowliest of baubles is preferable to famine.

What’s more I did feel chuffed for those present – even through the prism of transatlantic telly their jubilation was evident. As was Robbie Keane’s – he did a bit of the ol’ crying, always a big plus for me to see a sobbing footballer as it brings them into the sphere of my experience, all teary and puffed out, though with me it was during matches at school playtime not after a cup victory. For the parallel to have been enhanced a dinner lady would’ve had to stroll over to Robbie and offer to hold his hand till his melancholy subsided.

While the Chelsea vs Spurs final may have lost something in translation, Eduardo da Silva’s heartbreaking injury tore through the screen with nauseating clarity. The twisted sock and bone, the anguished referee and Cesc Fàbregas’s hands cupped over mouth drinking in his own tender mortality. How do they ever come back from those injuries? Do they? Are they ever the same? At the very least their innocence is lost, and in most cases a yard of pace.

We certainly won’t see Eduardo play again for the best part of a year by which time the bilious glare will have faded and championships will have been decided. When Kieron Dyer was injured earlier this season I felt again the grisly pang but I’ve seldom thought of it since unless selfishly lamenting West Ham’s lack of depth in midfield or how useful his pace would be in opening up Chelsea this afternoon but he has lived with it every day.

In a week or so I’ll have forgotten about Eduardo so I’ll wish him a speedy recovery now and hope that the player that returns has all the skill and grace of the one that fell last Saturday.

It’s all well and good English clubs marauding through Europe winning matches all cocksure and swaggering like it were the barmy ol’ days of the Empire once more, strutting through the Champions League knocking over tables in piazzas and laughing at Greek fellas wearing national dress but in Blighty the oft-cited yet frequently neglected ‘grassroots’ of the game are being bizarrely mishandled.

‘I’d worry that I’d tended the roots too aggressively like Steinbeck’s Lenny loving another mouse to death’

I suppose the phrase ‘grassroots’ has caught on as the game is played on a grass surface. I don’t much care for the metaphor of tending the ‘roots of grass’ on my knees with tweezers, forever avoiding worms and worrying that I’d tended the roots too much or too aggressively like Steinbeck’s Lenny loving another mouse to death with his clumsy thumb. The only time the game’s grassroots are mentioned is in connection with abuse or neglect; e.g. Trevor Brooking’ll go ‘we must be sure that the game’s grassroots are properly nurtured.’ You never hear someone say ‘’Ere, the grassroots are coming on a bundle – thick, lustrous, flourishing things they are, if anything we need to impede the progress of these effin’ roots or they’ll turn into triffids and devour us all – get some weed-killer.’

The term came to my attention once more this week with the FA’s judgment that non-league Grays Athletic FC must pay £14,000 to their former player Ashley Sestanovich who has been convicted with conspiracy to rob and imprisoned for eight years. Grays terminated Sestanovich’s contract prior to his conviction but the FA’s judgment means that unless they pay the player’s wages for the preceding five months they could face suspension from all competitions.

I’m from Grays and spent many happy hours at the Recreation Ground
where the team played their home matches, admittedly mostly on Guy Fawkes night where a lovely firework display took place. The few football matches I attended were bloody dismal, but there is no denying that the games, and fireworks, I saw were taking place on grass and beneath that grass were roots. In short, Grays Athletic are a good example of the game’s grassroots. The club chairman, Mike Woodward, has said he will not pay the fine either from his own pocket or the club’s resources as a matter of principle.

In addition to being club chairman Woodward is also its owner and manager, a kind of non-league Abramovich minus the marionettes or perhaps more generously a Willy Wonka-style football benefactor. I like that he does so many jobs, I bet he’s at the turnstiles taking money then pops on a false moustache, dashes round to the pie stall and knocks out pasties, then darts to the bench in a sheepskin, spraying away the Ginster-pong with a tin of Lynx – he’s running that club and furthermore he’s single-handedly making a stand against a loopy edict from Soho Square. Apparently Sestanovich, who only had three training sessions at the club and played for 20 minutes in a friendly, initially told officials that he was being held on motoring offences. When they learned he was involved in a robbery in which a man was murdered Grays terminated his contract but because he was arrested after he signed for them the FA say Grays are obliged to honour his contract up until the point of conviction, under contract law.

It’s difficult to determine what moral stance one ought rightly to take in such an unusual situation. Until conviction Sestanovich (whose name I’m already sick of typing, I wouldn’t have wanted to be the woman in court who had to keep minutes – she must’ve been writing it constantly on that typewriter with only three buttons. Ghastly) was innocent so entitled to be paid but now he’s been found guilty should he receive retrospective payment? Not in my view, it sounds like as well as being a crook he was rubbish. Twenty minutes of match play? Three training sessions? Darren Anderton would’ve been embarrassed by those statistics and he’s never been convicted of conspiracy to rob – he’d’ve been too poorly to
complete an entire robbery anyway, they’d have to bring him off halfway through.

Also he, SESTANOVICH (I capitalised it to spice his name up) doubled for Thierry Henry in a car ad. What kind of bonkers treble life is he leading? Half-hearted training by day, a quick impression of Henry at lunchtime then cooking up robbery plots in front of the telly at night. Perhaps that’s what drew the equally versatile Mike Woodward to him in the first place; he recognised another shape-shifting utility man and snapped him up – the meeting in which SeStAnOvIcH was signed must’ve resembled a film starring Alec Guinness and Eddie Murphy, each of ’em leaping in an’ out of their various identities.

Whilst I acknowledge that the FA has no power to override employment law I think they have an obligation to be supportive to Grays Athletic at this time of crisis, giving them 14 days to pay this fine or risk suspension seems draconian. It is a malevolent gardener who so unthinkingly condemns his lawn. Instead of administering the Baby Bio they’re out there blundering about in stilettos.

If a match is on television that I’m already aware West Ham United have lost I don’t bother to watch it. What’s the point? The football? What, on their inexorable trudge to defeat the Hammers might do something sexy and skilful? Well, that’s great but prior knowledge of an unpleasant result, for me, negates enjoyment. It’s difficult enough to watch West Ham live, when the possibility of victory theoretically exists; remove that and all that remains is masochistic snuff soccer.

The way football is televised over here, in Los Angeles, is usually several hours after the event. I’ve accepted it now. Like many other previously bizarre aspects of their culture, I no longer gawp or even remark, I simply look out the window and get on with my life. Everything is too far apart and crossing the road is illegal. Shops and cafés don’t let you use their toilets. In fact nothing that doesn’t directly hoover up money from your pants (trousers) is allowed to flourish.

‘I’d sooner watch last season’s thrilling home defeat to Tottenham than the 4–0 kick in the nuts we got last week’

If I wee’d gold coins Starbucks would let me use their bathroom (lavvy), as it is I spend a lot of my time piddling in the street like a cur. Why, too, are they so euphemistic about bodily function? Restroom? What, for a rest? A rest where faeces emerge from your anus? That’s no kind of respite from the trials of the day. Having said that, I’ve been utterly seduced by all the rhubarb and glamour to the point that when I hear ‘West Ham lost 4–0 again’ I allow the shame to drizzle past and pop out and buy myself a new bikini. It’s my optimism that prevents me from watching a game which I know the Irons have squandered; in spite of irrefutable proof that the result has been decided I sit pointlessly willing alternative results with my brain.

It’s stupid enough doing that at a live game, like trying to will Frank Lampard into being sent off or Jermain Defoe into missing a penalty – both of which have happened this season, but surely (surely?) that’s not as a result of my mental dexterity and villainous telepathy? I’m pretty sure that once, on acid, I was able to make a weather girl stutter just by staring at her on GMTV thinking ‘Stutter, stutter!’ but my testimony is perhaps marred by the LSD.

A consequence of my reluctance to torture myself with West Ham’s inefficiency and my cynicism has been that I’ve not seen West Ham play for ages; they seem only capable of humiliating defeats at present and if
I know they’ve lost 4–0 to Spurs I don’t see why I should subject myself to 90 minutes of doomed cock-eyed optimism.

Julian Dicks, perhaps the most popular left-back in human history (Roberto Carlos? Kenny Sansom?) has berated West Ham for ‘not trying’ in recent games, as well he might, for when he played for West Ham it were as if what were at stake was not the abstract idea of three points but the safety of his own sex organs – which were never in jeopardy. It would be a foolhardy pervert who targeted the genitalia of the terminator; I imagine his sperm was a caustic liqueur that would devour the deviant’s hand.

Dicks spared Alan Curbishley in his venomous ejaculation, saying he wasn’t to blame. Curbishley was also offered support from the board and it comes to something when a vote of confidence is universally accepted as a tacit admission that the manager’s days are numbered.

Where else would such loopy double-speak be de rigueur? Maybe in mob culture where the thoughtful and delicious delivery of a bit of fish means one of your mates has been murdered. I suppose at least you’ve got the fish to cheer you up afterwards – a bit of salmon would take the sting out of all but the most sudden bereavement.

A quick glance in the direction of St James’ Park puts Curbishley’s recent achievements in perspective. Dear Kevin Keegan seems to be meticulously nurturing a somehow unforeseen travesty for the people of Newcastle who, with the benefit of hindsight and a near certain awareness of the result, appointed a man for whom optimism is the sole qualification.

I expect members of the Toon Army would happily re-watch the games that have taken place since Keegan’s appointment, glued to the set, rattle in hand waiting for Bolton Wanderers to capitulate. After last season I suppose mid-table mediocrity is quite an achievement but I miss the adrenaline and adventure. I’d sooner watch last season’s thrilling home defeat to Tottenham than the 4–0 kick in the nuts we got last week, because the spirit of the team that game was spellbinding, which I suppose is what Julian Dicks is getting at and why Newcastle are still enchanted by Keegan.