Authors: Russell Brand
Articles of Faith (8 page)
Capello’s trunks more titillating than his titles
I suppose my feelings about the FA’s failure to appoint José Mourinho exposes me as a rather shallow man influenced by the media, hyperbole and sexual charisma. Of course Mourinho is an exceptional coach but my interest in him being the national manager was enhanced dramatically by the convenient legitimisation that the appointment would’ve given my prurient interest.
I’m trying to get into the spirit of Fabio Capello’s coronation but in spite of his incredible success he isn’t a titillating choice. Whilst reading about his triumphs across Europe, the facts with which we are all now familiar, having received a crash course as a nation – nine titles at four clubs, one European Cup, he likes the art of Kandinsky and Chagall – made little impression. In fact I was much more interested in the photo of him as a youth diving into the sea.
Ah, the power of the image. He can top as many leagues as he likes and devour modern art with the rapacity of a Shoreditch fire but unless I get a snap of him in his trunks he can eff off. I was aware of Capello as a successful coach of Milan then as an opponent to David Beckham in Castilla. He said Beckham would never again play in the white shirt – people are always saying that to Beckham, he should work for Daz; no matter how much mud people sling at him he turns up a few days later in a pristine white top and saves the world. I hope the Ku Klux Klan don’t learn of his abilities, they’ll make him a grand wizard and the unity for which we’ve all toiled will go right down the plughole as racism is suddenly made to seem fun.
‘I would query the rationale of promoting a product with an image so arresting the subject becomes irrelevant’
Them briefs he had on were pretty spick and span an’ all. With my easily stirred devotion to image he can count himself fortunate that I don’t embark on a campaign to have his gorgeous knob made England boss; him sat there all seductive and reclined, his goolies bunched up into a taut smurf hat between his thighs. I think the ad is for the pants but I would query the rationale of promoting a product with an image so arresting that the subject of the advert becomes irrelevant. When I see that ad I don’t think ‘Oooh, I must get myself some pants’ I think ‘Oooh, I wonder if I’m gay.’ I’d never wear them pants, I’d feel the pants would be judging me – ’Well these balls certainly aren’t golden, they’d be lucky to get a bronze.’
Capello for most of us is as untarnished as David’s ballbag; a blank canvas upon which sharp lines of success can be etched or vague, blurred draws and losses can be rendered. When I first see a beautiful
woman my mind floods with expectation and I project a future onto her perfect form; ‘She could be salvation, a secular saint, the answer to my murmured prayers’ then we embark on a journey that can only lead to disappointment just as certainly as the agonising euphoria of birth is death’s first klaxon.
What will we and our red-topped spokespeople make of this apparently educated and brilliant man? Will he be Fabio-lous or Crappello? I no longer care that he’s not English – the idea of an English manager being a prerequisite was ground into the dirt like a dog-end with kid’s knickers in its garage by the God-awful period under Steve McClaren.
Only Paul Ince seems bothered saying ‘it’s a damning endikement of our game’ or something but given Ince’s ‘previous’ around ties and loyalty – turning up in a United top after making all manner of oaths and pledges to a future at West Ham – we can rinse his comments down the same lavvy my childhood love of him was bitterly flushed.
It’s going to be a little while before any of this matters with a barren few years for England but in the Premiership we have an enthralling weekend ahead of us – West Ham will avenge their midweek defeat when Everton come to Upton Park today and tomorrow the ‘big four’ are all at it in an incestuous riot of money and hype.
Plus Joe Cole came and saw me do stand-up the other night, a man who left the Boleyn with his head held high and his integrity unblemished. So let’s not get too worked up about Capello for a while, let’s lose ourselves in the national game and use the holidays as an opportunity to ask some pretty searching questions about latent homosexuality. Merry Christmas.
RB:
Do you think Zola is going to be good for West Ham?
JC:
I do, I do. It’s funny, I looked at some West Ham message boards last night and I saw these fans were saying, ‘He’s only using the club as a stepping stone to manage Chelsea.’
RB:
Mmm.
JC:
And I kind of thought, if he comes and manages our club and in four years’ time, three years’ time, at any point Chelsea are interested in him to manage their club, he’s probably done a really good job for us.
RB:
Yeah.
JC:
And they’re not going to be interested in him if we get relegated or we don’t really do anything, so you have to give him the benefit of the doubt and go, well everyone has to have a first job at some point, and yeah he might be brilliant or he might not. I just always think you should be positive until you’re shown otherwise. It’s odd what’s happening at the club because it seems like they just want a coach and not a manager as we’ve always known it, who’s someone who buys the players and is in charge of the absolute running of the whole team. It seems the club are going to buy the players and Zola will coach them. It might be the best thing that’s ever happened to us or it might be the worst, nothing is guaranteed in football at all really.
RB:
I think that he’s a charismatic and likeable figure, Zola.
JC:
Mmm.
RB:
The Chelsea connection is troubling but it’s lovely, he is at least an affable likeable man.
JC:
Yeah.
RB:
And I think that’s a good point you’ve made…because I’m really fond of the role of the gaffer, the, you know, the Alex Fergusons, these characters that have absolute control. It’s sad, the erosion of that office is one of the sad things about football, I think.
JC:
Absolutely, yeah, yeah.
RB:
I didn’t like it at the World Cup when you’d see Bobby Robson and they’d say he’s the England coach, no he ain’t, they’re managers.
JC:
Yeah, they’re managers. The coach always sounds like he’s your PE teacher who coaches the team on a Sunday.
RB:
Yeah.
JC:
I kind of believe in this, in Trapattoni, er no, not Trapattoni, oh who’s the guy?
RB:
Nani?
JC:
Yeah, Nani, I believe in him, I have a good feeling about him and he worked very closely with Fabio Capello.
RB:
Really?
JC:
Yeah, ultimately it’s about feeling…the ultimate feeling, because the most consistent feeling of being a West Ham fan is that you can’t help feel that we squandered so much.
RB:
Yeah.
JC:
Of course, that great crop of players we had come through, we squandered that, and then things like buying Freddie Ljungberg.
RB:
Yeah.
JC:
…and then paying to release him, or paying Gary Breen forty grand a week and things like that, it seems that we’ve just squandered either talent or money.
RB:
I always feel being a West Ham fan is like an almost exact paradigm of being an England fan, I mean the constant disappointment.
JC:
Yeah.
RB:
Always being let down.
JC:
Yeah.
RB:
Occasional flashes where you get optimistic.
JC:
Yeah.
RB:
Mates of mine that support Arsenal or United or Chelsea, I think well at least when we’re having trouble with England you’ve fucking got club football, we have the exact same experience, but with club football, oh no!
JC:
I go to a lot of games with a really good friend of mine called Gavin, it was him who kind of introduced me to West Ham really, and he said this season he would love us to be in a relegation battle and I said, ‘Why?’ and he said, ‘Well, just ‘cos it’s exciting.’
RB:
Yeah.
JC:
And I would rather have excitement than what we had last year, just kind of being mediocre, just mid-table, that sort of safety thing. He said, ‘It doesn’t really thrill
me, the safety of that.’ I’m not sure I agree, I mean relegation battles are great if you beat Man United on the last day with a player that you don’t legally own, that’s great fun.
RB:
James, you like me are a gentleman off the television who supports West Ham United. What’s it like when you go to matches now that you are famous?
JC:
Do you know what, it’s kind of quite nice because West Ham fans seem to really like people who are on the telly who support West Ham, do you know what I mean?
RB:
Yeah.
JC:
They really seem to like it. So people are always positive and nice and just seem to want to have a picture on their camera phone and be very nice and say that they like the show, or say how terrible it is that Matt Horn’s character in the show, Gavin, supports Tottenham so blatantly in the show and that’s about it, that’s all they tend to say really, you know. I never feel like, ‘Oooh this isn’t very safe.’ I tell you the best atmosphere I’ve ever felt was at an away game at Villa and obviously at an away game you have no choice over where you sit.
RB:
Yeah.
JC:
I was sat amongst some people who looked like the most brutal and hard-nosed people you’ve ever seen but I’ve never felt more safe really. It feels like you’re one of them.
RB:
Yeah. It’s nice to have that. Affinity is good to have, something that is grounding. One of the things I enjoy is being lost in the crowd.
JC:
Yeah.
RB:
And at half time maybe sign a few programmes or whatever but…
JC:
During the game…
RB:
Yeah.
JC:
It’s all about the players on the pitch in that game, and no one ever comes up or things like that during the match. You know you’re one of a team really, you know you’re just a fan, everyone is. Whether you’re in a box or you’re in the posh seats or you’re in the lower, where I used to sit when I had my season ticket…as soon as it starts and they come out you’re just a fan.
RB:
I sometimes reflect that it’s strange to have spent so much time cultivating individuality only to crave being lost in a crowd.
JC:
But isn’t that kind of the beauty of football really and being a football fan, because I’ve thought about it quite a lot when I’ve gone to matches because I always find it quite strange that that many people part with that much money to watch ninety minutes of what sometimes isn’t entertainment.
RB:
No.
JC:
Do you know what I mean? It’s actually quite depressing and demoralising sometimes. And yet everyone still goes and I came to the conclusion it’s because everybody ultimately wants to be part of something, or belong to something. It’s the perfect thing to belong to because ultimately, it doesn’t really matter and yet you can give it all the meaning and purpose and emotion that you want to let out. Your sheer joy and elation or anger or sadness or all these things, but within the safety of a bubble so that actually your life isn’t tremendously affected. You can let it affect you how much you want to but you’re always in control of that. It’s not like losing someone in your family or losing a job, losing a pet.
RB:
Yeah.
JC:
And yet you can make it matter as much as you want to.
RB:
Extreme emotion…
JC:
(Long pause)
Oh hello? Are you there?
RB:
Yeah, I’m here James, it’s just a bad line.
JC:
Shall we crack on? Because I’m going to see Stevie Wonder, so we should crack on as best we can.
RB:
Ok.
JC:
It’s always interesting supporting West Ham, I wonder if it’s quite as interesting supporting you know, Middlesborough?
RB:
This is an interesting point you’ve brought up there because the writer Irvine Welsh is an Hibernan…Hibs fan.
JC:
Yeah.
RB:
And he believes that secretly all other football fans believe that it would be better to support Hibs. I’ve always thought that West Ham is a well cool team to support.
JC:
Yeah, I’ve always felt that. It always feels like people like West Ham and like West Ham fans. There’s always clubs and fans that don’t but on the whole it feels like people respect its history I guess – Bobby Moore and things like that and now players like Rio, Michael Carrick, Joe Cole, Frank Lampard. These are all great things, and just an eternal sort of false optimism or realistic
optimism. I remember going to one of the opening games of the season and we won, I think it was the season we went up actually and we beat Blackburn 3–1 and because we’d won by that goal ratio we were top of the League and just hearing all these fans walking to the tube station saying, ‘We’re gonna win the League’ and you felt like ninety percent of them knew this was an ironic song but there were ten percent of them who thought, we’ve just beaten Blackburn, we’re gonna win the League.
RB:
(Laughter)
JC:
There’s something really beautiful about that kind of thing, you know.
RB:
Yeah, the cockeyed optimism. I think it is an incredibly romantic club to support. I don’t think there are many teams now in the Premier League, perhaps Newcastle, that have still got that kind of affinity, that relationship with their fans. Everyone that works for West Ham has got the same accent, this club feel to it.
JC:
Shall I just tell you the best thing I ever heard a fan say at a West Ham game?
RB:
Go on.
JC:
He was sat like two rows behind me and we were having a real nightmare time of it, we were putting crosses in but they were useless, they were terrible, and no one was trying or attacking the ball in the box and he said, ‘We need someone like Van Nistelrooy or Ronaldo.’