Bonfire of the Vanities

(from Percy Main programme, 31/07/10 v North Shields)

“Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends,” as Emerson, Lake and Palmer phrased it in 1974, a date that is remembered by all football fans as the year when the World Cup was stolen by German pragmatism from the grasp of serene, Dutch artistry. 36 years later, the domestic football season arrives with no such feelings of compassion for the Netherlands after Holland’s abysmal non-performance, epitomised by Van Bommel’s thuggery and Robben’s theatricals, at Soccer City in Johannesburg.

To be honest, I had intended not to be able to write about the World Cup, as my initial aim had been not to watch any of it. This piece was going to about how my summer had been filled with the sublime joys of Teenage Fanclub’s peerless “Shadows” album that came out in early June, the incredible night I had seeing them at the Cockpit in Leeds (when Network Rail delivered me home nearly 4 hours late) or how much I’d enjoyed getting my capacious nose in a book, with Roddy Doyle’s “The Dead Republic,” the final part of his “Last Round-Up” trilogy, being a particular favourite. However, I only managed 2 days of WC abstinence, before schadenfruede got the better of me. Mind I’d had good excuses for giving the tournament a wide berth in the early stages.

The tournament kicked off while I sat in a Solicitor’s Office in Winlaton, where I’d gone to apply for Probate on my late father’s estate, confusing the learned friend by refusing to swear on a Bible as I’m an atheist, causing him to redraft what I was subsequently required to affirm. As South Africa and Mexico drew 1-1, I travelled by public transport to North Shields and ate cheaply if not sumptuously with graduating former students at Sambucca’s while France and Uruguay played out a stalemate.

Day 2 saw me forswearing the supposed joys of South Korea v Greece and Argentina against Nigeria, despite the appearance of the only Geordie at the tournament, Jonas Gutierrez, for my annual delve in to the Scottish Junior set up for the East of Scotland League Cup Final, which saw Linlithgow Rose overcome Musselburgh Athletic 2-1 in a thoroughly compelling game witnessed by over 900 people. The only downside for me personally was that the game was played at Creamery Park, home of Bathgate Thistle, where I’d been last year for their astonishing 6-2 demolition of Forfar West End, as I’d hoped to fit in a new ground. No matter; there’s always next year, or even mid December as Teenage Fanclub play Glasgow Barrowlands on December 11^th. The Scottish Juniors is a positive boon for those who like to keep the season going as long as possible, with the last game of 2009/2010 taking place on June 20^th.

Heading back from Linlithgow to Auld Reekie, I was reminded of the FIFA carnival taking place in Cape Town and several points north, when I saw a couple of dozen punters resplendent in t-shirts bearing the legend “Official Algeria, Slovenia and USA Supporters’ Club” on the front and “Anyone But F*****g England” on the reverse. Perhaps Robert Green had one of these garments beneath his England keeper’s top; there can be no other explanation for his error against America.

I confess it was this event that caused me to switch on to the tournament. Not having seen the goal live as I was being whisked south by rail as the game unfolded, the barrage of intemperate and bemused texts relating to it caused me to watch the ITV highlights. This programme was presented by a lardy oaf by the name of James Corden. Previously unknown to me, he appears to be another of these banal, estuary English accented media nonentities that the television programmers believe represents not only what viewers need but, by implication, what they deserve. Personally a loathsome, contemptible figure who appeared to be a post-lobotomy Tim Lovejoy who has been fed exclusively on fish cake and chips is not who I want to be talking about the beautiful game, in my living room.

After this distressing experience, I flicked over to the reassuringly grey temples of Lineker, Hansen and Lawrenson, whose steady analysis of Green’s personal trauma was a sensible warm up to a genuinely moving documentary piece about the history of the secret inmates’ football league on Robbens Island political prison during the apartheid era.

While ITV steadfastly refused throughout the tournament to look at the wider political implications of South Africa’s history pre 1993, preferring instead to allow a barely coherent and clearly unhinged Kevin Keegan (wonder if he noticed a certain Ignacio Gonzalez in Uruguay’s squad?) explain the yellow and red card system in a way that a foetus would find childish and patronising, the BBC relentlessly traversed the fascinating and still socially divided South African landscape, producing a daily piece about the lives of ordinary South Africans and how the tournament and football as a game affects their view of life. Stirring stuff they were too. These features, including interviews with Afrikaners farmers who supported the Dutch and hated England because of the Boer War, not Russell Brand’s fiancée or Simon Cowell talking shit about a game they don’t understand, kept me hooked on the unfolding drama in Durban, Port Elizabeth and elsewhere. Indeed, so beguiling were the real life stories, one could factor out the breathtaking hypocrisy of Shearer criticising Capello for not being able to motivate talented players enough to get the results the team were capable of.

So, how was South Africa 2010 for you? As this is the Main’s third game, following other friendlies against Newcastle East End and Annfield Plain, our lenses may have refocused on to a more localised image, but it is useful to return our gaze to the coldest World Cup in history. Frankly, I’m glad I don’t support England. Alright, so I may be pushing bitterness a little by saying I’d cheer on the Taleban if they were playing Capello’s Cretins, but as an Ireland fan, I have no love for the three lions. Indeed, following Thierry Henry’s basketball tactics last November, I had to reassess who to follow in the finals. Having lived in Slovakia for 2 years, it seemed natural to cheer on the side managed by Vladimir Weiss, who used to coach Petrzalka the side I followed during my Bratislavan sojourn. Back in those days Weiss was not a sober-suited, dignified figure, but a ranting Henry Rollins lookalike who nearly caused a Slovak referees’ strike by threatening to cut the head off one official following a controversial 2-4 home loss to Presov.

However, my support was not entirely for the Transdanubian team at the expense of the other 31 qualifiers, as the side from the People’s Democratic Republic of North Korea gained favour in the Cusack household, mainly for political reasons. After all, one side had to take up the mantle of sporting opposition to the running dog lackeys of Yankee imperialism. Also, I drew them in the work sweepstake.

I was led to believe PDRK television would only show their games, if the side did well. The fact they finished 32^nd in the FIFA Merit Table for the tournament says a lot about what was on the screens in Pyongyang, but nevertheless, I got in to the mindset of the Eternal President’s Men by claiming they beat Brazil 1-0, as I’d only got home and switched on after the Samba shamblers had scored a brace of their own. The Portugal game may have ended up 7-0, but as I was at work, it remained effectively scoreless for me, as did their final game against Cote d’Ivoire as the BBC chose to show the Brazil v Portugal non-event.

Actually, if Didier Drogba wasn’t Ivorian, I may have supported them as their gold, white and green flag is the reverse of Ireland’s tricolour. Then again it was amusing to see Sven Goran Erikkson, same as that other charlatan, Paul Le Guen shuffle apologetically out at the first hurdle, in common with all African teams bar Ghana, who were the only team in their home continent to give it a go.

This was a problem with much of the first stage, exemplified by Slovakia’s terribly timid 1-1 with New Zealand and their shot-free slumber to a 2-0 loss v Paraguay. Quite where the game of the tournament, their 3-2 victory that sent the detestable Italians home, came from, nobody knows. While ITV got themselves in to a state of near hysteria over Howard Webb officiating this game, Robert Vittek (repeatedly called Vittel by Jim Beglin) kicked Lippi’s side square in the “catenaccios.” I also enjoyed seeing Everton’s despicable Tim Cahill red carded v Germany; actually I was hoping Winnie Mandela would necklace him.

Up and down the land England-shirted buffoons drank venomously at vats of Carling while Rooney shambled around like a Scouse Tiny Tim with gripe, while I only saw 2 games in the pub; the loathsome France’s defeats to South Africa and Mexico, when a side in green shirts sent them and their buffoonish Graham Lister lookalike manager home to pursue fights between their fitness coach and a Manchester United squad player in the departure lounge, like Bellamy and Carver all those years ago. Allegedly.

Enough of those French and Italian ponces, what about a real one? Chile’s central defender was the stunningly named Waldo Ponce of Universidad Catolica, though his team mates were not far behind him in the silly surname stakes. Rodrigo Millar should have married Ghana’s Johnathon for a start and poor Estrada’s red card against Spain really pissed on his CHiPS. If Chile went out with a whimper against Brazil, then at least Ghana died bravely.

While I don’t think any of the tedious clamour for a penalty goal after Uruguay’s Suarez handled on the line was justified, I do found it tragic that the hopes of a whole continent were invested in Mackem loanee John Mensah (a man so injury plagued he’s known as an occasional table), with predictable results, though not as predictable as England’s shambolic thrashing by Germany.

Actually, I think the England fans showed a maturity in their measured response to defeat that was far more than the dreadful performances merited. When bonfires should have been lit outside Soho Square, most gave a contemptuous glance and an indifferent shrug to the vain millionaires whose narcissism and avarice has perhaps caused the general public to fall out of love with a national side they embraced so enthusiastically at Italia 90. In fact, when I saw Peter Beardsley in Four Lane Ends Post Office on the day of the Holland v Uruguay semi, I almost embraced him on the spot. That day I was embraced by my Dutch neighbour Fred, who stood swaying in his garden singing “Het Wilhelmus” at the top of his voice while slugging from a vat of Heineken. Fred is a senior researcher at Newcastle University Medical School incidentally.

As regards the fluent, attacking German team, I have to say that the fashion choice of manager Joachim Low (no shirt, v-necked woolly jumper, Primark jeans and suit jacket) should have seen his side expelled for reasons of aesthetics. Instead a bullet header by the bizarrely bouffanted Puyol sent the Catalan Castillians in to the final.

The final itself took place two days after I arrived in Spain for my summer holidays. Whereabouts did I go? Bilbao, in the Basque Country, or Euskadi as the residents, who have fought a bitter campaign for independence from Madrid since the 1930s, call it. I’ll tell you all about my adventures there in the next update.