1966 AND ALL THAT My thoughts on the eve of the 2006 World Cup

I was not around in 1966, I wasn’t even a twinkle in my Father’s eye but as a follower of football and a devoted England fan that year has been ingrained in my head ever since I fell in love with the game from the terraces of Fratton Park. Way back then in the early eighties with hooliganism rife I recall watching Tottenham’s Glen Hoddle and Ossie Ardilles bring a certain flair to the rough stuff us Pompey fans were used to. An Argentinean playing in Portsmouth of all places, a naval community still fresh from the effects of the Falklands war but still yet to fall prey to Maradona’s ‘Hand of God’, needless to say poor Ossie got some stick that night.

All England fans under the age of fifty have something in common, a jealousy of those who were old enough to witness the win coupled with a desperate hope and a vain expectation. If it wasn’t for 1966 we wouldn’t be suffering but as the song goes, the Jules Rimet trophy is still gleaming and forty years on Gordon Banks, Alan Ball and the Charlton boys continue to be wheeled out for a long hot soak in the post match bath tub of nostalgia. When you hear those guys talk they are still reeling from the experience and everybody else naturally wants a piece of that, any fan understands the emotion because we all feel it together. When Gazza cried with his second yellow card in the Italia 90 semi-final the nation cried with him, we needed our star player for the final, a final we were never to reach as the good old Germans stood firm and resolute as always from the penalty spot.

Whether it’s England v. Germany, England v. Argentina, USA v. Iran or Germany v. The Netherlands one cannot escape the politics of football. In black and white football stadium terms nobody likes the Germans apart from the Germans, the Argentineans are cheats and the colonising English always get the comeuppance they deserve and only won the cup once on advantageous home turf. Those bloody English, the inventors of the game, let them win it once just so they can suffer the torturous embarrassment of never wining it again!  If you look at photos of the first Spanish football team there is an cosmopolitan mix of swarthy Latins and pale skinned working class lads with Bobby Charlton hairdos who were employed at the Rio Tinto mines just up the road in Huelva. It was actually an ancestor of the local Langdon family who started things off; Grandpa Langdon and his brother were instrumental in forming the Huelva and Sevilla teams all those years ago. This mixture of cultures in the name of sport takes the game to a new level, everyone wants to beat their teacher and master while at the same time bring their own particular cultural slant into the manner in which the hallowed game is played. It becomes a universal language, developed and bastardised along the way but always within the parameters of certain fixed rules. The English pride themselves on being tough, straight and never diving. The Argies will openly admit that they are sneaky, cheeky and will do almost anything in order to win. Everybody loves Brazil as they are naturals who seem to be the only team who play football as the game it is and have fun while doing so, but let’s admit it, we are all a bit fed up of them winning all the time. The country who nobody wants to win the World Cup has to be USA, the most powerful nation in the world has to lose out at something, I would personally hate to see America lift the trophy for the plain reason that most Americans don’t even watch football and wouldn’t appreciate the importance of the tournament and quite frankly wouldn’t care. Shameful! The nationhood of football brings out the temporary xenophobe in all of us and no less here in Gibraltar. I am quite sure that if Gibraltar was filmed from the moon when a goal is scored against Spain you would witness the Rock visibly shake. There is also a faction in Gibraltar who, like some Scots, supports anyone but England, as the political scars of colonialism are slow to heal. I spent my childhood world cup years listening to my Father slag off the English while my brothers and I, born and bred in that land grew up to be dyed in the wool England stalwarts despite the rantings of our Father. My son being half German supports Deutschland, Deutschland uber alles, second it is England and then Spain; Spain?? ‘Because they are our neighbours’ he explains, perhaps the new generation of Gibraltarians will bring their own ideas into the socio/political foray…………….

Over the past year I have harboured a new optimism for the England team and I feel that English football is experiencing a renaissance which started when Liverpool won the Champions League in glorious fashion last May. This year we have witnessed Arsenal and Middlesboro in European finals against all odds; add to that the new reign of Chelsea, the incredible rise of West Ham and the welcome return to the top flight for Tottenham Hotspur; all these factors are giving English football and English players a taste of winning ways again. The England team mirrors the nation with its cultural mix encompassing black and white, north and south, youth and experience, yob and poser; but will this ‘mezcla’ be able to gel as a team and overcome the mental hurdles that forty years of hurt have put before it.

I never give up hope as a true fan and I suffer for it along with all my fellow compatriots, I can only dream of seeing England reach the final on the 9^th of July but the thought of it makes me feel ill with nerves. I personally prefer watching all the other matches because only then can I relax and enjoy the sport. For those of you who pooh-pooh football and the hype of the world cup or maybe feel you are too intellectual for such base enjoyment, I suggest you avoid all media for the next month and go on holiday to America. Failing that, immerse yourself in the knowledge that in every continent, and in countries who have qualified or not, there will be someone with a badly tuned radio listening to the beautiful game. COME ON ENGLAND!