The Beautiful Game: 

“For me, football is more than a sport.  Look at the impact it has on society.” 

• Kylian Mbappe. 

And so, that’s it for just under eighteen months.  The innate pragmatism of Southgate meets the cerebral energy of Mancini.  Someone was always going to pay the penalty.   

Football is a unifying force.  Like all forces though: both invisible and no-one really holds the rules of what it opens.   

I am a keen football fan (Liverpool).  Tournaments are festivals and therefore time to cancel reality for a month, settle down for three matches a day, wonder if I will ever get a full album of Panini stickers and players, I’ve never heard of getting linked to my beloved Reds.  As a result, I spend the hours between games checking YouTube sizzle reels and Flight Tracker. 

My oldest friend is a Tranmere Rovers fan.  I can remember shivering on the terraces; watching them lose on a cold Saturday before Christmas to Wimbledon, making a sharp exit to the pub on 85mins.  I can also remember them beating Man City, with the away end singing “We’re shit and we’re sick of it.” 

 

I know, ancient history.  See also winning tickets to Euro 96.  Sitting in Anfield, watching The Czech Republic beat Italy.  My brother having a “polite word” with an Italian fan, so incensed by Pierluigi Casiraghi missing a sitter; he was attempting some foot-based percussive maintenance on the seat ahead of him.   

Combine this with my love of Liverpool and you could say it's not just in my blood, but in my DNA.   

But when those tournaments come around, my love becomes a more public, shared thing.  Which is not just an egalitarian, but a logical one.  Everyone watches The Euros and The World Cup.  People become experts on players and systems.  They tether their soul to a country, for a variety of reasons.   

So, we’re back at the old patriotism thing.  The blind, unstinting, uncritical look at your country.  Wherever that is.  And we’ve seen many instances of that at the Euros.   

Let’s start at Hungary’s refusal to take the knee.  Players from a right-wing kakistocracy, where homophobia and transphobia are legislated. UEFA intervened in an attempt by Bayern Munich to light up the Allianz Arena for the match with Germany in gay pride colours.   

Funnily enough, The Europa League Final is in Hungary next year.  Perhaps UEFA could spend more time worrying about this, then ensuring bottles of Coke or Heineken are in shot in press conferences.   

Ah, a right-wing kakistocracy.  A government of politicians, who say that they are not politicians.  Casually racist, reactive, specialising in dog-whistles to those who consider themselves disenfranchised?   

Seems vaguely familiar.    

Over the last month, the phrase “Full Kit Wanker” has been redefined. Mainly by Priti Patel, a woman whose favourite sport is watching kids drown, expressing a love of football.  And Boris Johnson wearing an England shirt over a collar and tie. 

Football and politics are like binary chemical weapons.  They shouldn't be mixed, as the results are toxic.  Patel and Johnson are dogs, sniffing the national mood and using it to make them look slightly more normal, more human, more like the banjo Plucker's who put them in power.  

See also, Nigel Farage rocking up to Wembley in a union jack waistcoat, after dismissing BLM as a “far left Marxist organisation.”.  This is the sort of argument that an A Level politics student, or a rational human being could see through. 

I supported England as I live here.  Simple, really.  I was disappointed by France and The Netherlands will always let you down.  I refuse to support Portugal as their star player is a narcissist.  Though his mid-match arguments with Liverpool's Jota were hilarious, reminiscent of a soon to be divorced couple on a make-or-break holiday. 

However, I could never truly get behind En-ger-land.  Not just in footballing terms - the overt caution of it infuriated me.  No, it was more than that.  It was the booing of the national anthem of an opponent.  It was that lovely song about the bombing of Dresden.  And the song “We hate Scousers.” 

Following on from this: the racist abuse of Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka for the simple act of missing a penalty.  If we follow that line of logic, if you’re black and play for England you’re ok.  If you miss it, you are a target for the opinions of bellends.   

So, you can see why I find it hard to really feel like an England fan.  Not all of them are fucking idiots, but the ones we see are.  There is a flag at Anfield that says “We are Scouse, not English.” And I don’t just believe that, I understand it.  When Liverpool players are seen as superfluous to the England team (either by birth or team) I’m mystified as to why.  But conversely, I am glad they are not part of it.   

I support a team which is made of players from (amongst others) England, Holland, Brazil, Senegal and Egypt.  It’s managed by a man who is not just a devout Christian, but a socialist. The team does charitable works in the not just the local, but international community.  If football is a model of society, then here is the purest version of it. Unity, charity, synergy, acceptance.    

But racism, a disrespect for any flag other than your own, an overflowing bandwagon of chancers, comparing it to war...? That’s not beautiful.  And it’s certainly not part of the beautiful game.     

 

 

 KIND OF MY THING: 

‘Times are bad.  Children no longer obey their parents and everybody is writing a book’. 

• Cicero. 

So, I’m writing a book.  This is nothing new, I mean, I am a writer.  It’s kind of my thing.   

They say that surgeons have their own private cemetery.  Every mistake they ever made, which they make a mental visit to, periodically.  This must be, I reckon at least my third serious attempt at writing one.  Let’s leave aside, the childish affectations of filling an exercise book with a new Doctor Who or a Star Wars sequel. Pool Of Blood, a comic horror set in Liverpool is on an old laptop, in a Scouse landfill somewhere.  Josh101 a YA novel, is on the red USB in the tin the bookshelves behind me.   

What do all these “projects” (a wanky phrase, but it fits) have in common?  Unfinished, lost, forgotten.  The new novel is called River City People.  It’s set in a fictional version of Liverpool.  It is, as yet unfinished.  But it still has an energy and freshness I love.  And I’m still working on it.  Shit, I might even finish it.  Fuck, it might even get published and I might actually earn some money for it.   

I was inspired to give flight to my dreams, after attending Marian Keyes novel writing class.   For four Monday evenings in January, I listened, made patient notes and my homework diligently.  It was ever thus, though in St Kev’s in the early 1980’s, I never asked questions on Instagram. This gave me ideas, plotlines and fully-formed, three-dimensional characters.  Admittedly, I’m gonna work some of my old ones in there too.   

The novel lives on my laptop, it’s backed up on the purple USB.  It’s currently about the 20,000wds mark (or 100kb).  It’s not just a thumbnail, or a waveform.  It’s a living, breathing thing.  Like all life’s good things - a relationship, a child, a plant, a pet – it needs constant care and attention.  I try and write every day (on a notepad), but it’s not the worst thing in the world if writer’s block, workpeople, a Hello Fresh delivery, a dip of depression, or even the odd virus get in the way. 

When I have enough, I fire up the laptop, play Sarah Gosling’s show on BBC Radio Devon and type it, save it, back it up.  In between, there is coffee and chocolate (current favourite: Daim Latte).  When not writing, I try and keep the energy going, think about plot holes, pester people to use their surnames as characters and kick around what is going to happen on long country walks.   

It’s my routine, and it appears to be working.  I have a good sounding board in my wife. I’m looking at the routine of famous writers and listening to interviews with them.  Everything is both research and inspiration at the same time.   I am, after all: a writer.  A guardian of truth and justice in the universe (allegedly).   

Then again, why should I get so territorial?  Everyone is writing a novel.  Celebrities (the orphan child of the English language) have books out on a regular basis.  Generally, these are kids' books.  So they’re not on my radar as much as they used to be.  But generally, the constant stream of ‘celeb’ books needles me.  And I can’t figure out why, exactly. 

It’s not professional jealousy.  I’m genuinely pleased that someone as nice as Richard Osman can get both a seven-figure advance and a four-book deal for his first novel.  Similarly, I don’t envy the large advance that Celia Walden got for her next book.  it’s a lot of money, but inadequate compensation for being married to mouthy gammonlord Piers Morgan.   

And I genuinely feel that sometimes, ‘celeb’ books can do some good.  The ongoing conversation about mental health can only be continued by celeb’s who write honestly about their depression.  That way, it makes it a plain and everyday fact.  It also gets rid of well-meaning, but patronising dickheads who use the ‘broken leg’ analogy. 

But you know.  I’m a writer.  This is kind of my thing.  I’m following the Blakeian tradition, of using my talents for “spiritual communion” and not “throwing it in the ground for a lack of bread”.  I rarely earn any money for what I do, even though technically my job is being a carer to my wife.  I always remember the school careers officer, advising me not to be a writer as “it’s hard to make a living from it” and advising me to be “a lorry driver, like your dad.” 

So, in that sense I’m just writing to piss someone off; who in reality may not be alive anymore.  You can’t get more existential than that.  The upside is that there is a long list of teachers and lecturers who would probably love my writing. One got in touch with me on Facebook to say so.  So there. 

But we’re in a sort of information war at the moment.  Where to question the large amount of money in a politician’s account; or committing senecide for a cheap burger is ‘racist’.  Where BAME people can even gaslight BAME people, into the disingenuous concept that it doesn’t even actually exist.   

Incidentally, David Baddiel got a whole book of the erroneous concept that, if you’re left-wing you’re antisemitic.  To say that is blown out of all proportion, is a point of view.  I’m a socialist, with Jewish heritage in me, somewhere.  I direct my ire and disdain towards racists, flagshaggers and middle-aged comedians who have yet to achieve puberty.   

I write, because I like it.  It’s a mental-health activity, as much as me doing Popmaster every day.  I still dream that someone might offer me a large cheque, that my wife will be organising a book tour for me, someday.  In that sense, it’s as remote a concept as a lottery win, world peace, me managing Liverpool FC.   

So, when someone ‘famous’ writes something with genuine weight and verve (like Michelle Obama’s autobiography), I’m both pleased and enthused at the same time.  When John Cooper Clarke’s autobiography has the same laconic drone of the eminent Salforian, I’ll devour in it a week.   

But (and I know starting a sentence with one is factually incorrect, a teacher told me so) when I’m not reading books, or pre-ordering books, I’m writing.  Because that is much a thread of my soul, as blue eyes, the mole on my stomach, the scar on my left leg.   

Because I’m a writer.  It’s kind of my thing.