Corrupt, awash with cash, and, currently, the plaything of an autocrat... but I still love the World Cup
IGREW up in a household steeped in football. With my father something of a mover and shaker in local football circles, renowned footballers were in and out of our house all through my childhood.
Spurs captain Danny Blanchflower; his brother Jackie, who played for Manchester United and was badly injured in the Munich air crash; Celtic captain Bertie Peacock, and, of course, the hero of the Munich disaster, goalkeeper Harry Gregg – my father knew them all.
Harry, who mentioned in his autobiography that it was my father who gave him his ‘start’ in amateur football, remained close to my father all his life and was particularly kind to my own son when he was a nine- or ten-year-old and obsessed with Manchester United.
At that young age I was to be found in the Showgrounds on a Saturday, to watch the endeavours of Coleraine Football Club. And my own Liverpool obsession had also begun. I’d first watched them play against arch rivals Everton, in what was then called the Charity Shield, in August 1966.
Stomping
What do I remember about being in Goodison Park that day?
The World Cup trophy being paraded by Everton’s Alan Ball and Liverpool’s Roger Hunt, both having played on the winning English team that summer. The fact that I had a raging toothache. That Liverpool won 1-0.
Also, however, I remember one particular man. Who on earth was he, stomping up and down the sideline, pacing, shouting, encouraging the players?
‘That,’ explained my father in respectful tones, ‘is no mere man – that is Bill Shankly.’ From the lips of an Everton supporter, the use of such a reverential tone for the Liverpool manager was enough to make anyone think twice. Even someone who’d only marked nine birthdays.
Bill Shankly. Scotsman, socialist, oldfashioned right half. Football manager. Before we called it soccer. Before the preening and the poncing, the prawn sandwiches, the Armani suits and the millionaire lifestyles.
I wrote to him when I was 13, telling him how much the club meant to me… the posters on my bedroom walls, the notebook I kept with all the results and transfers recorded.
A week or so later, a letter arrived. My name on the envelope. The red liver bird crest in the top left-hand corner. ‘Dear Roslyn,’ it began… ‘Best wishes, Bill Shankly,’ it ended. Gold-dust through the letterbox.
And the beginning of a football love affair that has lasted for me from my first glimpse of that World Cup trophy in Liv-protest erpool on that August afternoon in 1966, right through to today’s World Cup.
Sadly, we’re not there this time round and yes, it’s unfortunate it’s in Russia. And that Sepp Blatter, the disgraced former Fifa president, is to attend the tournament as a personal guest of Vladimir Putin. No surprises there, though. You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours has long been a feature, after all, of international wheeler-dealing when both prestige and vast amounts of money are at stake.
Blatter is the man, lest we forget, who was busted over Fifa corruption in 2015, and the very same man who was instrumental back in 2010 in securing for Russia – against all the legitimate odds – the hosting of this summer’s World Cup.
As that World Cup kicks off today with the opening ceremony and the first match between Russia and Saudi Arabia in the spectacular Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow, there will be many people across the world with serious reservations about this tournament because it has ended up in the lap of Putin.
Dictator
There have been comparisons made, indeed, to the Olympic Games in Hitler’s Berlin back in 1936. And there have been legitimate arguments forwarded as to why this tournament should not now, not ever, indeed, be in the gift of a country like Russia. That to support the event in any way comes across, in effect, as the world saluting a dictator.
The World Cup has had its controversies before. Back in 1978, I well remember the furore over host country Argentina where, two years earlier, a coup had brought a military dictatorship to power. There was talk of a number of teams pulling out in protest – most notably the Netherlands. But while Johan Cruyff didn’t play, in the end his team did, going on to lose to the host nation in the final. Years later, Cruyff admitted that he had stepped down, not in an act of political as everyone imagined, but due to a personal matter.
So, controversy or no controversy, when it comes to the World Cup, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t even really matter that, at the eleventh hour, the Spanish manager, Julen Lopetegui, has been sacked because he had the audacity to take a job at Real Madrid.
Why doesn’t it matter? Because it’s all about the game, the talent, the patriotism, the memorable moments, the victors and the vanquished. And the goals.
The fact that some three billion people will watch the tournament over the next month speaks for itself. It is, and was, and will simply always be a platform for the beautiful game – irrespective of the political wrangling that surrounds it.
Leveller
But football is all about money nowadays, complain so many people, my late father among them. The transfer fees, the billionaire owners, the flashing of the cash. What’s that got to do with a game that has always been open to anyone? Boys like George Best or Lionel Messi, from the backstreets of Belfast or Rosario, but also the likes of Spain’s Gerard Pique, who grew up in an affluent family, his father a successful lawyer.
It’s a great leveller, football, a game that’s open to rich or poor, and as accessible to a skinny 5ft 5in player as it is to a 6fr 6in Incredible Hulk look-alike. It’s all about the skill.
And the thing about the World Cup is that, actually, it’s not about the money at all. You can’t buy players for your national team. If you could, then Putin certainly wouldn’t be leaving Russia languishing where they are in Fifa’s world ratings, having just dropped to 70th place, and finding themselves, rather embarrassingly, the bottom-rated team of the 32 countries in this World Cup.
What all that means is that what we will be watching over the next few weeks will be football in its purest form. And I can’t wait. The World Cup, for me, can’t come around fast enough every fourth year. I don’t recall watching the tournament before 1966, but I remember that final, not just because of the Geoff Hurst hattrick and England’s win, but because we were leaving for our holidays that Saturday evening. With the match going into extra time, my mother was getting agitated at the prospect of us missing the boat from Belfast as my father refused to budge from in front of the television.
So for me, it doesn’t really matter that Putin will be preening himself on the screen tonight, because it’s not actually about him. And it’s not about money either.
What the World Cup is about, when you strip everything right back, is what it has always been about – the sheer magic of football.
Bring it on.