Category: Football
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Curriculum Vitae (Ad Absurdum)
I spent most of my three years ‘working’ in Manchester down the pub. When I was in my shared smoke-filled office, I was more often than not playing a very early demo of football manager (four free seasons, on repeat), or compiling a regular comedy fanzine for the five-a-side footy team I helped to found and run. They were crazy and fun times.
Every other weekend, I got a train back to Lincolnshire for band rehearsals, recordings and occasional gigs. Although these were more often than not simply excuses to drink to excess.
I forget how much I was being paid, but it seemed like a fortune (it wasn’t, but life was free and easy back then). My boss Terry was a quietly manic Irish gynaecologist who had somehow ended up leading European studies into vertebral osteoporosis. He had more faith in me than I had in myself. He would type things on to the computer screen and ask me to read them. I would say things like, “You need to slow down, mate. Use some spaces and punctuation.”
My main role was to input response rate data, which consisted of reams of handwritten register books from all over Europe containing names, gender, dates of birth, and what kind of fracture they had suffered, if any, and if they responded to our survey, or not. Thrilling work.
On the plus side, I got to go to a couple of conferences (excuses to drink to excess) in Bath and Prague. I remember watching Ireland beat Italy in the 1994 World Cup with a bunch of Italian bone doctors in Bath. And we stayed in a stereotypical concrete skyscraper communist-era hotel-cum-conference centre on the outskirts of Prague, but had enough free time to explore the gothic city centre in the midst of a wintry, thundery snowstorm while drinking Czech vodka.
As what felt like a last resort to motivate me, my boss sent me on a week long working holiday to Athens. My objective was imply to visit one of the research centres there and make sure they knew how to complete the response rate registers correctly. A two hour job, as it turned out. They sent me for a week, as it was cheaper than sending me for a day or an overnighter, flights only, I had to find somewhere to stay when I got there. When I arrived in the heart of Athens and got out of my airport taxi, I stumbled on to the street trying to catch my bearings. A ‘friendly’ local ’took pity’ on my and asked me where I was from. “Manchester” I said. “Aha! Bobby Chalton! Nobby Sti-les! Come! Come! I have a bar! I will get you a drink!”
I walked into his dimly lit bar just around the corner. I bottle of cold beer was waiting for me. So friendly and welcoming! As my eyes became accustomed to the light, I looked around to take in my surroundings. A group of scantily clad young (and not so young) women giggled at a table opposite the bar. Red lights everywhere! I made my excuses and left!
After doing my two hours work, I spent the rest of the week walking all around the old town and seeing all the ancient sites by day, and drinking to excess in the evenings.
Same old England
I've been writing (if that's the right word) about the England football team elsewhere since 2006, and this is basically the theme: (even when we win) England are shit.
If that's not depressing enough in itself, and you are curious for more, here's a little summary of what to expect should you enter the rabbit hole:
The best place to start is my preview of England's ill-fated plan to get to the final of the 2012 World Cup in South Africa under the guidance of disciplinarian Italian capo Fabio Capello.
That post links to all my previous writings on England's proud tradition and long history of international failure, humiliation, and general, all-round shittiness on the football pitch. But in case you prefer a handy list, here you are, in chronological order:
2006: A new Scotland? Why England's football team will soon be as shit as Scotland's
2007: Why we're crap: the problem with English football
2010: Why England don't have a hope in hell of winning the football World Cup in 2010
2010: No future in England's dreaming? Inside the mind of Fabio Capello
2010: The World Cup on drugs: pure-grade heroin cut with shavings of Clive Tyldesley
2012: Why England don't have a hope in hell of winning Euro 2012
By 2014, I got sick of all this, and so turned to music, with my adaptation of Billy Bragg's classic song: A New Ingerland
While I'm at it (self-promotion, that is), and in case you're still with me and wondering what the Jimmy Carter thing is all about (and you have the stomach for more football-related musical adaptations):
2011 (There's Only One) Jimmy Carter (the footballer, not the peanut farmer)
2014: Whatever happened to... Jimmy Carter?
How to be a Top Football Manager
Leaked documents and video reveal the FA’s shortlist and assessment interview questions for the England manager’s job.
Stuart ‘Psycho’ Pearce, who presided over some of the least attacking and creative Manchester City and England U21 sides in living memory, was asked to give some expert coaching advice on how to play more attacking and creative football in line with England’s DNA blueprint. In a rambling and incoherent response, he finished off by reminiscing about how he used to psych out opponents. 2/5
‘I used to be’ Alex McLeish was asked how he would motivate England’s players to perform at the highest level. The dour Scot explained how he reduced all the players he managed to quivering wrecks unable to perform under pressure. All except fellow Scot Barry Ferguson. 1/5
Gus Poyet was asked about dealing with the media and how to get England scoring goals. The fiery Uruguayan stressed the importance of ’timing when to go’, presumably not referring to his ill-timed public thoughts on when he might leave Brighton that got him sacked shortly afterwards. He then presented a Powerpoint video on scoring goals in which he was the only one who managed to put the ball in the back of the net. 3/5
Alan ‘I haven’t done much coaching lately’ Curbishley failed to answer any questions at all, and just got all bitter and twisted about the time Charlton might have finished two places higher in the league if Scott Parker hadn’t left mid-season. 1/5
Lastly, and perhaps most bizarrely of all, Tony Pulis, not long ago sacked by Stoke City for not playing attractive-enough football, was asked how he would help a team play more attractive football, and focused on lumping it up to the big man up front. 4/5
Sam Allardyce pipped Tony Pulis to the job by virtue of not being Welsh.
Wife: “I don’t like the words. I don’t like the music. You sound like a hooligan. I couldn’t care less about fucking Jimmy Carter.”
Careers Advice
“When I grow up, I want to play football for Manchester United!”
For an eight year old boy growing up in rural Lincolnshire in the 1970s it seemed like an honest and rational response to an impossible question. No one else at my school wanted to play football for Manchester United. Leeds, maybe. Liverpool, definitely. Other kids said they wanted to be firemen, soldiers, doctors, and nurses. More of that later. Maybe their parents were firemen? Or maybe not. I didn’t know what my parents were. My dad went out before I got up every morning, and came home after I went to bed. At weekends, he told me stories about George Best, Denis Law (his favourite), Bobby Charlton, and the Busby Babes. About Manchester United and how they had the best team and had the best players. Not any more. That was all before my time. I was born in the year United had won the League for the last time, the year before they went on to win the European Cup. The Glory Days. Now, in my time, United were in Division Two (although I didn’t understand what that meant at the time). What I did understand was that I got to see highlights on Yorkshire TV occasionally, with a young and annoying Martin Tyler commentating on matches against the likes of ’local’ teams Hull City, Sheffield Wednesday and York City. United were good that season. Stuart Pearson was my favourite then. Stocky and powerful, he played with the passion that I came to expect from United players. He was never the best, but he scored goals and looked like he meant it. I meant it when I said I wanted to be a footballer.
“Think of something realistic,” I was told.
“You’ll never make it.”
“Concentrate on your studies.”
I couldn’t wait to prove them wrong.
I got in to the school team. In games lessons and playtime, I was a stocky and powerful centre forward who scored goals. Our first proper match was against another village school.
Five years later, in big school, I’d had my chips pissed on, but I still wanted to make it. I wrote to East Stirlingshire Football Club (just before a young Alex Ferguson took charge) offering my services. I got a polite rejection letter back.
No one ever told me why. I was too upset to ask.
Later, in Art class, I put together a morbid collage of war and that terrible question in cut-out newspaper headline letters:
“Why?”
“Don’t be so childish!” the teacher scolded me when he woke from his alcoholic stupor.
Well, pardon me. I was a child. Surely I was allowed to ask, and expect an adult answer?
So instead, I told them I wanted to join the Army. Not because I wanted to, but because that seemed to keep them happy.
Later still, when approaching school leaving age, after filling in countless forms asking me what I liked doing and what I was good at, I was told by a ‘careers advisor’ to study chemical or electrical engineering at university. I didn’t know what they were or why they’d been chosen for me. I resolved to go on the dole.
(Has careers guidance gone off the rails?. Was it ever on the rails?)
My back is killing me and I’m practically crippled after being out in the rain all day training and coaching.
Thanks to FA 1st Aid trainer Richard Barnes for relating the story of how he had his left wrist cut through to the bone and dangling off.
Doing homework for the FA coaching course I’m on. Last night I suffered the ignominy of fainting during the bloody bit of the 1st Aid class.