Been out of football for four years? Suddenly find yourself in charge of
Newcastle United? Then you must be Joe Kinnear. But worry not. Our one-stop,
at-a-glance, catchup service will bring you right up to speed with the
developments you missed, leaving you briefed and ready to go for tomorrow’s
trip to Everton.
The Premier League anthem and fair-play handshake
No more getting the lads to burst on to the pitch looking like they mean it,
I’m afraid. Since the start of the 2004-05 season, players in the top flight
file on, as if entering a church, and then formally greet each other while
an official anthem is played. (No requirement to stand and sing along, by
the way.) I know what you’re thinking. It’s political correctness gone mad
and it wouldn’t have washed in the old Wimbledon days, when this would have
been time that could have been more usefully spent “getting to them” in the
tunnel. But there it is. Best to go along with it.
Executive directors (football)
Directing the football used to be the manager’s job, but these days it sort of
is and it sort of isn’t, and the bits of it that aren’t tend to be handed to
an additional “director of football”. This is commonly explained in terms of
the fashionable desire to build a club “on the continental model”. (Nothing
to do with Eva Herzegovina. And incidentally, people don’t really talk about
Eva any more. It’s still OK to mention Kate Moss, though.) Your director of
football, by the way, is Dennis Wise. No, seriously. But the thing is,
people grow, they mature. They hold down proper jobs.
Umbrellas
I don’t know if you’ve ever considered using one of these in the course of a
match, to protect your notebook and/or hair, but I’m afraid it’s absolutely
out of the question now. The umbrella may have been a perfectly innocent and
practical rain-proofing accessory in 2004, but post-Steve McClaren, it can
never be raised by a football manager again. Ever.
The Consortium
Expect to hear much talk about a consortium (South African, Chinese,
Venezuelan, whatever) “coming in”. It’s just a business thing. No football
fan used the word “consortium” four years ago. Now everybody uses it all the
time. See also “metatarsal”, “Setanta”, “ClimaFlow fabric” and “Theo
Walcott”.
Wembley
They finished it. No, really, they did. And it’s not bad. A bit lacking in
atmosphere, perhaps. But a lovely arch thing that can be seen from a long
way away. And loads of toilets. Simply loads of them.
Arsenal
You will remember them as the invincibles – the side who, in 2004, completed a
season-long league undefeated streak. But that’s all over now. A number of
those players have moved on, mostly replaced by French schoolboys over here
on exchange programmes, and these days Arsenal are only invincible roughly
every other game. Hope to get lucky.
Television
It’s all got a bit more confusing recently, with the entry of an extra
broadcaster. But, as a rule of thumb, if your game kicks off at 3pm on a
Saturday, then you’re on Match of the Day. If your game starts
at 4pm on a Sunday, then you’re on Sky Sports. And if your game starts at
5.15pm on a Saturday and you can’t find it on your remote anywhere, then
you’re on Setanta. Also, if you’re on ITV on a Tuesday or Wednesday evening,
then you’re in the Champions League. But I don’t think that’s going to
happen, if we’re being honest.
By the way, there’s also a Match of the Day 2 now, on a Sunday.
It’s very good. Some people even rate it above Match of the Day,
which is highly unusual with sequels.
David Beckham
Not around so much these days. Moved to California in search of a better
climate, a more relaxed lifestyle for the family and a contract worth
approximately $84,000 per minute. We miss him.
Teddy Sheringham
Same as Beckham, really, only without the bit about America, and the other bit
about missing him.
Touchline bans
The bad news is, they still count. And you’ve got one outstanding from your
last spell in management. You would think they would come off after a while,
wouldn’t you, like points on a driving licence?
Ah, well. It’s a chance to sit back and enjoy the match in the company of a
few friends. No one can see anything from the dugout in any case. That’s
something that never changes.
* * * * *
The great work of literature that left Davies in a sorry state
"No ifs, no buts. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.” Thus, in a rare moment of genuine
candour in the published extracts from his new book, does David Davies
solemnly condemn his decision to help Glenn Hoddle to write My World Cup
Diary, the former England coach’s memoir of the failed 1998 World Cup
campaign.
To which we reply: “Wrong, wrong, wrong, Mr Davies.” My World
Cup Diary was, and remains, one of the most extraordinary
autobiographical accounts written in a hurry by anyone, a book so richly
textured and imaginatively replete that it inspired one reviewer to declare
it “one of the great works of magical realism”. Imagine the loss to
literature, and to those who love words, if it had never appeared.
True, some would argue that when, on the eve of a World Cup, the England coach
raises the possibility of rushing into print straight after the tournament
with the behind-the-scenes story, it is the duty of the FA’s spokesman,
which Davies was at the time, to have a quiet word with him about dropping
the idea rather than chortlingly offer to ghost-write it for him.
But then, if FA Confidential: Sex, Drugs and Penalties - The Inside Story
of English Football, Davies’s forthcoming memoir, promises to teach us
anything, it is that simple logic has frequently had a lonely old time of it
in the national game.
Anyway, such arguments are a mere quibble beside the timeless achievement
which was that book. The bit where Hoddle reveals the formative part played
in his thinking by the astrologer in the Daily Express, the walk-on
role for Eileen Drewery (whom Charles Dickens, surely, would have struggled
to create), the spectacularly deluded sense that fate, rather than football,
conspired to thwart England during that miserable summer a decade ago . . .
little wonder that so many of us return to our well-thumbed volumes as a
source of wonder and a comfort in troubled times.
“The biggest mistake of my 12 years at the FA,” Davies now calls it. We’ll
have none of that here. In any case, he’s too modest by far. Twelve years?
There must have been loads of mistakes that were much worse.
* * * * *
Boom and Buster time for Britain
For a tantalising few days there, we allowed ourselves to believe that
big-grinning Greg Rusedski was going to ride out of his 17-month retirement
and haul up the Great Britain Davis Cup tennis team, who have sunk so far in
the world standings that they can be detected only by oceanographers using
sonar.
But no. Greg is apparently busy with “other projects”.
So who does that leave with the requisite nationalistic fervour for this
mission? We’d argue for Andrew Castle, if he wasn’t so tied up with Strictly
Come Dancing. In his absence, only one name seriously suggests itself.
Buster Mottram, your nation awaits you.
