World Cup memories of a 29 year old…

In case anyone hadn’t noticed, the World Cup comes around every four years.  When it does come around, it’s ace and very memorable.  This year’s one is one day away and I can barely contain my excitement – I’ve just had ‘World In Motion’ on repeat seventeen times on Spotify.

The four year cycle kind of means that in between World Cups, quite a lot changes in your life and things move on.  Well, especially at my age.  I guess if you’re about 63 they all seem the same, but as I look back on all those I can remember, I was at very different stages of life throughout…

“It’s the first one I’ve ever understood…”

Italia ’90.  Quite simply legendary.  I was 1 for Spain ’82 and 5 for Mexico ’86 (which I don’t remember) and so Italia ’90 is where it all began for me.  I had everything – Esso coins, stickers, the biggest binder of collectable weekly magazine things ever – it must have started in 1987, the England kit (and what a kit it was).

It was the first time I experienced World Cup fever, and unlike typhoid, it was a fever worth having.  Italia ’90 seemed perfect.  Even looking back now, 20 years on, it still seems perfect.  Even the mascot – that stick man made out of green, red and white blocks – was better than any mascot since.

Whenever I think back to Italia ’90, ‘Nessun Dorma’ by Italian rock band Pavarotti plays in my mind.  Never has a song seemed to fit an occasion so appropriately.  As you read this, you may want to hum it.  All the memories need to be in slow motion too – Gary Lineker turning around and looking up from the pile-on on David Platt with one arm outstretched after Platt’s volley against Belgium.  Think about that in slow motion and Nessun Dorma just comes on automatically.

The main game I remember from Italia ’90 is actually the first one – Argentina v Cameroon.  Maybe it’s because I’d been hooked on the build-up and maybe it’s because the whole of England revelled in Maradona’s failure after he apparently did something in Mexico four years previously, but that game seems really vivid in my mind.

How did Oman Biyik jump so high?

Drugs, probably...

Obviously Roger Milla’s corner flag dance was pretty spectacular too.  Well, actually, it wasn’t spectacular in the slightest.  When you watch it now, it’s pretty pathetic.  It was still good at the time though.  Just think about it now… go on, picture it.  Doesn’t work with Nessun Dorma, does it?

Anyway, as for England, the whole thing was great.  After a troubled 80s, football-wise (Hillsbrough, Heysel, Oxford United being successful), English football needed a boost.  Looking back now, had they been rubbish the whole of English football now might be a very different place.  Italia ’90 appeared to recapture the public’s imagination.  I didn’t really appreciate that at the time.  I was nine.  After the game all I wanted was my He-Man figures and some Ribena, rather than to analyse the social impact that this tournament was having, but with hindsight now, it appeared to reignite the English public’s love of the game.  Is it coincidence that the whole Sky/Premier League generation was only a few years later?  Would it have happened if England had lost their last group game to Egypt and been knocked out?  Well, possibly, but don’t ruin my rose-tinted recollections… (still humming Nessun Dorma?)

It seems such a long time ago, and it’s hard to believe that  babies born during Italia ’90 will be celebrating their 20th birthdays around now, getting drunk watching the current England side in South Africa, asking their mates who Paul Parker was and thinking that Skuhravy is some kind of STD rather than a Czech superstar.

Anyway, it all came crashing down in the semi-final for England when they lost to Germany on penalties.  It was appropriate, really.  As a 9 year old at the time, I didn’t know who Hitler was.  Italia ’90 gave me an early reason to hate the Germans, one that was only further strengthened by GCSE History.

And as you continue humming Nessun Dorma, just think back to Gazza’s tears and Gary Lineker (in slow motion) mouthing “have a word” to the bench whilst indicating that Gascoigne was crying.  Think back to Pearce’s penalty.  Think back to Waddle blasting over the bar.  Think of all of that, and then think of a 9 year old boy hiding behind the curtains in his parents’ living room, crying like Paul Gascoigne, and when someone did “have a word”, him blurting out that he was so upset because “it’s the first one I’ve ever understood”…

Soccerfest 94, man!

The World Cup ventured to the USA for the first time, but England weren’t there.  Did I not like that?

Well, actually, at the time it didn’t quite seem so bad.  I wasn’t really used to England being at World Cups, having only seen the one, and so it didn’t really feel like I was missing out on a quad-annual (is that a word?) experience of watching England at such a tournament.

By now I was 13, and had discovered sneakily claiming to be going to bed, only to sit up watching TV in my room.  Perfect for a tournament going on in the USA where games were on late UK-time.

With England not there, I think it gave me my first insight into world football.  Obviously I’d seen Italia ’90, but a lot of the focus was on England.  With England not there, it meant I wasn’t really following anyone (although I claimed to be supporting Nigeria) and I could enjoy the football.  Actually, it was pretty good.

People speculated that what with the tournament being in American, it might get Americanised.  It wasn’t though, really.  It was just like watching football, but being played in America.  It was fine.  I’m not really sure what people were expecting and how it would be Americanised, but the players didn’t suddenly become obese, obnoxious and generally unpleasant…

Well, not all of them...

For the first time random European teams were quite good.  Romania and Bulgaria were ace.  Other teams who generally aren’t that successful did well too – Ireland and Sweden, for example.  Then there was my first real experience of pure Brazilian football.

With no specific allegiance I was able to marvel in the late night glow of the skills of Hagi, Romario, Stoichkov, Baggio, Batistuta, Letchkov, Bebeto and Sami Al-Jaber.  It opened my eyes to a football world outside of England.  I’m glad it did.

Particular memories include Maradona’s drug-fuelled tongue wagging down a camera, Ray Houghton’s fluke against Italy, Bebeto’s baby-cradle and, of course, Diana Ross missing a penalty from about two yards as part of the opening ceremony…

Miss Ross

Merde

Merde, for those of you who don’t know, means “shit” in French.

To be honest, not only is that what people thought when David Beckham kicked out at Diego Simeone, but it’s also what France ’98 was.  It doesn’t feel particularly memorable at all to me.  In fact, it seemed a bit rubbish.  Any tournament where Ryan Stiles from ‘Whose Line Is It Anyway?’ is a referee can’t be good.

Ryan Stiles doing "pretend you're a Danish referee dashing the hopes of a nation"

I was 17 by now and still at school.  England’s first game against Tunisia was a lunchtime kick-off on a school day.  The school, sensibly, knew that unless the showed it, no one would be there.  I’d have been down in Perfections Snooker Club in Stirchley (like most other school days) otherwise.  So they put it on in the hall.

Also, given that I was 17, I had discovered alcohol, so other games were seized as an excuse to drink anywhere.  The Colombia game was at a mate’s cricket club and then the big one against Argentina was at a mate’s house with about five cans of lager each (we were 17 – that was plenty).

It was a rollercoaster ride.  Going behind early on, then equalising before another 17 year old, Michael Owen, scored a wonder goal, before Beckham’s flick at Simeone, Argentina equalising and the, by now, usual penalties defeat.

My most vivid memory of that game though was Sol Campbell’s disallowed goal.  When his header went in, like David Platt in 1990, I found myself at the bottom of a pile-on.  Beer went everywhere as we celebrated.  I then looked at the TV though and Argentina were attacking.  What was this?  Some new rule?  Could the ‘keeper restart after a goal?  England were still celebrating and Argentina were attacking, and then it dawned on us.  It was disallowed.

Such a bloody disappointment, just like the tournament.

Far East… in Hull

21 and at university.  Actually, I’d finished all of my exams in my final year at Hull University a few weeks before the World Cup started, but my student house on Lambton Street was still available, so rather than returning home to be nagged at by parents about not having a job, I just stopped there, for the whole month, watching every single game at ridiculous hours in the morning and doing little else other than drinking.

With the times going the other way than USA ’94, the earliest games were at about 6.30am or 7.00am.  I forget which.  They’d then go on until early afternoon, by which time it was about time for a pint in the pub.  It was brilliant.

I actually remember getting up at 6.30am one morning to watch China v Costa Rica and thinking, “this is too much”.  Good game though.

I remember how red the South Korean fans were.  It was crazy.  It seemed like the whole of South Korea were painted red.  Well, their upper torsos anyway.  It was so bloody red.

Red

It looked incredible, the whole thing did.  What a setting for a World Cup, over in South Korea and Japan.  For the England games, my setting was pretty spectacular too – I went to The Main Event on the Beverley Road/Cottingham Road crossroads in Hull.

The pubs were all opening early, and every single England game was rammed.  People literally would not buy pints and would just buy crates of bottled Carlsberg so that they had sufficient supplies, could sell additional bottles on at a profit and could then stand on the crate for a better view.

The best game, of course, and one of the best football days I’ve ever had, was the Argentina game – Beckham’s revenge.  We all know what happened…

Take that, Stiles

The game was one of the early ones – 7.00am kick off.  My uni ball was that night – 7.30pm kick off (going on until 2.00am).  All that there was to do in between was drink and celebrate.  And I did.  What a day.  That evening I ended up at a black tie do at Beverley Racecourse in a tuxedo, black shirt, white bow tie, white shoes and my hair dyed in two different colours (yellow and purple) to look leopard-skinned.

I'm the attractive, sober-looking chap in the middle (some seventeen hours after starting drinking)

That night I met (and then in a fit of paranoia, ran away from mid-conversation) one of Atomic Kitten.  I still hope one day that I’ll read an interview with her where she’s asked, “what’s your strangest ever encounter with a fan?”  “Well, there was this once at a racecourse when a fat lad with yellow and purple hair…”

As for the football, that was as good as it got (the Denmark game doesn’t count) and it all came crashing down a week or so later when some toothy Brazilian lobbed Seaman…

I was there…

By 2006 I was a proper grown-up (possibly), and I did something I hadn’t thought about much previously.  I actually went to the World Cup in Germany.

The first game against Paraguay was a Saturday.  We drove to Frankfurt, couldn’t get a ticket, watched it in a pub and drove back to Birmingham.

England v Paraguay actually AT the World Cup! (In a pub, two miles from the stadium...)

When I went back to Germany a few days later, I did actually have a ticket to England’s win over Trinidad & Tobago which was in Nuremburg which, apparently, is where some slightly mad bloke did a few speeches once or twice in the past.  The area he did those speeches was literally next to the stadium.

It's in black and white to make it more like when Hitler was there...

Next it was Koln (Cologne, where they make toilet water) for the final group game against Sweden.  No tickets, again, and with England already qualified, no need to go to the game because where there’s Sweden, there’s Swedish girls.  Doing the ‘Ikea Challenge’.  On the steps of Koln Cathedral.  Obviously.

Next up was Ecuador in the last sixteen in Stuttgart – tickets secured.

I'm not the one in the hat

Before the stunning stadium in Gelsenkirchen for the ill-fated quarter final against Portugal.

Calm before the storm...

The whole experience was stunning though, and I’d recommend it to anyone.  The one thing that you miss when you just watch a game on TV and then go about your normal life in between games is the whole festival that goes on alongside it, the partying, the atmosphere, the interaction between fans from different countries…

Dutch fans in a Stuttgart fountain

and the fact the you get to meet celebrities everywhere…

Some bloke off the telly

… as well as the friendly locals…

… and you might even bump into Ronaldinho.

Ronaldinho

It’s not all about England though – you get to take in other games, such as Zidane’s masterclass versus Spain (and what a view I had)…

Zidane's there somewhere...

Or Ukraine versus Tunisia to see stars like Shevchenko…

Sheva

… and Nafti.

FIFA World Footballer of the Year 2011

Ultimately though, it all ended in disappointment again for England.

That winker...

Here’s hoping that in just over four weeks time it’s a lap of honour that those England players are on, not a lap of appreciation…

Enjoy South Africa 2010 and here’s to some more memories.