N°68 A game for poets
Or staying up late to watch the Democratic Republic of the Congo vs. Uzbekistan
This week: football punditry and poetry, how the beautiful game isn’t beautiful any more and my run in with the Bereitschaftspolizei…
Picture this: a little cockney, looks like trouble, a sickly, druggy type, abroad for the first time, too long holed up in a cheap pensione, hurls a plate of pasta into the piazza and it all kicks off.
You’ve got the image. You’ve seen it in the newsreels. There’s a football crowd. Probably. Water cannons. Possibly. Plastic chairs thrown in foreign town squares. Fat, bald blokes taking swings. It’s ugly. There is a collective national tutting. Commentators say it’s a disgrace, headlines: The English Disease, there is outcry, a blight on our nationhood. England away. Love it.
The incident I describe in the opening paragraph didn’t take place during a World Cup or have anything at all to do with football. But it did happen. In 1820. The little cockney in question, a poet, one John Keats. OK, so he didn’t exactly chuck his spaghetti and start a riot but he did scrape the contents of his dinner plate from a high window onto the Spanish Steps in Rome and it caused consternation. He made a scene. He was a trouble maker. I mean he was brought up above a London pub, he got into scraps in the streets as a kid, was disruptive in class. He was a trouble maker in the best possible sense. He may not have been one of the lads but Keats, oh Johnny Keats he was a geezer.
The World Cup is upon us. You may be doing your best to ignore it. I tried but slowly it’s reeling me in once again. But this year something is off. Perhaps it’s the disturbing rise of nationalistic anger away from the stadiums that’s making me uneasy about participating in the pageantry. Football was always more about belonging than it ever was about jingoism. It was about rooting for the outsider, cheering on the underdog, coming together, celebrating. Yes it got messy. Sometimes it got very messy. I’ll admit I rather liked it when it did. There were times when I got carried away. But that’s poetry, right? That’s what poetry is supposed to do, it’s supposed to carry you away.
Let’s get this straight. I never liked sports. I’m not a sporty type. I dislike competition in general. But I adore football. Or I used to. It was a love affair, a love affair that occasionally turned toxic. I got picked for my school team (once), turned out for a local league side (twice) and played every Sunday for the Cubs where the coach employed a ‘turn up and you’ll get a game’ strategy. I liked his approach. I still like this approach. This is how we make poetry. This is how Keats made poetry. He just turned up, got a game. He didn’t have an expensive education, specialist training or all the fancy kit. You don’t need those things. Just a pen and some paper. A ball and some grass.
This month you’ll see Lionel Messi’s messianic image in New York’s Times Square, Gabby Logan will show off her expensive wardrobe and broadcast with the Manhattan skyline behind her, they’ll be slow mo, hi-def reels of some bronze Adonis in his team’s shirt selling you deodorant. It will all look spectacular. But something is missing.
If you read the copy carefully you might find occasional mention of ‘ordinary supporters’ but you won’t see many of them at this World Cup. If you want to go and watch the Democratic Republic of the Congo vs. Uzbekistan this month it’ll cost you £250. That’s just for the match ticket. Try booking a hotel or getting a train to the game. Football isn’t for the people anymore. Sure, there will be spectators in expensive replica shirts, dignitaries and celebrities, those who have the cash to splash on such razzmatazz.
When I started going regularly in the late 80s you could watch a top flight club in London for under a fiver, that’s about £12 in today’s money. Admittedly you might have taken your life in your hands going to certain games back then. There was trouble. But only if you went looking for it. There won’t be any trouble at this World Cup because the ordinary supporters, those who travel on mass, who bring colour and passion, excitement and exuberance, who occasionally get carried away with the poetry of it all, they, they have all been priced out.
Keats faced a similar problem. He was told that poetry wasn’t for him. The art form of the fireside circle, of the tribal gathering, of the public square had become the reserve of a wealthy elite who didn’t want a grubby little cockney, like him, ruining it. Poetry is still a gated community and the money men who attach a dollar sign to absolutely everything have now hijacked the beautiful game. It is an obscenity far greater than the filthiest football chant.
Twenty years ago I went to the World Cup finals in Germany with my brother and Cockney Clive and Graveyard Jon and tens of thousands of others. It was everything I expected. The gayety of nations. The poetry and the pageantry. And yes the mess. Especially the mess. The Eurostar was drunk dry before we’d even left England. On the last night I got pulled aside, probably just because I looked the type (I don’t look the type who’s invited to pose for a photo at the Poetry Society) “Vee have just arrested vun hundred of your countrymen,” said a German copper prodding me in the chest with his night stick. “Do you vant to be zee vun hundred and first?” No, I thought, no, I’m done. I got to see what I wanted to see, do what I wanted to do. It’s time to go home. It’s time to go home and make poetry, make poetry as epic and as terrible, as beautiful and as messy as everything I expect to find at a football match.