SHARPENER #1

that london-based, bi-monthly football zine april-may issue2014free (£2 where sold)e-zine

sharpener / ˈʃɑː.pən.ər / noun a pre-matchalcoholic drink that sharpens the senses

Contents

4 Phil Streckhead: Agent Provocateur

6 The Pro Evo Glossary a look back a vintage Pro-Evo commentary

8 Crystal Pulis life under Tony Pulis

10 Tony Evans Interview Pt.1 the culture of Liverpool Football Club and what it means to Tony...

15 Queer as Stoke a view from a gay football fan

16 Match Feature: Dulwich Hamlet v Harrow Borough

22 On The Nature of Charles Reep football’s first statistician

26 The Secret Analyst the uncertain times of a budding football analyst

29 The JFK Files which one of you is Simon Bird?

31 Glyn Branville the voice of soccer

32 What of the Out-And-Out Striker is there a place in modern football for the number 9?

34 A Day in The Life: Chelsea what you might encounter on a trip to Stamford Bridge...

37 Bookworm a review of David Winner’s ‘Brilliant Orange’ and ‘Those Feet’

39 Letters

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Contributors & Zine Particulars

Editor: Toby Skeels (@Skeelington)Vice-Editor: Richard Yates (@yatesric)Feature Columnist: Pete Wright (@Latahs)Feature Columnist: Alex MyersColumnist & Espionage: The Secret AnalystContributor: Mike Yates (@mikeyates1)Contributor: Steve Williams (@SRWsteve)

Illustrations: Ben Appleby benapplebyart.com ben.appleby@gmail.com

t @SharpenerZine H sharpenerzine.wordpress.com E thesharpenerzine@gmail.com f facebook.com/SharpenerZine B Issuu.com/thesharpener

If you would like to write for The Sharpener then please send an email to thesharpenerzine@gmail.com putting the phrase ‘FAO EDITOR’ in the subject field. If we like your work we will publish it.

All rights reserved

All characters appearing in this zine are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

All images and words are copyrighted to their respective owners. No content to be reproduced without prior permission.

The Sharpener zine has no budget and the contributors herein have not been paid for their work. If you have enjoyed reading this zine, then please, do us a favour: spread the word.

Cover image: Huish Park, Summer 2013

© The Sharpener is designed by Toby Skeels

Editorial

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“Yeah, y’know, a couple of pre-match Sharpeners.” And so it was, born from an innocuous incident really. I suppose many traditions are; but yet, this one seemed to stick, a more treasured ritual

which invokes so much fondness.

This zine, which takes its name from that event, is here to be a port in the topsy-turvy storm which is media coverage of football. I’m hesitant to call The Sharpener a fanzine, even though it fits the mould. We are football fans, and this is a nascent football publication; yet it feels like more than a fanzine. We’re a zine of purpose, of satire, of love and of pasts gone by and futures yet to be realised. We seek to lend some discernment to the ongoings of the modern game, while looking back and picking out poignant or nostalgic issues from times gone by. We want to poke fun and we want to decry. If we can achieve any of that then we’ll have

done all right.

The contributors and illustrators herein are unpaid, but that doesn’t mean they need be unloved. If you like The Sharpener, or any of the articles in this zine, then let us know. Oh, and tell someone

else – together we can make a difference.

Phil Streckhead: Agent ProvocateurIn this column, legendary Super-Agent Phil ‘The Streak’ Streckhead discloses the un-

believable truth of football’s inner circles.

“They can’t handle the truth!” screams my editor whilst editing this piece.

“They can,” I whisper back. “I trust them – they’ve a right to know”.

I was an agent for 30 years. I’ve had all the big names: Srnicek, Schemmel, Kishishev, Downes and Casiraghi, to name but a few. I retired last year after negotiating David Bentley’s appointment as play-er-manager at Ebbsfleet for the 2014-15 season; a good bit of business for all concerned. I wanted to

go out on a high.

Since my retirement, my publicist Dean Lerner has been sifting through hundreds of your questions, and each month I will answer as many as I can. Dean and I endeavour to read all of the letters we receive, particularly those with gifts attached. At this point I’d like to thank Jeff from Banbury for sup-

plying us with a ‘50 per cent extra’ pack of milk chocolate Hobnobs. Much obliged.

“Dear Phil, I read recently that you had a run in with Mino Raiola during your career. Could you elaborate on this rumour?” From Sandy Bowell in Thornton Hough

Well, Sandy – it all happened in the summer of ‘98. I‘d been shar-ing a camper van with Alan Ball and Trevor Francis whilst covering France 98 for Maltese TV (who, by the way, still owe me £75 for my commentary of Morocco’s dramatic 2-2 draw with Norway at the Stade de la Masson.) I needed somewhere to stay upon my return to England, so I kipped in Paul Parker’s loft for a spell (Parky owed me a favour after I’d helped him invest in clockwork radio technology.) At the time I’d been doing a bit of repping on the side for Selco. At this point you might be wondering, “Phil, you’re a brilliant and successful businessman – why on earth didn’t you have your own mansion?” Well, there’s a simple answer to that question. A lot of people will tell you that owning a house is a good investment – that’s rubbish. I bought my first house in ’84, a lovely cottage in Chipping Sodbury. At the time I was very much into space travel, so I decided to turn my house into an homage to NASA’s Space Shuttle Enterprise. I spent a considerable amount on perfecting the details: an upright shower, suction toilet, navigation centre, air lock door and so on. The house was completely air-tight and required a constant supply of oxygen. It was getting expensive, so I decided to sell up. All in all I made a very considerable loss on the property. From then on I decided to invest in race horses. I own three nags, the tastiest of which – Razor’s Red Ruddocks – won the Diss Sprint in ’03. Much more lucrative than owning a house, I think you’ll agree.

Anyway, as I said, I needed somewhere to stay, so I rang up Danny Wilson. Danny and I go back a long way – I’d introduced him to his missus Penny on a booze cruise to Bilbao, so he owed me one. I’d been staying in Danny’s garage for a few days after he’d taken the Sheffield Wednesday job, at which point he asked me to look into buying some talent. He needed a shot-stopper, so I recommended Pavel Srnicek, who I’d worked with for a while. Pavel was an inter-

esting character: he would only eat green coloured food, and he carried green food colouring around with him all the time. But he had the mitts of a lion, and the heart to boot. I knew Danny was onto a winner.

After finalising the agreement (pocketing a swift £50k and down-ing a few pina coladas) I’d got wind that Wim Jonk was unhappy at PSV. I knew their kit man Bert quite well, as he’d invested in my clockwork radio scheme, and he told me that Wim was looking for a new challenge. I brought Wim and his agent to a barbecue at Des Walker’s gaff in Carshalton. You could do that in those days – there was no such thing as ‘tapping up.’ It just so happened that Wim’s agent at the time was one Mino Raiola. Nice bloke; very fond of blue cheese, something that we had in common and chat-ted about for some time. He was a ruthless negotiator, as I found out that evening during a game of Star Wars monopoly, but also when sitting down with Wim and Danny to talk over the deal. Mino had wanted him to go to Arsenal, but Wenger was scared of filling the team with too many Dutchmen. I assured them that Danny really wanted Wim, and that he’d get £5,000 a game regardless of whether he was playing. Mino was coming round to the idea, and Wim finally came on side when I promised a 33 per cent discount from the Leighton Car Sales garage around the corner (the owner was my ex-brother in law.)

Mino and I finalised the paperwork and celebrated our earnings by renting a small cottage on the outskirts of Torquay. He took his wife and kids along, so to keep up appearances I brought my nephew and a proper nice escort named Kim to pose as my family. We had a lovely trip crab baiting and enjoying the fresh air, until Kim got hideously drunk at the Sailor’s Arms and sat crying in the car for four hours about something or another. Mino left the next morning in a hurry, and I didn’t see him again for some years.

Thanks for your question Sandy – that really took me back.

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“Dear Phil, is it true that Barry Fry gave you a Jack Russell as part of your fee for the transfer of Giuliano Grazioli to Swindon Town in 1999?” From Terry Ladeleauville in Shepton Mallet

Great knowledge, Terry! Where did you hear that? Well, unfor-tunately it’s not true at all. I received my usual flat £50k, a box of Montecristos (Barry used to get them smuggled in at a special price) and a Border Collie which I named ‘Dougie.’

Nasty business about Dougie: I was taking him for his weekly walk to the shops to get him a Mini Milk (dogs love ice cream as it hap-pens – I’m rather partial to a Snickers ice cream myself.) On the way I spot Colin Hendry taking his poodle Liz for a ponce around, so I call him over and we have a natter. Colin’s miffed, as he’s been promised to be the new face of a Head & Shoulders ad cam-paign, only to hear that Jason McAteer got the nod last minute. Needless to say, I’m just as perplexed. I mean, Jason McAteer! Don’t know what they’re smoking down at Head & Shoulders HQ, but he couldn’t find his arse with both hands, let alone the back of the net.

“Hey ho, that’s showbiz,” I say to Colin, and start to walk on. At this point I notice Dougie salivating whilst staring right up Liz’s arse. I drag him away and notice he has the biggest stonk on I’ve ever seen on a dog. I have to say, if it were any other poodle I’d have let him fill his boots, but I’d heard some nasty rumours about Colin and his ‘relationship’ with Liz. He often took her to training and on nights out with the lads, and was known to be somewhat posses-sive and controlling of her. I didn’t want Dougie to experience what I’d heard had happened to Chris Sutton on one such tear-up...

...The way Jeff Kenna tells it: it was Chris’s birthday back in ’95, when Blackburn were steaming at the top of the league. Chris tells the players and staff that he’s organising a night out at Liquid nightclub in Blackburn. Jeff and the others are well up for it, and a lot of them ask if they can bring their birds along, and Chris agrees. Then Colin asks if he can bring Liz. The dressing room goes silent until you could hear a mouse fart. Chris pauses a second, and slowly nods his head – he was never one for confrontation, says Jeff. As Colin leaves the room, Chris frantically calls the nightclub to see what their policy on animals is. Understandably, the club say that no animals are allowed in. An hour-long negotiation ensues, in which Chris agrees to pay £2,000 to hire the entire venue for the night, and signs up to do five public appearances at the club throughout the year.

Now, At this juncture I should also mention that Chris Sutton fan-cies himself as a bit of a ladies’ man. I mean, he thinks he’s some sort of East Midlands Don Juan. But nothing could be further from the truth. I had first-hand experience on a night out with Chris in Norwich back in ’91 (I was looking after Rob Newman at the time, who’d just finalised his move from Bristol for a pretty fair price.) So, we’re in the club, and Chris is putting the moves on this posh Harris at the bar, but she’s having none of it. He’s trying a load of one-liners and getting nowhere. So I swoop in, chat a little bit about my charity work, how I just can’t meet the right woman ‘coz my wife “died” last year, and that I’ve got a Audi Quattro sitting outside – and she’s all over me. Meanwhile Chris, dejected, hits the bottle, gets twat-faced, and ends up pulling some beached whale wedged into the corner by the cloakroom.

Anyway, Jeff tells me that Chris had taken to bringing a packet of love hearts on nights out as a bit of an ‘ice-breaker’, shall we say. Well, whatever you want to call it, it worked – Chris had been knee deep in clunge for months. Apparently, on this particular night, Chris – feeling more confident and perhaps more amorous than ever – told Jeff and a few others that he’d wrapped a candy bracelet around his cock and bollocks for some lucky lady to have a munch on later. The night started out great, everyone was having a swell time. The beer was flowing and dance floor was spinning – quite literally (Liquid has a motorised floor, apparently.) Next thing, Colin shows up with Liz, and with everyone drunk, and perhaps a bit high, they all show Liz a lot of attention. Colin sits at the bar

all jealous, has a few too many sherbets, and pulls Liz away from Garry Flitcroft as they’re dancing to Jennifer Rush’s ‘The Power of Love.’ Colin takes Liz outside for what we think is a bathroom break – but they have a raging argument for about 10 minutes, before coming back in.

So, from then on, everything seems fine again. Everyone’s having a great night aside from Chris, who’s a little worse for wear – he’s been bought shots and dirty pints since seven, and can barely stand. He stumbles off to the gents for a quick Roman relief. About half an hour passes until Jeff – who’s stood at the bar with Henning Berg – starts to wonder where Chris is. Just then Colin runs out of the gents and rushes up to them red faced and panicky, shout-ing some inaudible Scottish babble – something about “cheating bitch” and “lying bastard.” At this point they notice blood on Colin’s hands. Jeff and Henning rush into the gents, assuming something must’ve happened.

As they run in they see Liz, half-in-half-out of one of the cubicles. As they round the door they see a passed-out Chris sat on the toilet with his trousers down. His face is caked in blood, which luckily has stopped flowing. Then they notice Liz licking the sweets around Chris’ semi-erect jaffers, and they begin to put the picture together. Chris wakes up in a sudden rush, and screams: “Aaaaarr-rrgggghhh!!!!” He tries to explain but he’s so past it he can’t get his words out. He pays off both of them and makes them vow never to tell a soul. So they take the cash and drag him out of the club to a taxi.

Now, the only reason I know all this is because I sorted Jeff out with a 160 per cent APR payday loan to buy a hovercraft. Jeff was so grateful that he took me out on the lash in Chatham. He had a few too many Grand Marniers and spilled the dirt on Colin.

What with all this being known, you can understand my nervous-ness regarding Dougie and Liz’s encouner. I try to abort it, but Dou-gie is just too determined to get his end in. He only manages two strokes before Colin – in a berserker-esque rage – picks him up by his bollocks and throws him into the road, just in time for Dougie to simultaneously reach climax and get squashed under a fully-laden Eddie Stobart. I wasn’t that upset in many ways. I thought “Well, that’s how I’d want to go.” I couldn’t blame Colin – he really loves Liz and I don’t have to buy dog food anymore, so I’m saving a bit on the old outgoings.

Hope that sets the record straight for you, Terry.Alex Myers

5Phil Streckhead - A Man of Conviction

PES Name Real Name What to say...

Camel Salatcher Carl Fletcher On being substituted: “Camel Salatcher’s got the hump, here”

Roquel Arjen Robben“A dribble wizard with a left foot...you have to wonder, is Roquel Welsh?”

Farry Tikki Faith Tekke“In Turkey they call him Farry Tikki-taka for his short, accurate passing”

Calmen Jorge Campos “He’s been a Calmen influence on his back four today”

ValenyMaster League

Player ♫ “Why dontcha’ come on over Valeny........VALENYYYY” ♫

Dogue PES United Player “This lad is stealing a living – he should be on Dogue Traders”

Nzom Gole PES United Player Upon scoring a screamer: “That was Nzom Gole by the left-back!”

Hanue Gheorghe Hagi“Hanue he’d score eventually, what with all this scripted gameplay”

CarameliFernando Cavenaghi

“He’ll be tucking into a Tunnock’s Caremeli wafer after this performance”

Carls Royce Carlos Ruiz“Selling him would be akin to removing the engine on a Carls Royce”

Aore Daniele Adani♫ “When the ball hits your eye, and you’re buying a pie, that’s Aore...” ♫

Kayukin Valeri Karpin“He loves his adventure sports – in fact he’s off Kayukin in the Alps next week”

Pursel Ferenc PuskásOn a muddy pitch: “His shirt’s all dirty – don’t worry, Pursel should get the stains out”

Cashoo CafuOn being sent off for violent conduct: “This lad really is a (Cashoo) nut”

Camre Carecca “This lad gets 20% off all craft ales with his Camre membership”

Footyn WE United Player“What a great tackler – this lad certainly knows how to put his Footyn”

The Pro Evo GlossaryKonami’s legendary ISS Pro / Pro Evolution Soccer titles. Ever the plucky underdog, the Japanese company routinely failed to secure image rights for players, clubs and stadiums. Yet, deep in the bowels of Konami HQ in Tokyo, there dwelled a footballing visionary – the man who created a cast of fake names to defy the lawyers. Here, we celebrate our favourites…

Jig WE United PlayerAfter winning the Konami Cup: “We’re quite literally witnessing a Jig of delight”

Pas Chiton WE United PlayerAfter a blatant foul / act of cheating: “He’s gone Pas Chiton and into the realms of pure skulduggery”

Snake Derick Steven Davies Against China: “This defence usually eats Snake for breakfast”

Label Thomas Ravelli “They’ve conceded four goals today – I’d check the Label”

Linden Gary LinekerOn a Hertha Berlin player squeezing through his legs: “That was literally a case of Unter den Linden”

Wootang Ray Wilson“This player has his own supporter’s club – the Wootang Clan”

Blowm Alan BallOn a design glitch: “The 100ft tall midfielder was Blowm out of all proportion!”

Greggs Ryan Giggs“like a recent humanities graduate, the right-back has been working at Greggs all afternoon”

Fule Marc-Vivien FoéWhen coming on as a sub: “They’re putting more Fule in the tank, here”

Janlu Mário JardelUpon retiring in Master League: ♫ “Janlu for the days...I won’t forget a single day believe me...” ♫

Durlmints Kenny DalglishUpon scoring: “And the crowd hurl mints at Durlmints! What a treat this player is”

Dely Run Denis Law“He went for his Dely Run this morning; not that you could tell from this energetic display”

Breimar Billy Bremner “He truly has turned this midfield into the Breimar Republic”

Dental Lee Dixon“Once again the right-back cleans up – they don’t call him ‘Dental hygiene’ for nothing”

Phathas Jean-Marie Pfaff“There’s some Phathas bass sounds on the new Konami soundtrack”

Fil Da Buuni Frank de BoerUpon enacting a rule whereby the losing player must insert a Cadbury’s creme egg into a toy bunny rabbit for the victor’s later enjoyment: “Looks like I’ve won again...Fil Da Buuni!”

♫ “Why dontcha’ come on over Valeny..........VALENYYYY” ♫

Having watched Crystal Palace lose to Tottenham Hotspur on the opening day of the season, I, along with most others, thought their campaign was doomed as soon as it had begun. The team looked toothless, unable to keep possession, and were without imagina-tion when they had the ball. It all seemed very...Championship.

Seven months on, Palace are unrecognisable from the side that lost on August 18. Of course, there have been some changes at Selhurst Park – most notably a new manager. Ian Holloway left his post by mutual consent on October 23, and was replaced by his close friend, the often maligned Tony Pulis. The board took a month to arrive at the decision – Keith Millen acted as care-taker-manager for four games – and Pulis assumed his role on November 23.

Palace lost the first game of Pulis’s tenure 1-0 to Norwich at Carrow Road. But already they looked more defensively assured than the side that had shipped 17 goals in eight games under Holloway. They followed up by beating West Ham and Cardiff in their next two games, recording clean sheets in both. The revolution was gathering momentum.

At the time of writing in late-February, Palace have won seven Premier League games since Pulis’s appointment. This is a record bettered only by the top five teams in the league over the same time period – a remarkable upturn in form that, if it were to con-tinue, would see Palace end the season in mid-table rather than as relegation fodder.

Pulis spent well during the January transfer window, making the most of the opportunity afforded to him, albeit leaving it a little

late (the majority of signings were made on January 31.) The five new players were Wayne Hennessey, Scott Dann, Joe Ledley, Ja-son Puncheon and Tom Ince; the latter surely drawn by the allure of playing for a London club. These are by no means blockbuster signings, but they are shrewd, and show a seasoned nous of the transfer market.

Ledley and Ince had excellent debuts in a 3-1 win over West Brom, displaying real invention, with Tom Ince scoring Palace’s first with a debut goal and Ledley also notching a goal on his debut. The permanent signing of Jason Puncheon, previously on loan from Southampton, also appears astute: his attacking prowess has been the foundation for much of the good football Palace have played under Pulis.

It is yet to be seen how Palace will finish the season – their run-in is by no means the easiest. But as the teams around them falter they appear well placed to push on to security. Many things have been done right at Palace, but it is the timing of them that has been key. The board acted early to replace Holloway once it became clear that he was out of his depth; they put their faith in Pulis and instilled in him the confidence that may have been removed by his abrupt dismissal at Stoke; and they have backed him shrewdly in the transfer market whilst rivals have overspent on seemingly sub-par players.

As the chant suggests, it would appear that Tony Pulis really does possess a magic hat. Or perhaps Stoke were wrong, and he is sim-ply a damn fine top-flight football manager.

Toby Skeels

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things at Selhurst Park have been going a lot better of late...here we take a look at the impact Tony Pulis has had for The

Eagles.

C R Y S T A L P U L I S

Spotted Out and About

While on a recent trip to New York City the adjacent photo was spotted in a bar in Williamsburg. Now, one might jump to the conclusion that this sticker found it’s way into one of the city’s

many sports bars, but that assumption would be wrong. This was clocked in the unisex bathroom of a tiki bar; totem poles, sand on

the floor - the works.

Still, regardless of it’s location, I think we can all get behind the message. It’s great to see the spirit of inclusivity promoted at FC

St. Pauli working it’s way around the globe, one tiki bar at a time...

C O M I N G S O O N

BOBBY ROPE:TIME-STRIKER

WANTED

CARTOONIST TO LEND A HAND

GET IN TOUCH

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Advertisement

Tony Evans Interview – Part One

Tony Evans, Football Editor of The Times newspaper, reveals all in this in-depth interview about the ethos of Liverpool Football Club, the cultural history of the

fanbase and how it affected his path through journalism

Richard Yates: Your book is subtitled “Pride and Passion the Liverpool Way.” What is the Liverpool way?

Tony Evans: There’s no Liverpool way, really. The only Liverpool way is winning. That’s what all the players of the period said. There’s a great mythology that we did things different, we did things simple. In training they concentrated on one and two-touch stuff – get the ball and move into space, get the ball and move into space. One touch, one touch, one touch. That’s what it was all about, really. When players talk about the seventies and eighties, they compare it to the Barcelona tiki taka – don’t dwell on the ball. They all tell stories of when they first came to the club. John Wark tells a story: he got the ball in training, knocked a good ball, and stood back and admired it. Ronnie Moran was on his back straight away, going: “Don’t do that! Never, ever admire the ball – you move, you get into position.” When you compare it to people who were hailed as big stars at the time, like Glenn Hoddle, who did stop and admire the passes, we did things very differently. [The players] distilled The Liverpool Way into various catchphrases. They said, “We’re trying to make each other look good; every one of us worked for each other.”

And was that instilled by [Bill] Shankly?

Yeah, that was all the way from Shankly. But he also created a Liverpool Way off the pitch. He came to Liverpool not just with a football culture but with a philosophy of life. He was a socialist who came into a socialist city. And he created a sense among the fans that they were part of it with that saying: “My belief in socialism is of people working for each other, and everyone shares the rewards. That’s in football, and that’s in life.” He brought it into Liverpool, and he convinced people that this was the right way. And obviously that chimed perfectly in an increasingly left-wing city at the time. So people started believing that the Liverpool Way was to associate these political beliefs with the football.

By the mid-to-late 1980s, Thatcherism was at its height and the two best teams in the country were Liverpool and Everton. Was football a way of sticking two fingers up

and saying, “We’ll show them”?

It was a time when the city was politically, culturally, economically under pressure, when the Scouse accent was being demonised as being associated with violence and crime. We were going across the world, and we were beating everyone. And you look at the iconography of Liverpool,

in particular, more than ever...[clenches fist and places it over his heart]...the blood red, the Liverbird. The success of the football club became sort of a flag bearer for the city, and, for want of a better phrase, two fingers up to everyone who derided us and mocked us. Our message to the world was: this is a great city. And that was one of the ways of expressing the greatness. People might laugh at that, but it was clear in the thought process of those who went to the match. Again, at the time, most travelling supporters – away fans – were thought to be right-wing, National Front. Our boys were very left-wing. During the miners’ strikes and the city council crisis, we came down to London – I remember the ’84 League Cup final, coming into Euston, and everyone

was wearing red and blue “I Support Liverpool City Council” badges, running off into the concourse at Euston singing “Derek Hatton, we’ll support you ever more.”

You’ve just nicked my next question – I saw a clip of the 1986 FA Cup final [between Everton and Liverpool] when both sets of fans came down together on the train, bonding, laughing and joking. Why doesn’t that happen anymore?

Relations between the two sets of fans have gotten a lot more poisonous. They started getting worse around the mid-nineties, when some Evertonians started invoking Heysel, and this great myth – the Heysel leap of faith – that if it wasn’t for Heysel then Everton would have won the European Cup the next year, and would go on to be one of the dominant clubs of Europe. Clearly Heysel affected Everton Football Club, and not for the better. But you know what? Of all the bad things that happened surrounding that day, that’s the least of it. It doesn’t help currently that Liverpool fans went a long time without taking true responsibility and culpability for their actions that day. So this poison built up, and sadly there’s a substantial undercurrent of it, especially among the

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The Sharpener – Feature Interview

young lads. The young lads dislike each other in a way that we never did. There was never quite “the Friendly Derby” of popular myth – town on derby night always got a bit Wild West towards the end, but you’d wake up on Sunday or Monday, everyone would go back to work. There might have been a bust-up between mates, but you’d let it go. “It was derby night,” everyone would say. It’s a magical night where no crime is prosecuted! But these days it’s not like that. In recent months they’ve been attacking each other’s pubs for god’s sake. It was never like that, and I find it a little bit sad. There was no substantial level of hatred between Liverpool and Everton. Yeah, we’d irritate each other, yeah, we’d wanna beat the hell out of each other on derby day. Not physically – in the match. But there was no hatred. Sadly there’s hatred creeping in, which I still find very, very depressing.

Now Liverpool are owned by an American consortium [Fenway Sports Group], after another American consortium [run by Tom Hicks and George Gillette]. Is that compatible with the ethos of socialism that Shankly was talking about, or is it a reality of modern football?

It never was. Even in the fifties and sixties the aspirations of the ownership and the aspirations of the fans ran along parallel lines and never met. A lot of people say its irrational putting so much of your culture and your belief – your political beliefs – into a football club that was clearly being run as a business, and was a business. So I don’t think it’s changed in that sense. It was always incompatible – it’s no more compatible now. It’s more obvious when you look at American venture capitalists. Fenway Sports Group are not like the previous American owners.

They’re competent?

I wouldn’t quite go that far, but it doesn’t strike me that they’re in to take money out [of the club].

They’re not asset stripping.

Yeah, exactly. Whereas Gillette and Hicks wanted to get in quicker, big sale, and make money out of it. I do yearn for the days when you didn’t know who the owners were, you didn’t care who the owners were. You knew in the back of your mind that they were making money, and that they didn’t really want to be associated with the likes of you – snotty nosed types who went on the trains. And you knew you were getting looked down [upon] in some sort of way. It’s difficult now when all the talk is of owners and money and finance. The great thing about football when I was young was that you never thought about money. It never occurred to you to think about how much money your club had.

In the final chapter of your book, you touch upon themes that are quite universal to any club: “Each party [fans and owners] takes what they want from the relationship and chooses to ignore the negative aspects of the exchange.” Is that sustainable? Is that going to keep going until the end of time, or will the point come where enough is enough?

I think the point will come when enough is enough. But I think what’s happened is there’s been a sea change in the nature of supporting football. Most people support football through the medium of television now. Whereas when I was going to the match as a kid, if you wanted to see the game – the ninety minutes – you had to go. Until I was in my mid-twenties there’d only be one televised game a year, the [FA] Cup final. There’d be a highlights package once a week. Those who went [to the game] were the only ones who truly knew how the team played and what they looked like. Nowadays everyone sees it on television, everyone goes on YouTube, everyone knows everything. And it’s created a generation who buy into all the mythologies. “We need money to compete, we need top players to compete.” The mad thing is they’ve created a generation of football fans who believe that winning really matters. And the essential truth about football as I knew it, and how it existed for a hundred years until the Premier League and all the money came into it, is that it wasn’t about winning. It was about going to the match with your mates, and the adventures you got up to. I was lucky: Liverpool won. But you know what? If they hadn’t, I still would have gone. Now people sit on their couches. If you go to an away game and you get beat, what do you do? You leave the ground, you look

for somewhere to have a pint, you have a pint in a strange city, you meet strange people – you get up to all manner of adventures when you’re a young lad. You meet girls from there, the local boys don’t like it. You get up to adventures that you’d never get up to before. If you’re sat watching it on telly, what do you do? You see ‘em get beat, you kick the cat and go to bed angry. By the time we got home from a match, if we’d got beat, we’d kinda forgotten we’d got beat. It was all about the adventure and the stories. I go home

[to Liverpool] now, in my mid-fifties, and we still argue about incidents that happened in the late seventies or early eighties. We’re like boring old men – we still tell each other tales about it. What are you going to tell if you’ve watched it on telly: “Remember that night we watched it on telly?” So it’s created a very different culture and atmosphere.

But now the debate is so instantaneous, you don’t even have to wait until you get home...

And most of these people are uninformed. We would get off the train at Lime Street [in Liverpool] and we’d go into the Yankee, the American bar. People would come up to you and say: “What were they like today?” Because you’d been there and they hadn’t, and they wanted to know. Now nobody asks anyone anything, no one tells anyone anything, because everyone knows everything. It’s a change in the way people look at the game, and I don’t think it’s a change for the better.

Do you think that match-going fans can actually change how their club is run without simply boycotting the game and taking money out of the club? Isn’t money the only language that really talks? I’m thinking Hull, Cardiff…

It’s difficult, because there’s two lines of argument. If you’re a Cardiff fan you might say, “I’ve had this all my life, I’m not letting Vincent Tan take it away from me.” And then there’s

11

They’re Competent?

I wouldn’t quite go that far, but it doesn’t strike

me that they’re in to take money out.

the other line of argument, which is that what Vincent Tan has done has fundamentally changed the nature of the club you supported. I have some sympathy with both arguments. I think people commit to football because, obviously, there is the potential to make huge amounts of money. Even clubs that appear to be losing lots of money generally aren’t. As I always say, in what other business could you asset strip on an annual basis, and people come back for more? These rich businessmen who say, “I got into it for love, and I’m losing money” – very few people come out the other side losing money. The other classic example is: rich businessman buys club, and says, “I have to loan the club money for it to survive.” What they normally do is short-term loans, bridging loan rates at 23, 25 per cent. Take the money out after three months, loan it again. You can make a very, very nice profit doing that. So there’s loads of mythology about that. What do you do? Liverpool fans fought Gillette and Hicks, but did they really have any effect? Not really in the end. A bank decided what was going to happen.

They ran out of money...

Yeah, they ran out of money and the bank pulled the plug. Have we any control over it? I’d love to say yes, I’d love the romantic side of it. But we probably haven’t. And until the financial bubble bursts, we probably won’t. If it does, hopefully it will be the fans who find a way of getting into joint ownership. On the other hand, you look at what’s gone on at Swansea, you’ve got to say that’s turned out reasonably well. The fans’ trust has a 20 per cent share. It’s a bit more than paying lip service to them. But is it our game? Probably only in our minds.

Spirit of Shankly [a Liverpool supporters’ group] have a manifesto, the ultimate aim of which is fan ownership of the club. One of the primary aims is being represented in the boardroom. Is that an achievable goal?

If the ownership [Fenway Sports Group] stays for the long term, which I personally think they will, they could consider it. They’ve already set up a fans’ forum to address problems supporters have. I personally think if I was running a club I’d always have a fan on the board. And I wouldn’t have a tame one, I’d have someone who could give you input and could help avoid some of the pitfalls that the people who run clubs just walk into. Let’s face it, [Laughs] Liverpool have walked into more obvious traps than most clubs. So I’d get someone in who is bright, who has a great sense of the culture of the club, and who is not a yes-man, who’d be prepared to tell people that they were wrong. I think it’s healthy.

You grew up in the period when The End magazine came out of Liverpool. How influential was it among your demographic, and in the fanzine movement which blossomed in the eighties?We started seeing The End getting sold around, in the American bar, in the pubs and on the trains. You’d see it and you’d buy it, and it was funny because it mocked ‘Scally’ life while the people who were creating it were part of Scally life. You’d see Peter Hooton [creator of The End and founding member of the Farm] around. It took the punk ethos of fanzines and music. But The End wasn’t a football magazine, it was a lifestyle magazine. It was about clothes, it was about drinking, it was about music, interviewing the bands. And they took the piss out of people – Billy Bullshitter, who told all these outrageous stories about what he’d been

up to, robbing and fighting. Joe Wag...What it did most of all was it gave people like myself – whom the outside world viewed as nihilistic and violent, out of control adolescents – somewhere within the boundaries of the football club where you can be creative. You can make art for god’s sake. The drawings in The End that [Mick] Potter did were brilliant.

The End found a cult readership in West Yorkshire, among them the guy who became editor of Loaded magazine...

James Brown.

Yeah. He said: “To those of us looking into Liverpool through The End, it seemed a world of fashion-obsessed lunatics with their own language, heroes and priorities.” What were the fashion trends of ‘Scallies’ back then?

It changed. It started off, I’d say, in ‘76, with the round-necked Adidas T-shirts and Adidas Samba [trainers]. By ‘77 people were wearing Fred Perrys. When we went to Europe the boys went on the rob – robbed different trainers, Adidas trainers, multi-coloured ones, polo shirts that looked most like Fred Perrys, and they’d come back with Lacostes. So we were all wearing Lacostes. And then the sportswear thing came in the early ‘80s, people wearing Fila, Kappa and all that. Back then, those of us who were on the first crest of it had changed. We weren’t wearing labels, we were wearing John Smedley wool crewnecks, £100 suede boots, Hush Puppies. It was a drabber look, a more mature look.

How quickly would it change?

At its peak between ‘79 and ‘82 it would change on a weekly basis. [Laughs] Some of the shops in Liverpool would have a sign: “For one week only.” It was literally like that. People would be buying and changing. There was a period

12

The Sharpener – Feature Interview

where it would be bold primary colours. In the early stages people wore mohair jumpers. At one time it was very sort of effete, with the bubble wedge. I remember going up to Middlesbrough, coming off the train and the mob waiting for us, looking at us and going, “They’re all queers, look at the way they’re dressed!” And we looked it compared to them. They had denims on and big wide flares and denim jackets. I remember going to Aberdeen in ‘83, and when we came off the trains and coaches, those boys up there, their eyes would boggle out. They couldn’t believe what they were seeing, the way we looked. It probably settled down by ‘83. By then I was 22, so for me it had settled down. A mate of mine by then was cutting all the crocodiles off his Lacostes, saying “I don’t wanna look like those Cockneys.”

What did he do with them?

He threw them away and kept the T-shirts. The period between ‘76 and ‘82 there was a massive change. You have to factor into it punk and mod. The scal look looked very close to the mod, certainly in the early days. And it changed. You never knew what was going to be “in.” A lot of it was based around which consignment of what leisure shirt had been stolen.

Peter Hooton said that he started The End as an alternative to zines written for “student types and arty-farty types.” How big a factor was class in the fanzine movement and being a football fan?

In the fanzine movement, we felt fanzines were middle class. They were produced by the middle classes. Football felt working class, which is one of the amazing things about The End – it tapped into our lives and opened up a lot of things. I went to university, and got kicked out, but I was the first member of my family to go. The school we went to didn’t send many people. In a sense I wasn’t as conscious of class when I was living in Liverpool at the time because everyone I knew was like me. The big consciousness of the time was religion, the religious divide. You’re either orange or green [Protestant or Catholic]. Class didn’t come into it until I went to university, and then dealing with the middle class was a real shock for me. One, I’d been led to believe that they were more intelligent than they were. [Laughs] Secondly, I’d never met people with a sense of entitlement. And I suppose that was one of the things that, again, is part of the radicalisation process. You just were what you were, you lived how you lived. I think in many ways it’s one of the big problems in British society, there was no great aspiration there. The aspirations were different. You wanted to do well, but in the constrictions of how you saw your life. You wanted a few bob, you wanted to be recognised as a hard man, you wanted to be dressed well. No one led you to believe you could achieve [other] aspirations by developing through education. When I did my A Levels, I’d had an offer from Keele, and a teacher said to me, “what did they offer you?” I said two B’s. And he said, “forget it.” So they dropped the offer. I had the right hump about it, and I felt it was a big mistake, and I got the two B’s. But the thing is, no one expected you to do anything in terms of education or creativity, except perhaps in music, where people taught themselves.

How much genuine racism was there on the terraces at Anfield in the seventies and eighties? Was it as intense as is portrayed?

Yeah, it was bad. By the early eighties, certainly amongst the circles I mixed in, it had changed considerably, because in those left-wing circles it was very ‘right on.’ It was a relatively advanced component of Liverpool. We were not having the right-wing and the racists. Having said that, I’d say there was a large proportion of people for whom casual racism was very common. Monkey noises for black players was not unusual.

Opposing players or Liverpool players?

Opposing players. We had Howard Gayle, who was the only black player [at Liverpool]. He didn’t play very often. I never heard Gayle getting any stick. People were casually racist, as you would have thought. I remember the whole ground making monkey noises at Clive Best when he was there for West Ham. It had calmed down a bit by the early ‘80s. I think the whole mindset of Liverpool had changed, certainly among the younger people. I remember the National Front selling papers outside the Kop in ‘77-78. By ‘79-80 they’d been punched away, literally given the kicking of their lives. And so the mood had changed. The British Movement came to Liverpool, and most people went to meet them. There was a fair proportion of students there who would have

been easy pickings for these people. But then our boys came down, and Everton boys as well, and when they arrived on the scene there was only one winner.

Terry Christian said that anyone with a northern accent working in the London-based media is assumed to be thick. How were you treated when you started off?

Even now you can see a switch go off in some people’s brains when you start talking, and they assume you’re stupid. It’s always most amusing when you blindside them. In many ways it’s an advantage because they don’t expect much. [Laughs] You can blow them away like that. But yeah, there is an assumption. I think there’s less now than when Terry Christian came through the door twenty or twenty-five years ago. It was probably tougher then, and I think it’s a bit easier now. Bizarrely, I think in the Murdoch papers, because of him being an Australian and a radical rather than the conservative that mythology has him, I think there’s more opportunity there for people from working class backgrounds, which is bizarre because people would say the opposite. Yeah, there’s still people who look at me and think, “Thick bastard,” which makes it all the funnier when you can do something that really shocks them.

You worked for Chelsea...

[Laughs] Yeah.

In your book you reserve a particular contempt for Chelsea and their fans. Why is that?

It’s not contempt...

13

I remember going to Aberdeen in ‘83, and when

we came off the trains and coaches, those boys

up there, their eyes would boggle out.

The Sharpener – Feature Interview

It comes across as contempt.

It’s not meant to be. You’d use the word...I was gonna use the word contempt! [Laughs.] Not only were they the employer who got rid of me, Chelsea are not very lovable. There’s a lot of people who worked for them, and still work for them, that I have a lot of time for – good people. As a club they don’t appear very loveable, and probably never had been. In a perverse way I actually have a soft spot for Chelsea, although Chelsea fans would never believe me.

Is that due to your personal experiences there?

Yeah, as I say, good people there. I’d always hope they lost every game, even when I was there. I tried to do my best for them. I don’t have any contempt for them. The thing about Chelsea is: United are the enemy. Chelsea are desperate to make Liverpool fans hate them. We don’t really care about them. This sounds really bad, but I’ve used the analogy before: Chelsea are annoying – it’s like stepping in dog shit. It’s a pain in the arse, but you rinse it off, you wipe it off, and in five years you won’t remember it. But United? The stink of them will be around forever.

United are the dog barking over the fence...

Yeah! [Laughs] There was an element of piss-taking in there. What I have contempt for is the way the modern game has got on. The Chelsea fans that I see there now are by and large not the Chelsea fans that I used to see when I went there in the ‘80s. The demographic of them has changed. The whole nature of football supporting there has changed. Some people say it’s good, some people say it’s bad. I have more time for the old school Chelsea loons then I have for the ‘Giles-es’ – Giles Smith works for the paper – the ones who were screaming “murderer” at me.

You worked for Ken Bates, who is in that long line of things about Chelsea that no one likes. What was he like to work for?

Strange. If you caught him before one o’clock he was quite rational. And then he’d go off for lunch, and who knows how he’d come back. Ken in many ways was a genius. He seemed to compartmentalise everything. To use a quote

from the Rutles: “His left hand never knew that his right hand was screwing.” He had a peculiar genius – and he keeps going. He could be very funny, he could be very stupid – mostly he could be very stupid. It’s hard to know exactly how to think about him, even all these years on. Even when I saw him he’d affect not to recognise me. He’d be like, who are you? And you’d seen him an hour before.

Were you a press officer?

No. Ken said they’d never have a press officer while he was alive. So I was editing Football Monthly, and I had the title Publications Editor. But the whole thing was a madhouse. He was a strange character. There were some great stories about him knocking around, probably best told when he’s dead. Part of his game was keeping you off balance all the time. When you caught him and he was rational, sober, he could be quite reasonable.

Did you ever talk to him about his idea of having electrified fences, bearing in mind how disastrous that would have been for ground control and ground safety...

Ken always had a great eye for the headline. I don’t even think he really countenanced electric fences. But I think he knew it was to keep him in the public eye. The whole notion of what Chelsea was, and is, is complex, and I don’t think we’ll ever truly get to the bottom of it. For Ken, Chelsea was a vehicle for wider interests...I’ll probably leave it there, in case of litigation!

***Part 2 of the Tony Evans Interview will be published in The Sharpener Issue Two***

14

The Sharpener – Feature Interview

As a gay football fan I am occasionally told: “You’re not very gay. You like football.” The re-mark is delivered quite innocently, as though my interest in the sport were a legitimate subject of curiosity. Often I don’t know how to respond. I’m not at all offended by the remark, and I under-stand why it is said. But the more I contemplate the notion, it seems absurd.

I fell in love with football when I was six years old. Ten years later, I found that I loved boys too. The origins of my sexuality concerned me very little. It was something that, once I realised it, make absolute sense. The same feeling hit me the first time I sipped a White Russian, or watched the first episode of Mad Men, or donned a pair of skis…how has it taken me this long?!

Discovering your sexuality is rather like finding your football club: you don’t choose it, it choos-es you. It’s an integral part of who you are, and it always will be. You’re wedded to it for life. Sometimes you wear it with pride; in other situ-ations it’s best to keep it to yourself. It connects you to people you’ve never met and never will meet. You make friends and enemies by it. You keep artefacts of it on your wall. It can be used against you; it can be a defence mechanism. It can define your relationship to other people, and alter their perceptions of you. It contains severe ups and downs, and can accompany some of the best and worst moments in your life.

I know that someone of my sexual orientation is expected to prefer more feminine pursuits to the gritty, competitive rough-and-tumble of Eng-lish football. But I played and watched football throughout my childhood, and it came to define

much of who I was and how I thought of myself. I wrote, discussed, watched and obsessed over it. I felt proud to share a field with my teammates, be it in the playground at lunchtime or on a mud-dy pitch on a Sunday morning. It was a way of fighting my corner; something I could stick my flag on. I loved showing up the cool kids with a nutmeg or a quick change of feet – Who knew the quiet boy could play football? I wouldn’t have surrendered it for anything.

I remember the day when it truly hit me that I wasn’t into girls. I was sixteen, in my first year of sixth form, and I had developed a fascination with a boy in the year above. What was so spe-cial about him that made me feel stunned and light-headed? One morning, he walked past me to the window of the common room and climbed up onto the windowsill. He was wearing shorts and a T-shirt, but at that moment he felt over-dressed. For the rest of the day, all I wanted was to be near him. I knew what this meant. But there were more important matters to consid-er: it was the night of the Champions’ League semi-final first leg between Manchester United and AC Milan. He was bumped down to second billing.

Of course there are footballers who I find attrac-tive. There are one or two I’ve even had a ‘thing’ for. But when those players cross the white line, all of my desires go out of the window. I’m as mad, irrational, capricious and judgemental as any other football fan. I can shout abuse at him without a second thought. It’s a form of insani-ty, I suppose. But show me a sane football fan, and I’ll show you someone who isn’t much into football.

Q U E E R A S S T O K E

15

one fan’s point of view of what it’s like to be a gay football fan in modern Britain.

The Sharpener – Viewpoint

Isthmian Premier League: Dulwich Hamlet FC vs Harrow Borough FC

Champion Hill, 15:00 Saturday January 25 2014

£10 Adults, £4 Concessions, £1.50 Programme; Attendance 810

Result: 3-2

M A T C H F E A T U R E

I arrived at Champion Hill – Dulwich Hamlet’s home since 1931 – a tad earlier than intended. However, I was pleasantly surprised to be greeted by hustle and bustle some 45 min-utes before kick-off. The (relatively) newly renovated stadi-um is hidden behind a Sainsbury’s superstore, and the walk to the turnstiles is jacket-soakingly close to a vigorous hand car wash. It is not the most auspicious of entrances, but it’s one that is embraced by home and away fans alike.

As you pass through the gate you’re greeted by an impres-sive home stand which seats 300 people and houses a large, reasonably priced social club. The place feels homely, and there is a real community vibe in the air. Warm greetings are exchanged between old friends and acquaintances, and there is a buoyancy to the home support galvanised by Dul-wich’s strong league position – the team sits second in the Isthmian Premier League.

Gazing around the small ground, a few things catch the eye: the overwhelming abundance of pink and navy – Dulwich’s home colours – with every other home fan appearing to own a scarf; the mismatch of practice balls pot-shotted by the players during the unmanaged warm-up; and the caravan flogging teas and pies be-side the wooden shed selling scarfs and replica shirts. The set-up seems a time-honoured template for local matchdays and runs like clockwork.

Football hipsters hang around, noticeable by their trendy hairstyles, beards and skinny jeans. By no means do they dominate the support, though. Fans of all ages are here: Children run around the gaps outside of the pitch, amusing themselves with a ball which has seen better days; old boys lean up against the metal fence which surrounds the whole playing area, supping from plastic pint pots as they wait for the game to start.

As the match kicks off it suddenly occurs to me how close the dugouts are to the pitch; an overzealous slid-ing tackle could see a player end up in the manager’s lap. The earthy smell of the grass fills the nostrils from pitch-side, reminiscent of matchdays at school; a sen-sory stimulus rarely experienced at a top tier game. A fan standing close by has brought along his whippet, its tail tucked firmly between its legs, perhaps an ex-ception to the rule that real dogs shouldn’t wear coats.

Dulwich start as the better team with the lion’s share of possession, probing away down the Harrow Borough left. Harrow, in an all-scarlet strip, have set up in a 4-5-1 with a tall centre-forward. Dulwich start in a ‘traditional’ 4-4-2 with the diminutive Turkish No 10

Erhun Oztumer linking the play between the midfield and the striker. In the early stages the midfield is very congested, and the flow of the game is hindered by the poor playing surface. Yet in the 11th minute Dulwich spring the offside trap, with Oztumer getting in behind the defence and finding the wing-er Jordan Clarke, who scores with a right-footed curler from the left side, bending the ball around the goalkeeper.

The early strike gets the fans behind the goal up and singing: “Gavin Rose’s pink and blue army!” The advantage is short-lived, though, as Harrow equalise on the half-hour mark with a good lobbed finish from close range. Two minutes later the first booking of the game arrives, with the Harrow right-back penalised for bringing down Hamlet’s No 7.

* * *

At half-time there’s a buzz around the Dulwich fans as they pause for refreshments. It has been a good performance and, despite the 1-1 scoreline, they have largely outplayed the vis-itors. There’s a long queue for the burger van – some things never change no matter what level of football you’re at. I nip up to the social to take in the atmosphere from the vantage point at the top of the stand. There’s a real excitement in the air, with only a few stragglers watching rugby on a TV at the far end of the bar. There seems a keen anticipation for the second half.

* * *

Dulwich start the second period positively, and it pays off when forward Kevin James scores a poacher’s header from close range. As a cow bell chimes up behind the goal, rolls of thunder can be heard overhead, the gathering storm as om-inous as Dulwich’s attacking threat. Minutes later the Harrow

goalkeeper punts a long goal-kick up the field only for it to float back towards him at the end of its tra-jectory, the wind at the open Champion Hill making its influence felt.

In the 70th minute Dulwich go 3-1 to the good. Again the star is Oztumer, combining neatly on the edge of the box to go one-on-one with the goalkeeper, slotting calmly past his outstretched arm and into the bottom corner. Five minutes later the heavens open, and many fans (myself included) flee towards the shelter of the main stand.

As Harrow look to salvage the game, they take off the midfielder Danny Dyer, much to the amusement of the home fans. After the switch they go 4-4-2, and the change in shape almost pays off instantly with some good play around the Dulwich box, draw-ing a foul from which the subsequent set piece fizzes narrowly wide. Harrow are handed the initiative late on as Dean Lodge gets himself sent off for a second bookable offence after a crunching tackle.

By the 83rd minute the rain is truly biblical as light-ning forks overhead. The referee tries to continue the game, but it is quickly apparent that play has been made impossible due to the amount of water pooling onto the pitch and unable to drain properly. As the players rush back to the dressing rooms, the PA pipes up with the official attendance: a formidable 810.

Play resumes five minutes later – the storm has passed but the surface remains boggy. In a final twist, Harrow put in an excellent set piece from the right-hand side which is ably nodded into the net at

the back post by the Borough No 9, who has toiled tirelessly all game. It is now a backs-against-the-wall affair for Dul-wich, who substitute the mercurial Oztumer to add an extra defensive presence in the final moments. Dulwich survive the two minutes of added time, and are deserving winners of a difficult fixture.

All in all it was a thoroughly enjoyable day at Champion Hill, an exhilarating non-league experience more entertain-ing than many of the higher tier fixtures I have watched this season. After the game the Dulwich players applaud the stal-wart fans behind the goal as they soak up the cheers from the home support. They leave the field to a chorus of “We’ll win the League at Champion Hill.” Time will tell whether that prophecy is fulfilled.

21

The nature of Charles Reep’s effect on football in this country has attracted much comment, debate and gnashing of teeth. There is little agreement amongst the football cognoscenti as to whether his analysis brought the game into a shining new era, or stunted its growth for a generation. Then again, his relative obscurity may mean that, unless you’re interested in the history of stats, you may not have heard of him. I believe that criticisms of Reep, due to his belief in the effectiveness of the long ball game, are

misguided, as they fundamentally misjudge what Reep was about.

(Reep himself misjudged what he was)

The Formation of The Football AccountantThorold Charles Reep was born on the 22nd of September 1904, in Torpoint, Cornwall, one of three brothers. He attended Plymouth High School after winning a scholarship and left in 1923 to become an accountant. He worked during the day and studied for his accountancy exams at night, qualifying in 1928. At this point he decided to join the RAF as a Pilot Officer in the newly formed RAF accountancy division. He had a long-standing interest in football and sport in general, having represented Devon and Cornwall at tennis and been a regular at Plymouth Argyle games. But his

interest in applying his specific skill set to “solving football” was piqued after attending a talk by Charles Jones (then-captain of Herbert Chapman’s all-conquering Arsenal). Jones described to the attendees a system whereby the two wingers had an agreement concerning crosses and ball positioning in certain scenarios during the game. Life, marriage to his wife Evelyn, and then Adolf Hitler conspired to delay Reep’s quantitative analysis of football for 17 years, but in the meantime he built a subjective knowledge of the game by playing and managing RAF teams.

Notional Analysis is BornAs Richard Pollard noted, there are few examples in human history where the genesis of a specific activity can be pinpointed to a specific moment in time. The birth of football analytics is one of them. At 15:50 on March 18, 1950, Charles Reep – having at this point risen to the rank of Wing Commander – touched pen to paper and began to record passing movements during the second half of Swindon Town’s home tie against Bristol Rovers. That day at the County Ground, Reep began to use a beta-version of his shorthand which he would use to fully record matches for the next 52 years. There are scant details of what his system looked like

(some were published in an obscure article in 1961 that I could not get hold of) except that it broke the game down into passes and their outcomes. Each relevant action performed by a player was denoted by a shorthand code which, after a few years, became so complex that Reep would transpose his notes to rolls of wallpaper so they could be visualized in their entirety. From this beautiful cartography of the game Reep calculated his ‘event frequencies.’ He thought he could solve the game on this basis – but it proved to be Reep’s downfall.

What Did Charles Reep Want to do for Football?

“Provide a counter to reliance upon memory, tradition and personal impressions that led to speculation and soccer ideologies (personal communication)” – Charles Reep

What Did Charles Reep Do For The Game?

22

Due to his day job Reep was posted all over England during the period of 1928 to 1955. This aspect of his career governed his first contact with the professional game when in 1951, through a mutual friend, he became involved with Brentford. The Bees had been on shocking form, and were bottom of the Second Division. After

Reep’s arrival Brentford had won thirteen of their last fourteen fixtures.

Here are the ideas that informed Reep’s Theorem of Football, based upon frequencies he observed:

The First Soccer Analyst

• It takes ten shots to get one goal (on average)• 50 per cent of goals are scored from zero or one passes• 80 per cent of goals are scored within three passes or fewer • Regaining possession within the shooting area is a vital source of goal-scoring opportunities• 50 per cent of goals come from breakdowns in a team’s own half of the pitch

Reep thought that the most likely reason for these figures was that football, in his view, is basically a random process. Or rather that a great deal of football is governed by chance, which is not entirely untrue – after all, the bookies’ favourite wins just over half of the time. In this respect, Reep believed that the most effective way to play the game was to ‘put the ball into the mixer.’ Wasteful midfield play was rendered efficient, as the effect of ‘useless’ multiple-pass moves was reduced. Random chance allowed more frequent regains of the ball in goal-scoring positions, resulting in more shots and more goals.

The eagle-eyed among you may be thinking: how many passes make up the average passing move? Well, as pointed out by Bobby

McMahon and Jonathan Wilson, about 90% of moves don’t go above three passes. This, along with the stat that 50% of goals come from breakdowns in a team’s own half, is telling. Rather than showing any ideological bias, Reep just didn’t ask the right questions of his data. He was after all an accountant; he counted things and he didn’t understand the need for hypothesis testing, and probably wasn’t even aware of game theory. His early success at Brentford showed up Reep’s statistical naivety: he interpreted the run of wins as proof of his genius, but a proper statistician might have questioned whether this was simply a regression to the mean. By rallying late in the season, Brentford had ended up where they should have been all along.

Mainstream ApprovalA posting to Shropshire led to Reep striking up a relationship with Wolves manager Stan Cullis. He quickly became a correspondent and helped to prepare the Wolves side for their exhibition match against the mighty Hungarian side Honved. After leaving the RAF in 1955, the Wing Commander ended up in the employ of Sheffield Wednesday as the first ever professional football analyst, for the princely sum of £750 per annum (c£14k). At this point his employment history becomes more obscure and he seems to have ended up more as a casual observer and informant at many different clubs. But he also happened to meet Dr. B Benjamin, an obscure statistician who helped Reep to get published in a few editions of the Journal of The Royal Statistical Society. Here was an attempt to strong-arm Reep’s data into a true statistical framework.

Is passing random? Reep and Benjamin certainly thought so. Football is undeniably a game of skill, but chance does seem to play a large role. According to the figures it appeared that every time a pass was made the chances were roughly 50:50 as to whether it would make its target. The frequency of successful passing almost obeys the statistics of the coin toss.Consider this: if each time you flip a coin, with heads a successful pass and tails a failed one, an unbroken chain of heads becomes less likely – making the chances of an Argentinian 40-pass move vanishingly small. At this point Benjamin should have explained that the frequency of these events in football resembled a negative binomial distribution. They then tried to shoehorn the rest of Reep’s stats into this system with diagrams and equations such as the following.

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This meant that football was being considered as a process of almost entire randomness (obeying stochastic mathematics) where the smallest events appeared to have a great bearing on the outcome of games. This was the position of Benjamin and Reep’s 1968 paper, in which the frequency of goals was explained as obeying the mathematics of randomness. Interestingly, in 1988 an unknown League One manager asked two statisticians based at Nottingham Trent University to investigate these papers. They found that Reep was in fact right: in the 1950s goals were almost random but, after this period, the frequency of goals lessened.

(This reduction in scoring rate has plateaued from the 1990s to the present day.)

Later games began to obey something called the Poisson Distribution. This branch of stats governs only very rare events – football is a low-scoring sport, with often less than three goals per game. Reep had delineated a very real change in the game’s figures, its professionalization, and its journey from the mud soaked quagmires of the 1950s to the undersoil-heated hallowed turf of the 1990s Premier League.

Era of AcolytesFrom the 1980s onward Reep authored a training manual for the FA, and spent a lot of time in correspondence with various managers. It is for this period that he has drawn the most scorn. His most well-known acolytes were Graham Taylor, Dave Bassett and Sven-Goran Eriksson. The long ball game re-surfaced following the Dutch Total Football revolution of the 1970s. England failed, and failed again; whereas Norway under Egil Olsen (big fan of Reepy) prospered. Many commentators despise the fact that Reep was taken so seriously by Taylor and others. They claim that he set the national game back a generation. Although this may be the case, the

arguable primacy of the Premier League over European leagues would suggest that the real problems came from the influence of Reep in less skilled, grass roots football. This, after all, has the most bearing on the quality of the national side in that it is responsible for the production of young talent. Some commentators have suggested that the failure of route one football, due to its faith in statistics, is somehow partly responsible for the anti-intellectualism in British football today. But this is only true in part. Reep’s ideas mislead people because they were prepared to unquestioningly follow them, rather than adapt and improve them.

Why Numbers Alone Can’t Win You GamesFootballers aren’t the smartest bunch. They cling to faith (Pray for Muamba, rather than fund Latah’s research into stress-induced heart failure). Restructuring your game on the basis of a few figures is foolhardy. You have to strike a balance. The use of statistics in biology (of which football is a part) is typically used to tell scientists when two populations are somehow different. What Reep did was to analyse events and record them, because he wanted to improve the game. These are two extremely different aspects of scientific machinery. Changing the game suggests the need to test interventions; changes in the style of play. What Reep did was generate a hypothesis – no more – that the long ball would

win you games. To test this properly he would have had to get half of the league to play long ball football and the other half to play tika-taka without the other team knowing for a season. Then an exhaustive analysis of the relative league positions and results would tell you which ‘treatment’ of the game was most effective. This would have been an impossible task then as it is now. Biology and consequently football is often more subjective and more of an art than we may suppose. In any other sphere Reep’s absolutist ideas would have been tested and subsequently discarded. But some managers are stubborn and most don’t really understand randomized control trials.

Reep and The Modern EraThe idea that the long ball should be completely discarded is somewhat strange. After all, it has functioned as an effective disruptive mode of football for Sam Allardyce, Tony Pulis and even Roberto Martinez. In the face of superior opposition in terms of passing skill, the long ball is often the best way to play. But without Reep, we would not have understood why. I think that understanding things – and employing the scientific method to prevent us from being fooled into thinking we know more than we do – is beautiful. As Immanuel Kant said: “Dare to Know.” If only more of us were like Reep and less like Taylor. Reep just needed a better understanding of his tools. I suspect that if Reep were to have been made a more central figure in English football, the positive elements of his work would have been put to better use.

The days of amateur football statisticians are somewhat numbered – football analytics is now an industry, albeit a nascent one. Each Premier League club now employs a complement of analysts using analysis software like Prozone to work out quantitatively what happened in each game. This effort serves an important purpose, as it tells the manager where the weak links are, which players are unfit and who needs to concentrate on specific elements of their training. The style of play, or the art, is still determined by the manager and the players. There may have been another at some point, but Charles Reep was the first ‘football accountant’ and consequently changed the complexion of the game forever. Wing Commander Charles Reep died in 2002 at the age of 99 in Torpoint.

Pete Wright

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What Did Charles Reep Do For The Game

S P R E A DT H E

L O V E

THE SHARPENER

S P R E A DT H E

W O R D

S P R E A DT H E

L O V E

THE SHARPENER

S P R E A DT H E

W O R D

@SharpenerZine

T H E

S E C R E T

A N A L Y S T

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Dreams of becoming an astronaut or a professional footballer begin to fade as the horrors of adult life emerge as reality, and more attainable career options have to be considered. As a lost teenager I experienced a multitude of jobs ranging from assisting entomologists to standing around with parrots on my shoulders in a pet store, yet the idealistic aspirations of my youth continued to linger. As I begrudgingly began to concede that I would never become a professional footballer, I decided to pursue a career as a coach instead.

My first steps into professional football came not as a coach but as a performance analyst with a League Two club. After 18 months of coaching courses and of coaching local amateur teams, I hoped this new position would be the perfect opportunity to gain an insight into how professional clubs operated. I was also mindful that certain influential Portuguese coaches had taken similar roles when they began working in the game. The world of professional football was at this stage pretty much foreign to me, so the example set by André Villas-Boas felt like something to be used as a guide.

As you can probably imagine, I initially struggled to contain a feeling of smugness and vindication. I had proven that the obstacles to working in professional football could be breached by an everyday person. Yet it was clear that many people, including my parents, thought I was deluded for thinking that I could ever succeed. While this role was by no means my end target, I saw it as a pretty emphatic way to answer their doubts.

My specific responsibilities, it was explained, would be to film academy and reserve matches on Saturdays, and to occasionally film the younger age groups on Sunday mornings. I would then have to provide video analysis for first team and academy matches based on a combination of the coaches’ instructions and my own observations. This seemed like an ideal opportunity to routinely study matches and work with experienced coaches in a professional

environment. But my romantic vision of arriving at the club and becoming a key part of the setup never really materialised.

After a day or two of being shown around, watching a couple of matches and being introduced to various people, it became increasingly apparent that any training for the role would be minimal. I was told: “You’ll have to go for a coffee sometime with the last guy who did it. I’m not really sure how he did everything.”

This situation was far from ideal considering that I was a 21-year-old in a completely new environment with no real idea how to behave in it. At first I didn’t see this as much of an issue, but countless problems began to surface, many of which had no obvious solution. My camera battery rarely lasted over an hour, so I was left having to awkwardly explain why I hadn’t filmed matches in their entirety. The laptop I was provided with simply wasn’t fit to edit large amounts of video footage on.

I don’t think I’ll ever forget the day I was warned of the absolute necessity to capture a French trialist’s performance in full. Out of sheer desperation I managed to find a dilapidated downstairs room with an electrical socket where I filmed the last 20 minutes of the game through a smeared, dirty window at ground level. It was the absolute best I could do, but it did little to prevent a slightly frosty atmosphere on the 40-minute minibus journey back to our own stadium.

When I eventually got hold of my predecessor on the phone, he explained that he had used his own high-spec computer and editing software, which of course was of no use to me. Gradually I overcame these niggling, frustrating issues, but I was always left with the impression that they caused a slight feeling of resentment, as though somehow it was my own fault.

My frustration was only enhanced as countless clichés about English football were repeatedly reinforced. The first time I sat

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Here The Sharpener gives you an insight into the life of an up-and-coming football analyst in the football league.

Nowadays it is easy to assume that the modern revolution of statis-tics based analysis has led to an overhaul at clubs across the land. However, as revealed in this article, that isn’t the case at all clubs.

Read on for an exposé of exactly what it’s like to take the plunge into a job in football; facilities, and attitudes, are not to be taken for

granted.

in the stand for a league match, I couldn’t help but notice that a dynamic, clever but dainty holding midfielder was effortlessly finding diagonal pockets of space, yet the defenders and goalkeeper hadn’t passed the ball to him once in the first 30 minutes. I asked the coach beside me why the other players were struggling to spot him, and the answer rather soiled my innocence: “They can see him but they just don’t trust the short pass in their own half.”

Despite being the most technically gifted player on the pitch, he had been made redundant. Our team was left playing a 10-v-11 game as a result. Rather than coaching his teammates to make better use of him, the player was soon removed from the team and eventually transfer listed. Unsurprisingly, he now starts every week in a higher division.

The mismanagement of talented young individuals is a recurring theme, particularly when players get to the ‘make or break’ age of 17 or 18. Sometimes there are youth matches between hardened 18-year-olds and teams primarily made up of players coming from the younger age groups. This is an inevitability, owing to the differing methods of clubs and the various stages the players happen to be at. The result is that some games are horribly unbalanced.

In one academy game we were lucky enough to win by a 10 goal margin. The opposition manager, an immediately recognisable former Premier League player, was simply unable to offer any form of psychological guidance or technical advice to his devastated players – during or after the match. As ever in this situation, he put the comprehensive defeat down to a lack of desire. There is clearly a fundamental problem with ex-pros being fast-tracked into significant coaching roles – while it may seem like the perfect foundation for their future managerial careers, it comes as the cost of the players’ development. These favours for old mates are performed at the expense of the club’s future.

The star of our 10 goal victory was a 17-year-old forward. He always looked noticeably different to his peers due to his elegant running style and a level of composure that you very rarely come across outside of the top level. He’d already been linked with many of the country’s top clubs and it was painfully obvious that he was ready for first team football. With the likes of Nick Powell, AJ Leitch-Smith and Max Clayton emerging to such great effect at Crewe Alexandra, it should have been natural for other clubs with comparable budgets to follow a similar model. For this player, though, the opportunity failed to materialise. With the first team manager continuing to favour his more experienced grafters, his performance and motivation levels eventually became affected.

The moment I lost all enthusiasm for my job came when the same

player put in a scintillating first half performance in a friendly match at a Conference side, creating an incredible sense of energy in the crowd around me. I was interrupted from filming on several occasions by people desperately wanting to find out who he was. A few minutes before half time, he put in a needless sliding challenge to give away a free kick despite the manager’s frenetic instructions to stay on his feet. He was swiftly substituted, with time still to play in the first half. After the game he received what I believe is officially classed as an ‘almighty bollocking’ in front of all his team mates: “I’ve run out of ideas now! What can I even do with you? You tell me!”

It was a humiliating experience for him and seemed to signal the end of any hopes of making it into the first team. He finished the season with several loans to non-league clubs, which seemed like a further attempt to attack what the club perceived as an ego problem. Elsewhere, Nick Powell now plays for Manchester United and Max Clayton has represented England at four different age groups.

Despite my near-endless grumblings about my time at the club, it has to be noted that there were a lot of supportive, well-intentioned people there and within the Football League in general. The club was clearly doing something right be able to develop so many talented young players, but there seemed to be a breakdown when those players were being primed for senior football. However, I can never blame the individuals involved, as they were only doing what they felt was right; and, to their credit, they usually develop a genuine rapport and friendship with the vast majority of players.

Rather perversely, I don’t think I would change anything about the way I was treated or integrated into the role. I entered the intimidating world of professional football as a shy, awkward young man waiting to be constantly nudged in the right direction. But I’ve learned the only way towards success is to be forceful, outgoing, and to fight to prove yourself at every opportunity. It simply isn’t enough to be eloquent and able to analyse football matches. My ambition to become a world class coach remains, and my experiences thus far have only furthered that desire.

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The Secret Analyst

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TheJFK

Files

Fri 18th October, 2013St. James’ Park, Newcastle5:32 PM

Got a call off Knobchops this morning. Says he wants two cen-tre-halves and a winger in Janu-ary. Some fucking brass neck. I give Andy Hessenthaler a bell, see if he’s got any contacts at Gillingham. Hess says they ain’t selling no one cause Paul Scally’s on holiday in Bermuda and he’ll go apo-fucking-plectic if anyone leaves the club without him get-ting a cut. Sod that for a bag of chips.

I give Fergie a bell, but it went to his answering machine. Third time in a row, that. Guess he’s busy promoting that book what he wrote. I left him a message ask-ing if Darren’s still trying to shift anything down at Peterbor-ough. I’ve known Alex for donkey’s years, since United came down to Selhurst Park in ’92. Brian Mc-Clair tore us a new arsehole. We had a glass of wine in my office, and I told him to sign Eric Canto-na.

Mon 21st October, 2013The Dorchester Hotel, Mayfair10:50 PM

Sat next to Karren Brady last night at the LMA dinner. Lovely girl, Karren. Smashing personal-ity. She asks me if Sammy Amoe-ba’s going for less than 3 mil. No fucking chance, I say, you can have his brother on loan. She pulls that Apprentice face what she does, y’know, “get out of my office.” Fuck off, love, this ain’t your fucking office.

Later on I bump into Robbie Earle in the gent’s. Says he’s been hav-ing a nightmare with his Lancia, can’t get it going for love nor money. Hydraulics are fucked. I says I’ll pop up to Enfield tomor-row to have a look. 50 quid up front, another 50 if I can fix the cunt. Job’s a good’n.

Tue 29th October, 2013 Newcastle United Training Centre, Darsley Park11:05 AM

Lost the derby on Sunday, 2-1. Watched it round Mike’s gaff in St. Albans. Fucking bollocks per-formance. Bolini, the wanker, couldn’t hit a barn door at Liv-erpool then smacks one in the top corner against us lot. Fucking Italians.

Knobchops gives the lads a right pasting in training today, saying this and that. They can’t stand the smug twat. Problem is we can’t sack him unless Mike slaps 20% on the price of trainers at Sports Direct, which he ain’t fucking doing.

Mike’s told me to keep a lid on cost, cause we’ve only got 250k left from the Demba Ba deal. Knobchops mentions some bloke called Costa Coffee from Athlet-ico Madrid. Who the fuck’s that, I’m thinking. Had a word with Djibril Cisse’s agent, says he’ll come for 15k a week, but Knobchops is having none of it. Says Costa Coffee’s twice the player. Fucking hell, it’s like talking to a brick wall at times.

Thu 7th October, 2013St. James’ Park, Newcastle9:40 PM

Egil Olsen’s missus calls me up this morning, says he done his wrist falling down a flight of stairs. He was always a clum-sy prick, Egil. I tell him to put some ice on it and stop being such a Doris. You’re ex-Wimbledon mate, fucking show some bollocks.

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G L Y NB R A N V I L L E

the voice of soccer

How tedious this week to witness the absurd media coronation of Lionel Messi as the so-called “greatest footballer of all time.” That Messi himself is a player of great wit and effervescence is beyond repudiation. But let us not forget his insipid displays in qualification for the 1998 World Cup in France, when he was subsequently left out of the squad entirely by man-ager Daniel Passarella, himself a far more worthy candidate for such lofty ennoblement.

Consider also Messi’s dismal goal-scoring record against Chelsea in recent European competition, which puts one in mind of that great modernist poet J.S. Donahue: “A man worth half of his shilling is but a chimera of false doubloons.”

For a genuine discussion we must turn to the golden age of World Cups between 1950 and 1962. I attended them all, in contradistinction to that ineffable Messi-ite Johan Cruyff, who so disgracefully jeopardised the great Dutch totaalvoetball side in the 1974 final versus West Germany with his impudent showboating and general thinness.

For true and lasting greatness it would be churlish to overlook Mexico’s Augusto Barranquilla – he of the great head and foot – who so tortured the Chilean backline in the second round contest in Belo Horizonte in 1950. I sat then in the press gallery as he blinded the Brazilian public with such bright effervescence that, after the contest, no one could quite recall hav-ing witnessed his mesmeric brilliance, or even seeing him enter the field of play. What would Mr. Cruyff and his acolytes make of that!

And who could forget the great Uruguayan schemer Enzo Gorgonzola, then of Peñarol, whose decisive wing-play so memorably resuscitated a meagre contest versus Yugoslavia in the 1962 quarter-finals; or Donildo, the little black outside-right who shone so gloriously for Brazil throughout the 1952 Olympic Games in Helsinki.

These three surely stake a greater claim than Messi to such an auspicious award; indeed there are countless others. Clever and waspish the little Argentine may be – as exemplified by his great running against Ajax in this season’s European Champion Clubs’ Cup round robin contest – he clearly does not possess the esprit de l’époque of Matthias Sindelar, the garder la tête froide of Raymond Kopa, or the phallus enorme of Garrincha.

In the modern era Messi is surely surpassed by that Madeiran conjuror Cris-tiano Ronaldo, a far more complete player. Tall, strong and balanced, with two able feet, and toned, athletic thighs, Ronaldo is surely the archetype of power and dexterity that the post-Barranquilla game so covets.

Glyn Branville’s book Herbert Chapman and I is published by Curmudgeon, £14.99

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What of the Out-and-Out StrikerIs there a place in contemporary football for the old-fashioned No 9?

He has many names: poacher, finisher, goalscorer, number nine. The out-and-out striker was the man you’d always rely upon to put the ball in the back of the net. Nowadays, though, the posi-tion seems to be a little unpopular – or perhaps just out of vogue. These agile, balanced forwards are the lesser-spotted players of today’s squads. But are they overlooked, unrequired, or just mis-understood?

If like me you grew up watching the nascent Premiership years, or European leagues and international tournaments, you will be all too familiar with the humble poacher. Robbie Fowler, Fillipo Inzaghi, Davor Suker and Hernán Crespo graced the top leagues in Europe and scored nearly all of their goals from inside the 18-yard box. These players built a reputation on being excellent finishers, honing their craft with long runs in the team. Often they were the first name on the team sheet.

It’s easy to forget that these players were not only prolific but extremely popular. Managers lauded them in the media, and fans sang their names on the terraces. In the 1990s and most of the 2000s a top team without a thoroughbred number nine was un-thinkable. This trend also ran through international football: Inzaghi was the poacher-in-chief for Italy just as Michael Owen was for England. Davor Suker finished as top goalscorer at France 98, scor-ing all six of his goals from inside the box.

But something has happened in the last ten years which has ren-dered this type of player almost obsolete. We have gradually wit-nessed the phasing out of the traditional number nine in favour of a more rounded forward player, commonly referred to as a ‘false nine.’ The contemporary striker is now required to do so much more than his equivalents of yesteryear. Forwards can no longer expect the play to come to them, nor can they simply float around the edges of the game assuming that their team will be as direct as possible.

That this change has occurred is due to a number of factors:

Tempo – In the past decade it is undeniable that the game of foot-ball has sped up. Players are required to possess extreme physical prowess and must be supreme athletes as well as great footballers. Remarkably this trait is not limited to outfield players, as the ma-jority of goalkeepers display lightning reactions. Keepers such as Hugo Lloris and Victor Valdes are more than capable of covering large expanses of the pitch away from their line. This requisite has altered the form of the frontman and brought about an entirely new aesthetic in football.

Formation – The top-tier trend toward the 4-3-3 and 4-2-3-1 is booming and shows no sign of slowing down. The formation has become a favourite of many coaches and has been spread throughout the world. The 4-3-3 relies on the top 3 players in-terlinking play with the midfield, deftly swopping positions with one another and dropping off into the channels or deeper down the pitch to collect possession and allow build-up play. If a striker doesn’t embrace this new mandate then a team can find them-selves outnumbered in central areas of the pitch, and their quality of possession is likely to suffer. In the eyes of the modern coach poaching has thus become a crime.

The Omnipotent Target-Man – Every team wants one. Every coach wants one. Every chairman wants to acquire one. Great sums of money are spent on young players with the hope of them one day become the all-encompassing target-man. Recently Chelsea bought Romelu Lukaku in the hope that one day he will be the

next Didier Drogba. Aston Villa have bought wisely in the form of Christian Benteke, whose scoring form has recovered this season. Cardiff, on the other hand, spent speculatively on the young Dane Andreas Cornelius, a raw and undoubtedly talented individual but with less pedigree than the aforementioned recruits. These teams are all after the same thing: a player able to lead the line in a 4-3-3 or 4-2-3-1, much in the mould of Zlatan Ibrahimovic. The Swede can drop deep into midfield to link possession or hold up the ball after a long pass out of defence. Above all he is brutal finisher with the ability to hold off even the most robust centre-back.

The contemporary number nine is a far more complete player than ever before. This has led to a downturn in what is perceived to be ‘top quality’ poachers. In previous eras a glance at the end-of-sea-son top scorers table revealed many strikers (and indeed players from all over the pitch) capable of contributing more than 15 goals a season. Yet now it is relatively uncommon for a team to have more than one player above the 15 goal mark, if any. This is not a slight on these players – it is merely a reflection on the task at hand. To contribute more to the game as a whole, forwards spend less time hanging around the box. This goalscoring burden has been taken by midfielders, wingers and wingbacks who are more capable than ever of putting the ball in the net.

There is an enigma, however. Manchester United’s Mexican for-ward Javier Hernández is a player who breaks the mould. In a time when players like Jermaine Defoe are limited to bit-part roles and fleeting moments as an impact substitute, Hernández is manag-ing to straddle the gap. Last season he made 36 appearances for United in all competitions, scoring 18 times. This goal return – for a player who is a throwback to the number nines of old – shows that perhaps there is still a place for the poacher in modern foot-ball.

So what is it that separates Hernández from his peers? Simple: his chance conversion percentage. In the past three seasons his conversion rate has been 23, 26 and 30 per cent respectively. Consequently Hernández has been the top chance converter in the Premier League over the past three years for players with more than 10 goals. Contrast this with the similarly diminutive Jermain Defoe, and we get a clearer picture of what it takes to make it as a modern out-and-out striker. Defoe’s chance conversion rate last season was a mere 13 per cent, bringing a return of 11 league goals. His opportunities were limited to substitute appearances and the occasional start in place of injured first-teamers. He has now been deemed surplus to requirements at Spurs and sold to Seattle.

The traditional role of the centre-forward is not dead, but being a prolific finisher is a must. The ability to put away one chance in three is something that will never be undervalued and will always earn appearances in the first XI. It is yet to be seen fully how David Moyes will use Javier Hernández: whether he will turn to him as a back-up for Robin van Persie, or whether he will be selected to lead the line in lower-key fixtures. However, Hernández is likely to remain as Manchester United’s number one option from the bench should they be searching for a goal or looking to close-out a game.

Though they have become few and far between, there is still a place in football for the poacher. They may be a little unfashion-able in football as it now exists, and if they do not have the re-quired all-round quality they can leave coaches hamstrung in terms of the team’s flexibility. But one thing is for sure: if a forward pos-sess the ability to finish chances more often than not, then there is always a place for him in a top level team.

Toby Skeels

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Going To The Game

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The only place to be every other Saturday is strolling down the Fulham Road. We sing it, live it and breathe it. Being a Chelsea fan is a lifelong duty, instilled in you from a young age; it brings forth a passion, commitment and work-like diligence that only a stadium with 44,000 baying fans can satiate. I am here to share it with you.

There is nothing better in life for a football fan than a Saturday 3pm kick off, at home. It gives you enough time to get ready with-out rushing, enough time before the game to drink without getting too drunk and enough time after the game to drink yourself sober.

You saunter to the station about 1pm, pick up a tin of your fa-vourite fizzy drink (be it soft or hard) and pick up a newspaper to check out the team news on the train – not that you haven’t already checked it via all other mediums first. In fact it’s probably at least the third time you have checked, or even fourth if anyone still uses Teletext.

As soon as you round the corner to the stadium the butterflies in your stomach begin. The familiar smell of onion from the fatty yet fabulous burgers drifts through the air; undesirables try to sell you a 50 pound ticket for 150; the bustle of the boozed-up boys bel-lowing their favourite ditty as they stumble out of bars down the length and breadth of the road fills your eardrums and takes your breath away. You are here. Home.

You walk with a bit of swagger. You are amongst your own now. You are an army in uniform colour marching towards the arena, the coliseum, where the main battle will take place. You buy a programme at a stand-up stall; it costs you a pound a page but you don’t mind, its all part of your day. You wink at the girl selling it like you do every week; she smiles and curses under her breath, but who cares – you’re invincible today. It’s Chelsea at home.

You find your gate and there’s a bit of a queue. Gossip of the starting line up slaloms its way along to you. Excited songs break out once more and you abuse the man at the gate as you do every week, because he’s too slow; he points out that there are thousands of you trying to get in and he cannot do a thing. This isn’t acceptable.

He looks a bit like an international from twenty years ago, an ugly brute; this is what he shall be known as forevermore, as a chorus breaks out: “Super, Super Pete, Super, Super Pete, Super Super Pete, Super Peter Beardsley”. He has no idea it’s directed at him, he doesn’t even like football; he nods and smiles, blissfully unaware of the melodic massacre. You laugh. You’re nearly there.

The turnstiles retain their retro function and look. You’ve done it a thousand times before but you still lead with the wrong arm, stub your foot and drop the programme as you push through like an overweight otter stuck in a trap. As you roll into the stand the smell of stale lager hits you in the upper tier like a Torres penalty. You make your way to the one of the many bars; more queues, this time about six people deep with the occasional fan snaking his way through with a cardboard tray, four half-empty pints and a dripping wet jacket.

You cleverly make your way to one end of the bar where the queue is only two-deep; you’ve done it again, outfoxed everybody else, you spotted it first, you tell all your mates, “I always come to this bit as the barmaid knows me here”. You proceed to wait 45 minutes to be served; nobody stands there because nobody serves there.

Your mates have long deserted you but you’re determined; no point moving now even though you’re the only one at the bar. They bring the shutter down and you have 15 seconds to drink a pint. You give yourself brain freeze, leave half of it and head up the block 10 steps to your seat. You’ve already missed the first goal and it wasn’t who you put a tenner on. It was Torres. It doesn’t matter. You’ve entered the cathedral and football is your god.

Ten minutes before half time you see the first few sneaking out; these are normally the younger ones or new fans being directed by their more experienced peers. These boys are sacrificed – they will miss the end of the half – but getting to the front of the beer queue for when the shutter goes up is much more important. These apprentices will have to learn to carry seven pints back through the rest of the queue without spillage or else face their tutor’s wrath. They will have a couple of seasons in this role and will be promoted when the next new kid on the block arrives.

The fans not privileged enough to have a servant (the category I fall into) have to wait until the half time whistle and must scram-ble down the steps amongst thousands of other bar space rivals. These men are thirsty for beer, and mean business. Younger fans should steer clear as no obstacle will prevent them from getting to the bar. Pints will fly – there’s no doubt about it.

By the time you eventually reach the front, the shutter is again on its way down; you’ve ordered two this time, to warm your cock-les for the second half and have 7.5 seconds per pint. This feat is slightly easier as your gullet has been previously lined and your brain’s defences feel strengthened after the first freeze.

The second half whistle blows and you’re there just in time. For the next ten to fifteen minutes you will be up and down, not because of the action on the pitch, but because the slower drink-ers will be filing back in at staggered intervals. Familiar jeers of “sit down” fill the stand accompanied by the offenders’ awkward smiles. They like to pretend it’s all a joke, but deep down they know they’re being heckled by their brethren for real.

This half is normally the louder of the two; I attribute this to the boozed-up boys who become a decibel louder after a few pints. Their initial nervousness and conservative behaviour slowly unrav-els as the alcohol welcomingly inhabits their bloodstream and their inhibitions depart. Everything now is exaggerated: your player is fouled, it’s a straight red card; the other team’s captain slips, he should be sent off for diving; the referee gives a foul against you, he should be hanged.

The game finishes and you win 1-0. As you shuffle out of the ground there is a further heightened sense of elation. You sing

For Chelsea fan, Steve Williams, there is only one place to be every other Saturday...

35

merrily with your fellow supporters as you head to the next stop...the pub. If any opposition fans are unfortunate enough to cross your path they are pelted with top-of-your-voice abuse; these aren’t humans, they are rivals; this is a battle, remember, and they are the enemy. You are filled with happiness that you have defeat-ed them and you are going to show them, as proud as a peacock displaying its tail feathers. This is a mark of who you are, it’s in your blood. If you had lost you would be hiding, sloping sheepishly down the steps to Fulham Broadway tube; not us, we are here and we are out for the night.

The evening is setting in now and the pubs are full; you go to the one closest to the ground as it has the most atmosphere, blue shirts are spilling out of the door, a small bunch smoking, the others looking menacingly at the passing away shirts. Two beefy bouncers eye you up as you do not have your colours on. “Are you Chelsea?” Of course you are, and an away fan would have to be pretty crazy to want to enter this blue jungle. You show your sea-son ticket, is your gold card – this will get you in anywhere around this neck of the woods. It’s a symbol of your love for the club.

The bar is in front of you along with another ten-deep crowd awaiting their fill. The man next to you has what looks like one eye and no teeth to boot. He squawks something in broken English and you nod unassumingly, he has a Chelsea shirt on so he must be alright; you quickly look away and focus solely on the bar. Now only seven-deep, you’ll have a pint in your hand in an hour and all will be OK.

Your rivals are playing in the evening kick-off which is being shown on all twenty of the televisions around the bar; not satisfied with ninety minutes of football in the flesh you are now content to watch another ninety minutes twenty times over. Confusing. We don’t care, we could watch football all day and all night because Chelsea have won and everything is alright with the world.

When you finally reach the bar you’re gasping; it’s been a long afternoon, all that shouting has taken its toll and once you have the pint in hand your happiness escalates an octane and your tired throat gets its reward. The bitter lager makes the sweet taste of victory all the better.

After several more drinks you have re-written the history of the game: the goal has gone from being a ten yard slotted finish to a thirty yard screamer; instead of a narrow 1-0 victory you were all over them and should have had another ten goals; the captain’s mild altercation with the opposition centre forward has escalated to a full scale gun battle.

It’s all part of the fun, and once you’ve had your fill of lager and can no longer focus on the screens above you, still showing re-plays of the game you have now seen several times, you’re ready for some food. This is always an interesting experience if you stick close to the ground. Most fans have been drinking nonstop since long before the game and its now knocking on for 11pm.

The Fulham Road eateries run the gamut of high end establish-ments to hostelries presenting scenes that resemble feeding time at the zoo. As you make your way to the entrance you have to push through those leaving with bellies full of food and drink; they are so intoxicated by this point that you are no longer an obstacle, in fact they cannot even see you, so they head straight for you and it’s your duty to move.

When you finally negotiate your way into the restaurant the noise hits you like a wave, table after table of drunken men (and wom-en although notably fewer) lined up in rows like a chess board of dinner covered kings, queens and pawns; food dripping from the corners of every mouth, napkins tucked over protruding beer-filled stomachs and tablecloths that were once white. This is a place only looked upon as acceptable by those under the influence.

Waiters slink in and out of the tables, heckled from all angles, and any waitress unfortunate enough to be working tonight becomes the centre of every man’s attention; her friendly innocent smile is a lead in to something much more sinister in the eyes of the drunken fan. If only she knew.

You sit down and immediately order another beer that you will never drink and your meal which you probably won’t manage more than a few mouthfuls of. Conversation is starting to wane and the beer is sending all involved into a zombie-like state. You are hit-ting the proverbial wall.

Dinner seems to last a lifetime and the bill can’t come soon enough. You rise, feeling even more full than when you had en-tered, and now the thought of getting home fills you with dread and horror. You make your way down the steps to the tube and as it’s so late only a few of the hardcore fans join you on the plat-form. Most are in a similar state to you.

After the tube and the train you call a taxi for the two minute walk back from the station, you get in for thirty seconds and you’re home for 50p. The day has been great and it’s time for bed; you’ll get a good few hours before you need to be up for the 8am show-ing of Match of the Day that you missed the night before.

Steve Williams

36

Going To The Game

“After several more drinks you have re-written the history of the game: the goal has gone from being a ten yard slotted finish to a

thirty yard screamer”

A few months ago Dennis Bergkamp released a book called Still-ness and Speed. It was not an autobiography, nor a diary, but a collection of ideas, stories and conversations reflecting on the art and science of playing football. Bergkamp, a rare and subversive talent who flourished amid the straight-lined conformi-ties of English football, proved a worthy literary subject. But all footballers, no matter how gifted, must depend on teammates. Bergkamp found a partner and intellec-tual soul mate in the journalist David Winner, author of perhaps the most anarchic and original football book in recent memory: Brilliant Orange. A revelatory study of Dutch football, it established Winner’s reputation as both a unique football thinker and an authority on all things Oranje.

Winner is perhaps best described as a football psychoan-alyst. He interrogates how specific football cultures have formed, and the psychology behind them. Brilliant Orange is his attempt to explain the revolutionary and often dazzling ideas underpinning Dutch football since the mid-1960s, when Rinus Michels began transforming Ajax into Europe’s most modern, progressive and ar-ticulate team. Winner argues that the genesis of this revolution may have grown out of the physical dimensions of Holland itself.

Holland is hemmed into a small, uniformly flat area of land, half of it below sea level. This has forced its inhabitants to be inno-vative in their use of ‘flexible space.’ The Dutch built tall houses with steep, narrow staircases, preserving their existing living space while creating new. Through designing and constructing dykes, waterways and canals, Dutch engineers were able to permanently alter the physical dimensions of their landscape for the better. There’s an old saying: God made the world, but the Dutch made Holland.

Dutch footballers, too, thought of their space in architectural terms. Michels, together with his captain Johan Cruyff, reimagined the football field as a flexible, controllable space that could be altered by any team playing on it. This space could be long or short, wide or narrow, and exist wherever a team wanted it to. Players swapped positions and moved freely, not in straight lines as before but in new dimensions relative to the position of the ball, the opposing players and each other. Pressing high, defenders attacked and attackers defended. Michels’s teams controlled and defined this space with an almost neurotic attention to detail. The concept was named Total Football, and it changed how the game was played forever.

“Arrogance is part of the Dutch character,” admits Wim van Ha-negem, a tough, left-footed member of Holland’s doomed 1974 World Cup side. It’s a trait that has facilitated both the extraordi-nary creativity and maddening tendency to self-destruct that de-fines the psychology of Dutch football. A painful lesson was taught by ‘the Lost Final’ against West Germany in 1974, a game to which, writes Winner, “Every conversation about football in Holland even-tually turns.” The tale is well worn: a goal up after two minutes,

Holland proceeded to taunt their opponents through indulgent and unnecessary showboating; a kind of perverse ‘payback’ for the Nazi occupation that still marred the Dutch psyche a generation later. Van Hanegem recalls: “I didn’t mind if we only won 1-0, so long as we humiliated them.” They lost 2-1.

At the 1976 European Championships, a more sinister and lasting frailty began to surface: Dutch ill-discipline. Political chaos behind the scenes led to the resignation of new coach George Knobel hours before the semi-final against Czechoslovakia, a 3-1 defeat. Two senior players had walked out before the tournament in pro-test at Cruyff’s “all-encompassing influence” over team affairs. The democratic team ethos of Ajax, where the captain was elected by the squad on a weekly basis, had not been replicated in the national side.

Two decades later, at Euro 96, the Dutch camp became allegedly split along racial lines, with Suriname-born players Clarence See-dorf and Edgar Davids leading a revolt against a group of senior white players – among them captain Danny Blind, of whom man-ager Guus Hiddink was, according to Davids, “too deep in the arse

of.” Pay disputes were also a factor, but the saga rein-forced Holland’s reputation as a powder keg of tension, strife and ill-discipline.

Winner cites a “suicidal” tendency to waste talent and capitulate under pressure as an innate and irreparable aspect of Holland’s sporting and cultural mentality. In a chapter entitled “Death Wish” he traces the historical roots of Dutch individualism and subconscious religious guilt as setting the template for sporting failure. Dutch Calvinism, he suggests, inflicted “a weird tension be-tween the desire to succeed and the unconscious belief

that success is morally wrong.” Hence Dutch players’ shocking ina-bility to convert penalty kicks; deep down, Winner hints mischie-vously, they don’t even want to. These masochistic tendencies help to explain every Dutch blowout and capitulation since 1974.

The wasted potential of the Dutch national team is sad and per-plexing. A combined Holland XI from across the ages would beat their equivalents from almost any other country. But the modern, democratic principle of Total Football – whereby every player is al-lowed to express himself equally – makes for a dangerous fragility. “The Dutch,” Winner notes, “seem to have an allergy to authority, leadership and collective discipline.” Victims of their own inherent democracy and openness, the Dutch cannot – will not – be told what to do.

*

“The English like to run and fight,” says Rudi Fuchs, a famous Dutch historian and art critic, while musing on the reflection of national characteristics in paintings. “When [Ruud] Gullit tried to transplant this Dutch art [beautiful geometric patterns] to New-castle, he was trying to do something impossible. He was bound to fail.”

Five years after Brilliant Orange, Winner turned his attentions to another unique but flawed football culture dogged by recurring psychological frailties: England. More overtly than in Holland, the English mentality seems to be positively bi-polar: flitting between grand proclamations of immortality and despairing self-disgust at the irreversible ‘decline’ of English values and cultural relevance. “The notion of English football as a vehicle for national degradation is widely held,” Winner observes in Those Feet, a thematic study of the quirks and contradictions of the English footballing mindset.

Masochism, above all, informs England’s relationship to its football. There exists “a nagging sense of national mediocrity and despair [that] is never far away.” In the aftermath of the Heysel stadium disaster in 1985, when English ‘hooligans’ were the shame of Eu-rope, The Times wrote: “Just as the Germans had to recognise

B O O K W O R M

The Sharpener’s book feature:

David Winner – Brilliant Orange: The Neurotic Genius of Dutch Football (2000) and Those Feet: A Sensual History of English Football (2005)

37

that they have a collective guilt for the Nazi regime, so the English must publicly acknowledge the existing tumour in their society and consciously and forcefully eradicate it.” Eighteen years later, after a group of England players threatened to ‘strike’ in protest at Rio Ferdinand’s eight-month ban for missing a drugs test (after a week of tabloid revelations detailing the act of ‘roasting’ so beloved by English footballers,) the game was confronted by a media chorus of self-flagellating diatribes bemoaning its “terminal moral decline.” Sir Michael Parkinson, that authoritative emblem of a certain kind of English self-importance, wrote that football “needs fumigating, sterilising and purifying … Most of all it needs and deserves a good kicking.”

With its Empire lost and its football team supposedly stuck in a perpetual rut, the fear of an irreversible surrender of English ‘great-ness’ has long held a powerful spell. This sense of decline and un-derachievement was reinterpreted by such cultural phenomenons as Baddiel and Skinner’s Three Lions at Euro 96, which swept into the charts on a figurative tidal wave of Paul Gascoigne’s tears. The song’s nostalgic rallying cry of “football’s coming home” supposed a historical superiority to other nations while simultaneously wal-lowing in the agony of past defeats. This duality – glorying in its past while finding comfort in inadequacy – focused and ignited English patriotism like nothing since the Second World War.

Another chapter deals with the portrayal of ‘Englishness’ in boys’ literature, exemplified by the classic Roy of the Rovers comic strip. Roy Race was the archetypal all-action Captain Marvel; the quin-tessential English football hero. “On the pitch, there was no fancy stuff,” says the cartoon’s editor Barrie Thompson. “Just basic, old fashioned English football. It wasn’t a matter of tactics but spirit.” Maverick, flamboyant players such asGeorge Best, Rodney Marsh and Frank Worthington were considered inappropriate to embody the English characteristics so integral to boys’ literature. Winner writes: “Their crime was sensuality … Rival fans saw their flamboyant skill as a sign of effeminacy.”

In Roy of the Rovers, foreign players were depicted as sly and swarthy caricatures, typically of Latin descent. “Distain for foreigners was a key component of this lit-erature,” Winner notes in reference to the old ‘twopen-ny weeklies’ that Rovers drew inspiration from. George Orwell baulked at the deep-rooted xenophobia of these titles, which were aimed at boys aged 12 to 18. He saw “a world-view in which ‘foreigners were unimportant comics’ and the Empire ‘a sort of charity concern that will last forever.’” This imperialist at-titude still rears its head today, as seen by the recent remarks of Premier League chairman Sir Dave Richards, who claimed that football itself been “stolen” from the English: “England gave the world football. It gave the best legacy anyone could give. Then, fifty years later, some guy came along and said: ‘You’re liars,’ and they actually stole it. It was called Fifa.”

Winner identifies the impact of Éric Cantona, “so manifestly su-perior to every English player” in the early 1990s, as prompting a revision of the “ancient English code” that predicated a deep mis-trust of foreign players, previously regarded as “fancy” and “soft.” Still, few clichés are as worn as the notion that foreigners brought ‘bad habits’ into the English league, with simulation a particular bugbear. Again this haughty view can be found in boy’s literature – W.E. Johns, creator of the tough and chivalrous Biggles, an RAF pilot, said of his work: “I teach a boy to be a man … I teach that decent behaviour wins in the end as the natural order of things.” English football’s conception of ‘fair play’ appears to exist less on objective principles regarding the so-called ‘spirit of the game,’ and more as a sniffy, conceited assertion of the innate superiority of English values. Worse still, instances of homegrown chicanery (see Michael Owen’s dive against Argentina at the 2002 World Cup) are typically overlooked or, if possible, blamed on the influence of foreigners.

*

English football’s historical resistance to global trends – tactical and political – is well documented. As early as the 1950s Bri-an Glanville cursed the “shamefully wasted talent, extraordinary complacency and wanton insularity” that characterised the English game at coaching and administrative level. After a pair of humili-ating defeats to Hungary in 1953 and 1954 by an aggregate score of 13-4, England’s long-held assumptions of its divine supremacy over global football had ended. In a parallel universe, Glanville’s scathing verdict could well have been aimed at Holland after the wasted years of the Cruyff generation. Arrogance, complacency and a chronic inability to learn from its past are mutual traits of Dutch and English football. A paltry two tournament victories, in 1966 and 1988, attest to that.

Football cultures, no matter where they exist, can be stubbornly impervious to change. Xavi Hernández, the midfield conductor of Barcelona and Spain, bristled when asked to defend Barça’s ethos – heavily influenced by Dutch Total Football – months after a 7-0 aggregate trouncing by Bayern Munich: “The team’s philosophy is untouchable and non-negotiable … We have never thought of changing our style.” In Argentina an obsession with the old-school No. 10 playmaker still dominates all tactical discourse. Playing any other way would be not simply unthinkable, but unpatriotic.

The English, too, have a clear idea of who they are on the football field, and it has become a comfort blanket under which to hide during uncertain times. After suggestions that foreign-born players could be called up for England, a disapproving Jack Wilshere said: “We have to remember what we are. We are English. We tackle

hard, are tough on the pitch and are hard to beat.” Here was the 5’7” great English hope of technical foot-ball proclaiming the virtues of brute physicality to the detriment of his own style, primarily due to his cultural education.

Winner sees this English passion for grit and physicality as inherited from the very earliest forms of the amateur game, played across open fields “by sturdy men in an-kle-high boots driving monstrously heavy leather balls over atrocious surfaces.” The patterns of hard tackling, high passes and endless turnovers of possession that have long distinguished the English style derive, he argues, from the muddy bogs that for so many years passed for playing surfaces. The conditions under which

English football developed – in rain, wind, and mud – prohibited the emergence of small, intelligent, technical players. Their skill was regarded by English coaches as “a form of leprosy.” These smaller, less physical players were forced into wide positions on the peripheries of the game, while the real men (i.e. central play-ers) got on with the proper business of kicking lumps out of one another. The greatest English centre-forwards – Dixie Dean, Nat Lofthouse, Alan Shearer et al – descended from the same lineage of tall, strong, direct No. 9s suited to a hard-running aerial game – real-life Roys of the Rovers.

So what of Mr. Fuchs’ casual distain for the English incapability of absorbing Dutch footballing patterns? The main beneficiaries of Dutch education today, Barcelona and Spain, hold a long tradi-tion of openness to foreign influence. As Sir Dave Richards might have boasted, football was brought into Spain by English traders in the late-nineteenth century, and its foremost clubs were mainly coached by foreigners. Barça was founded by Swiss emigrant Joan Gamper, and its modern football philosophy shaped by Cruyff as a player and then manager. England, meanwhile, despite the recent influx of foreign talent, has consistently failed to produce players capable of mastering the tools of Total Football. It takes an awful lot of willpower to change an entire culture, as Winner discovered when interviewing former Holland coach Leo Beenhakker: “In 1974 it was arrogance too … I hate it, I hate it. But I love it, I love it! Because we are so special.”

Richard Yates

38

Bookworm

L E T T E R S

Dear The Sharpener,

I think it’s great that you’ve finally gotten off your collective arses and done something semi-interesting with your life. But I must warn you: the world of fanzines is a very dark and fickle one indeed.

In 1987, I launched a bi-quarterly pamphlet called Franco Baresi’s Left Bollock. It was a stapled-together DIY job aimed at educating the then savage and insular English football fan about the finer points of the continental game; namely the concept of tactics, short passes and physical conditioning.

In our first issue we printed a 12-step guide on how to attend a football match without punching, spitting on, or racially abusing someone. This feature proved enormously popular, and I believe that it contributed to the long-term improvement in the overall matchday experience.

In 1991, at the peak of our success, a small fire broke out at our printing presses in Rotherham, incinerating all 1,000 copies of FBLB Issue 12. We lost a fortune that day, and the zine was immediately retired.

I hope that in today’s world of digital storage, no house or factory fire could result in the destruction of your materials. Though the golden age of fanzines may have passed, at least you’ll have something to show to your grandchildren, in the unlikely event that you have any.

Trevor Turnpike,Sheffield

Dear The Sharpener,

I really enjoyed Alan Kimble’s feature on Bhutanese women’s football in last month’s TS (Issue 0). Though it may not have actually existed owing to the falsified nature of this letters page, it remains an insightful and revealing look at one of the more ignored footballing regions (the hilly bit between India and China.)

Having lived in Bhutan for five years, I can assure you that their passion for the game rivals that of any country in the Himalayas. Though Nepal may have a richer history and a semi-professional league, the stadiums are often empty and their national team hopeless. Bhutan, meanwhile, recently defeated a Tibetan XI in Lhasa by a best-ever scoreline of 2-0, and football fever has since taken hold.

I coach a kids’ 5-a-side team here, and they all eagerly run after the ball with the fullest intention of depositing it in the opponent’s goal. It truly brings a tear to the eye.

Jacob,Via email

Dear The Sharpener

I noticed a mistake in your last issue. You said that John Barnwell managed Wolverhampton Wanderers between 1977 and 1982. In fact, Barnwell took over the side a year later, in November 1978. That’s a full 12 months later than you had originally stated. No wonder football journalism’s going down the shitter.

Andy,Stourbridge

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thesharpenerzine@gmail.com

BACK COVERGOES HERE

Years have gone by and I’ve finally learned to accept myself for who I am: a beggar for good football.

I go about the world, hands outstretched, and in stadiums I plead:‘A pretty move, for the love of God.’

Eduardo Galeano

A Sharper Zine

© The Sharpener