Articles of Faith (3 page)

The one thing that could perhaps redeem the column I wrote seven, vast days ago; immense days, days with the limitless, intimidating scale of the expansive Kansas plains that I’ve been crossing this past week is that, at its close, having spent 800 words fear-mongering, I did offer, with rare perspicacity, the sentence: ‘I reserve the right to flood these pages with hyperbole if England win both matches.’ Well England did win both matches but hyperbole is not what I’m going to offer, no, I think more appropriate would be contrition. I feel contrite at having referred to the team’s key player in those games, Emile Heskey, as a ‘confidence junky’. So what if strong, committed, unselfish, skilful Emile sometimes requires what Ron Atkinson (note: this stereotyping refers to pre-racist Ron, when he was just a bejewelled vending machine for clichés) would doubtless describe as ‘an arm round him’ once in a while.

I think that’s rather lovely. In this age where the modern footballer is regarded as a brash millionaire floozies-harvester, players like Emile, and indeed Shaun Wright-Phillips, occasionally suffer from self-doubt and need assurance from their manager if they are to perform to their potential. Unhelpful then to reduce Heskey to a man who uses esteem like a drug and sees his coach as the pusher, hence ‘confidence junky’. Sorry.

Also in my doom-laden scribbling I conjectured with grisly portent that Steven Gerrard would end up in a wheelchair as a result of fierce Mossad attacks or assaults from ex-KGB but, I now accept, he seems to be fine. Again, I’m sorry.

Then dear, triumphant, indefatigable Steve McClaren or ‘McLazarus’, as I dubbed him due to his tendency to resurrect dead or at least departed players, a tendency which I now realise marks him out as brave and willing
to take risks rather than being a victim to the whims of an all-too-fickle press, of which I must now stand as the worst example. Also ‘McLazarus’ doesn’t quite work because the biblical character Lazarus, upon whom my cruel, cheap pun was based, was resurrected by Christ and did not resurrect anyone himself, so I’ve offended theologians as well as the great tactician McClaren.

I’ve had scores of complaints from theologians but I’m less concerned about insulting a group who have forgiveness as one of their core tenets than I am noble McClaren who is as wise and gracious as Christ. I’m so very sorry.

‘When I left, McClaren picked his teams like a drunk shuffling bags in a trolley. Now he is indispensable’

I did also say that Alexi Lalas looks like a live action version of the
Scooby Doo
character Shaggy. I stand by that. Thank God I didn’t have time to express my ill-informed views on Michael Owen who I would’ve probably dismissed as ‘finished’ or ‘a bastard’ but would now like to celebrate as a great servant of the game who will doubtless surpass Bobby Charlton’s 49 goals during the qualifying phase of this tournament, a tournament that last week I revealed grave doubts that we’d be attending beyond this formative stage but now firmly believe we’ll win.

Furthermore I cast aspersions on Owen’s assertion that Wembley would become a fortress, claiming it was as impenetrable as Nancy Spungen’s jugular. I was writing the piece in the Chelsea Hotel and it seemed a fitting simile as it was there that Sid Vicious for once lived up to his name and murdered her. The line was cut from the published article on grounds of taste – I only wish the censor’s pen had removed the relentless, pulsating pessimism which seeped through the column staining
the page the way Nancy’s blood did the tarnished floorboards of my hotel room.

Tentatively, let me say this: West Ham were tumbling towards the Championship last season with such fervour and pace that one could be forgiven for thinking that the players were sexually aroused by the prospect of poor stadiums, then I went to Hawaii to work and they immediately became a squad of well-drilled, committed heroes winning eight of their last nine fixtures.

When I left the country 10 days ago England were playing like a bunch of berks and McClaren picked his sides like a homeless drunk shuffling bags in a trolley. He is now indispensable and Gareth Barry is the new Bryan Robson. I said if England won both games I’d campaign for the manager to be knighted; I now demand that Her Majesty kicks Phil right out of the royal sex-pit and instates Steve as her lover and the new King of England. I’d also like her to sit beside him on the bench and squeeze his thigh and coo when things go well.

Well done England and sorry for last week’s column. Prudently, I’ve read this week’s column back and I’ve written nothing that could offend anyone, what a relief. Finally, huge congratulations to our dear brothers north of the border. I should probably stay in America for football’s sake.

Jetlagged and delirious, I’m trying to make sense of the events that adorn the front and back pages of the English newspapers. José Mourinho and Chelsea have parted company ‘by mutual consent’ due to a ‘breakdown in their relationship’. This doesn’t seem to me to be the typical language of the boardroom but the brittle nomenclature of damaged emotions. When I recall the numerous occasions on which I’ve been, in my case deservedly, sacked, my incensed employers seldom said things like ‘It’s not you – it’s me’ or ‘I just feel we should spend some time apart.’ It was usually ‘Get out you thief’ or ‘You smell of gin.’

I’m not suggesting that Mourinho and Roman Abramovich were having a big, saucy, gay love affair that has ended in recrimination and unfulfilled potential but the fact that it would be impossible to allocate who would be passive and who the aggressor in such a tryst is perhaps central to this saga. Whilst I acknowledge that most homosexuals chuckle at the antiquated, heterosexual assumption that gay relationships have a ‘man’ and ‘wife’ dynamic, partnerships the world over are defined by status, and the inability of these powerful men to find professional harmony, to me, resembles two randy stags, nostrils flared, bristling, with angry erections, locking horns over which one is going to bite on a branch and be Bambi’s mummy.

‘Mourinho provoked a kind of neutered lust. I enjoyed his manipulative interviews and eccentric outbursts’

Ultimately Chelsea are Abramovich’s club and there could be only one winner but as a result we, the English nation, the Premier League and the media, have lost an intriguing and charismatic figure.

Like most people I became aware of Mourinho when he darted down the touchline arms aloft in
that
coat, at Old Trafford, having engineered
Porto’s victory over United. ‘What a twit,’ I remember thinking. The fact that the coat became independently famous is a testimony to the unique place he attained in the firmament of top-flight bosses. What other garments have secured such cachet? Brian Clough’s green sweatshirt? Arsène Wenger’s specs? Fergie’s gum? Unless Roy Keane starts turning up to matches in cowboy boots it’ll be a while until personal style makes such an impression from the dugout.

His departure is significant enough to prompt comment from figures as diverse as Gordon Brown and my mum – ‘He made a huge impact in such a short time’ and ‘That dishy manager’ respectively. Neither of them cared when Alan Pardew left West Ham.

We can glean from this momentous event several things: Abramovich will be satisfied with nothing less than immediate success in Europe, he wants attractive football and he wants to stick his oar in whenever he
fancies and put his mates in the team. One of the difficulties is that most of the great footballing dynasties have achieved success with practical, as opposed to flamboyant, football. Milan, Juventus and recent Real Madrid sides have prioritised winning over all else whereas teams like Barcelona or Arsenal always have moments of vulnerability and but two European Cup wins between them.

Personally, I’m sad about it. I’ve mentioned in this column before that Mourinho’s presence at Chelsea prevented me from harbouring the hatred expected of a West Ham fan for our rivals across the capital because he provoked in me a kind of neutered lust. I enjoyed his aloof, snooty, manipulative interviews and eccentric outbursts; calling dear Wenger a voyeur and Frank Rijkaard a pervert. What about when he fled from police with his unquarantined lapdog? That’s berserk, I can’t imagine any other manager embarking on such a mad quest.

Sam Allardyce would not try to sneak his cat into a disco, David Moyes would never ride a cow to work and Alex Ferguson wouldn’t squabble with cider tycoons over the ownership of a gee-gee. Actually he would because he too is a genius in the business of football management and in exchange for that bedazzling gift we’ll tolerate his refusal to speak to the BBC, his hurling of boots at national treasures and his insistence on absolute authority at his club. But Abramovich wouldn’t tolerate that, which is why when Chelsea visit Sir Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United tomorrow it’ll be under the stewardship of Avram Grant of whom I know little but suspect if Abramovich demanded his yacht play in goal and his wife on the wing would offer little resistance.

Like many a spurned lover before him Mourinho said he was going to take time off to unwind and wait for the phone to ring. I don’t imagine he’ll have long to wait till he gets optimistic tinklings from north and possibly east London and whatever he chooses to do I don’t suppose it’ll be long before he’s back at the Bridge with a new paramour and then I suspect it’ll be Abramovich who ends up heartbroken.

‘I consider him a mystic, a shaman, an alchemist, speaking from somewhere far behind his inky eyes’

Six or seven games in we are able to ascertain the flavour of the season, we have savoured the first giddy sips and can now assess whether this shall be a vintage year. It’ll be some time till we rinse away the spectacular taste of that swoonsome, dark rascal José Mourinho, probably we’ll dispatch into the spittoon far sooner the bitter tang of Martin Jol, the poor sod, like a cuckolded father putting a brave face on for his bewildered kids, while Daniel Levy capers around Europe in a push-up bra with his knickers showing.

Fernando Torres is reckoned to be the new Ian Rush by Steven Gerrard and the arrival of the cartoonishly pretty Spaniard does seem significant. His input could ensure a realistic challenge from Merseyside for the first time in a decade-and-a-half and who but the blue faction of that city would begrudge them?

There is much to ponder in this richly evolving drama but my attention is drawn currently to Arsène Wenger, whose beautiful, more ‘royal’ than ever, Arsenal visit Upton Park tomorrow. Last season West Ham bested the Gunners twice, a feat that is unlikely to be repeated as Arsenal appear to have several teams playing with a grace, confidence and joy that is almost transcendental.

Given the concern that many expressed pre-season about post-Henry Arsenal this is a surprising and exciting development and one that can only really be attributed to Wenger, who to me seems to be vibrating above the frequency typically associated with our national game. I consider him a mystic, a shaman, an alchemist, speaking from somewhere far behind his inky eyes, issuing spiritual sermons on the game’s decline and our obligation to nurture English talent.

‘English football’s responsibility is to continue raising quality without losing its soul,’ he says, talking of foreign money and bare terraces as potential symbols of an atheistic erosion of our holy essence. Ten years ago Wenger came over here, taking our jobs, recruited a clutch of Gallics and Latinos and picked up the Double with the insouciance of a gent collecting a baguette and an espresso. The debate continues to this day as to whether the influx of foreign talent has harmed our national team; I feel that if the game is elevated and standards raised that will ultimately be positive across all strata and few would dispute the contribution made by ‘the professor’ unless they are actual racists or Spurs fans.

Now that Wenger has expressed concern about the development of young English players it does seem more serious. But aside from his new ecclesiastical role he has no duty to anyone other than the fans and board of Arsenal and that doesn’t run to positive discrimination in favour of Anglo-Saxons.

He spoke of fans as ‘the keepers of the game’ which is a further nod to the civic, if not sacred nature of the sport, which makes me query the new directive to referees to regard with renewed positivity ‘hard to call’ offside
decisions, the reasoning being that ‘a dodgy goal is preferable to a dodgy offside’. Is that an edict with which most fans would concur? Obviously that would be contingent on whether it was scored or conceded.

For me the relative scarcity of goals, perhaps the factor that has prevented football enchanting America, enhances their sanctity. Gary Lineker and his sexy, brown legs would never put the ball in the net in a pre-match kick-about so as not to tarnish the magic of that rarely achieved objective and in midweek I saw, in a match against Real Zaragoza, that paragon of the footballer as divine, Thierry Henry, on sighting a raised flag, curtail his magisterial canter towards goal with the despondency of a man abruptly woken from a beautiful dream.

It was as if, in that moment, meaning itself had been suspended, the ball with trickling inertia departed from its master, who himself was left to wonder, when would come his first goal in La Liga. Amidst the swirl of the scandals, the rumours, the ignoble chatter and limitless tainted money something chaste and sacred remains and it belongs to us, the fans and cannot be bought, sold or branded. Wenger is aware of this, which is why one can overlook the paucity of Englishmen in his side; he could field a team of ravens and be closer to the game’s essence than most, and I hope, for West Ham’s sake, that tomorrow he does.

I’m in Tuscany. I’ve been sent here by my publishers to finish my autobiography. Usually, this column is the only writing obligation I have to fulfil and is rattishly indulged, today it must vie with literary siblings and is being produced during a hiatus of the solipsistic, caffeinated torrent that has consumed my every waking hour. Goethe wrote here, I am informed, and Auden too, so expectations are justifiably high and this voluptuous, rolling land ought to be sufficient muse for any man.

‘Mourinho has the appearance of a gigolo assassin, Grant looks like Herman Munster’s butler’

I went into town on Wednesday night to watch Chelsea vs Valencia, initially to gloat but as usual when abroad, was seduced by patriotism. My hopes that post-Mourinho Chelsea would fall apart looked likely to be fulfilled before a ball had been kicked, with John Terry in his see-through mask (there’s a baffling concept, see-through masks. What’s next? Cuddly daggers?) and Petr Cech in his stupid bonnet, they look like they’re disintegrating as individuals let alone as a team. For future matches I want Joe Cole to be on stilts and Didier Drogba to wear fake boobies. Let Chelsea field a team of prosthetically enhanced oddities, it’ll be good for morale.

After David Villa’s opener I felt the first nationalistic twinge, the Italians that were watching were hardly vociferous, they indifferently sipped beer, but I took their silent boozing to be a slur upon Her Majesty and all her fleets and became enraged. ‘How dare you!’ I thought, after everything we’ve done for you. I began to crave a Chelsea revival, not in a profound way, just in a ‘I drew them in a sweepstake at work’ way. Then thanks to the skill and persistence of Drogba and Joe Cole, or Johkohl as he’s known on Italian telly, Britannia triumphed.

Were Chelsea more flamboyant under Avram Grant? It seems ridiculous that they could be, using the judge-a-book-by-its-cover method, Mourinho has the appearance of a Latino, gigolo assassin, Grant looks like Herman Munster’s butler. There’s a word that oughtn’t to be bandied about so profligately, butler. Butler means a devoted, Woodhousian gentleman’s gentleman. The lunatic who bears that title and has come as part of the package with this Tuscan villa would have seen Bertie Wooster starved and raped within an hour of his employment. I know that complaining about the quality of your butler is a lament unlikely to elicit much sympathy outside of Kensington but this fella, Sam, could no more butter me the perfect crumpet than take flight over the olive groves that surround me.

It was Sam who took us to the bar where we, me and my mate Nik (who’s also my agent here to force me to write the booky wook), watched Wednesday’s match and let me complain about the coffee and the light reflecting off the TV screen before telling me on the way home that the premises were run by the Mafia. I suppose I should be grateful he didn’t wait till my funeral before mentioning it to my weeping mother.

Had I been aware that I was drinking in the Café Cosa Nostra I might not have been so cheeky with the waitresses, nor would I have sung the national anthem at the final whistle. The problem may be due to linguistic difficulties rather than incompetence – he did yesterday speak the sentence ‘Marijuana Michelangelo my brother Italy.’ I’ve been thinking about it ever since and am no closer to unravelling its mysteries.

What could it mean? It’s almost entirely made of nouns, there’s not a verb to be had. Could it mean that marijuana influenced the sculpture of Michelangelo and in turn inspired Sam and his brother to come to Italy? Whatever he said, it’s better than my Italian, all I can say is ‘grazi’, I say it in different accents to deal with every situation. I just hope that I can intone ‘grazi’ in such a charming fashion that I can avoid being murdered in the plaza by a disgruntled Godfather.