In 1975 Football
Magazine and its star writer John Ross in particular, had a singular bee in its bonnet. The buzzing noise has followed us resolutely into the 21st century until it sounds like the shelling of Hiroshima.
The John Ross column, Football Monthly Magazine, Volume 2 Number 1, 1975
Watching football on
the television in 2020 has become such a sophisticated process that the army
of pundits and presenters, pitch-side mic-wielders, pre-match interviewers and voxpop crews needed
to keep the whole thing afloat could successfully crew an aircraft carrier across the Atlantic.
The simple idea of the
co-commentator first seems to have been mooted at the 1970 World Cup and, by the time the show came around again four years later, was already truly entrenched. Sir Alf
Ramsey could be heard alongside ITV’s Hugh Johns chuntering things like “Tha Polish chaps really don’t seem to have the slightest idea of what they are
doing” in a quavery voice pitched just south of the 1st Duke of Marlborough. The expert panel wheeled out for half time frivolity and full time analysis was also a thing of beauty, a kind of full page ad for Man at C&A andan opportunity to marvel at precisely where Derek Dougan's hair started and finished.
By the time the likes
of Jack Charlton and David Pleat had joined the ranks in the 80s, as live tv
football exploded onto our screens on a weekly rather than once in a lonely
while basis, we had strange Geordie slang and first name cosiness to add to the
growing problems. The men with voices now joined in at an alarming rate and
with a grand variety of skills to bring to the job. When Andy Townsend starting
personalizing everything he saw in football by commencing every comment with the
honey-soaked words “For me, Clive”, football on tv had grown its first adolescent
moustache. Unfortunately, the pimple went unpopped and has been allowed to grow
to the size of Richard Dunne’s behind.
Soft spot, impartiality, bias: from Football Monthly, Meet the Press, Vol 2 no.4, 1975
These days, of course,
one cannot move for the detritus of Punditry. The facial hair has become
positively Darwinesque, so far have we travelled from the early Townsend
bumfluff. The industry has grown up, embraced sophistry and welcomed in a whole
new troop of co-workers. This genre, the ex-player, can be found everywhere. In
fact, if your station begins a football broadcast of any sort without one
sitting plum next to the commentator, ready to offer pearls of ex-footballer
wisdom on what is unfolding before us, there is something wrong. Or he missed
the connection in Northenden.
With this army of
ex-players, of course, comes the past lives they represent.
Ex-Liverpool, and
there are admittedly one or two of those striding around in the media, means
a red leaning. Ex-Newcastle would suggest a timeworn fondness for the Magpies
and ex-Swansea would suggest the same for the South Wales outfit. Only there
are no ex-Newcastle and ex-Swansea men on offer. They are all ex-Liverpool, ex-United
or ex-Arsenal. Battalions of them, all carrying the gentle biases and partialities
you’d expect from wearing those red jerseys on their shoulders for so many
years
This reached an
interesting peak with Manchester City’s final pre-covid game of any
significance, away at Real Madrid. Expert analysis came that night from Steve
McManaman, a man whose name is synonymous with Liverpool as much as it is with the
idle overuse of the letter A.
Steve, of course, also
turned out for Real Madrid and Manchester City, where his arm-waving became so over-indulgent
as to look pathetic in the extreme.
"Over there, Paul, ffs. Do I have to do everything myself?"
Perhaps as a result of
the Stadium of Manchester’s reaction to his comic gesticulating episodes in sky
blue, which mainly featured the brittle-looking Steve trotting or walking in
the centre circle, brushing his foppish locks out of his eyes and pointing like
someone who had just witnessed an armed robbery, Steve probably doesn’t harbour
a massive amount of goodwill towards City. Steve’s frantic motioning towards an
inert Paul Bosvelt might have had its aesthetic justification, but it was
ultimately useless. At the time he played in sky blue, he didn’t care. We could
tell from an early stage and the arm-waving only made it worse on the grounds
that frantically telling everyone else where to position themselves whilst
being forever in the wrong place yourself smacks of a degree of nonchalant laziness
that will never win you new pals and admirers.
Steve now hauls his
haircut into the BT studios for our benefit and on this occasion, as both an
ex-City player and an ex-Real player, BT bosses must have thought they had
finally cracked the conundrum. There would finally be no reason for the great
unwashed hordes of “City Twitter” to mount the keyboards and fire off expletives
afterwards. That was until Steve could be heard howling the plaintive “nooooooo”
in the background as Danny Carvajal brought down Raheem Sterling for a late
penalty to City. In that swift unguarded moment Steve revealed his old biases
and we absolutely hated him for it. Why was an Englishman who had played for
City howling his barely disguised disappointment at a setback for Real Madrid?
Surely, nationality would trump everything even if he couldn’t shake off a deep
dislike of all things City?
Bias is an odd beast
that lurks in all of us and to expect football pundits to be clear of it is
plainly delusional. What might, could and surely is possible, however, is the
simple solution of employing less (please, God, less) and employing objective
individuals on a case by case nature. If football ever returns to our screens,
then we should begin the new dawn with some stock-taking and some spring-cleaning.
First to go should be 70% of the talking heads that plainly exist with the sole
intention of warming up the atmosphere. If Football Magazine could get up tight
about the use of an ex-Leeds manager during coverage of that club’s historical
pinnacle in 1975, then I’m pretty sure being force-fed Danny Murphy and Michael
Owen’s views on just how brilliant Liverpool are in the present day could
qualify as a crime against humanity.
"Definitely Klopp's fault, don't you think, Michael?"
Number two
in a series comparing the best players in the history of Manchester City:
Joe
Corrigan v. Ederson Moraes
Joe Corrigan hit
the depths before he reached the heights, eventually becoming an England squad
regular, restricted only by the phenomenal presence of Ray Clemence and Peter
Shilton from gaining more than his 9 England caps. The goalkeeping art has perhaps
changed more than any other facet of the game in modern times and certain
skills are much more prevalent now than in Corrigan’s day, especially in the
systems and game plans run by the likes of Pep Guardiola. Here we compare the
two great ‘keepers and judge them on their different attributes. With Graham Ward.
Presence in the
box
JC:
Joe was a huge man, and unusually tall for his era. He did suffer from a weight
problem when he first made his mark, but once this was under control following
his return after MacRae’s injury at Leicester, he never looked back, and was a
commanding figure, covering the whole of his penalty area superbly.8 EM:
Ederson and his ilk are no longer really required to be a “presence in the box”
in the old way of things. The goalkeeping art has changed more than any other
position on the field. Often it is not even “the box” where Ederson and his peers
have to carry out their work, as noted below against Wolves. 7
Communication
JC: An area where Corrigan improved with age, as he built up his
relationship with his central defenders like Booth, Doyle, and Watson, which
was an important factor during the ‘what if’ 1976/77 season, as City missed out
on the league title by a point, although Liverpool could afford to lose their
last game. City conceded 34 goals (one more than the champions) in a 42 game
season. 7.5 EM: In this era of multinational squads, communication
has, as a must, become short and simple. Perhaps it always was. “Out!”, “Back
post” and the like still suffice and even Ederson’s scratchy command of English
can see him through this. Not the shoutiest of keepers, however.7
1976-77: Joe Corrigan races back towards his goal as Dave Watson's back pass heads into the net v. Liverpool at Maine Road. 29th December 1976.
Crosses
JC: Again, an unsteady start for Corrigan, who was at fault for
the WBA goal in the 1970 League Cup final, by being caught a little flat-footed
under a looping cross. Once he slimmed down, his agility improved, and it was
then rare to see him beaten in the air by an opposition centre-forward and
there were several around who were useful in that respect.7.5 EM: Ederson often has so little to do that
his decision-making can be called into question. He can hardly be blamed for
lapses when he touches the ball so infrequently. Having said that, this is not
one of the areas of his game where he looks most accomplished.7
Shot-stopping
JC: This
was an issue for him at the start and during the early development of his
career. However, I can say that I saw the greatest save I’ve ever seen live,
when he sprang from a standing start to his left to keep out a point blank
range Allan Clarke header in an FA Cup tie at Leeds, and was still agile enough
to then pick up the pieces. 8.5 EM: Much more of an athlete than his predecessors
in the City goal, his agility is second to none. Able to get down quickly to low
shots and to fly high to tip others over. He is built to fly and he takes full
advantage of his attributes in this respect. 8.5
Positioning
JC: Corrigan’s
positioning was usually excellent and he was very rarely caught out, but he
would look back, I’m sure, at one of his England appearances, against Brazil,
when he was beaten at his near post. 7.5 EM: Can be caught out, as seen this season when being
beaten by shots that might not have gone in, had he been positioned better.
Generally aware of his angles and quick enough to right any positional wrongs
that can occur. Has been rash on occasion coming out to meet forwards, ending
in serious injury against Sadio Mane and a red card for interfering with Diogo Jota in
the calamatous defeat at Wolves this season. Also beaten badly at his near post by Anthony
Martial in the Derby. 7
Distribution
JC: An area where Corrigan was initially suspect, but, again, a
caveat about the laws in place for the majority of his career. Usually a
goalkeeper cleared the ball down the field as far as he could, both from a
place kick, and out of hand. I’m afraid Joe will always be remembered for ‘that’
Ronnie Boyce goal, and a howler against Sunderland in the FA Cup when he wasn’t
wearing a cap in the unseasonably strong sunlight. I saw both!
6.5
EM: Throws almost as far as he kicks and kicks like a quarterback. If there is one aspect of this
goalkeeper’s armoury that puts him in a different class to his peers, it his
distribution. Fast, technically adept, with a clear vision of what he is trying
to activate, his pinged diagonal slices have opened up many a defence and produced a direct assist for Sergio Aguero against Huddersfield in 2018-19. Let himself down badly in the Derby when setting up Scott
McTominay for United’s 96th minute clincher this season, though. 8.5 Temperament
JC: Overall,
I would rate this his greatest asset. The way he overcame the early setbacks,
and accusation that he was a manufactured goalkeeper, speaks volumes for the
man. As I indicated earlier, following his chance return, after 12 months or so
he was winning his second League Cup, and his first England cap. Don’t forget
this was in the era of Shilton and Clemence, plus other very fine keepers like
Phil Parkes (QPR/West Ham). He was rightfully declared man of the match
following the FA Cup final and replay against Spurs in 1981, when it seemed the
only way Spurs would score in the first game was via a fluke - which is what
happened, and, if you’re of a certain age, still gives you nightmares, or has
caused a life long dislike of the north London club. 9 EM: A steady Eddie for a Brazilian, who you might be
tempted to stereotype as hot headed and prone to tantrums. That would be unfair
to Brazilians and to Ederson, who has seldom lost his control while at City,
despite taking some stick from on-running forwards. Extremely coolness in
tapping the ball nonchalantly about his area with forwards getting closer and
closer is sometimes taken for granted. Not immune to the odd rumble, though. 7.5
Concentration
JC: This,
too, was a problem to start off with, but again improved with age. As he
reached maturity in his career. City had another outstanding side that usually
scored more than they conceded, meaning Corrigan had to guard against lapses,
as it was rare that City had to defend. Following Malcolm Allison’s dismantling
of that side, Joe was the bulwark needed to prevent more heavy beatings for a
young and callow team. 8
EM: Along with his distribution, this is Ederson’s greatest attribute,
although this season has seen a few lapses, which had not been on display up to
now. While Corrigan had an increasingly heavy workload as the City side he
played for diminished in capability, Ederson has only known great periods of
non-activity during his time at the Etihad. To remain vigilant in the teeth of incessant
attacking away from your area of the pitch and overwhelming possession stats in
favour of your team mates takes something special. 8.5
Handling
JC: Corrigan’s
handling could be called poor during the first stages of his City career, and
improved immeasurably as he gained experience. I should add a caveat about
general ground conditions, and the fact that the gloves of today were at the
prototype stage, by comparison, at the end of his career. If you look at early
videos, you will see Joe wearing plain white woollen gloves. The first great
goalkeeper to use the type of glove that is common today was the great Gordon
Banks. 8 EM: Gloves,
balls, pitches, preparation. All these items have improved beyond recognition in
the time between the end of Big Joe’s career and the beginning of Ederson’s. The
Brazilian’s handling has generally been of the highest order, but, again, this
season has seen one or two shots spilled in a range of slightly below-par
performances 8
Penalties
JC: I think I can honestly say I only saw
Corrigan save one penalty in a 90 minute game - at Maine Road against
Newcastle. The Scoreboard (soon to be North stand) end was boarded up, and the
penalty was a poor one, and Joe managed to shovel the ball away before he dived
under it. I should add I was there for the epic League Cup penalty shoot out at
Stoke, and how can you forget the comedy value of a booking at Derby for pacing
12 steps to the missing spot? 6.5 EM: While Ederson has missed out on the possibility
of being a penalty shoot-out hero like Willy Caballero and Claudio Bravo in
recent years at Wembley and on the road to Wembley (even Aro Muric has emerged triumphant
from one shoot-out - v. Leicester - during Ederson’s time at the club), he does have a critical penalty
save to his name in the Premier League, salvaging a 0-0 draw at Selhurst Park
with a stoppage time save from Luka Milivojevic’s weak effort Also saved from Aubameyang at the Emirates and
Dries Mertens of Napoli in the Champions League. 7.5
Albert
Camus, who everyone is reading this spring, don’t you know, once stated that “Everything I know about morality and
the obligations of men, I owe it to football.” Well, not many of us can say
that anymore. In his epic novel La Peste (The Plague), Camus depicts Raymond Rambert, a journalist who is visiting Oran to
research a story on living conditions in the Arab quarter of the town, as a
character trapped in a city with which he feels he has no connection.
The week’s machinations in the Premier League gas bubble have left many of us
with similar sentiments. Do we belong here? Does any relevant connection remain?
In the existential waiting room that we all
inhabit right now, it is perhaps restorative to ponder a while how we might all change as a result of the Covid-19 health crisis and, in particular, as this is
what draws us to this particular forum, what football might do to right some of
its evident wrongs in any future world we are granted clean breathing air in.
So far, it has been something of a mixed bag, and
scrutinising individual cases (Jesus Christ, Tottenham; for
God’s sake, Richard Branson, oh no, Liverpool) doesn’t really solve anything. We all know who
are doing their stuff and who aren’t. We certainly don’t need Sky News, Matt
Hancock and the crack team from the Sunday Times to single out particular clubs, who don’t fit their agenda, to help us form our opinions. I hope.
On a more general note, however, we might want
to ask ourselves where we go from here, presuming there will be a place to
launch ourselves from once this purge has had its way with us. The opinions fly thick and fast. There are those who
think this is God’s work, or the devil’s, or that it is Mother Earth scolding us for blatantly ignoring all of her beseeching
messages to calm down a bit in our rape and pillage of the planet’s resources. Is it a punishment for those who believe these things are sent as a punishment? That would be neat. For all of us then
whatever we might believe, the current state of affairs has delivered a pregnant moment to pause
and think.
Like Camus on contemplating absurdism and what
our response to it might be, a deeper reflection on ourselves and our way of
life is likely to end in heavy existential angst. Most of what we do is
worthless, trivial and selfish, we will probably decide. Bordering on the absurd, our habits and
routines are not much more sophisticated than the hamster running around his
wheel thinking he might be on the way to the peanut kiosk on the beachfront at Fleetwood. Being forced to self-isolate tends to sharpen the senses, allow us to prioritise anew. Do we have enough to eat? Do I feel ok? Are my close ones safe? How can I participate meaningfully in keeping
communities going and boosting the flagging fortunes of those less well-placed?
How can I show my appreciation for those people I always presume are just
there but never really value properly? All these thoughts now reach us before "who wrote this latest baseless attack on my football club?" and "Is Kevin de Bruyne fit?" The cleaners, the doctors, the
nurses, the drivers, the refuse collectors, the delivery folk, the support
staff, those bringing us reliable news and information, those transporting us
to and fro, in and out, those keeping us fed, those keeping
us safe, those keeping us informed, those keeping supply chains running, the chap that put the Dalek on the street the other day.
Who would have thought we would one day rue the passing of the milk delivery? Into none of these categories falls Daniel
Levy. I begin with the Tottenham chairman solely on the grounds that his acts are the latest to appear before our eyes from the Planet Altruism that is football. There are plenty of
others and you can consider them too if you have the energy. On Tuesday, Tottenham Hotspur announced,
via chairman Levy, sitting freshly atop his self-awarded £3m bonus for the
(albeit tardy) completion of the new Tottenham Hotspur stadium, that "people need to
wake up to the enormity of the coronavirus pandemic”. It is not clear whether
he was nibbling on one of the 234 different kinds of cheese to be found in the
new stadium’s Cheese Foyer at the time or not and, if so, whether it was one of
the particularly malodourous French ones that can cause hallucination, but what
is clear is that Levy’s pint is filling from the bottom up. Football’s pint is
also filling from the bottom up. Despite technology at Spurs, this has almost
always been the case.
By
now, the details of the situation are well known: in order to make sure
everyone at the club was fully awake, Levy announced that 550 non-playing staff
would take a 20% pay cut. Levy himself will be involved in this scheme, meaning
some of the £7m he earned in the last calendar year will be taken back. No
biological honey on his toast this week then.
It
is not known whether Tottenham’s owner, Joe Lewis -apparently worth roughly (it
is sometimes a little tricky to get to the final, precise figure when there are
so many noughts making your eyes blur) £4.35bn (this from the Sunday Times Rich
List, who rejoice in this kind of vulgarity)- will be hit by the same in-house
procedure. Levy’s Trumpist addendum that even his Tottenham “the 8th
richest club in the world according to Deloittes rich list” have been hit hard
holds little sway. We really don’t care about the state of your media partners,
Daniel, or whether the club’s cheese is going off or even that Tottenham lie 8thin the grossest of league tables. And whilst we are looking at you and your
ideas in these crisis times, dipping into the government’s emergency furlough
scheme when you are running a multi-million pound business is in all
probability not the kind of struggling business Boris Johnson and the guys and
girls at HM Treasury had in mind, when they announced the emergency aid
package. They probably won't have been expecting to pay 80% of Liverpool's non-playing staff's salaries either. You really just can't find a good news story around when you need one, although some will work harder than others to put a positive gloss on things, just to keep the nation's morale high.
You can polish a turd as long as you don't mind getting stuff under your finger nails. (always wash your hands thoroughly afterwards, singing, well, you know the drill by now). What about those on salaries so high they could each forgo a camouflage Hummer to arrange some shopping deliveries for the elderly community of the Tottenham High Road. Before we explode with indignation, it might be worth remembering that Spain, where Barcelona's squad have agreed to take a huge pay cut, are much further along this crisis line than the UK is. People have had longer to come to terms and to rationalise their own response, although there is clearly no point taking your time to rationalise your response and then responding as Tottenham and Liverpool have...
Gordon
Taylor, for decades a barometer of how football folk approach life’s great
causes, has already said his members will block any multilateral deferral of
wages. Not the least of Mr Taylor’s shortcomings has been the inability to
judge when was an opportune moment to retire from his post.
There will be plenty of players embarrassed by Taylor's response and they will determine their own response in the next few days if their union cannot do that for them. Meanwhile
our own Premier League bigwigs have been busy conference-calling each other
through the night to come up with hair-brained schemes to “get the Premier
League done” in any form necessary, including the frankly hideous prospect of a
massive wave of football matches being played in concertinaed form, players
staying en masse in lock-down viral free Premier Inns and a raft of behind
closed doors matches being put on simultaneously in London and the South
Midlands. The thought of medics being dragged away from hospitals
that are so overworked they are spilling patients out into tents on their front concourses in order to watch over Dejan Lovren for 90 minutes in case he pulls a
hamstring is frankly hideous.
Trying one’s utmost to put on what is evidently
not a show for public morale but a dogged attempt to save having to repay tv
cash for not fully delivering the product as the contract stated is not the best look at the moment. Self-interest
and greed is not a new theme in football, however. What on earth would make humble Burnley club together with the likes of Liverpool, Manchester United and Arsenal to deliver a plea to the Court of Arbitration for Sport to keep City out of Europe? Football has been busy eating
itself for several decades. Covid-19 has done us all the favour of hurrying up
the process whereby we see it for what it is. In the great scheme of things, we
can actually do without the white noise of the football press, the endless
fabricated transfer speculation, the moral-lite world of agents and advisers,
the haggling for million dollar cuts and the gasping and the whooping that
accompanies every fart and every burp in our national sport. The
£25m play-off final, the £70m goalkeeper, the £5
pie, the £12 souvenir match programme. The record profit announcement that then follows.
The last seismic sock in the teeth of this
proportion fell upon our heads in 1939. Hitler’s whim that Poland might look
nice on his mantlepiece reduced the new football season to dust. Large
gatherings were banned, as they are now. The war footing meant that players not
only had to curtail their athletic pursuits but were conscripted into the army
instead. Imagine that, Corporal Harry Winks and Not Quite Private Enough Jack
Grealish. Gas masks were carried by
spectators at all times and the employment of officials to disperse larger
crowds was also deemed fruitful. History goes around in tight little circles.
One wonders, when serious things befall us (and
by this, I mean things more serious than losing in the last minute at West Brom
or shipping your star forward to Juventus), how some will manage to relativize.
The Daily Express, in particular, must be in something of a lather, having
succumbed to literally hundreds of front pages down the years saying killer
storms would be the end of us and, more recently, that an early judicial block
on Brexit was “the day democracy died”. It is quite possible that organs such
as the Express have already obliterated their stockpile of hyperbole to such an extent that they are
now left to wipe their leaky bottoms on their own discarded back issues.
We have travelled a long way since powdered
eggs, however. Our new creature comforts come at a massive cost to the planet.
Passion fruit and mangos fly in from deepest Peru. mobile phones drop in from
China, cars slide off the ramps from Korea and footballers wing in from Argentina; golf trips
are to Dubai instead of the pitch and putt at Timperley. The world is suddenly
a small place, but we have also undermined it, made it fragile.
Perhaps now things might change and, just for
a while, they may stay changed. For the good of everyone, we must all alter our
ways. This has not just been the deprivation of our rights to party and a
chance to make ourselves look ridiculous pushing shopping trollies filled to
the brim with toilet paper. It is not just an unforeseen but temporary
curtailment of our narcissistic lives of puff pastry and caramel frappuccinos.
The self-indulgent shallowness of what we have created should be reconsidered.
The hollow drum that is modern football must follow suit. It has gone deeper
now than paying €175 for a match ticket in the Champions League only to be
treated like a two-bit nobody when you try to enter the ground. The time has
come to stop milking and start reallocating.
“A little too late and quite a lot too little
…” does not have to be the phrase to mark 2020.
Extract from cover illustration of La Peste by Albert Camus.
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