Dave Hill's Big Britain

Football As Metaphor Pt 5,312: Keegan Returns

I watched the last 20 minutes of Newcastle versus Bolton on Saturday evening, mostly out of the corner my eye. The Magpies pressed ineffectually, their opponents blocked obdurately. At intervals Setanta's cameras picked out placards in the crowd heralding the return of "King Kev". The consensus is that Keegan's reappointment is a triumph of romance over realism. I think that's right, and it makes me smile and despair at the same time. Keegan's football philosophy has always exemplified a school of English patriotism that pre-dates even his playing days. It's all about good mates together having more heart and more flair than the other lot. It served him wonderfully as a player, but has worked less for him as a manager. When he was England boss he sometimes implied that our best bet was to stick some cold steel up Johnny Foreigner. Cheery, honest and doomed, he'd have been a good man in the trenches. He'd have been a disaster too. Football is a metaphor for hopeless optimism.

Busby Babes

From The Guardian:

"Fabio Capello's first match as England manager will not be preceded by a minute's silence for the Munich air disaster after the Football Association reluctantly came to the conclusion that supporters could not be trusted to show respect. The FA is so concerned about the possibility of fans disrupting a tribute for Manchester United's Busby Babes it has taken a 'better safe than sorry' policy for the friendly against Switzerland on February 6."

The FA is probably right. Sad story. Football is a metaphor for cheap sectarian nastiness.

Hackney Marshes, Sunday Morning

Football is a metaphor for...watching and waiting.

Risotto Capello

Plenty of links to this story...

"Health experts have created a recipe to celebrate the appointment of Fabio Capello as England's manager. Nutritionist Nathalie Winn, of the World Cancer Research Fund, dreamed up the risotto to get England fans in the mood for a bit of Italian. The dish - called Risotto Capello - is based on Arborio rice, grown in the north of Italy where Capello was raised." (PA)

...but only one site provides the ingredients and tells you what to do with them. Now, where do I find Arborio rice? Football is a metaphor for, ah, cookery.

No Crap Capello

As the man himself fills in some time at his tax-dodge pad in Lugano (thank you, Five Live) the "small details" are ironed out by gangs of lawyers at Soho Square. Meanwhile, here's my take for the Guardian.

I grew up in a Good Olde England full of jokes about Italian tanks having only reverse gears. It therefore gives me a small thrill that the appointment of Fabio Capello as England manager, which is expected to be confirmed today, has excited native hopes that he will eyeball the prima donnas of our national game and tell them to shape up for their country or ship out. Old pros who've worked for Capello at club level - Marcel Desailly, Dino Zoff, Clarence Seedorf - have confirmed that he indulges no superstar airs. Ronaldo, Totti, Del Piero and even HRH Beckham have had their noses put out of joint by the steely 61-year-old. Englishmen phoning Five Live have been enthused: the Eytie, it seems, will knock a bit of pride into Our Boys.

Well, a manager who values team blend and attitude higher than pure reputation is surely never a bad thing. Capello's poor command of English won't matter very much in that regard. A few evenings with Linguphone and he should have "You're dropped, son," mastered easily. How, though, will he handle the England job's other special challenges? The Italian media is as unforgiving as the English, although its press has not evolved the same appetites for private-life peeping or agricultural insult. And Capello, with his love of travel and Tolstoy and an art collection reputed to be worth £10m, shows worrying signs of being an intellectual. He won't half cop it if he comes on all Kandinsky here.

Then there's the club-versus-country problem. So reluctant are some top English clubs to release their stars for international games that a brush with a stinging nettle is enough to have their domestic boss withdraw them from the national squad and confined to the treatment table, only for them to recover with miraculous speed in time for the next Premier League fixture. Bear this in mind when reflecting on the sweet-talking tributes paid to Capello by Sir Alex Ferguson as speculation about the former's appointment gathered strength. Could the good knight have been preparing the ground for breaking bad news in the future? "Hello, Fabio! Old friend! I'm really sorry, but Wayne's got a nasty wallet strain and I cannae risk him. You know how it is."

What, though, if Capello proves successful? Imagine those cultural ripples, my dears! In Italy they celebrate national football triumphs with impromptu motorcades and blaring horns. People make love in fountains. Strangers kiss in the streets. Imagine Ing-er-lund gone all bellissimo. Well, try.

Also appearing at Comment Is Free.

McLeish For England

Oh well, I suppose you can't blame him. Perhaps Salmond should insist on the next Scotland manager being a diehard Nationalist. How else to ensure a successful one isn't lured south of the border? Football is a metaphor for the Premiership gobbling up everything.

Steve McClaren: Cheerio, Cheerio, Cheerio...

The image that says it all. And now, in the grand tradition, the great wailing has begun. But, of course, the solutions are obvious.

One: Peter Crouch should be appointed player-manager.

Two: No player whose club is in the top half of the Premier League should be selected (other than the player-manager).

Three: Everyone in England should become less bothered about football.

Simple really.

England Tonight

Ambivalent about tonight's big game? Me too. My latest for Guardian Comment.

I approached last year's World Cup bent on getting into the patriotic swing. Enough of your writer's lofty detachment, I told myself. Enjoy the thing. Join in. After all, there were things to be glad about. The pond life element of England's travelling fans seemed to have shrunk, while at home St George's flag fever appeared, on the whole, to represent a more generous expression of national identity than before. Among the England players were characters that personified aspects of Englishness I could warm to: Crouch the plucky underdog; Beckham the boy dandy; Gerrard the swashbuckling hero. My reward? The usual constipated plod to quarter-final defeat.

Actually, it was worse than usual. Customarily in the big tournaments, there's one satisfying win or honourable defeat along the way to ending up just OK, but England's matches in Germany produced few moments to take pride or pleasure in. And the road to qualification for next year's European Championship in Switzerland and Austria has been similarly rutted with indifferent and embarrassing displays. Had Israel not surprisingly defeated Russia last weekend, manager Steve McClaren's team would by now have been eliminated and tonight's game against already-qualified Croatia but a painful formality, mocked by the opulence of the new Wembley stadium where it will take place.

Football As Metaphor: Pt 7,972,352

The following was written for Comment Is Free.

"I'm glad Jose Mourinho has ceased to be team manager of Chelsea football club. With luck he'll be employed overseas any time soon and I'll be spared the daily chore of closing my eyes and ears to the unending inanities of the special one soap opera, the football media's pathetic slavering over his every pronouncement and tantrum, its simpering gratitude for his press conferences being "good value", its dismal preoccupation with the "mind games" he engages in with rivals; and all this at a time when the English game has never been more deserving of detached, critical scrutiny and exposure as the debauched, imperial procession it has become.