The Greatest League In The World

So when it really mattered, Spain dispensed with the fannying around. Perhaps it was incisiveness brought about by the mumblings of criticism, or by the recent memory of an Italian side that had matched up during the group stage, or by the fact that until the final Spain had simply been prepared to go through the motions, aware of their superiority and content to keep the best for the last. Whatever the reason, in this Olympic year Spain played with the gods. The Italians were mortals and other teams were condemned to a life in the underworld.

Paco and Manu didn't disrupt broadcast communications. Their manic shouting was quietened by that to which they were bearing witness. "¡Somos campeones!" You could forgive them this combination of their one eyes in forming a commentating "we". They were, they are champions; Spain, that is. There was no singing and not even a burst of the greatest musical horror known to sports events the world over, Queen's "We Are The Champions".

What will it change, though? Very little where the boys with the Three Lions are concerned probably. The very insistence on the continuing invoking of Skinner and Baddiel, now formally translated it would appear to the national team, makes ever more apparent the limitations of a lionhearted spirit, inadequate when confronted with the feline lusciousness of the stroking of a football. The lionhearts dance a bump and grind of heavy boots hoofing on the turf and hoofing the ball, while the Spanish are fleet of foot, a flamenco meets salsa, a movement of joyous inhibition. Finally, and in the final at any rate.

In a few weeks The Greatest League In The World will start up again. Back will come the misplaced pass, the inability to control, the stuttering motion. The replica shirts will fill with Bar Brit beer, and from their mouths will come the encouragements to "go on, my son" and to "get it up there" and the admonishments to "stop fannying around". A Spanish team can fanny around, content in the knowledge of superior ability. A Premier League team can fanny around, only if it's called Arsenal.

For the English or British observer, be he or she tourist or resident and sometimes unacquainted with footballing nuance, Spain's success and the resultant celebration were the stuff of the patronising or the plasticity of temporarily having gone native. The regular English football fan, however, and this fan in a replica shirt on tour takes on more brutish an Englishness than at home, will still extol the virtues of, say, a Stevie G. Like Garth Crooks has. The team of the competition, in Garthland, includes Stevie G, yet Gerrard is no creative genius. He should be a component of a midfield rather than its focal point, a David Platt to Gazza.

Rare exceptions apart, e.g. Glenn Hoddle's youthful Owen-Beckham team, England have failed to produce sides that can stand comparison with European sophistication since the days of New Order and Pavarotti. But initially in 1990, it wasn't so. I was in a bar in southern France for the England-Ireland match. The half-time analysis said it all. In one word. "Primitif." It was primitive, dire and embarrassing. But then what happened? The players took the initiative. So much for English players only being capable of 4-4-2. They changed to a sweeper system, and Mark Wright became one of the players of the competition. 

That was a team of players blessed with an openness, one that had taken them abroad or would do so. Lineker, Waddle, Platt. Gazza probably never learned much while at Lazio, but they were all of an era before the money, selfishness and "excitement" of The Greatest League In The World put an end to players broadening their horizons (Owen and Beckham being exceptions) and put an end to England ever being capable of being more than eternal quarter-finalists.

Hang on, though, will say the replica shirts of Bar Brits. There's Jack Wilshere. To the Three Lions' rescue will come a new fake Messiah, like the Second Coming of the one-time young Joe Cole. Alas, poor Wilshere.

Past apostles of The Greatest League In The World have goggled at Bar Brit's Sky while England have suffered their ritual humiliations. But had the channel changed during one previous championship, they would have seen a game from a different tournament. It was played in Cala Millor. Between Spain and Germany. The ball never went above head height because had it, it would have been penalised. The movement, the passing and the control were all exemplary. The pitch was small and so were the players. They were 12 years old. 


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.