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.
Showing posts with label British bars. Show all posts
Showing posts with label British bars. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 03, 2012
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
The Revolution Is Televised
The riots have claimed Mallorcan victims. Bar Brits. The cancellation of the international footy has deprived them of an important date in their calendars; those, that is, for whom the "season" revolves around the peaks of the football season and England internationals in particular.
Rather than cries of "England till I die", Bar Brits reverberate to the calls of "shoot 'em" and not "shoot, come on Rooney, shoot". These calls mix with demands that the army be brought in, that water cannons be used, that the birch be brought back along with National Service and, for good measure, hanging. Enoch is invoked, as Enoch tends to be invoked at such times.
There isn't a whole load of sympathy as Sky plays over and over scenes of unrest, looting, burning cars, burning buildings and fights with police. The Bar Brit punter doesn't want any of this; he wants to be able to watch the telly in order to vent his frustration at another dismal England performance and to shout abuse about Capello.
Sky though, along with the rest of the media, have played their own part. Social media may have been significant (why should anyone be surprised by this?), but rolling 24-hour news and constant images are also significant. They fuel greater disturbances as the hoody class seeks to find itself captured on camera.
This is, after all, the happy-slapping generation, one brought up on actual and personal depictions of unruliness and violence and on its self-aggrandising glorification. Being seen, albeit with a face masked or covered by a hood, is what counts. Being caught on digital film is the esteem maker for those without esteem. Attacks on reporters are not attacks to prevent filming, but attacks for attacks' sake. To prevent filming would undermine the ethos of riot in 2011; these have been riots by media and not social media. They disprove Gil Scott-Heron's poetry of the revolution not being televised.
And in Bar Brits, as in bars in Britain, the public is served its media diet and only too willingly regurgitates it. Words on the lips of Bar Brit occupants are "pure" and "criminality", a curious juxtaposition of adjective and noun, but one spouted as the on-message spin-bite by police, the Home Secretary and a Prime Minister forced to leave his tennis kit behind in Tuscany.
In 1981 the revolution was televised, too. A difference, however, was that there wasn't the cachet attached to being at the end of a lens. It was a televised revolution which gave an incomplete and at times false picture. Ealing, where I lived then, was caught up but not to anything like the way the trouble was represented. Unlike this time.
The revolution is televised not only on Sky and the BBC but also on Spanish TV. Riot by media is a global event, and the whole world can have its say. Spanish telly and press are lapping it all up, as are the chatterers on news sites. Spanish explanations for the riots cover easy access to benefits, Muslims, British imperialism, Conservative governments, a British mob mentality dating back to the Mods and Rockers, and the absence of a middle class in Britain. Some will be the same explanations of Brits themselves; others will make no sense, like the belief that there is no middle class and only rich and poor.
The Mods and Rockers one initially seems odd, but may not be as the riots are only partially a race thing. Whitey is engaged as well, finally finding a cause about which he can riot, one that The Clash called for as long ago as 1977. And the cause is a pair of Nike trainers.
Buried among the Spanish prescriptions on the internet, which have expanded into a free-for-all aimed at Magalluf and Benidorm tourists and demands for Gibraltar and the Malvinas to be returned, are the occasional voices who wonder if the same thing might happen in Spain. But as Spain has a middle class, and Britain doesn't have, then presumably it won't. You do get some pretty weird and distorted views, as you do from the Brits themselves.
Everyone knows what the causes of the riots are; or rather, they reckon they know. I have my own views as to the causes, but why should you be interested in knowing them? They might be right, they might be wrong. However, unlike 1981, when I lived in a part of London that was caught up in the riots, albeit to nothing like the extent that the media suggested, and lived in a city where I knew well enough the issues in Brent, Brixton, Southall, what do I know now?
Perhaps I know far more, however, because these are riots by media and the revolution is very clearly televised.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Rather than cries of "England till I die", Bar Brits reverberate to the calls of "shoot 'em" and not "shoot, come on Rooney, shoot". These calls mix with demands that the army be brought in, that water cannons be used, that the birch be brought back along with National Service and, for good measure, hanging. Enoch is invoked, as Enoch tends to be invoked at such times.
There isn't a whole load of sympathy as Sky plays over and over scenes of unrest, looting, burning cars, burning buildings and fights with police. The Bar Brit punter doesn't want any of this; he wants to be able to watch the telly in order to vent his frustration at another dismal England performance and to shout abuse about Capello.
Sky though, along with the rest of the media, have played their own part. Social media may have been significant (why should anyone be surprised by this?), but rolling 24-hour news and constant images are also significant. They fuel greater disturbances as the hoody class seeks to find itself captured on camera.
This is, after all, the happy-slapping generation, one brought up on actual and personal depictions of unruliness and violence and on its self-aggrandising glorification. Being seen, albeit with a face masked or covered by a hood, is what counts. Being caught on digital film is the esteem maker for those without esteem. Attacks on reporters are not attacks to prevent filming, but attacks for attacks' sake. To prevent filming would undermine the ethos of riot in 2011; these have been riots by media and not social media. They disprove Gil Scott-Heron's poetry of the revolution not being televised.
And in Bar Brits, as in bars in Britain, the public is served its media diet and only too willingly regurgitates it. Words on the lips of Bar Brit occupants are "pure" and "criminality", a curious juxtaposition of adjective and noun, but one spouted as the on-message spin-bite by police, the Home Secretary and a Prime Minister forced to leave his tennis kit behind in Tuscany.
In 1981 the revolution was televised, too. A difference, however, was that there wasn't the cachet attached to being at the end of a lens. It was a televised revolution which gave an incomplete and at times false picture. Ealing, where I lived then, was caught up but not to anything like the way the trouble was represented. Unlike this time.
The revolution is televised not only on Sky and the BBC but also on Spanish TV. Riot by media is a global event, and the whole world can have its say. Spanish telly and press are lapping it all up, as are the chatterers on news sites. Spanish explanations for the riots cover easy access to benefits, Muslims, British imperialism, Conservative governments, a British mob mentality dating back to the Mods and Rockers, and the absence of a middle class in Britain. Some will be the same explanations of Brits themselves; others will make no sense, like the belief that there is no middle class and only rich and poor.
The Mods and Rockers one initially seems odd, but may not be as the riots are only partially a race thing. Whitey is engaged as well, finally finding a cause about which he can riot, one that The Clash called for as long ago as 1977. And the cause is a pair of Nike trainers.
Buried among the Spanish prescriptions on the internet, which have expanded into a free-for-all aimed at Magalluf and Benidorm tourists and demands for Gibraltar and the Malvinas to be returned, are the occasional voices who wonder if the same thing might happen in Spain. But as Spain has a middle class, and Britain doesn't have, then presumably it won't. You do get some pretty weird and distorted views, as you do from the Brits themselves.
Everyone knows what the causes of the riots are; or rather, they reckon they know. I have my own views as to the causes, but why should you be interested in knowing them? They might be right, they might be wrong. However, unlike 1981, when I lived in a part of London that was caught up in the riots, albeit to nothing like the extent that the media suggested, and lived in a city where I knew well enough the issues in Brent, Brixton, Southall, what do I know now?
Perhaps I know far more, however, because these are riots by media and the revolution is very clearly televised.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Wear Your Shirt With Pride: Football returns
England play Hungary this evening. On Saturday, the Premier League kicks off again. Rarely have two football occasions been greeted by such a lack of enthusiasm. By me, at any rate. Not so by the local Brit bars. There is at least one that counts the number of England matches through the tourist season; days when it can expect a full house and empty barrels come the end of the evening. It won't be the only one.
The dependence upon football, England or Premiership, seems a bizarre way of running a business. But it's not so bizarre when one witnesses the hordes that take to the bars when Saturday (or Sunday or Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday or Thursday or Friday) comes. Has anyone ever attempted to measure the level of "ancillary" business that football creates - the takings in the bars of Mallorca and elsewhere?
One wonders, though, at the enduring capacity of footy to entice tourists into parting with good money to demonstrate affiliations with teams unworthy of the price of a pint of Saint Mick. During the England game against Slovenia, I started to contemplate the peaks of beer buying during a match and the average pint consumption per punter. I never arrived at a scientific figure, but the peaks were rarely troughs and the consumption seemed massive. There are a lot of cold drinks imbibed in the name of ... in the name of what?
Come the day of a match, the football shirt is ritually removed from the hotel or apartment drawer. Wear your replica shirt with pride. In England's case, it's the last thing anyone should be admitting to, let alone donning. Affiliation? Ah yes, a team run by an Italian, increasingly being exposed as an idiot, and populated by numbskulls such as Potato Head. Premier League and affiliation? Ah yes, to whole African tribes and a European dribbling diaspora handed fat cheques by representatives of superpowers, past and present. Rod Liddle in "The Sunday Times" at the weekend raised the possibility of Premier matches provoking nuclear attacks. To the USA and Russia, we must now, in all likelihood, add China, to say nothing of the threat of Islam.
Why does anyone care any longer? My own team, Spurs (who it might be said were to blame for a movement towards football fan alienation when they grabbed footballing aliens - Villa and Ardiles), do at least have an English manager and a smattering of English/British players, but it's not the club of Greaves, Mullery, Gilzean and the rest. Yet, curiously, alienation has never quite caught on, despite the hopelessness of success for any club unprepared to spend the equivalent of an African nation's GDP on ... on an African player, and despite the not infrequent references to the size of those cheques and the disproportionately lamentable performances they pay for.
It's all due to marketing, one presumes, a process that can result in a red-cheeked English child walking the streets of Alcúdia in a Messi shirt. Why? The only good reason I can think of is because it's not a Rooney shirt. Marketing, constant and exhaustive media coverage, the 24/7 outpouring of inanities and also, just as important, the weird tribalism of football, one that is not just reserved for the English. Wear your replica shirt with pride. It's a statement, one of lurking confrontation and of territorial bravado, like a dog urinating against a lamp-post. When England played and I hacked along to the bar, I felt under-dressed not wearing an England shirt, akin to turning up in jeans at a wedding and finding everyone else in morning suits. The replica shirt sends out a message not just to supporters of other clubs, it does so also to Johnny Foreigner. Once upon a time, a foreigner in a foreign land was advised to keep his head down, unless there was a pith helmet on top of the head and he was running the foreign land. Not now.
One can understand the Blackpool supporter turning up at a bar with an orange torso and a bright pink face. An affiliation to the totally lost cause. He's likely to be bought drinks out of sympathy. He also knows that this season will be his only opportunity. But for most of the others, it's an exercise in compliant manipulation, in the pressure to affirm a marketing concept rather than a football team, in tribalism disguised as support, symbolised by the replica shirt and shouted over the constant chasing of yet another pint. Not, though, that the bars will be complaining.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
The dependence upon football, England or Premiership, seems a bizarre way of running a business. But it's not so bizarre when one witnesses the hordes that take to the bars when Saturday (or Sunday or Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday or Thursday or Friday) comes. Has anyone ever attempted to measure the level of "ancillary" business that football creates - the takings in the bars of Mallorca and elsewhere?
One wonders, though, at the enduring capacity of footy to entice tourists into parting with good money to demonstrate affiliations with teams unworthy of the price of a pint of Saint Mick. During the England game against Slovenia, I started to contemplate the peaks of beer buying during a match and the average pint consumption per punter. I never arrived at a scientific figure, but the peaks were rarely troughs and the consumption seemed massive. There are a lot of cold drinks imbibed in the name of ... in the name of what?
Come the day of a match, the football shirt is ritually removed from the hotel or apartment drawer. Wear your replica shirt with pride. In England's case, it's the last thing anyone should be admitting to, let alone donning. Affiliation? Ah yes, a team run by an Italian, increasingly being exposed as an idiot, and populated by numbskulls such as Potato Head. Premier League and affiliation? Ah yes, to whole African tribes and a European dribbling diaspora handed fat cheques by representatives of superpowers, past and present. Rod Liddle in "The Sunday Times" at the weekend raised the possibility of Premier matches provoking nuclear attacks. To the USA and Russia, we must now, in all likelihood, add China, to say nothing of the threat of Islam.
Why does anyone care any longer? My own team, Spurs (who it might be said were to blame for a movement towards football fan alienation when they grabbed footballing aliens - Villa and Ardiles), do at least have an English manager and a smattering of English/British players, but it's not the club of Greaves, Mullery, Gilzean and the rest. Yet, curiously, alienation has never quite caught on, despite the hopelessness of success for any club unprepared to spend the equivalent of an African nation's GDP on ... on an African player, and despite the not infrequent references to the size of those cheques and the disproportionately lamentable performances they pay for.
It's all due to marketing, one presumes, a process that can result in a red-cheeked English child walking the streets of Alcúdia in a Messi shirt. Why? The only good reason I can think of is because it's not a Rooney shirt. Marketing, constant and exhaustive media coverage, the 24/7 outpouring of inanities and also, just as important, the weird tribalism of football, one that is not just reserved for the English. Wear your replica shirt with pride. It's a statement, one of lurking confrontation and of territorial bravado, like a dog urinating against a lamp-post. When England played and I hacked along to the bar, I felt under-dressed not wearing an England shirt, akin to turning up in jeans at a wedding and finding everyone else in morning suits. The replica shirt sends out a message not just to supporters of other clubs, it does so also to Johnny Foreigner. Once upon a time, a foreigner in a foreign land was advised to keep his head down, unless there was a pith helmet on top of the head and he was running the foreign land. Not now.
One can understand the Blackpool supporter turning up at a bar with an orange torso and a bright pink face. An affiliation to the totally lost cause. He's likely to be bought drinks out of sympathy. He also knows that this season will be his only opportunity. But for most of the others, it's an exercise in compliant manipulation, in the pressure to affirm a marketing concept rather than a football team, in tribalism disguised as support, symbolised by the replica shirt and shouted over the constant chasing of yet another pint. Not, though, that the bars will be complaining.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
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