The Beautiful Game

It occurs to me that anyone reading some of the recent posts to this Far Place might assume I was chiefly, if not solely, interested in the progress of England's national team in the World Cup. This is by no means the case. I won't be terribly upset if they get eliminated at the group stage; in fact, I won't be at all upset, assuming they don't deserve to go through which, at present, they don't. (By the way, I still have not abandoned hope that they'll do something against Slovenia and am probably the only supporter they've got who thinks Capello makes perfect sense in his comments on how they played against Algeria and what they need to do now.)

My real interest in the tournament lies in wanting real football to be played - on the ground, to feet, plenty of movement off the ball, and wanting to keep scoring to the end because that's where the enjoyment lies. A bit like Portugal last night. Any team that can do that will get my support - as did Brazil in 1970 (their 1 - 0 victory over a fine England team being one of the great games of any World Cup) and Holland in 1974.

I reminded myself of the fundamental truths of the game back in Kuala Lumpur by reading Duncan Hamilton's Provided You Don't Kiss Me, a sort of account of Brian Clough's years of success (and failure) at Nottingham Forest. The writer was, at that time, a sportswriter for a Nottingham newspaper and had good access to Cloughie and he provides us with a persuasively raw and vivid portrait of the man. The book is organised around broad themes rather than proceeding sequentially - for example, one late chapter focuses on Clough's drinking and its deleterious effects upon him and casts about both early and late in his career to explain the mystery - and I suppose would be a bit of a puzzle for anyone unaware of the broad outline of the great manager's career. But it worked for me, helped by the fact I read the whole thing in less than a day (as a sort of holiday after ploughing through the Naipaul I had just wearily completed.)

What I liked most about the book was the obvious respect Hamilton maintained for Clough all the way through its 'warts and all' aspects, and the way it didn't lose sight of the bedrock truths of what football should be about. Yes, the man wanted to win, but he wanted to win with style and knew how to set players free, mentally and physically, to do so. The humour he embodied was at the heart of it all and sort of fed the passion.

It's a pity he didn't get the England job. He would have released the players from their chains. But, as Hamilton convincingly shows us, the media would never have allowed someone with a real personality to have sustained that position, no matter how right he was for it.

In the meantime, I'm salivating over the prospects of Portugal against Brazil. Let's hope they both turn up to play.