Eubank describing the Titanic. It is thinkable, too bloody thinkable, I’m thinking about it right now in Yanksville, Americee, where in ’94 a World Cup took place in which there was nobody speaking proper English and Alexi Lalas was just a Hanna-Barbera flesh sketch, a living Shaggy, not yet the manager of another resurrected McLazarus selection.
It’s awful when England don’t qualify; I’d rather watch every woman I’ve ever loved drunkenly fellating handsome idiots at a bus depot than sit through another USA ’94. Actually the bus depot thing could be quite sexy, inducing a masturbatory experience that flits between jealousy and intense excitement, where one cries, despite oneself, during the act of onanism. I believe it’s popularly known as a ‘cr-ank’. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to crank my way through Euro 2008. I’m older now and more dignified.
How are we to avoid this phantom of a nation lost in sexual flagellation – which would be an awful, Catholic, Marvin Gaye anthem: ‘In this situation I need, sexual flagellation, get up, get up, get up, let’s cry-wank tonight’? It’ll never catch on, so how do we avoid it? Where do we look for salvation? Dear, hobbling Stevie Gerrard? Confidence junky Emile Heskey? Joe Cole? Possibly, but he’s not starting for Chelsea and I don’t think he’s ever recovered from Glenn Roeder’s barmy decision to make him put on two stone – why did he do it? He might as well’ve bulked up Darcy Bussell or Harry Potter.
I don’t know if I’ll be able to watch the qualifying matches as I’m all caught up making a documentary about Jack Kerouac and On the Road for the BBC and I’ve got more chance of discovering the essence of being that the Beats quested after than a telly showing soccer-ball – even in the Beckham era.
Good luck England. I reserve the right to flood these pages with hyperbole if we beat Israel and Russia, and begin a campaign for McClaren’s knighthood. Such is the nature of football. Now for a spot of breakfast at the Chelsea, which will most likely be a lampshade smeared in peanut butter, by me with a room key. No wonder Sid killed Nancy – he was probably hungry and had a delirious vision of her as a hamburger. Arthur Miller was probably bored into writing that play and I bet Leonard and Janis’s bed was unmade when they arrived.
6 Repent, for the kingdom of Steve is at hand
The one thing that could perhaps redeem the column I wrote seven, vast days ago; immense days, days with the limitless, intimidating scale of the expansive Kansas plains that I’ve been crossing this past week is that, at its close, having spent 800 words fear-mongering, I did offer, with rare perspicacity, the sentence: ‘I reserve the right to flood these pages with hyperbole if England win both matches.’ Well England did win both matches but hyperbole is not what I’m going to offer, no, I think more appropriate would be contrition. I feel contrite at having referred to the team’s key player in those games, Emile Heskey, as a ‘confidence junky’. So what if strong, committed, unselfish, skilful Emile sometimes requires what Ron Atkinson (note: this stereotyping refers to pre-racist Ron, when he was just a bejewelled vending machine for clichés) would doubtless describe as ‘an arm round him’ once in a while.
I think that’s rather lovely. In this age where the modern footballer is regarded as a brash millionaire floozies-harvester, players like Emile, and indeed Shaun Wright-Phillips, occasionally suffer from self-doubt and need assurance from their manager if they are to perform to their potential. Unhelpful then to reduce Heskey to a man who uses esteem like a drug and sees his coach as the pusher, hence ‘confidence junky’. Sorry.
Also in my doom-laden scribbling I conjectured with grisly portent that Steven Gerrard would end up in a wheelchair as a result of fierce Mossad attacks or assaults from ex-KGB but, I now accept, he seems to be fine. Again, I’m sorry.
Then dear, triumphant, indefatigable Steve McClaren or ‘McLazarus’, as I dubbed him due to his tendency to resurrect dead or at least departed players, a tendency which I now realise marks him out as brave and willing to take risks rather than being a victim to the whims of an all-too-fickle press, of which I must now stand as the worst example. Also ‘McLazarus’ doesn’t quite work because the biblical character Lazarus, upon whom my cruel, cheap pun was based, was resurrected by Christ and did not resurrect anyone himself, so I’ve offended theologians as well as the great tactician McClaren.
I’ve had scores of complaints from theologians but I’m less concerned about insulting a group who have forgiveness as one of their core tenets than I am noble McClaren who is as wise and gracious as Christ. I’m so very sorry.
‘When I left, McClaren picked his teams like a drunk shuffling bags in a trolley. Now he is indispensable’
I did also say that Alexi Lalas looks like a live action version of the Scooby Doo character Shaggy. I stand by that. Thank God I didn’t have time to express my ill-informed views on Michael Owen who I would’ve probably dismissed as ‘finished’ or ‘a bastard’ but would now like to celebrate as a great servant of the game who will doubtless surpass Bobby Charlton’s 49 goals during the qualifying phase of this tournament, a tournament that last week I revealed grave doubts that we’d be attending beyond this formative stage but now firmly believe we’ll win.
Furthermore I cast aspersions on Owen’s assertion that Wembley would become a fortress, claiming it was as impenetrable as Nancy Spungen’s jugular. I was writing the piece in the Chelsea Hotel and it seemed a fitting simile as it was there that Sid Vicious for once lived up to his name and murdered her. The line was cut from the published article on grounds of taste – I only wish the censor’s pen had removed the relentless, pulsating pessimism which seeped through the column staining the page the way Nancy’s blood did the tarnished floorboards of my hotel room.
Tentatively, let me say this: West Ham were tumbling towards the Championship last season with such fervour and pace that one could be forgiven for thinking that the players were sexually aroused by the prospect of poor stadiums, then I went to Hawaii to work and they immediately became a squad of well-drilled, committed heroes winning eight of their last nine fixtures.
When I left the country 10 days ago England were playing like a bunch of berks and McClaren picked his sides like a homeless drunk shuffling bags in a trolley. He is now indispensable and Gareth Barry is the new Bryan Robson. I said if England won both games I’d campaign for the manager to be knighted; I now demand that Her Majesty kicks Phil right out of the royal sex-pit and instates Steve as her lover and the new King of England. I’d also like her to sit beside him on the bench and squeeze his thigh and coo when things go well.
Well done England and sorry for last week’s column. Prudently, I’ve read this week’s column back and I’ve written nothing that could offend anyone, what a relief. Finally, huge congratulations to our dear brothers north of the border. I should probably stay in America for football’s sake.
7 Chelsea too small for these two randy stags
Jetlagged and delirious, I’m trying to make sense of the events that adorn the front and back pages of the English newspapers. José Mourinho and Chelsea have parted company ‘by mutual consent’ due to a ‘breakdown in their relationship’. This doesn’t seem to me to be the typical language of the boardroom but the brittle nomenclature of damaged emotions. When I recall the numerous occasions on which I’ve been, in my case deservedly, sacked, my incensed employers seldom said things like ‘It’s not you – it’s me’ or ‘I just feel we should spend some time apart.’ It was usually ‘Get out you thief’ or ‘You smell of gin.’
I’m not suggesting that Mourinho and Roman Abramovich were having a big, saucy, gay love affair that has ended in recrimination and unfulfilled potential but the fact that it would be impossible to allocate who would be passive and who the aggressor in such a tryst is perhaps central to this saga. Whilst I acknowledge that most homosexuals chuckle at the antiquated, heterosexual assumption that gay relationships