THE GAME
BOOKS
DVDS
SOCIAL NETWORKING
|
| THE GAME'S GONE By Neil Humphreys From recent issues of EX . . . Issue 66 One bad game and Twitter goes nuts WE were on our way to Wembley. A welcome return to the Twin Towers was inevitable. All West Ham had to do was overcome Oldham Athletic and their Astro turf. Historically, the Hammers and artificial pitches go together like Billy Bonds and Harry Redknapp at a club reunion, but there was something intrinsically irritating about Oldham. They were not so much a bogey side as they were a bogey on West Ham's game; a route one grubby stain that the club always struggled to shake. So the Hammers headed way north of the Watford Gap - such rarefied journeys are a worry in themselves - and ventured to the featureless, foreign surface of Boundary Park for the first leg of the League Cup semi-final in 1990. West Ham played petrified on the plastic. They were slaughtered 6-0. The humiliation effectively ended the cup run and the defeat was one of the final straws that broke Lou Macari's back.The supporters' outrage was palpable; the disgust unmistakable. We shrugged our shoulders and moved on with our lives. So the recent online furore over West Ham's 5-1 collapse at Arsenal was more entertaining than exasperating. The fast food generation is farcically fickle in its intolerance of a poor defeat. Misinterpreting Mick Jagger, if satisfaction isn't instant, it isn't worth having. In an X-Factor world where success, failure and judgement are immediate, patience is a dirty word. On Twitter, Facebook and the radio phone-ins, the demand is always revolution. No-one has the time for evolution.The hammering at The Emirates was analysed, dissected and discarded within hours of the full-time whistle; the players lacked passion, the defence was abysmal and Big Sam faced the boot. Older, battle-hardened veterans of West Ham's ludicrously mercurial campaigns sighed and said something along the lines of, "we were away to Arsenal. What did you think would happen? This is West Ham. This is what we do."The Hammers specialise in comedic collapses. They went one better back in 1976, going down 6-1 at the old Highbury. Then there was the 2-8 battering by Blackburn on Boxing Day in the same season as the first FA Cup triumph. And in May 1989, West Ham needed to win at Anfield to have any hope of jumping clear of the relegation trapdoor. Naturally, they lost 5-1. Yes, long-standing Hammers fans are notorious for getting maudlin, wallowing in self-pity and singing about dreams fading and dying. But if we like to go for the violins, we seldom go for the panic button. If the knee-jerk reaction that plagues modern football had been common in previous decades, West Ham would've almost certainly been denied their two golden eras. Had Ron Greenwood been shown the door following that 8-2 personal embarrassment on Boxing Day 1963, his Hungarian-influenced Hammers would surely have been denied their Wembley stairway to FA Cup and European Cup Winners' Cup heaven in the following seasons. Greenwood was granted sufficient time to mould his men to resemble the magnificent Magyars. The only revolution instigated at Upton Park in the mid-60s was the telepathic, free-flowing football. Similarly, Twitter would've tormented John Lyall following the unexpected relegation in 1978. In the kangaroo court of online media, the most dignified of men would have been sentenced to a sacking. But in the late 70s, the 140 characters on Twitter still carried less weight than the one in the dugout. The task of rebuilding a demoralised club was not handed to the latest flavour of the month with a patchy resume and a powerful agent. Lyall kept the keys to the Boleyn castle and turned it into a fortress. In the early 80s, West Ham attained a level of flair, consistency and solidity that hasn't been matched since.But managers are no longer permitted three seasons to rebuild a squad. They are fortunate to get three months. If their face doesn't fit in cyberspace, they are lucky to get three games. In terms of playing philosophy, youth development and a stubborn adherence to the higher principles of the game, the closest coach currently to either Greenwood or Lyall is Arsene Wenger. And he's being sacked every other week.But one bad game isn't the end of the world as we know it, even on Twitter. There's always a bigger picture, always a silver lining. There certainly was after the 6-0 fiasco at Oldham. We got Bonzo back. Issue 65 Proud that Rio is one of our own RIO Ferdinand broke my heart when he left West Ham United. He was off to Leeds United, which felt like he was swapping the football palace for the pigsty. He left the Upton Park academy for Elland Road; one was famous for producing creators, the other stoppers. So he became the finest of his generation in both. He was a creative stopper beyond compare. That's why I loathed him for a while, struggling to watch him wearing a shirt once worn by Vinnie Jones. The Leeds jersey came with an intrinsic grubbiness, stubborn stains left over from the mudbaths of the 1970s upon which the Yorkshiremen won their league titles. The Hammers never won league titles, but they occasionally produced players like Ferdinand. Assured, unflappable, Ferdinand defined the principles of West Ham's academy. He played from the penalty box; anathema to most lumbering centre-halves, but routine to Rio. He played to the cheap seats by never hoofing a ball into them. So I tried to shut down the senses after he left East London. Ferdinand was a forgotten man; first at Leeds, then at Manchester United and of course with England. But the trophies piled up alongside international caps and, over time, I begrudgingly accepted that there were few others like Ferdinand in world football. There was no other in the English game. Only John Terry got close in consistency. They both filled holes, but Terry was a six-pack to Ferdinand's champagne. As footballers, they were near equals. As men, they were poles apart. They have nothing in common now. Terry is currently injured. Frankly, outside of Stamford Bridge, few people care. But many care about Ferdinand, particularly after recent events. Something has happened to Ferdinand; something that has forced me to put aside my puerile partisan prejudices and acknowledge my deep respect for a footballer who appears to be aware that his greatest legacy to the game is yet to come. Perhaps it stated in December 2009, when he established the Rio Ferdinand Live the Dream Foundation in December 2009, with the intention of nurturing young people from deprived communities in sports and entertainment careers. Perhaps it was the strident tweets about social issues beyond the mundane minutiae of being a multi-millionaire footballer. But Ferdinand changed. He became less a footballer and more a football statesman, the game's ambassador for morality, a rabid watchdog chomping at the bit at perceived injustices. He found a voice on Twitter and three and a half million people listened. He stood up for minorities without voices. He found the confidence to take a stand against racial prejudice. And in that moment, I fell for the man all over again. He is black sportsman, on a soapbox, refusing to go quietly. He could just smile for the camera for the photo shoots and offer the usual asinine sound bites about "needing to do more" about racism before speeding off down the gravel drive of his gated mansion. But he is risking his popularity for a polarising cause. The bigmouth that comes free with fame is shouting loudly, demanding better race relations for black people and ethnic minorities. Ferdinand's dignified handling of the despicable behaviour of that man from Chelsea has been both heroic and humbling. The boy from the Academy might just see football as a means to an end, rather than a self-centred end in itself. When he defied Sir Alex Ferguson in not wearing the Kick It Out anti-racism T-shirt, he deliberately kicked open a pungent can of worms. There was a feeling among black players that Kick It Out had become too complacent. As the Ferdinand brothers said in their joint statement: "Times change and organisations need to change with them." Rather than sit at home and fantasize over the next Ferrari, Ferdinand is making change happen. The footballer who was once never happier than when he had the ball at his feet at Chadwell Heath has evolved into a strident social activist. Like the imperious defender he has been for almost two decades, this is a role that Ferdinand was born to play. The back may be slowly giving way on the pitch, but no other footballer in the modern game is showing greater backbone off it. When he broke into the West Ham first team in 1996, he was clearly a cut above the rest, a different class. He stood out like a beacon of hope for this hapless Hammers fan back then. He still is, but for rather more important reasons. He has long since mended my childish broken heart. Ferdinand is one of us, in a way that Terry could never be. Issue 64 Hammers' history does matter, Big Sam BEING "bogged down" by history has been holding West Ham back all these years. Sam Allardyce said as much in a recent Guardian interview. Clubs get too bogged by their own history, he said. Progress cannot be brought into sharp focus if we're all wearing rose-tinted glasses. We must look forward, not back. That's where the Hammers have been going wrong. It's not the snow-tipped balls dropping down from the heavens for the latest totem pole to bludgeon back towards onrushing midfielders; it's the club's naive, nostalgic insistence on championing the values of Sir Trevor Brooking and Bobby Moore. In fact, Allardyce wondered aloud how many of today's fans had even watched Brooking or Moore play. "It's the modern day history that's important, I like to think," he said. Apart from the ridiculous assertion that one cannot remain true to the aesthetic principles of players of past generations (I never saw George Best play, but that doesn't mean I cannot wish more English kids were raised with the creative, impudent ideals of Lionel Messi), it doesn't make much sense. Are West Ham supporters now expected to store away cherished memories of Moore, Brooking, Peters, Byrne, Devonshire and Bishop in a file marked "Jurassic entertainers" and replace them with the likes of Kevin Nolan and Carlton Cole, taken from a file marked "honest workhorses"? Allardyce was right to assume that Hammers fans have always demanded "passion" and "commitment". The Chicken Run was notorious for roasting wingers who were perceived to be not trying a leg - sometimes fairly, sometimes not. Billy Bonds was, and will always be, revered for a work ethic that was beyond compare among his peers. But he could play. Watch the DVDs. He bent in crosses with the devilish whip of any decent winger. He just didn't end up on computer game covers. Allardyce appears to have separated "passion" and "commitment" from "flair" and "creativity; as if the two are distinctly separate. Most players signed by John Lyall and Ron Greenwood were expected to be able to play a bit, whatever their specific job requirements. It was an obvious prerequisite for a career at Upton Park. And again, contrary to Allardyce's belief, that philosophy hasn't changed; only the club's miserliness has. On the weekend of Big Sam's Guardian interview, Michael Carrick threaded an exquisite pass through to Shinji Kagawa to score against Tottenham. The goal was for Manchester United, but the pass was crafted at the academy, stamped with Brooking's DNA. That's the only difference. Players in the tradition of Brooking and Moore have still been groomed by the academy, they just haven't been kept. It's a tired tale at Upton Park but one that looks set to endure for different, more depressing, reasons. Restricted finances ensured Carrick, Rio Ferdinand, Frank Lampard and Joe Cole were never going to reach their playing peak in East London. A restrictive philosophy may see off the next generation. Leaving a club to seek the cups and cash that one's talent deserves is a fact of football life, but leaving a club to satisfy one's playing principles is a different proposition altogether. Academy kids were always honoured to be following in the footsteps of Moore and Brooking. They looked up at the old photographs in the tunnel in awe. For them, history wasn't overrated. It was something to aspire to. Allardyce has taken down the old photographs. He has replaced them with images of the Championship Play-off Final victory in May. The club has been "bogged down" by history for long enough. Who needs Moore and Brooking when you've got a play-off final victory for inspiration? Well, the real talented prospects might; those rare gems that come through the academy once in a generation. They might not be particularly overawed by a tedious play-off final win against Blackpool. They might just be more motivated by the achievements of Lampard, Ferdinand and Carrick and pursue their path to glory instead. They might also be keen on emulating some of that ancient, but pretty, football they've seen on DVD and YouTube. So they will go elsewhere. Because history - real history with a real pedigree - will always matter. Neil Humphreys' best-selling football novel, Premier Leech, is available in both print and e-book versions at www.amazon.co.uk |
MAGAZINE
RECOMMENDED
EDITORIAL ARCHIVE
|
