Two Of Our Own

February 6, 2023February 6, 2023Leave a comment

Greavsie

Another football related post. Yesterday, in our 1-0 defeat of reigning champions Manchester City, Harry Kane (above, right) scored the winning goal, which turned out to be his 200th goal in the Premier League, becoming only the third player in the Premier League to reach that milestone. More importantly, it was his 267th goal for Tottenham Hotspur, thereby becoming our highest ever goalscorer. The record he broke was that held by the great Jimmy Greaves, whose tally of 266 was, I always thought, impenetrable. Greavsie, above left, passed away last year and that’s when I made this little image of him. I also made one of Ian St. John, who also died, and was his long-term TV partner. As a kid in the 80s, the Greavsie of the telly and the Greavsie of the Spurs record books were two different people, I just would not believe they were the same guy. We loved Greavsie, he was this jolly bloke who made football on TV fun. Saint and Greavsie, the show the pair of them did, was genuinely hilarious, and Jimmy Greaves was this bubbly balding bloke with mischievous eyes and a bushy moustache, a cheeky chirpy Cockney chappie, cheerful and cheesy, while amiable Scot Ian St. John was his perfect foil, I wouldn’t say the Wise to Jimmy’s Morecambe, but Saint was very funny in his own right and they were a great double-act when talking footy, and Saint genuinely seemed to love Greavsie. We all did. (I loved Saint as well, and knew he was a Liverpool legend). When I would be shown pictures of this great star of Tottenham’s history – which in those days was less than twenty years before – I couldn’t believe it. this guy with short dark hair, thin serious face, no jolly ‘tache, and every time he got the ball he would race past people like they were not worthy of his time, before slotting the ball deftly into the goal, over and over again, for both Spurs and England (as well as Chelsea and AC Milan, from whom we bought him in 1961). It was injury that kept him from playing a role in the 66 World Cup Final, losing his place to a guy called Hurst who ended up doing quite well himself. After his time at Spurs ended he played for various clubs, and the drinking happened, and eventually he became the Greavsie I knew. He was a club legend though, one of the all-time greats, and even though he’s now only fifth on the all-time England charts, his goals per game ratio is one of the best, scoring 44 in 57 (current all-time best Wayne Rooney for example got 53 in 120, and long-term holder Bobby Charlton had 49 in 106; Greavsie was legendary). For Tottenham, that tally of 266 in 379 games seemed like something nobody would ever reach again. For one thing, even our legendary strikers tend not to stay for that long, or maybe wane a little. Clive Allen was the big striker when I was ten, eleven years old, scoring 49 in that one season, but even he didn’t keep that up and we ended up selling him to Bordeaux of all places (and bringing in Gary Lineker! Who scored a bunch before going to live in Japan). Great strikers like Keane and Defoe were never reaching Greavsie’s level, and when someone looked really good, a bigger team that was winning trophies would lure them away, your Berbatovs and your Bales. And then along came Harry Kane. Born in Walthamstow into a Spurs-loving family, he was actually on Arsenal’s books as a boy, but ended up coming through Tottenham’s youth teams before turning pro. He struggled at first to make that first team, spending time out on loan, and then being part of our Europa League campaigns, but not getting much of a shot in the Premier League. Until he did, and then he started scoring loads. He was branded a one-season wonder. He kept on scoring. He wasn’t a particularly fashionable name, but he kept on scoring. That Spurs team of around 2016, 2017, they were so bloody good, and he just kept on scoring. There was talk of other big clubs wanting him, but Spurs were not letting go. “He’s one of our own!” was the chant we would sing, being the local lad made good. He kept banging them in for England, but people were still all, “yeah but lots of them are penalties, they are against weak teams, blah blah”. He changed his game, dropped deeper, starting getting almost as many assists as goals, something ignored by people I would speak to who would always be “he just wants the goals for himself”. His price tag was so high that if anyone wanted him, they would probably need to build as a second new stadium to pay for it. He nearly did get to leave, when Man City wanted to snatch him away, but in the end he stayed, and set his sights on that Greavsie record, and maybe finally getting us a trophy. Well, we have no trophy, but Kane has finally reached the magic Greaves line, and whatever happens now, he’s a club legend for all time. Alan Shearer is perhaps Newcastle’s greatest ever name, with zero silverware to show for it (he did win the league with Blackburn, but kids would believe that now about as much as kids in the 80s would believe that Jimmy Greaves off the TV was some sort of amazing goal machine). Maybe now Kane has done this, if we don’t get a trophy this year, and after his world Cup disappointments with England, maybe Kane will be given his leave to go and pick up a free medal at Bayern or PSG or dare I say it Man United, but it wouldn’t mean as much. Or maybe he will stay, and see us to the promised land? As Greavsie would say, football is a funny old game. Either way, Harry Kane, we salute you, the all-new Greatest Of All Time*. You deserve it.

(*though I still love Ossie Ardiles best)

Spurs v Frankfurt 1982

February 2, 2023February 2, 2023Leave a comment

Fast-forward to Fall, here’s something fun. This season (2022-23) Tottenham Hotspur are playing in the Champions League. You wouldn’t know it the way we have been playing, but it’s true. For those unfamiliar, I’m a massive Spurs fan, ever since I was a little kid obsessed with Ossie Ardiles and Glenn Hoddle. It came from my big brother, who used to go to every game in the early 1980s, and still has his collection of programmes, especially the 1980-81 and 1981-82 ones all bound in the official binder, every single game. We were great back then. I didn’t start going until 1983 I think it was (might have been ’85; it was a game against Everton and we lost 2-1, I think it was the 83/84 season because I have a memory of Marc Falco scoring while my brother was in the toilet, but it might have been the 84/85 season, and Graham Roberts scored in that one) (the internet’s great isn’t it, you can look up any old football score, but you can’t tell if you were there, and I don’t have the programme any more). By the way, Americans would say ‘program’ instead of ‘programme’ – “there’s no ‘me’ in ‘program’!” – but to us quaint British folk from Jollie Olde EngerLandde we still use the traditional ‘programme’, same as we use ‘colour’, doughnut’ and ‘aluminium’. We just like extra letters, while in America they are removed to make more room for advertising space. Anyway, I used to have all the programmes for games I went to in my old bedroom at home, and then I remember that a bunch of them got wet because (it was assumed) the cat did a wee on them. I think the radiator leaked on them. Whatever the culprit was, some of my own programmes got a bit damaged. That said I still have a bunch of them in the loft of my mum’s house, and they are mixed in with a bunch that were given to me by my brother-in-law at the time, also a Spurs fanatic who went to a lot of games. Last summer when I was back in London I went into the loft to find these old programmes and bring them back to the US with me, including a copy of the 1981 FA Cup Final, which I treasured when I was a kid. This is another one he left me, when Spurs played Eintracht Frankfurt in the 1981-82 European Cup-Winner’s Cup. That competition doesn’t exist any more, but it was always my favourite one of the three, which in those days were the European Cup – now the Champions League – which only the league champions could play in, your Liverpools, Aston Villas, Nottingham Forests; the Cup-Winners Cups, for the winners of a country’s main domestic cup, so in England the FA Cup winners would play in it, your Tottenhams, Arsenals, Man Uniteds – Spurs won in 1981 so we were in it for the 81-82 season, eventually going out to Barcelona in the semi-final; and the UEFA Cup – previously the Fair’s Cup, now called the Europa League – which was for those teams who came second, third and fourth in the league, your Ipswiches, Watfords, Evertons. I remember the French magazine France Football would always just call them ‘C1’, ‘C2’ and ‘C3’ respectively, indicating the order of their importance. When the Cup-Winner’s Cup was finally given the boot at the end of the 1990s, it became one of those things we old people who go on about the 80s and 90s love to reminisce about. For Spurs it had historical importance – we were the first English club to win a European trophy, that being the 1963 European Cup-Winners Cup, beating Atletico Madrid 5-1 (get in there Greavsie!). We would wear all-white in our early European adventures, so that the kit would appear glow under the floodlights, these mostly being evening games – the ‘Glory Glory Nights’, as they became known. It’s still our tradition to wear all-white in Europe as a home kit, instead of the usual navy shorts. Nowadays if I tell people about Spurs winning the 1963 Cup-Winners Cup, I may as well be saying we won the Anglo-Italian Cup or the Makita Tournament or the Wembley Arena Indoor 5-a-side or something. Hey, I still count Le Tournoi as an England trophy.

I thought I’d draw this though in honour of Spurs playing Eintracht Frankfurt once again (twice actually, two legs), this time in the Champions League, or ‘C1’ as France Football calls it. I believe they still call the Europa League ‘C3’; there is no ‘C2’. I wonder if the new Conference League, in which Spurs played last season in the inaugural competition, is called ‘C4’? I know you don’t really care. So I found this old programme, which I think was one of the earliest exposures I had to German football, indeed the German language, as we used to always have a section in the language of our guests, welcoming them to White Hart Lane (in this case, Wilkommen to Weiss Harz Strasse) (actually I think it would be “Weißer Hirsch” but as with all translation it’s much funnier when it’s wrong). I used to look at all the players they had, not really knowing who any of them were, although one of their subs in the programme was a young Joachim Löw, future excellently-dressed World Cup-winning boss of Germany. They also had a player I remember called Bum Kun Cha, who was the most famous South Korean player I knew until my favourite guy Sonny years later, and I remember seeing him again in the Mexico 86 sticker album (and yes, child me giggled that he had the word ‘Bum’ in his name, which middle-aged me would of course not do). Frankfurt’s assistant manager was called ‘Dieter Stinka’ though, which middle-aged me still finds very funny. Their coach was Lothar Buchmann, which makes me think of the library cop from Seinfeld, Bookman – “well I gotta flash for ya, joy-boy!” – and he looks a bit like your secondary school’s deputy headmaster in 1985. Their main player was Bruno Pezzey, who I don’t know much about but German friends I know who were watching football at the time are very familiar with him. I looked him up, Bruno Pezzey, it turns out he was Austrian, and born in the very small town of Lauterach, in Vorarlberg. Lauterach is where I spent two weeks in 1991 on a school exchange trip to Austria, staying with a family there, riding a bike around in the rain, hanging out with students from the Lauterach high school, doing a work experience in a small advertising agency up a mountain next to the nearby town of Dornbirn. Pezzey tragically died in 1994 aged only 39, and his youth club FC Lauterach have a sports center named in his honour. The things you learn. The other people on the cover are our great boss, General Burkinshaw, under whom we signed Argentinian World-Cup winners Ossie Ardiles and Ricky Villa, and won three trophies (the FA Cup in 1981 and 1982, the the UEFA Cup in 1984). These days of course we don’t need to win ‘trophies’, just being good sometimes is a trophy in itself, just participating in the Champions League occasionally is definitely something we hang in our trophy cabinet, or the half-and-half scarves with teams like Monaco and Dortmund at least. The other guy is our long-time captain and club legend, Steve Perryman. When I think of the phrase Club Captain, I think of Steve Perryman. A tough little fellow, I never actually met him, but I did get a nod from him as he walked past me when he was player-manager of Brentford back in the like 1989 or something. Maybe he was nodding at someone else. On that same day I did get to actually meet Geoffrey from Rainbow though, which was a massive deal, and he drew a little picture of Zippy for me. Not a very good picture of Zippy admittedly, but I don’t think Geoffrey did the artwork in Rainbow, that was probably done by Bungle or someone. I do have Perryman’s autograph though – on my 40th birthday, as a special present my older brother got me an official programme from the game Spurs played on the day I was born, a home game vs West Ham, and had it signed by Steve Perryman himself. I have it framed on my wall, and Steve wishes me a Happy Birthday “Pete”, with my name in inverted commas like it’s some kind of nickname or alias. Still, it’s something I treasure.

Incidentally, Tottenham won this game 2-0. We also won the game in 2022, 3-2.

last night on turf

August 5, 2022August 5, 2022Leave a comment

More soccer! This sketch from May was done at the FC Davis match against a team from Oakland, played at the Playfields turf field in Davis. It was the AYSO United Davis fundraiser evening, where people involved with the club went to Sudwerk’s beer garden and had food and drink, before walking as a big group over the I-80 overpass to Playfields to the game, to support the local FC Davis team. The last time I watched FC Davis they were still playing at Aggie Stadium (they were a brand new club then) – see https://petescully.com/2018/06/25/saturday-nights-down-at-fc-davis/ – so it was nice to watch them again, and I love their black Admiral shirts (would love to get me one of those). My wife was chatting with an old friend she’s known since school while I sketched and chatted to others I know; Davis ended up winning the game, and a little more beer was had. Playfields is where I’ve coached a lot of youth soccer practices and games over the years so I’m well familiar with that surface, which is not the greatest field to play on. I actually did play a game myself before Christmas; I’ve not played in years and years, the last time I actually played was a kickaround game with students and faculty from our department in about 2013, when I stretched too hard for a cross and pulled a leg muscle, making it hard to walk for a few weeks, and I gave up then and stuck to coaching. This recent game was for over-40s in one of the local ‘pick-up’ leagues (well it was for men over 40 – though most were over 50 and still twice as fit as me – but women needed only be over 30, and they were about 100 times fitter and faster than me) (despite my recent running and fitness successes, getting decent times in the 5k races, I’ve a long way to go). One of the parents on our youth team invited some of us to take part as they needed players for their team, and it turned out they were going to be up against one of the best teams in the league. It was about six or seven a side, depending on who came, and was pretty informal, I just had to wear orange. Hot off my best ever time in the recent 5k Turkey Trot, plus lots of technical practice training 13 year olds to play club league, I felt pretty good. It was raining too and I don’t mind that. Except, when it rains, the astroturf of Playfields becomes like an air-hockey table, and my steamed-up glasses become fairly useless. They kept falling off too – I really needed a strap – to the point where I would just take them off and hold them, trying to pass to the orange blur but stay away from the blue blur. My opponents were friendly and I joked with them, but they were really good. I did score though, which was unexpected, and put us 2-1 into the lead. Lovely goal as well, considering I can’t usually hit a barn door with a banjo* (*this is a phrase I think I’ve picked up here, not typically something someone from Burnt Oak would use), I hit the target a few other times too. Most unlike me, made it worth it. But I also hit the deck time after time, mostly just slipping over on the plastic ground. I called my self “The Man Who Fell To Turf”. Those little black beads of plastic that get kicked up were just too much for my turf shoes to take. I fell a couple of times really hard, covering my legs in bruises and hurting my arm, and my opponent helped me up a lot of times. In the end I was physically hammered, although I wouldn’t actually stop playing or rest, I dropped back into defense to make a few calamitous clearances. We ended up losing about 5-2 I think it was. I had a lot more sympathy for the players I have been coaching after that experience! It did help me visualize some things I’d been coaching too. I don’t know if I could do it regularly, a lot of people my age do and it’s great for them, but I hurt so much for about a week afterwards. I wouldn’t mind so much playing on grass maybe, but that hard surface took it out of me. So I think the FC Davis players did a great job playing on it. It’s a bit like when I draw on a certain type of paper and think, oh this paper is bad, you can’t draw on this, and then you see someone else drawing beautifully on the same paper and you think, hey maybe it’s me, I need to up my game.

The footy is back this weekend. Premier League, that is. Spurs kick off against Southampton tomorrow morning. It will be a long season…

everyone seems to know the score

July 12, 20212 Comments

Ok, fine. It’s not coming home, this time. England didn’t win the final; they drew the game 1-1 with Italy, but lost the penalty shootout after missing three times. England beat England on penalties. One day in about twenty-five years, Bukayo Saka will coach England to another shootout, while Raheem Sterling is in the studio as a pundit, and the cycle of life goes on. I mean, at the end of the day, these are all important life lessons aren’t they, watching your country’s team lose penalty shootouts in quarter-finals, semi-finals and now at last a final, it’s what brings us together, disagreeing on how it should have been done. Oh well, I’m done thinking or talking about football for a long time now, a long time (until at least tomorrow, since I am actually coaching a youth team right now). Well done Mancini, happy for you. But damn…we were close. Oh well. The Heat is still very much On, here in California. When we were kids we were told that the Heat would be On the Streets, and I suppose it is. Inside the house, the Air-Conditioning is On. Apart from briefly popping out to go to Target, we stayed home today and watched the match, played some PS4, watched old episodes of Lost. Didn’t do any sketching, though I would really like to just pour myself into a big complicated drawing right now, I’ve not got the energy. So I just drew the little mosaic England flag. Years ago we made a whole bunch of paper mosaic flags for the World Cup, and we put them up for the Euros too, for each country that takes part. Then when they get eliminated, the flag comes down. Never thought England would be in the last two. They did end up the tournament only letting in two goals total, even fewer than Italy. And they didn’t lose the match, they drew the game, just lost the shootout. And didn’t win the trophy, and that’s what matters. Ah well. I do want to do a big complicated sketch though. I need to rejoin my Virtual Tour de France – in fact I need to start posting what I’ve done of that already here on my sketchblog. So far I have gone from Calais to Brittany, and was about to draw Le Mans when I put the project on hiatus. Now the real Tour de France is going on, maybe I should keep going with mine.

homecoming

July 11, 2021Leave a comment

Harry Kane 2021

Well tomorrow is the big day. It’s coming home. England are in an actual major final for the first time in my entire life, and with a (current) Tottenham player as captain no less. I find it hard to get excited, after a lifetime of (a) watching England and (b) being a Tottenham fan. But excited we are. That’s Harry Kane above, by the way, for those who don’t know. Also for those who don’t know, “it’s coming home” is what people in England say now when England do well at the football, and it’s taken the meaning of a hopeful “we’re gonna win it!” It’s a reference to the 1996 song by Baddiel and Skinner and the Lightning Seeds, “Three Lions”, which sings that as an opening refrain, “it’s coming home, it’s coming, football’s coming home”. Great song, I still have the original CD. Kind of a little overused in England the past few years. That line, “football’s coming home” was the tagline of the Euro 96 tournament, which was held in England. Why home? Because the sport originated in England. Now a lot of people are getting a bit uppity, oh no no it didn’t, football was invented thousands of years ago in this country or that culture, and all of that is probably true, they all had some sort of game that involved kicking a ball, though not always exclusively and . The sport that is played now and called “football” in England – “soccer” in America – however did originate in its modern form with its modern rules in Victorian England, and that is where the modern rules were first codified with the first ‘Football Association’ in 1863, which by the way is why people call it soccer. You might have heard posh types in Britain refer to Rugby as ‘Rugger’, well Association Football was shortened to ‘soccer’, a British – not American – term. Prior to this, there were a great number of different forms of the sport in England, such as the ‘Sheffield Rules’ or the ‘Cambridge Rules’. It was probably a bit like when you go to someone’s house and play Charades and they play the rules slightly different from you, and it can be problematic unless some great minds come together to form the Charades Association, or something. It was that form of the sport (football, not charades) that was exported around the world, and many great clubs and institutions were founded by expat Englishmen, such as AC Milan (note how they use the English name of the city); similarly, Genoa (not ‘Genova’) still go by their original name ‘Genoa Cricket and Football Club’ Basque team Athletic Bilbao has its origins in the shipyard workers who emigrated from various English ports; British emigrants kickstarted soccer in South America, and Brazilian team Corinthians was formed after the visit of amateur English side Corinthian FC. It’s not to say that the idea of playing sport on a field with a ball (or even calling it football) was inherently English, various other sports called football exist in other countries today, but those are different sports. They all have origins in the idea of sports with a ball but this particular one, Association Football, the one that is played with same rules worldwide, that one came out of England. Once it was out it went everywhere, and had many many different styles, but the FA rules were universal – sorry, not the ‘rules, I mean the Laws Of The Game. You have to call them that or referees get cross. FIFA was founded in Paris in 1904, replacing the FA as the global governing body of the sport but guaranteeing to only play games according to the FA’s Laws. The great tournaments of the game, they were not English in origin – the FIFA World Cup was organized by the Frenchman Jules Rimet (he of the “still gleaming” lyric in Three Lions) and held in Uruguay, and England refused to take part until 1950, when they were roundly beaten by the United States. UEFA, the European governing body, was founded in 1954 in Switzerland, and the great European tournaments followed – the European Cup (now the Champions League) in 1955, started by the French (ironically only one French team has ever won it, Marseille in 1993, and that was questionable given they were relegated for match-fixing that year), and of the course the European Championship itself, founded by UEFA with the trophy named after Frenchman Henri Delauney who had been having this idea for decades (he died before he could see it finally play). England have never won this tournament, never even been in the final. Or should I say, England’s Mens Team has never been in the final – the Womens Team has been to the final of the European Womens’ Championship twice. But in this tournament England has never been to the final, until now. When England sing “it’s coming home” they aren’t referring to themselves as the founders of the competition, or as previous winners, they mean as the birthplace of the current sport, they aren’t saying “Football Including All Other Versions Of The Game Going Back Over Thousands Of Years In Different Unrelated Cultures Is Coming Home”, and they don’t have to actually point out “Association Football Is Coming Back To the Country Which First Codified the Laws Of The Game in 1863”; it doesn’t actually need pointing out. You don’t need to worry about football songs being literal. I don’t actually believe “Tottenham Are The Greatest Team The World Has Ever Seen”. Honestly, don’t worry about it. The song itself is self-deprecating in a typically English way, while also being hopeful, and saying we don’t need to always be so negative. It’s a much nicer song than some of the others that get sung by England fans, although as much as I like it and it makes me feel like it’s 1996 again, I hope another song comes along (not ‘Vindaloo’, I hated that one) that is just as good so people aren’t utterly sick of “It’s Coming Home” (I am sure many of you already are). It will probably come along in 2051, thirty years after our last trophy, which of course will be won tomorrow against Italy…

Ok, I’m not getting ahead of myself but I can still believe. We’ll see what happens. Italy haven’t won this trophy since 1968 but they’ve had a couple of World Cups since then. They don’t even call it football, they call it ‘Calcio’, and that name has origins in a sport that goes back centuries…don’t get me started on that story. But if it happens, if England win it… I will be running around Davis in my one England shirt singing “It’s Coming Home” at the top of my voice. Even in this 111 degree weather…

Happy 4th of July the 4th

July 4, 2021Leave a comment

Alexei Lalas copy

Yes, I know it’s Coming Home, and Southgate is a genius, and yes I did do a Kane illustration, but today is the birthday of my adopted country (actually I think it adopted me, although since I’m still a permanent resident I am really just fostered). 7/4 happens on July the 4th over here, unlike in Britain where people celebrate American Independence on April the 7th, along with all the old dad jokes like that. To celebrate, here is perhaps my favourite American football player (ok, my favorite American soccer franchiser) Alexi Lalas, wearing my favorite USMNT soccer jersey (see, I can speak American), the 1994 away kit. Along with the amazing red and white wavy stripe home kit, this was my favourite kit from the 1994 World Cup, USA 94. It is an all time epic. As a proper redhead myself I loved Lalas’s amazing barnet, and the King Tut-esque beard, and I actually did copy the beard a few years later (without the moustache) (it was the 1990s), though my attempts at the hair did not go too well. See my hair is curly, a bit like Lalas’s, not ring-curls but uncontrollable waves. I knew blokes with long hair who could just wave it around like an extra appendage, especially when dancing. Anyway my hair just grew upwards, like straight up. So that didn’t work. Lalas is a bit taller than me though, so maybe gravity works differently on his head, I don’t know. He’s often on TV these days doing punditry, no longer long haired and long bearded, but still with a bit of personality. So happy birthday United States, thanks for giving us Lalas and the greatest World Cup shirt in history.

“an ‘oops’ moment and then some”

July 2, 2021July 2, 20215 Comments

I’m not drawing every game in the Euros or nothing, I just, well I like to draw and write things down. There were some bonkers games in the Round of Sixteen. France went out, half an hour after I had told my son that the game “had ‘Kylian Mbappe misses the decisive penalty’ written all over it”, congratulations Mystic Pete. The Dutch went out, after De Ligt batted the ball away with his big paw, and headline writers and tweeters scrambled to get the best ‘De Ligt based pun, having used every possible ‘Czech’ based pun already. (I wonder if any found a way to shoehorn “Red De Ligt District” in there somewhere? I hope not.) The Czechs had Holeš exposing holes in the Dutch defense (another low-hanging fruit for sub-editors everywhere). I’m not even going there with all the ‘Schick’ ones. And then there was Sweden-Ukraine, where the Swedish player Danielson got a red card, and my own version of the many obvious Karate Kid based jokes was “Danielson whacks on, walks off” which I thought was alright. England-Germany, Harry Kane was apparently not running much, so was being called ‘Walking Kane’ which I thought was quite funny (I still love you Harry). Portugal-Belgium, glad Belgium won that, and when Hazard’s same-height little brother scored I yelled out “That’s what I’m Thorgan about!”, but then immediately thought I should have said “Lukaku’s Thorgan” because it sounds a bit like “Look Who’s Talkin'” but it didn’t really work. This always happens when international football tournaments are on, I have fun with all of the names. In this one I tried to make Star Wars Prequels connections with the players, you had General Grealish, Count Doku, Anakin SKyleWalker, Chancellor Pal-Palhinha, Bale Organa, Darth Mæhle, Jonas Windu, Ethan Amp-idala, and, um, the Marcus side of the Forss (not to mention De Ligt side). Plus many other probably better ones.

deep-six ninety-six

July 1, 20219 Comments

Gareth Southgate 2021 copy2

Well, there’s no question now is there. It is definitely coming home. It may have to quarantine for ten days and take two tests but come on. England did it, they beat Germany in a knockout game, and it didn’t even have to go to penalties. Sure, not an entertaining game, but if you want entertainment go and watch Hamilton. Or Spain v Croatia, or France v Switzerland. Amazing and ridiculous games, no defending whatsoever. England haven’t let in a goal yet. Haven’t scored many either, but maybe this is how it comes home. Anyway I am not going to analyze the game or offer opinions on whether Kane wasn’t getting service or tired or whether this Germany isn’t as good (it’s better than circa 2000 Jens Jeremies era Germany) or home advantage or any of that. I don’t even really think it’s “coming home” (if “coming home” means England winning it, since “it” is the European Championship, which England has never ever been in the final of before, or “it” is the Henri Delaunay trophy, which is French). The semis and the final are at Wembley though, but first England have to play a quarter-final against Ukraine in Italy, specifically so people can sing “it’s coming Rome”. Whatever happens, England did beat Germany, at Wembley. Gareth Southgate beat Germany, at Wembley, in the Euros. So, just as I did an illustration of him in 1996 recently, here he is in 2021, a quarter of a century later, this time in celebration. nice tie, Gareth. No waistcoat this time. Here he is, burying 1996. And so I ask myself, can we all bury 1996 now? 96 is the new 66. England didn’t even win it in 96 but it’s become such a big thing, part of the folklore, and that song, that bloody song, yeah you know I’ll be getting the CD out if England make it through to the final. CD?! How old are you, grandad? Can we all bury 1996 now? Not just the Euros, but everything? 1996 was one of the Last Great Years, maybe even The last one. Nobody used a mobile phone. What a time that was, eh! People had to wait until you got home before you ignored their call. To call people when you were out you had to use a phone box, with ‘coins’, maybe with a ‘Phonecard’. Nobody used a mobile phone. A few people sure, the things existed, but you go to a football match or a gig or watch a building burn down, nobody had their phones out filming it, tweeting it, recording it in case they forgot. People had to just ‘remember’ their experiences. Nobody used the internet. The odd ‘tech geek’ perhaps, in England anyway. There was a guy we knew at college called Ruman who could get us ‘on the internet’ in the computer labs, he was the only person we knew who could get onto this magic place, but there was nothing on there back then anyway, and our college wouldn’t let us stay online for long before kicking us off. Social media? What the hell’s that? 1996, the Star Wars Special Editions hadn’t even come out. The old Tories were still going, pre-New Labour, John Major and co. Princess Diana was still alive and being hounded by the press, before they decided in the middle of the night a year later that she was actually the Princess of Hearts or something. 1996 Wembley isn’t even the same Wembley as 2021 Wembley, it’s just in the same bloody place. 1996, I was twenty and could stay up all night long, bouncing about to Pulp or Oasis or Rage Against The Machine, and often did; I ain’t twenty no more. London was amazing in 1996. I got my guitar that year, on Charing Cross Road, I still have it. I bought it while on my break from the chocolate shop I worked at. A piece of 1996 I have held on to. Soho was brilliant in 1996, not yet shite, but no longer quite as seedy as in the 70s and 80s. Still seedy enough though. The Hellfire Club on Oxford Street was the best place on Saturday nights, a place long gone now. Can we all bury 1996 now? I mean, the world of 1996 has been buried a very long time, and it ain’t ever coming back. Gareth just buried another bit. His penalty miss is now in the ground with all the CDs, VHS tapes, Phonecards, cash, music magazine with cassette tapes on the cover, Soho being cool, and all the other stuff we left behind. Is this about me missing London? Might be, most things are, I’ve been burying that for years.

walk away, walk away, walk away

June 27, 2021June 26, 20212 Comments

Southgate 96 copy

And so, the rematch is on. Sure, England have played Germany loads of times since 1996. Euro 2000 for example, when an England in red beat a Germany in dark green in Charleroi, the city I lived in at the time. In October 2000 in the last ever game at the old Wembley stadium, the historic old toilet with the twin towers, Germany beat Keegan’s England causing Keegan to quit in sadness. And of course who can forget the 2001 5-1 mauling of Germany in Munich by the exciting young England of Owen and Beckham. And then there’s the 4-1 whopping of England all in red by the Germans at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, that was a hard one to take. But for me, that semi-final in 96 was the one. Bigger than 1990, the World Cup semi in which Waddle launched the ball into low-earth orbit, because that was held in Italy, and was about Gazza’s tears. 1996 was at home. England wore grey. It was a brilliant summer in London, and it all came crashing down in a penalty shootout. Ah well. Young Gareth Southgate missed the decisive kick for England before Andreas Möller beat Seaman and celebrated by strutting, and the BBC played Casts’s “Walkaway” over the end credits, a song which I’ve always felt should be called “Walk Away”, but always makes me relive the sheer crestfallen emotion of that moment. I can’t do those penalty shootouts you know, I can’t watch them. I end up in the kitchen. But next Tuesday morning (for me, living in California) England will play Germany in a European knockout game, once again at Wembley (the newer one with the big metal arch), once again with Southgate involved, this time as manager. I know I have Written Off The Germans (At My Peril), but no, no no no, this will end in penalties again, and I will be in the kitchen. We can hope. I had to do a quick digital drawing of Southgate, 1996, right after the penalty miss. He looks like he’s being taken hostage. In a way I suppose he was, nobody wants to be chained to the memory of penalty miss in a major semi-final on their record, which is why Stuart Pearce looked like he was expelling demons after his penalty against Spain in 96. Southgate you could say expelled his by managing England to the penalty shootout win against Colombia in 2018, but really the arc of history, the ninety-six narrative has all been heading here, to a game against Germany at Wembley in what is effectively another home Euros for England. It is, as they keep telling us, coming home.

Getting out of the Groups

June 24, 2021June 24, 2021Leave a comment

And so, if you are following Euro 2020 (held in 2021; don’t worry about it), today was the day the Group Stages finished. It was an exciting end; as the last games played out simultaneously to decide the last few spots, teams moving up and down their mini-group with each goal, the phrase “If It Stays Like This” played on repeat. Some very good games, some not quite so good ones, and of the 24 teams that started, 8 are now out. I remember in the last Euros I drew some of the games (see here), so I thought yeah why not, let’s draw some of the games. And write in the commentary as I hear it on the TV. I started with Italy v Switzerland, and drew five more, below. I’m not going to bother talking about the games, but here are the matches I drew. The best was probably Wales beating Turkey, but the Germany v Portugal game was pretty fun as well. England played Scotland, the ‘oldest international game’, and just like that first one in 1872 it ended 0-0. Though in that very first game, England played with seven forwards and Scotland with five, though none were able to score. Apparently the Copa America is going on as well right now, someone asked if I was watching that too. No, no I’m not, I may be historically obsessed with the Euros (see previous post) but after this past season, boy I’m overloaded with football. There needs to be a good break from football after this tournament. In the meantime, I’m going to enjoy a few days off watching people in coloured shirts kicking a ball around, then this weekend it will start up again with the knockouts. England will play Germany next week in the ‘Southgate 96 Rematch’. I’m going to call it now – I am officially Writing Off Germany. At my Peril. I probably won’t draw that match. Probably…