The Power and the Glory

My new history of the World Cup is out today. It's a book I've been gearing up to write since I first became obsessed with the tournament aged five. Have that, Auntie Doris!

In 1982, aged five, I went on holiday with my parents to Scotland. The details of the trip are a little vague, although I remember two elements quite clearly. I was told not to mention the World Cup at breakfast the morning after Scotland had drawn 2-2 with the USSR to go out, which means we were there on the night of June 22. And I know we were in Fort William on June 25, because I saw Trevor Francis’s goal against Kuwait through the window of a TV shop as we walked along the High Street.

(I just googled to check it was actually called High Street and, idly clicking, I’m pretty sure I’ve found where we stayed: the Highland Hotel. The recollection of playing cricket amid the fir trees, wearing a navy jumper, looking up at the austerely gothic slate arches was so vivid as to be overwhelming.)

*

The book can be ordered here or here.

*

I was definitely at home for England’s opener against France on 16 June, and back home for Italy’s famous 3-2 win over Brazil on 5 July. Given that was term time, it seems like we were away for a week, if that. But even that was enough to make me resentful. I wanted to stay at home and watch the World Cup, not indulge in some silly pretence that the Loch Ness Monster might be real. I was so obsessed with the World Cup that while we were away, my dad would go out to the car at night and listen to the radio to get the scores of the late kick-offs, writing them down and leaving them on a piece of paper beside my bed so I would know as soon as I woke up. I’d then enter them assiduously in my Ladybird Book of the 1982 World Cup.

That may be the book that’s had a greater influence over me than any other. I read it over and over again. I was fascinated by the colour-coded diagram outlining which teams would progress from which first-phase groups to the which second-phase groups – it looked so pleasingly official and scientific. I loved the word “phase” which had so much more gravitas than “round”. Before the World Cup had even begun I could easily have recited the scores of every previous World Cup final, and the currencies, capital, flags and kits of every competing nation. Was I an odd five year old? Quite possibly; probably even then I was thinking I might write a book about the World Cup.

The first game I remember watching on television was the 1982 FA Cup final between Tottenham and Queens Park Rangers but given I remember talking about the final to our milkman on the Saturday morning – “Two London clubs? I’m not that bothered, son” – I must already have been watching games regularly. Or at least as regularly as you could in those days – which of course is why the World Cup hit with such a powerful kick.

There were suddenly games on all the time, exotic games, played in bright sunshine to the relentless whining of air-horns – games played between remote and exciting countries. I remember lying on the floor at my gran’s watching Peru v Cameroon, arguing vehemently with my Auntie Doris who didn’t see why games not involving the home nations were being broadcast. I wanted Peru to win, because I loved Paddington bear (in the Michael Hordern iteration; not the ubiquitous and insufferably twee modern incarnation); my dad tended to be reticent on such things, but I think he’d recognised in Cameroon a well-organised and gifted side. The idea that 30 years later I’d be visiting Roger Milla at his home in Yaoundé with a pissed-up Jean-Paul Akono or having coffee with Thomas N’Kono at a tennis club in Barcelona would have seemed absurd.

The kits, often visible soaked with sweat, were gorgeous. The names were glorious: Falcão, Tigana, Rummenigge, Cabrini, Tardelli, Rossi… The Adidas Tango was sublime. The occasional captions or shots of scoreboards in Spanish seemed impossibly romantic. This was football as a portal to the world.

The World Cup was probably always the element of football I enjoyed the most. To be honest, as a journalist, there was a spell when I slightly fell out of love with it. It wasn’t just the knowledge of the corruption behind the scenes: covering a tournament is gruelling (yes, I know, I know, but imagine working 16+ hours a day without a day off for five or six weeks, in the company of other journalists…) and often frustrating. Focusing on England especially, trotting along to talk to whichever player was being wheeled out that day, felt like I was seeing less of the World Cup than I would have done at home. In Brazil in 2014, I finally cast England aside, but made the mistake of shuttling between Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, with one blessed trip to Belo Horizonte for the 7-1, when the real story was probably in Manaus, Recife or Cuiaba, the cities relatively unused to major events.

Then in Russia in 2018, I got it just right, largely by planning a trip before the draw: Yekaterinberg (Uruguay v Egypt), Moscow (Iceland v Argentina), Nizhny Novgorod (Sweden v South Korea), and then Kazan until the end of the quarter-finals with one journey to Samara for Brazil v Mexico. Kazan was not only a fascinating city, but I also saw the exits of Poland, Germany, Argentina and Brazil – and nothing is as satisfying to write about as a big team going home. Eating plov and shashlik every day in the old town in the shadow of the domes of the kremlin, my love for the World Cup was restored. I was obviously aware of how hosting rights had been won, and of Vladimir Putin’s use of the World Cup for reasons of soft power, which added a disturbing undertone, but I was very fortunate with the football I saw and where I saw it.

As the club game became increasingly shaped by financial resources, there was a realisation that while the World Cup may not offer such high quality, it arguably provided something more engaging. Argentina’s victory in Qatar was proof of that, a great narrative enhanced by the scratchiness of some of their football. And all played out in stadiums built on the bones of migrant workers.

It's impossible now not to have that bifurcated vision. On the one hand, the World Cup showcases the venality and casual cruelty of humanity; on the other it demonstrates the artistry of which humanity is capable. On rare occasions it can, as Jules Rimet hoped it would, inspire fraternity among nations, but it also exposes and at times worsens political tension. But that complication is also why football matters: it showcases humanity at its best and its worst.

That, I hope, is what my book expresses. The World Cup is both beautiful and terrible. It is football with all its attractions and intrigues but it is also, for better and usually worse, politics. A celebration of sport has become a quadrennial snapshot of the state of the world.

*

Paying subscribers will get an additional newsletter tomorrow carrying details of a competition for a chance to win a signed copy of the book. Sign up now to have a chance of winning.