A Return But Not to Africa in 2010

I visited Africa in 1977 when Tim and I went on a school trip to Tunisia. I hated almost every minute of it. I hated the food, the people and the poverty. I was only seventeen and assumed that this was just a world view from a blinkered youth who had only ever lived in Cambridgeshire.

Since then I had lived an urban existence in Leeds, Sheffield and London, before returning to my roots in the Cambridgeshire Fens, but had no further desire to visit Africa again than I had on returning home all those years ago. So, all of the media coverage concerning the football World Cup coming to South Africa in 2010 and to this continent for the first time, really passed me by.

The event was supposed to reach the widest audiences anyway, through webcasts, satellite coverage and ITV1. Thankfully the BBC was also there and performed as the Barclays Premiership would against the average Conference Team. If people could still make the real difference, as opposed to the technology, then we should have expected more from referees and their assistants. Perhaps they should have expected more from the technical resources available as offside decisions and Frank Lampard’s ‘goal’ against Germany were consigned to words on pages and optical fibres.

FIFA of course didn’t really care providing the money was right. I would like to think that our collective expectations and disappointments over the course of the tournament would set a different ball rolling; one where long-term investment in local people’s lives would also happen for the first time. However, like England’s chances of winning another World Cup in my lifetime, I’d say that was unlikely.

The England team was, of course, dreadful and even without losing a penalty shoot-out. This wasn’t even glorious failure – as in Italia’ 90 – this was just failure on the elevated grasslands of the Veldt. Injuries, tiredness and unbelievable tactical decisions might once have summed up smug European commentators’ disdain for their African ‘brothers’ on the football field: any smugness and skill disappeared in South Africa.

Messages about this World Cup may have been communicated on new, digital platforms but the subject matter had fundamentally changed too. Spain may have become the first European team to have won the World Cup outside of Europe, and the first since West Germany as existing European champions; Europe may now have won more World Cup titles than their closest rivals from South Africa, but England were not part of that ascendancy. Since I watched my father and grandfather watch that first World Cup Final in 1966, England had travelled down the Kop and were barely worthy of cutting the grass let alone providing any kind of football competition on it.

Thankfully the season leading up to the 2010 World Cup Final was successful for Leeds United. As I turned fifty, I had a tattoo made of the club’s badge so that I could carry externally what had been in my heart for the previous forty years. Simon Grayson had finally converted recent promise into promotion back into the Championship. Sam and I were at Elland Road to witness a rollercoaster of emotions and an A1 bursting with happy but exhausted Leeds United fans on a much happier return trip than that back from Cardiff four years earlier.

We had moved house in the previous December, settling in the beautiful Cambridgeshire village of Burwell and, after twenty one years, I became a consultant to the IPA, meaning that I could spend more time writing and less on commuting. Work futures are now really about our children rather than me. Nathan is about to head off to university in Guildford to learn how to play bass even better than he already does; Sam and Hayley will have GCSEs soon and Sam appears to be as set on a teaching career as Hayley does on dance.

For Michelle and I this is a new period in our family life together. I wanted this World Cup to be special as the boys and I may not be together to watch it in quite the same way again, and the new Stella fridge definitely helped.

I know that Uncle Dick will have been looking down from his new position, high up in the stands and just below the clouds, to see whether it would be third time lucky for the Dutch. I also know that he will have been disappointed by their performance much more than the actual result. Like him, I am looking forward to next season to see how Leeds fare but also even to the next World Cup in Brazil, from where it all really started for me. After forty years I am no longer lonely, and content just to watch the beautiful game, realising now that, after all, I have always been part of it.

See also:

2006: http://sportales.com/soccer/not-all-that-glistened-turned-into-golden-balls-in-2006/

2002: http://sportales.com/soccer/eastern-promise-but-no-progress-in-2002/

1998: http://sportales.com/soccer/stylish-french-and-the-deja-vu-in-1998/

1994: http://sportales.com/soccer/hot-and-happy-states-in-1994/

1990: http://sportales.com/soccer/none-shall-sleep-in-italia-90/

1986: http://sportales.com/soccer/did-god-exist-in-1986/

1982: http://sportales.com/soccer/the-rain-and-spain-in-1982/

1978: http://sportales.com/soccer/i-cried-but-not-for-argentina-in-1978/

1974: http://sportales.com/soccer/by-the-1974-world-cup-i-had-grown-but-we-had-declined/

1970: http://sportales.com/soccer/the-1970-world-cup-the-end-of-a-golden-age/

1966: http://sportales.com/soccer/i-was-six-in-1966-and-thought-the-world-cup-was-just-for-fun/

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