Hidden histories of England’s football team

England Manager Graham Taylor stands between Stuart Pearce (left) and Gary Charles (right) during the England Summer Tour.

Don’t Mention the Score: A Masochists History of the England Football team by Simon Briggs, London: Quercus Sports, 2008, Pages 351, Price Rs. 350

If you appreciate witty remarks, flowing prose and a rumbustious style of storytelling like that of PG Wodehouse, this is the best sports book to read. Simon Briggs brings humour along with in-depth nuances in his remarkable analysis of the English football team. It is not just a narrative of successes and failures and the reasons why. It is a book which transcends mere reporting of football and looks for causes beyond the game.

Written with typical understatements and caustic wit, this hilarious but perceptive history of the English football team, is an unusual and refreshingly different kind of sports book. Simon Briggs has done immense research and examines the results of the English national team from 1872 till the appointment of Fabio Capello as Chief Coach in 2008.

His basic premise is that despite all the hype, England has underachieved as a football nation. He maintains that except for the 1966 World Cup win and a couple of semi final appearances in both the World Cup and European Championships, the national team have not delivered in major international events.

Brigg’s book is both witty and philosophic as he questions the whole concept of English superiority in football. He feels there is too much hype and no sense of proportion in the hyperventilating media coverage of England’s football team before every major tournament. Briggs feels this hysterical build up has a commercial angle as it enhances sales of newspapers, replica shirts and other merchandise.

This needless hype Briggs feels puts unnecessary pressure on the players, “the extra sense of expectation that comes with representing England, the country that invented the game”. The book provides football reasons also for England’s inconsistency such as the wrong choice of managers, like Graham Taylor who succeeded the late Sir Bobby Robson after the 1990 World Cup. Briggs chastises Taylor’s tactics of the long ball game which he cleverly calls Root One (Route one) football. He also criticizes Taylor for dropping ball players like Peter Beardsley and Chris Waddle and instead opting for Geoff Thomas, a former electrician who worked his way up from non-league football to Crystal Palace and the national team and the typical clogger the tall midfielder Carlton Palmer. But it is the author’s crisp prose which takes the cake. He blames the Football Association (FA) of England for selecting Taylor who was known for his outdated ideas on the game. He sums it up aptly in one sentence: “Offering Taylor the England job many people felt was like offering an orang-utan to play the violin.”

He also focuses on outdated practices like a selection committee, consisting of a dozen club chairmen choosing the national team for many decades and the England manager not having a vote on the composition of his own team. An example is cited from the 1950 World Cup, when manager Walter Winterbottom wanted to re-instate the legendary right winger Stanley Mathews for the group league match against USA but got over-ruled by a selector Arthur Drewry, a Grimsby fish merchant. Famous striker Dixie Dean was once dropped for a match because he criticized the quality of the soup being served. It is such hidden histories which make this book fascinating.

The book brilliantly brings out the paradox that British club football was always widely followed throughout the world but the national team rarely lived up to expectations. He quotes a clever line from a Yugoslav journalist in the 1930s, who claimed that if you ask any schoolboy in Belgrade, “Who is Bastin”….the boy would reply “outside left for Arsenal, the greatest winger in the world” but if you asked him who is Winston Churchill he will say, “I am sorry. I do not know that player.”

According to the author the myth of English football supremacy was finally shattered on 25 November 1953, when they were outclassed 3-6 at Wembley stadium by the magnificent Hungarians. The author describes this defeat as “the twilight of the soccer Gods.” Hungarian captain Ferenc Puskas, who won 85 caps and scored 84 goals for his country, scored the most memorable goal of this match. Puskas got the ball on the right side of the area and as English centre half Billy Wright came charging in, he used the sole of his boot to drag the ball back and fired in at the near post. The author quotes renowned sports journalist Geoffrey Green’s brilliant description of this goal, “Wright went past him like a fire engine going to the wrong fire.” He also quotes from Willy Meisl who said, “To the British fans Hungary’s game must have looked like soccer telepathy.”

Crisp anecdotes and fascinating biographical details are the other hallmark of this book. England’s captain in 1906, the muscular Bob Crompton was the first footballer to own a car and whose “record of 41 caps would not be broken until the 1950s”. Then there is this excellent description of the bustling Everton and England striker Dixie Dean, in the 1920s and early thirties. He is described as a physical player, “who prided himself on his kangaroo leap and rocket-powered header.” Over a 17-year-career Dean needed 15 different operations.

Sir Alf Ramsey

Sir Alf Ramsey’s attention to details gets described in the section with the 1966 World cup victory. In the final preparation for the 1966 World Cup at Lilleshall, Ramsey’s attention to detail was minute. “The attention to detail was minute. Players were moved around in different rooming combinations to prevent cliques developing. The team doctor, Alan Bass, gave demonstration in the proper technique of clipping toenails.” The training regime, football, physical training some non-contact sports and bedtime by 9p.m. sharp was described as sadistic and Jack Charlton said. “It was a test of character as much as a physical training programme.”

Yet for all his emphasis on fitness and athleticism Ramsey understood the need for a few beers after a match. The day after the goalless draw opening match with Uruguay he took the squad on a “stress busting trip to Pinewood Studios to watch the filming of the new James Bond movie You Only Live Twice”. Later, Sean Connery gave the players a pep talk and shared some beers with them.

The author praises Ramsey for being clairvoyant and realizing that with all teams playing in the 4-2-4 formation, rampaging down the flanks was limited. So in the knock-out stages of the tournament he reverted to a trio of hard working midfielders, in a 4-3-3 system.

Brigg’s research gives an insight of how some professional players lived discredited lives after retirement. He describes the life of Peter Storey Arsenal’s hard tackling anchor man as thus:”After retirement, he would be gaoled twice for a series of lurid offences, including running a brothel in East London, counterfeiting gold coins and importing pornographic videos.”

The hallmark of this remarkable book are the numerous analytical portraits of legendary players like amateurs John Goodall, Vivian Woodward (29 goals in 23 international matches), G.O. Smith (also a first class cricketer), professionals such as Stanley Mathews, Len Shackleton, Stan Mortensen, Tom Finney, Bobby Moore, Tony Adams, Glen Hoddle, Stuart Pearce, Paul Gascoigne, several others and some continental stars like Puskas and the Austrian Matthias Sindelar, probably the finest footballer of the 1920s.

The book is embellished with 75 black and white photographs and incorporates more than 100 witty quotations about English footballers past and present. The flowing prose, use of irony and subtle humour makes this a riveting sports book which aptly shows the gap between national expectation and actual achievement has been very wide in the case of England’s hapless football team.