Wednesday 22 May 2013

"We Know What We Are..."


I love football. I've always loved it and I always will. Despite wrangling with my conscience in the very pages of this blog, it's a fact I've come to accept.


In my adult years, as I've begun to embrace the anti-masculinity of cultural icons such as Bowie and The Smiths and developed a fulsome affinity with the politics of the left, I've found my infatuation with football - synonymous with male bravado and extreme financial speculation - somewhat troublesome.

My fandom for Chelsea, a club dependent on the oil-money of an enigmatic Russian Oligarch, only adds to the love/hate dichotomy battling away in the midfield engine room of my conscience.

And yet, from out of this dizzying nausea, I now find myself reaching a formative 'age of reason'. Somewhat unexpectedly, Chelsea's Europa League triumph has provided the keystone bridging the turbulent sea of uncertainty.

As the trophy was jointly raised by Frank Lampard and John Terry, I came to recognise them as yin and yang respectively - Lampard the consummate professional, who in a difficult season, has proved his talent and dignity amidst the furore over his lapsing contract, and John Terry, the self important, delusional captain, declining further in skill and self-awareness the longer his influence within the walls of Stamford Bridge remains.

Terry and Lampard, once peas from the same pod, now as polar opposites.

Yet, it's not just watching my football club that inspires this conflicting thought process. To return to The Smiths, Morrissey himself recently posed for a picture with Mel Gibson (and Tom Jones somewhat bizarrely) which was published on an authoritative fan site. That it was Gibson, a man recently lambasted for controversial statements of an anti-Semitic nature, only lends more weight to the critical voices chastening Morrissey's own plethora of concerning comments on race and immigration.

Can the same man who showed such empathy towards the oppressed in his art really turn out to be a racist? With those spectacles!? With that quiff!? Or is this a man who's made opposition to established ideals such a lifelong mission that he can't help but be contrary in all matters? More significantly, if we air on the side of the former, does it mark as null and void all the positive traits he represented during his mid-eighties alliance with Johnny Marr?

Perhaps a question for another day but this moral quandary emphasises the fact we don't enter this world fully formed, physically, emotionally or intellectually. One of the great joy's of life is seeking a greater knowledge of the world and oneself through experience, learning and education. As a result our lives are messy; a hotch-potch of sometimes counter-intuitive beliefs, our whole concept of right and wrong balancing on a knife's edge.

An admittedly trite example: I'd never think of myself as inherently conservative, yet - as inversion of the strict rules on dress enforced by the All England Lawn Tennis Club - I could never bring myself to play football in anything other than a predominantly black coloured boot. Ridiculous I know but my father's no-nonsense approach to sporting apparel has scorched itself into my psyche more indelibly than the image of the sun on my retina were I to aim my vision directly at its rays.

Similarly, my undying affiliation for the footballing totem of south London establishment will always grate against the more latterly formed facets of my personality. Yet, you know what? I think that's probably okay isn't it? After all, supporting Chelsea isn't a vote for the Tories and it isn't an endorsement of super-capitalism either.

If I was to support a football club based on political ideals, I suppose it might be Liverpool, borne of the north-western socialism embodied by the figurehead of Bill Shankly, their fans victimised by establishment cover ups in the wake of this country's greatest footballing tragedy. Yet they, as with that other great sporting working-class signifier Manchester United, are also now owned by multi-millionaire businessmen.

Regardless, I couldn't possibly support a team that isn't borne of my south London roots, that would quite obviously be absurd, as my dear old Dad would no doubt attest.

Perhaps I should form an allegiance to AFC Wimbledon, owned by their fans, who take an equal financial responsibility for the state of their club and are impassioned by the betrayal of their former team upping sticks to Milton Keynes? 

Yet, could I really bring myself to do that?! It would undermine all my history with the club I've supported since I was a boy. My first game a 1-1 draw with Crystal Palace in 1991, the FA Cup triumph in 1997 when I was 15 years old and all the ups and downs that followed would be as good as erased from existence? No.

I realise that chasing these arguments round and round in my head is as pointless as were I that character in Monty Python's 'Life of Brian', attempting to choose between joining the 'People's Front of Judea' or the 'Judean People's Front' (as it happens, I'd probably plump for the 'Popular People's Front' - I've never liked crowds). In fact, the important thing is I haven't chosen at all! Couldn't choose. No more than I could choose my parents or the place I was born.

As the traditional po-going of the victorious team begun in the Amsterdam Arena on Wednesday night and the blue and white ticker tape fell from the skies to collect at the bottom of that inverted traffic cone of a cup, I put an end to these futile attempts to square all the circles.

As with any human being, group of individuals, sector of society, rock band, pop icon etc.; a football club - indeed a sport - is never perfect; they/it will always let you down. In essence, in the forming of your own identity you can only ever pick up on the good stuff and run with it...

In that case I suppose I am a proud Chelsea fan and, perhaps, for the first time in my living memory, there is a suggested positive identity forming around the boys in blue - one of dogged determination and willpower residing despite the obscene monetary and moral maze in which Chelsea perennially find themselves lost.

It pleases me as much as Super Frank's record breaking 203 goal haul and I'll squeeze every ounce of pleasure I can from the claiming of another trophy in that image. That the winning goal in the final came from Ivanovic, a shy, retiring, unsung hero of the team is a bonus. John Terry's costume changes will be left to evaporate in the mists of my mind.