NME's View of the World Cup

J Cheever Loophole

Many years ago I usd to buy the New Musical Express and some of my favourite articles ever related to their light hearted previews of the forthcoming World Cups. I found some old editions in the attic and have re-produced the articles here. There are many references to what are now events, players and famius people of old which can make you pause for thought.


Italia 90

Confused by all these weird countries? Well don't despair. Read Wigan Athletic's STUART MACONIE's no-holds-barred guide to the protagonists and you'll be an instant armchair expert, ready to take each game as it comes...

GROUP A: Patchy. No South Americans. Reasonably Civilised.

Austria: Bucolic. Healthy. Lantern-jawed. All Austrian footballers look like Christopher Plummer in the Sound of Music. All Austrian footballers' wives are called Heidi. Typically stupid club name - Wacker Innsbruck. Passionate post-Anschluss hatred for the Germans except when they are defrauding hapless Algerians (see Germany). Useless at football. Not bad at archery.

Supporters: Kurt Waldheim, Mrs Kurt Waldheim, erm…

Czechoslovakia: Enigmatic. Kafkaesque. No great shakes. May well be fired up, however, by glorious people’s revolt against iron hand of Communism. Got to Final in 1962. Got stuffed.

Supporters: Gary Numan, Genesis P Orridge.

Italy: Hot blooded. Flamboyant. Shifty. Italian game rank with corruption from top to bottom. Style and flair of players should not blind you to their penchant for tripping, shirt pulling, spitting etc. Prone to tears and arm waving. Have won the odd World Cup.

Supporters: Kevin Rowland, Bryan Ferry, that bloke from Chancer, Paolo Hewitt.

USA: “Very much the dark horses of the competition” (J Greaves). Crap. In America all teams called things like Baltimore Visigoths and the Anchorage Goal Hangers. In America, game consists of seven, eight minute “quadrants”. Corners are worth half a goal. Beat us in 1950.

Supporters: Birdland, New Kids on the Block, Princess Diana.


GROUP B: Cosmopolitan. Could turn nasty.

Argentina: The holders. Cheats. Described by Sir Alf Ramsey as ‘animals’. Team comprised of pickpockets and male models. Top player Maradona looks like the little guy who used to shout “Hey Boss, the plane” on Fantasy Island (Tattoo – Ed). Horribly good.

Supporters: Tim Rice, Gary Davies, Big Fun.

Cameroun: “Very much the dark horses of the competition” (J Greaves). Football intelligentsia always say “soon the emergent nations will dominate the game”. Bollocks. If they beat Argentina in the opening game however, grown men will weep in the streets for joy.

Supporters: Sting, Peter Gabriel, Tracy Chapman, Jim Kerr.

Romania: The housewives’ choice. Highly fancied for sentimental reasons. Recent domestic argy bargy may have taken the players’ minds of their preparation, however. Their shooting has never been better. Slightly dour.

Supporters: Ben Elton, Roger Waters, Vlad the Impaler.

USSR: All new, all-singing, all-dancing, happy-go-lucky, post glasnost style team. All players now called Kev. Noticeable at World Cup HQ with their deelyboppers, safari jackets and cassettes of Brother In Arms. Still highly disciplined proletarian machine, though. In qualifiers, goalkeeper and left back declared themselves “culturally and economically autonomous” from rest of team.

Supporters: Billy Bragg, Arthur Scargill.

GROUP C: Bit of a mixed bag. Bound to be trouble.

Brazil: Spectacular. Gifted. Breathtaking. Haven’t won for twenty years. May have lost some popular support through their commitment to planetary destruction. All Brazilian footballers take stupid pseudonyms such as ‘Muller’, ‘Socrates’, ‘Oedipus Rex’, ‘The Venerable Bede’ etc. Can kick a bit if truth be known.

Supporters: Candy Flip, Ronnie Biggs, The Gipsy Kings.

Costa Rica: “Very much the dark horses of the competition” (J Greaves). Unfancied. Slightly more civilised than their Latin American neighbours, apparently. Their match against the Scots looks unmissable. On the poor side.

Supporters: Martin Boorman, Princess Margaret, Spandau Ballet.

Scotland: Aggressive. Drunk. Natural losers. A fixture of the World Cup as traditional as the opening ceremony itself is the Scottish team sloping to the airport after the first round having failed dope test and lost to Burkino Faso. Sweat must be breaking out on their brows at the very mention of Costa Rica.

Supporters: Oliver Reed, Prince Andrew, Charlie ‘The Chisel’ Henderson.

Sweden: The inherent contradictions of living in a society which, whilst enjoying welfare provision second to none, also sustains a thriving network of child pornography has taken it’s toll on the Swedes. They can’t play football for toffee. By law, the Swedish team must always contain someone called ‘Lars Gunnarson’.

Supporters: Abba, Simon Mayo, The Archbishop of Canterbury.

GROUP Sordid. Unappealing. Not for the children.
Colombia: Shady. Not above board. Colombia chiefly famous for harbouring Nazi war criminals and being the centre of the world’s drug trade. Impressive, huh? Notice how fast they run, how tireless their energy. Perhaps it was the half time lemon, eh kids? Colombian domestic season abandoned when drug cartels started killing referees (true).

Supporters: Spacemen 3, Frank Bough, Shaun Ryder.

United Arab Emirates: “Very much the dark horses of the competition” (J Greaves). Hopeless. Once managed by Don ‘Chuckles’ Revie. Yashmaks and dark glasses impede them in the air. Could probably buy Italy if they wanted. Unshaven.

Supporters: Carlos the Jackal, Yasser Arafat, The Godfathers.

West Germany: The Enemy. Calculating. Pompous. Superficially charming. Cheats. Germany’s recent contributions to World Cup folklore have been A) nearly killing Battiston of France and conspiring with their Austrian buddies to throw a match in the same tournament to ensure the Algerians wouldn’t qualify. Also started two world wars. Bastards.

Supporters: Margaret Thatcher, Satan, Philip Schofield.

Yugoslavia: Mediocre. Traditionally regarded as trendy Western-style variant of typical Warsaw Pact soccer nations. Hence footballers sport ‘page boy’ hairstyles, Bri-nylon slacks and wide lapels. Lack of cohesion caused by fierce Serb/Croatian hatred within team.

Supporters: Laibach, Frank Sidebottom.
GROUP E: Jokey. Unpredictable. Dodgy teams.

Belgium: Dull. Pensive. Moody. National diet of chips and mayonnaise has tended not to produce top class athletes. Passion not their strong point. Nor football.

Supporters: Steve Davies, Vince Clarke, Front 242.

South Korea: “Very much the dark horses of the competition” (J Greaves). Their Northern, Communist brethren were the darlings of the ’66 tournament with their spirit and tenacity. Decades of soft, capitalist excess have dulled the Southerner’s appetites, however. Slightly inscrutable.

Supporters: Mark E Smith, Arthur Daley.

Spain: Hot-headed. Second rate version of the Italians. Greasy, lank, untrustworthy. Lack the moral fibre for top class honours. Tend to cross themselves, kiss crucifixes etc upon scoring. Swarthy.

Supporters: Matt Bianco, Pete Waterman, Samantha Fox.

Uruguay: Sinister. Brutal. Inhuman. The thought police of International Soccer. Biting and gouging acceptable in Uruguayan football. Uruguayan offside trap consists of barbed wire, Semtex and a trip switch. Do not be fooled by recent England game. Beneath that flash exterior beat hearts of plutonium.

Supporters: Joseph Mengele, Reggie Kray, Paul Heaton.

GROUP F: Boozy. Shambolic. Anything might happen.

England: Vulgar. Stupid. Some of the worst hair cuts in world soccer (e.g. Waddle). Should manage the second round. Great song. The thought of the carabinieri filling a few tattooed, racist proles full of lead remains an attractive one, though.

Supporters: Norman Tebbit, Bernard Manning, Morrissey.

Egypt: “Very much the dark horses of the competition” (J Greaves). Not a lot to go on with these boys. North African. May try to sell their opponents sunglasses and transistor radios at half time.

Supporters: Omar Sharif, err…

Holland: Arty. Slightly precious. The nearly men of world soccer. Stuffed England in the European Championships. This does not bode well. Top man: Ruud Gullit. Looks like a complete prick but can play a bit.

Supporters: Bobby Robson

Republic of Ireland: Loveable. Slightly roguish. Managed by Jack ‘Conan’ Charlton. Motto: ‘If you’ve got a red setter, you’re in’. Should be the subject of some classic Motsonisms, e.g. ‘…..and they’ll be celebrating that one over a few pints of Guinness in Dublin tonight…’

Supporters: Mike Scott, Elvis Costello, Van Morrison, the Pogues, yaawwwnn…




Mexico 1986



Stuart Cosgrove, Scotland's roving enigma, taints your Tequila with a guide to the overblown language of the leather sphere.

A GAME OF TWO HALFS: A well-worn statistical fact overused by players, managers and television commentators to describe changes in footballing fortunes. Like the term “we went out looking for a result”, it is one of modern soccer’s many semantic hoaxes. Every game has two halfs and every team gets a result even if it’s a good thrashing from their local rivals.

ANIMAL: Invariably a foreign player with a special talent for homicide. The ‘animal’ reached an historical peak in 1966 when the English manager Sir Alf Ramsey described the entire Argentinian team as animals. The word enjoyed a brief return to vogue during the Malvinas crisis.

AUXILIARY MIDFIELD PLAYER: A full back who constantly runs out of position resorts to this term in order to disguise his own or his manager’s tactical incompetence. It belongs in the same descriptive category as the overlapping goalkeeper.

BOTTLE: A euphemism for character and determination used by fans and street-cred commentators. It is generally a term of respect when used about white British players and the basis of a racial slur when used about black footballers. When winter arrives and pitches are brick hard, black players, according to the ‘bottle’ theory, begin to lose their determination. This is football’s equivalent of “they don’t like it up ‘em”.

CYNICAL: A word used to distinguish between healthy British violence and the behaviour of Italian defenders, who are generally represented as duplicitous cheats prone to acts of inspired brutality. Although no commentator will get round to saying it, ‘cynical’ is much the same as ‘dirty bastard’ and the dirtiest bastards on show over the next few weeks will be the captains of Scotland and England.

ENIGMA: A player who is usually crap and always at the centre of transfer speculation. Any enigma worth his place wears his shirt out of his shorts.

FANNY DANCER: A player who generally propounds an effete decorum and is loathed for this lack of commitment and ‘bottle’. For some reason, utterly contradicting the Nazi Ayryan supremacy, many fanny dancers are blond.

OVER THE MOON: A popular post-lunar expression used to describe space-age delight after a comfortable victory. Now considered slightly bad taste in the wake of the NASA tragedy.

OFF-THE-BALL-INCIDENT: A squalid brawl or sometimes grievous bodily harm performed at some distance from the footballing action. Television commentators are almost presbyterian in their hatred for off-the-ball-incidents, not out of some grand morality, but out of the simple fact that their cameras always miss them.

PLUCKY: A term used to describe under-resourced teams. Jimmy Hill likes to describe Northern Ireland as ‘plucky’. The fans of Northern Ireland have had to tolerate the description for years. They sincerely hope that Jimmy Hill’s next **** is a porcupine.

PROFESSIONAL FOUL: Cheating condoned in the interests of victory. Also an award winning play by Tom Stoppard which implausibly links an English international football team to sophisticated debates about moral philosophy.

ST JOHNSTONE: The only British team with a ‘J’ in their name and the stimulus for one of Britain’s undiscovered teen cults.

TARGET MAN: An ungifted giant with no footballing skill who is willing to be kicked to bits in the interests of his side. Target men are always given a free transfer at least once in their career.

VERSATILE: A player who’s mediocre in more than one position.

VETERAN: A player whose maturity defines his behaviour. He is protected from the cruel criticism of the press and is now to old to score with the Director’s wife.

WAYWARD GENIUS: A talented schoolboy internationalist whose professional career has been ruined by a diet of Bacardis and blow-jobs. He goes to Stringfellows, rolls up the sleeves on his suit jacket, shows up in newspaper photos next to Brian Tilsley and an un-named brunette and regularly appears at Bow Street Magistrates Court.

WELL DRILLED: A term used alongside words like ‘methodical’ and ‘machine’. East European teams are always well drilled, not because their training is superior, but because it allows television commentators to make disguised swipes at life behind the iron curtain. Russia will be well drilled in Mexico. Poland are less likely to be well drilled than they were before the BBC supported Solidarnosc.

WE: The shortest but most pervasive word in the dictionary of soccer speak. ‘We is the commentators’ favourite word: ‘We look shaky at the back’, ‘We should be two goals up’ and in really desperate moments of national disaster, ‘We should be thrashing this poxy country and their dismal culture’. The word ‘We’ is virtually owned by England. Jim Rosenthal will use it ad nauseum and 8 million Scots will audibly reply, “Who the f!*k is we Jimmy?”

keano_afc

Yugoslavia:

Lack of cohesion caused by fierce Serb/Croatian hatred within team.

Ominous.

The whole thing reads like a dictionary of stereotypes.

Vinz Mesrine

Did you type all that out?

anncoates

USA: “Very much the dark horses of the competition” (J Greaves). Crap. In America all teams called things like Baltimore Visigoths and the Anchorage Goal Hangers. In America, game consists of seven, eight minute “quadrants”. Corners are worth half a goal. Beat us in 1950.

Supporters: Birdland, New Kids on the Block, Princess Diana.

USSR: All new, all-singing, all-dancing, happy-go-lucky, post glasnost style team. All players now called Kev. Noticeable at World Cup HQ with their deelyboppers, safari jackets and cassettes of Brother In Arms. Still highly disciplined proletarian machine, though. In qualifiers, goalkeeper and left back declared themselves “culturally and economically autonomous” from rest of team.

Supporters: Billy Bragg, Arthur Scargill.


:pac:

Still very funny although it's a bit disquieting hearing Birdland again.

J Cheever Loophole

Vinz Mesrine wrote: »

Did you type all that out?

I did! Sad I know.

I always thought it was very funny and wanted to share it with other footie fans - it was actually four years ago that I typed it out - just before South Africa, and I put it up on another site.

At my age unfortunately, World Cups are fast running into each other and it's all becoming something of a blur - when I was younger and I had a fanatical interest, the time used to drag between tournaments!!

The 'Jimmy Hill' reference always made us laugh back in our student days!!!