Shaitaan Ka Khel - Part 2

Pipsy podcast on suurin jälkeen. Sina kaike. Sä oon tärkein minun jälkeen. Tämä on jälkeen. Tämä on jälkeen. Tämä on jälkeen. Tämä on jälkeen. Tämä on jälkeen. All of them, apart from Curry, with his grand total of 17, the recipients of under 10 England caps. Sports writer Jonathan Wilson. It was very much suppressed. That was not what was ventilated. I think what happens by the 70s is it's a little bit of that sort of anti-authoritarianism of the 60s. It's a little bit of liberalization. That's suddenly there are individuals here. They're all rebellious and individual in exactly the same way. Yeah. They all have long hair. They all have pop stars. They all have all the socks down. They have a shirt hanging out. Yeah. They don't work particularly hard. But there was no place for that. I mean, it's really extraordinary if you look at the 1970s. Sports writer Barney Rone, who's kind of the nadir of the England team. Didn't qualify for two World Cups in a road like despair. Like, we play this game that just doesn't work on the world stage. And yet at the same time, English clubs are winning the European Cup, almost every year at one point. None of the people in those clubs winning the European Cup best club teams in the world were ever invited to be involved with the England team. Which, if you think about it now, is completely insane. I also put this round heads versus Cavaliers or Super Ego versus Eid, Managers versus Mavericks idea, to two men who kind of represent each faction. That being podcast to comedians Chris England, he's the controlled, ordered one, he is after all called England and Nick Hancock, who isn't. In cricket, we love our Mavericks. And not only we love them, we love them more if they go and get drunk the night before. Is that because it's a posh of sport? I think there's a touch of the forelock in it. There is. If you're out on that drinking champagne, all the better. Yeah. Yeah. If you play football or cricket for England, you're somehow representing the country. It's true because the dentist chair, right, in 1996, right? I sort of thought, what's the problem really with that? Very well who doesn't know, the dentist chair was a photograph, much reproduced in the sanctimonious tabloids of the times, in which various members of the England squad of 1996 were seen strapped to a chair in a Hong Kong nightclub, whilst other teammates squirted alcohol into their mouths. In general, it felt more to be to be a moral thing, which maybe to do with the fact that these are young working class men. I think it's that it's to do with letting the team down. And actually that goes to industrialised society. And you know what, if you're in a furnace or you're on a shop floor with big bits of metal shooting around, if somebody's a pisshead, somebody's going to die. So there's a kind of puritanical attitude to it, not at work. You know, other times fine. I suppose the other social class that one needs to think about in this, and maybe this is the root of the sort of uptightness and the hatred of Mavericks is not really from the aristocrats. Football historian David Goldblatt. In what we understand as kind of, you know, English football culture since, is the product of the people who ran the football leagues and ran the clubs and ran much of the F.A. which is, you know, the solicitors, methodists and clerks. I would say it is a much more provincial, lower middle class sense of respectability and propriety. And that is definitely part of the story of Englishness. [Music] Card on the table. I'm on the side of the Maverick. It's not a binary really, but English football has often imagined itself as a reflection of the other kind of Englishness. The sleeves rolled up, backs to the wall, honest endeavor, controlled emotion version. The Dunkirk spirit, the battle of Britain. I mean, it all gets very, very military. There's definitely an English love of the game where you're totally outplayed, but you cling on and somehow win. What's the most lionised moment of English football? -Setä ei buti. of it in blood. An image of the central defender in 1989 who after a clash of heads against a Swedish attacker stayed on heroically with a head bandage getting progressively redder so that England could doggedly hold on to our nil nil draw to clinch our place in Italian 90. And so it can seem that we have a long history of picking the grafter, the tracker back the work-raider, the honest decent leader of men hoping to win by being more disciplined, more stoic than the opposition. In this model skill, too much of it starts to seem un-English, it's showy, it's flashy, it's French. Drawing attention to your talent like that, it doesn't quite do. There's a sense that the national team has seen as an arm of something else that you can't quite trust the lads with, because it will be wrong to say the anti-intellectualism, what I'm trying to get at, wrong to say that it's because it's a working class sport, because that assumes that working class people are not interested in art, the inter- it's actually the other way around. It's more a way of keep them in order. Then suddenly Alpharamji walks in, Naive blue, tracksuit, immaculate, absolutely immaculate. That Rodney Marsh, who you may have noticed earlier, I put first on the list of Mavericks who missed out on England glory, that's because he should be first on that team sheet for the way he played and also for the way he talked back to authority, specifically to Sir Alpharamji. Rodney, you in particular, if you don't work hard, I'm going to pull you off a half-time and I said Christ, that's mentioned, see, you only get a cup of tea in orange. And that was the last time I played for him. It's still a great check. Rodney, why are you taking on three men, pass it sideways? Well, no, I'm enjoying myself having a bit of fun and I'm creating a scoring goals. No, no, you're supposing you lose the ball. Well, one is to be different and I was trying to be different and that was in my DNA. And it was only really when I became a professional that I realized everybody else was trying to knock it out of you. So it's not just that England didn't pick Mavericks, it's that when they did occasionally pick them, they wouldn't let them play like Mavericks, like themselves. David, we were training. I never ever forget this. Alpharamji suddenly called me over and he said, Rodney said, I'm going to start you tomorrow night. Well, I want you to do, he said, I want you to play like Jeff Hurts plays. I said, but Alph, I'm nothing like Jeff Hurts. And I walked away from that and I thought, Christ, I had several coaches in my early career. One of them was like, well, a big bucket. Who despise me, despise my originality and he called me a clown. Being called a clown from on high is obviously an insult, but as we know the gesture, the entertainer, the mad cap is as English as the stiff upper-lipped official. And the reason one needs to be controlled by the other is popularity, because it's the clown, especially the genius clown who's most going to be loved by the crowd. I'm sitting on the bench and suddenly the whole crowd started going, Rodney. I felt like I was only in there in England squad because of public demand. I felt they resented that. I wasn't enjoying it, David. I just wasn't enjoying it. No, I think that's at the heart of it. The notion that enjoyment is central to how you should play football is, I think, something which weirdly, the attitude I'm talking about, would completely bulk against. It's not about enjoyment. Here's to a job of work. English football is a great game played on great days by great people. The same suspicion of individualism operated at the managerial level. In 1977, the England manager job clearly should have gone to the most obvious candidate who at the time was not easy to overlook. Yeah, I would now. Brian Kluff, who has won the top flight with two different clubs and would go on to win two European cups, goes for the interview for England manager, but doesn't get it. Why? I think it's the confluence of Saharal Thompson joining the FA in '76 as its chair, this professor of chemistry at Oxford, who as an amateur thought he was upholding this kind of purest amateur ideals. Despite these high principles, he was also described by an FA official who worked with him as a bullying autocrat, a bastard who treated the staff like shit. Saharal Thompson knew better than those who were perhaps part of the kind of venal and commercial aspects of football in the football league, which Kluff sort of epitomised. He was a bit uppity. He loved a sound bite. He knew how to court the press. This thing in football that the executive has, that you can't bring the game into disrepute. Yes. Now, you've never accepted this. I've never accepted a talk. The very thing that they've given me a lot of stick about over the years, about talking too much and going on television too much, these are the very people who can't put two words together. Kluff, along with other colourful characters who'd gone into management, notably Malcolm Allison, represented another type of maverick, but one that the English football establishment were particularly resistant to, because as with the players, what they are frightened of is not just the maverick, but the crowd, the popularity of the maverick. And mass communication is now giving the maverick much more ability to court popularity. Saharal Thompson thought that he was defending a nostalgic idea of football, whereas Kluff didn't have any of the kind of social anxieties about his class, that for instance, Sir Al Ramsey did famously having elicution lessons. And let's not forget, it's 1977, the year punk broke into the mainstream, while unemployment reached record heights. Saharal Thompson, head of the FA, only has to turn on his wireless, to hear that the country is collapsing, both economically and certainly to his fuzzy grey years, culturally. And when the English establishment feels threatened, it doesn't give way, it digs it's heels in, which means this newfound power, what we today would call having a platform worked against Kluff. He has too much popular support. Why do you think you didn't get it, Brian? And I think they might have had the sneak in suspicion now, I would have ran the England football association, and I certainly would have done. What all this means is that who gets to play for and manage England isn't really about talent. It's about who we, or to be more exact, a combination of we and them, them being the FA, feel presents the correct version of Englishness. There anything you do, you're a role model for kids, whatever you do, there's more responsibility on your shoulders than just being good for 90 minutes. The whole modern notion of role models is key here, but the question should be asked, what role and what model is being aspired to? Throughout English sport, there has been a tradition of the athletes themselves being treated like school children and the governing body of the sport being like prefects or teachers, and it's unbelievable how patronising they have been about them. I mean, you're expected. Dot dot dot. I mean, it's so annoying and so English, I think. Now, I might be wrong about this, but other countries, I think, don't have this issue with Maverick Genius, although as ever, a caveat. But that canton are, didn't it? With the exception of Canton are proving the rule. Also at the time, the French had Zidane, so you know, difficult behaviour genius box kind of ticked, it doesn't matter how arrogant and not listening to the manager and show boating, the Zlatan Ibrahimovic is, he's always going to be first on the team sheet for Sweden, same with Cristiano Ronaldo for Portugal, or well, here's the most obvious one. But as Jonathan Wilson explains, this may be something to do with a different country's very different self image. And this is such a live topic in Argentina that in 1912, you have the leading poet of the Agile Baudre de la Gunas, gives the series of lectures which are attended by all the great and the good of Argentine society. And he asks, what is Argentinianist? What is it to be Argentinian? He says, the unique Argentinian thing is the pamphus, it's the gouchul, the cowboy. He's out there alone, he's got this great virtuosity, but he's also got to be smart, he's got to be able to look after himself. I'll get back to football, don't I? No, I see where that's going. And so the question begins to be asked in the early 1920s, where do you find the gouchul spirit in the city, and Argentina is industrialising rapidly, it's urbanising rapidly. They say, well, this combination of virtuosity plus self-reliance, you find in the figure of the Peabay, the Urchin kid of the street, right, who is learning to play football on the potrae bus. And then the reason that this is so significant is that football is one of the things that pulls the nation together. And therefore the way that Argentina plays is a very self-conscious representation of that identity. And you get this extraordinary passage written in 928 in our graphical which says if we were to elect a statue to the Peabay, he's describing something with, he's short, he's malnourished, come from a poor background, he's got this shocker dark hair, essentially 49 years before he makes his international debut, he is describing Diego Maradona. So Argentina, a country without an imperial history, one that was colonized by Spain, has a self-image about liberation, about independence, about outwitting the forces of control. And they happen to have a football icon that really suits that. The England Uruguay, friendly recently, a wimbly, I bumped into. My name's Asif Erhen. And you've written a book about the hand of God. Maradona, the captain of Argentina, putting his left hand to the ball, pulming it over the head of England's captain. It's a book looking at the match itself and the context of the match with the Falklands War. The match was in 1986, four years after the conflict. Although did Maradona ever straight forwardly cop to it? Yeah. And he said it was revenge for the boys shot down like birds, I think, was the phrase he used. The England team went into it with the wrong attitude, they went into it scared of Maradona and playing on the defensive. That's been a recurring theme of England teams since 1966. It made that custom of being an island that we've always tried to defend ourselves first rather than attacking other nations. I think you're right. Part of my frustration as an England fan is a sense that the team has a caution around it. And so far described as being something to do possibly with us being an island who defends ourselves because most people have talked about England being a colonial power. And maybe that's also empowered other nations to play better against us. So that's particularly a case with Argentina. And Hasbro Chagat, who is left and Valdean, who is left, he doesn't. He won't need any of them. You have to say that's magnificent. There is no debate about that goal. Maradona scores the greatest goal possibly in the history of football. While we're here, can we just hear again the last line of Barry Davis' commentary on that goal? That is so English. I think that if it was the other way round, the Argentinian commentator would not have acknowledged its magnificence. He had been spitting blood. I can hear at the tournaments the Brazilian commentators or the Spanish commentators. What is it? Go go go go go go go. Or as five live commentator John Murray said when I interviewed him in the box at Wembley before England played Uruguay earlier this year, I'd never do that. I'd never be comfortable commentating in that way. Probably because of there is that reserve. This may be historically arbitrary, but maybe after the hand of God, maybe after we see this gout show, this rebel, this trickster in full flow and the damage he can cause, England's attitude to such players does I think change a little. We allow at the next World Cup one absolute maverick. And with him, we go right to the far end of the Ignitioners as crazy clown genius spectrum. Paul Gasco is a kind of extreme example of the sort of anti-gester English figure, incredibly brilliant football. Possibly the only English player, I think who we can say was indisputably the best player in the world at his best in his moment. And yet so incredibly damaged, he was at his best when he was playing. Everything else was problematic for him. When I score a heart attack and I sat you, I love the tension then. This other bit, this kind of all that I do, I hear this. On the field, he was kind of liberated from it all that other stuff. But I mean, I love gas, I sort of love him as a player, but I also love the idea of him because I think he represents this sort of, sort of, it sort of damage brilliant, vulnerable form of Ignitioners. One of the things I love about Gaza or would my about Gaza is that despite the fact that he kind of turned football, and it said in this country, people always use him as a reference point. And yet football since then in this country certainly has spent all its time trying not to have players like Gaza. They have coaches that control the teams to the nth degree. I'm sure whatever you told him, none of it went in and when he was out there, everything was instinctive. And that kind of wouldn't be allowed now. Without any doubt, most of what went wrong for Paul Gascon was to do with his own demons. But I wonder if there isn't also something structural but play here as well. We love our Mavericks and then we tend to destroy them and I think that goes, you know, across the board. I don't think that's just football sickness. I think there's a lot of that in English cultural life generally and football is a mirror. This moment from Euro 96 is perhaps a perfect example of the triumph of the English Maverick. Gaza receives the ball and instinctively flicks it over the head of Colin Hendry and volleys it straight into the Scottish net. And then mimicking the dentist chair picture that had been in all the tabloids, lies down for his teammates to squirt water into his mouth. It's such an English two fingers up to all of those who think they know how an English player and an English man should comport themselves. And it wouldn't have been in Gaza's mind but at some level watching that goal and that celebration I'm going to say he scored it and celebrated it that way for Tony Curry and Frank Worthington and Stan Bowles and Peter Rosgood and Alan Hudson and Rodney Marsh. I was incredibly proud to play for England. I think that's so important because I think sometimes it gets forgotten that people like yourself they're as proud to play for England. They're as English as players who might be thought of as solid, stoic, put in the hours but they're no less proud. You're no less proud to be playing for England. I had one fantastic game and I had a chat with Malcolm Addison and he just said Rodney said just go and play your own game. I said don't worry about trying to play that other play. Just go and play your own game. I know one out there and I didn't give a toss and I was great. I was absolutely great and I just loved, absolutely loved it. I did offer him to say anything to you afterwards. No, I did so word. Bobby Mordid. He said, "Sunny said that was just absolutely brilliant." [laughs] [music] It isn't always the gray instinct, the men in suits mentality that crushes that spirit. Sometimes the Maverick does it by himself. But still, there is I think an English thing whereby, "Okay, maybe we can have one luxury player, but even that phrase is in my mind wrong, the idea of genius as luxury." At the highest level of football, Maverick Genius is not a luxury. You cannot win without it. There may be many issues with social media, but one thing the hundreds of reels of Lionel Messi coming up every 15 scrolls on my Instagram prove, if you want to win a World Cup, genius is not an accessory. Next time on 60 years of her, we'll be looking at the people who actually suffer it. The fans. You can listen to all episodes of 60 years of her first on BBC Sounds. If you want to be notified as soon as a new episode drops, make sure you're subscribed to the History Podcast on BBC Sounds and have push notifications turned on. I like sports. BBC Women's Football Weekly. The latest news, insights and analysis from across the women's game. Game, game. Game's really big, but welcome to the show. Are we including Damon, you are tired to her now? You know how much an honor that is. And it's a remarkable team. And it's a remarkable woman. You want to play in a way that they can show their skills, so that's what we try to do. Win the ball cup. It's a dream. Listen. With the BBC Sounds app. [Music]