Authors: Russell Brand
I’m off to Los Angeles for a while to make a film and I feel drenched in nostalgia. The cat has delayed further the writing of this piece, which had already been put off to provide a barrier in the form of an English work commitment to curtail the Atlantic’s inevitable lure, by lying on my stomach, perfect somehow, peaceful, a living shrine to serenity. Perhaps the pang we feel when we depart from a person or place (or cat) we love is so profound because it is a rehearsal for the ultimate departure, that we will all one day make, unto death.
Intoxicated by nostalgia, United of Manchester were unable to commemorate the anniversary of the Munich tragedy with a victory though in many ways defeat is perhaps a more fitting tribute to such a painful loss. City deserved the win from what I gleaned from a TV screen in an Antiguan suite, where the unusual grandeur of the occasion was heightened yet more by my situation and the period kits worn by both sides.
‘I know young folk will think I’m lying but it happened, I was there. We all took bananas to football’
I wonder if the kits affected performance? I wonder if Cristiano Ronaldo’s game was subdued by self-consciousness? Or even itchy socks? I know that if I’m wearing new shoes I can think of little else, not through discomfort but through vanity. I might pretend to be listening to an inquiring aunt or potential wife but actually all I’m thinking is, ‘I’ve got these shoes on. Look at my shoes. Notice them. Come on.’
Perhaps Ronaldo was unable to penetrate City’s five-man midfield and austere defence not because of their tactics and concentration but because he thought he looked brilliant in his 50s re-enactment costume. Far more likely, of course, that the absence of Wayne Rooney (a man born
to play football in period outfits – I bet he’d look good as a mead-drinking friar an’ all) and the sadness of the occasion affected him.
I see everyone’s taken to wearing those vests under their shirts now. Tightly fitted, exact-same-colour-as-the-club-shirt vests. When did this sartorial shift become de rigueur? Who’s selling them? They must be coining it in, everyone’s wearing them. We’ve gone from no one wearing them to everyone wearing them almost overnight, like if tomorrow when you left the house everyone you met, literally everyone, had a plastic bra on over their coat. I suppose that would be less rational as these vests provide warmth and the bras would only provide titillation – and only in a few cases. A lot of people would look silly.
The only historical precedent for this seismic yet preposterous cultural shift was that brief, bizarre season – I think in the late 80s – when suddenly, apropos of nothing, everyone at football matches, again, literally everyone, was required to bring a giant inflatable banana. I know that sounds absurd and young folk will think I’m lying but it happened, I was there. We all took bananas to football.
There is no obvious link between the potassium-rich fruit and the game of football. None. Why did this happen? Why wasn’t it stopped sooner? I suppose it was harmless fun and may have contributed to the decline in terrace violence as a heated altercation that involves an inflatable banana would look like a confrontation from
Some Mothers Do ’Ave ’Em
.
So last Sunday the weight of history proved too great a burden for the world’s best footballer to bear proving that for all their wealth and glamour the modern player does still have a soul. It’s difficult for us to get behind young Ronaldo (why are there so many good footballers with variants of this name? Ronaldo. Ronaldinho. Other Ronaldo – who, incidentally should have his hair cut, by force if necessary, he looks like an exotic bumpkin with it long) what with the wink during the World Cup, his incredible skill and most irritatingly his beauty. He’s tall and fit and muscly and young and handsome and rich and good at football; why, who could dislike such a character?
I also suspect that he may be no slouch when it comes to picking up girls for no-strings sex. Often I myself feature in red-top tabloids charged with this but let me assure you, should you care, that I endured years of famine in that domain and sacrificed my life and my sanity before my luck changed while Ronaldo did keepy-ups in his pants.
I will miss English football and I’ll miss England, a beautiful country that gave the world the beautiful game and rightly we’re proud of it and we ought to preserve something of the game’s integrity 50 years after an incarnation of the game’s joy and vivacity was lost while travelling. I’m glad that the country’s Premier League will be forced not to go global.
RB:
What do you think about the take-over of Man City?
NG:
Well, it was really weird judging it from afar because obviously whoever’s done the first press release has gone a bit mad and gone, ‘We’re gonna win the League next year and then we’re gonna win the Champions League the year after that, we’re gonna buy all these players for this amount of money’, and it’s like, oh fucking don’t say that. Especially for the City fans who were going to see them away to York ten years ago, you won’t find anyone that’s taking it this seriously – ‘Oh yeah, we’re gonna win the Champions League with Ronaldo’, it’s just, ‘Fucking hell, we’re gonna see some good players’.
RB:
I suppose the fact that they delivered Robinho so quickly, it’s, ‘Oh my God, it’s not just talk’, because there has been a few clubs where they’ve been ‘Oh we’re gonna do this, we’re gonna do that’ and then actually it just doesn’t materialise.
NG:
They must’ve sold it to him on the premise that there were gonna be all these players that were going to come. I mean, you can bid for these players all you want but trying to get ’em to come and live in Manchester…say for instance you’re Kaká and you’re going to sign one big contract at the end of your career and it’s the chance to live in London for five years or the chance to live in Manchester for five years. Let’s say City outbid on the wages and he gets 180 grand a week, I guess you’d much rather live in London, wouldn’t you? If you come from Milan. The best thing I heard about the Robinho sale was Pelé saying ‘Who? Man City? He must need counselling.’
RB:
(Laughter)
Mark Hughes handled that well, Mark Hughes went, ‘It’s a shame he’s not still playing, because we could’ve had him.’
NG:
He looked a bit shell-shocked on the telly from what I’ve seen from abroad on BBC World. I just hope they don’t force all these players on him and then sack him for not being able to mould this team together, do you know what I mean? Here’s these fifteen greatest players in the world, make them all play together or we’re gonna fire you.
RB:
That’s why I think Mourinho was good for Chelsea because he didn’t’ allow it to overwhelm his overall vision, he was able to go, ‘No, no, I don’t want them.’
NG:
I think he ultimately got sacked for not playing Shevchenko, didn’t he?
RB:
Yeah, it was only when that went wrong that it fucked up that experiment.
NG:
I think if the owners of the club have got anything about them they’ll realise that outside of getting Mourinho or Capello, which they’ll probably get in a couple of years anyway, then there’s no point in getting rid of Mark Hughes.
RB:
He’s a good, proven manager, it’s a different climate for him.
NG:
I would say this though, he needs to win a trophy either this season or next season to appease the owners.
RB:
Do you think expectations of fans will be reasonable?
NG:
I think City fans are different you know, we’re not Newcastle fans who think that as soon as Kevin Keegan walks through the door they’re gonna win the League. I’ve known loads of City fans from up there and down here and they’re just treating it like a bit of a laugh. The only people who are taking the take-over of Man City seriously are Man United fans. The City fans aren’t taking it seriously at all, it’s like ‘What, some idiot’s gonna spend all that money on our club? Bring it on.’ And all United fans I know are texting every two minutes. When City got beat by Chelsea I had like 10 texts off of United fans, ‘Oh, was that the sound of the bubble bursting? You’re not gonna fucking win the League now’. I don’t fucking give a shit. We’ll have solid gold goal posts by the end of next season and that’ll do me.
RB:
Yeah, it really has affected my mate Nik, you know he’s a Man United fan and he’s going, ‘Oh they’re gonna have to stop now because they’re having a laugh, they’re coming across as well arrogant’…I said, ‘Oh no, saying they’re gonna buy Ronaldo for £138 million, it’s just gonna make them unpopular.’
NG:
Yeah, but United have been buying the League to a certain extent, they bought it all the way through the nineties.
RB:
Yeah, like Pallister and Ince…
NG:
…like Ferdinand. If there was anyone up for sale…they went for Gazza and Shearer and Michael Owen, obviously they didn’t do it to the extent of Chelsea, who went and bought a team over two seasons but they always bought the most expensive player, they always had the record signing. So I don’t know what they’re banging on about but they’re taking it really seriously and I think you’ll find the City fans aren’t taking it seriously at all.
RB:
Right, yeah, it’s just an enjoyable thing.
NG:
It’s like Arsène Wenger said, well why don’t we get 20 trillionaires in the League, there’s still only one trophy. We can’t all be in the Champions League. There’s only two teams that are vulnerable which are Liverpool and Arsenal because United and
Chelsea are so far down the line with money you can’t oust them so you’ve still got to beat Liverpool and Arsenal. So there’s all this, ‘We’re gonna win the League, we’re gonna win this,’ that’s not guaranteed. It guarantees some decent players and that’s it.
RB:
Some people think it has a negative impact on the game in general, oligarchs and trillionaires taking over football clubs. Do you think that changes the essence of the game, does that affect you as a football fan or bother you at all?
NG:
Well, I tell you what’s funny right, is when it was English businessmen who were making millions out of corporate boxes it was never bad for the game. Then when they were taking it away from the working man it wasn’t bad for the game. When it was English businessmen who decided that they were gonna stop letting kids in for free nobody said it was bad for the game. But now it’s foreigners, it’s fucking bad for the game, do you know what I mean? They only care because they’re not making as much money, it’s been bad for the game for the last twenty years, you know, the corporate side of the game.
RB:
Because of Sky?
NG:
I don’t think because of Sky…I think Sky’s made the game more accessible to kids. But I mean the fact that when I was on the dole going to see City, if you brought your unemployment card you got in for half price, that is such a mad idea now…If you turned up at Chelsea with a UB40 and they’d go, ‘Fuck off, you haven’t got a job.’ But that’s how football clubs survived. But then with all the money coming in they’ve put executive boxes in and the grounds are half empty but they can still run their clubs. The likes of Peter Ridsdale or Ken Bates doing it, that’s somehow acceptable, but because it’s a guy in a fucking turban, it’s fucking out of order and they’re ruining our game. Well you sold it to these guys in the first place. There are debates about whether it’s bad but when they say it’s bad for the game, what does that mean? It’ll turn fans away? Prices turn fans away. If you want to watch Chelsea it’s £75.
RB:
I’ve always thought that just like the world is changing, football is part of the world, the world is more commercial and corporate so of course the most popular sport in the world is going to become more commercialised. It’s ridiculous to just say, ‘Oh, football’s become this thing,’ because look at the fucking world, look at the whole world.
NG:
There’s all that argument about foreigners invading the game and it’s bad for the England team. And it’s like, hang on a minute the last time I looked, England were always shit even in the eighties when there was no foreigners in the League, they were fucking rubbish then and they’re rubbish now. I don’t recall England winning
any trophies at all apart from the World Cup at Wembley, which a Russian aided the fucking score to. So to suddenly say it’s fucking wrong that Chelsea put out a team full of foreigners, well it’s full of Europeans, you can’t stop that.
RB:
We talked about what it was like being at Maine Road when you were signing on…what did it mean to your identity, to be a Man City fan and how has it changed as your life has changed as Oasis blew up and you became famous?
NG:
The reason I support City is because they are my local team and you could see the floodlights in my bedroom, and even when we couldn’t afford to go to matches, or were too young we’d listen to it on the radio and see the floodlights on a Wednesday night and it was kind of magical, you know. Piccadilly Radio on listening to the match and knowing it was going on just over there. They were my local team, if I’d have lived nearer to United I’d have been a United fan. That was how it was back in those days. How it’s changed is I used to stand and sit on the terraces but it’s impossible because you’re constantly signing autographs for people and you don’t really get to enjoy the game, that’s the only thing that’s changed really. And I guess, the football when you’re on the dole, it’s the most important thing there is because you’ve got fuck all else. Your whole life revolves around the football matches, but then once Oasis took off it’s a more enjoyable thing, you know I kind of find it funny when City get beaten. People are very intense about their football clubs and it’s because they’ve got fuck all else. They work in shitty jobs, they married the local bird before she turned fat down the local pub and they’ve got fucking ridiculous children and to them the
(adopts Geordie accent)
‘Toon is everything man! Me whole life’s ruined because of King Kev.’ Fuck off!