Mason - The Bluffers Guide to Football

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First published 2001

This edition published 2013

Copyright Bluffers 2013

Publisher: Thomas Drewry

Publishing Director: Brooke McDonald

Series Editor: David Allsop

Design and Illustration: Jim Shannon

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You have to be smart enough to understand the game, and dumb enough to think its important.

US Senator Eugene McCarthy

EARLY DOORS

N ever before has the ability to bluff your way in football been as vital as it is now. From boardroom to building site, from wine bar to pub, every other conversation seems to be about the game. The smartest dinner parties, which once echoed with talk of Plato and The Old Vic, now concern themselves with Messi and Old Trafford. In short, if you cannot talk about football, you cannot take part in modern life.

If you know that the expression early doors derives from the world of theatre (as in a matine performance), then you know more than most footballers and football fans. But you must also know that it is much better known as a football-related term for the beginning of a game, or indeed any undertaking, as in: Weve got to make sure that we get stuck in early doors.

So not only must you never be late doors, you must be properly prepared as you step through them. If you attempt to improvise in the jungle of trivia, invective and emotion that characterises modern football, you will soon be caught out. For proof of just how easily this can happen, you need look no further than the political world. Former prime minister Tony Blair, for example, was asked in a BBC radio interview about his lifelong support of Newcastle United. A local newspaper went on to misreport the interview, claiming that Blair said he had fond teenage memories of watching legendary player Jackie Milburn who had actually retired when Blair was four. The myth surrounding this claim, however, will take much longer to retire if it ever does. Football fans can detect the whiff of phoniness from a great distance, and if theres one thing they all agree on, its to hold in contempt anyone who claims to be a fervent supporter of a particular club when theyre demonstrably not.

Another case in point is Salman Rushdie who once wrote a magazine article professing his long-held love for Tottenham Hotspur in which he praised their legendary Scottish manager Bill Nicholson. Nicholson was in fact English.

So, as a bluffer you would be advised to follow the instructions given out by thousands of football managers through the years:

work hard in training;

keep your eye on the ball; and

dont do anything stupid.

In particular, you should remember the words of another politician, US Senator Eugene McCarthy, who compared his job to being involved in football (albeit the American version): You have to be smart enough to understand the game, and dumb enough to think its important. Admitting to a lack of understanding about the worlds most popular spectator sport is the cultural equivalent to having a bad case of leprosy (in its advanced, pustulent phase).

This book sets out to guide you through the main danger zones encountered in football discussions, and to equip you with a vocabulary and an evasive technique that will minimise the risk of being rumbled as a bluffer. It will lend you a few easy-to-learn hints and methods that will allow you to be accepted as a football aficionado of rare ability and experience. But it will do more. It will give you the tools to impress legions of marvelling listeners with your knowledge and insight about the beautiful game without anyone discovering that before reading it you didnt know the difference between a hairdryer and handbags at dawn.

____________________

Gender matters: It should be made clear that wherever in this book the impression is given that all football fans, players and officials are male, it is for reasons of grammatical convenience. It is not intended to suggest that men are more likely than women to have a keener grasp of the game. And if you should fall into that trap just remind yourself of the fate of expert Sky football presenters Richard Keys and Andy Gray who were required to step down after a notorious sexism row when they questioned the job suitability of female Premier League assistant referee Sian Massey (who clearly knows more about the offside rule than most men).

The jewel in any bluffers crown is the ability to explain the offside rule.

RULES OF ENGAGEMENT

T he first recorded mention of football was over 2,000 years ago in China. The Yellow Emperor is said to have developed his soldiers leg muscles by making them play with a stone football. References to heading the ball are notable by their absence.

It has been said that sport is a continuation of war by other means. For much of its history, football has tended to forget about the by other means bit. Games in the British Isles were for centuries little more than an excuse for mass fights, with hundreds of players on each side. The residents of Chester are said to have celebrated victory over the marauding Danes by playing football with the head of a defeated opponent. This attitude to the sport continues to this day among the supporters of Millwall Football Club.

The rules of football were first formalised at Cambridge University in 1846, when Messrs H de Winton and JC Thring met to decide a unified code for the game. Their deliberations took just under eight hours, thereby establishing the tradition that football should always be talked about for far longer than it takes to actually play the game. This tradition lives on with Sky TVs post-match analyses.

The first meeting of the Football Association (FA) was on 26 October 1863 at the Freemasons Tavern in Londons Covent Garden, near the headquarters of the Freemasons. The bluffer can effect a suitably jaundiced view of the FA by referring to the irony of their early connection to an organisation famed for its secretive practices and refusal to explain itself to the outside world.

The world game is now governed by FIFA, the International Federation of Association Football. The fact that these initials are in the wrong order tells you everything you need to know about this organisation. (Admittedly the French name is actually Fdration Internationale de Football Association, but why spoil a good story?) Never overburdened by headlines claiming that their procedures are completely above board and utterly legitimate, FIFAs biggest brush with scandal came during the bidding process for the 2022 World Cup. Having weighed up the respective bids of the various countries competing to host the tournament, Sepp Blatter (the bodys Swiss president) announced that he and his cronies sorry, well-respected fellow bureaucrats had decided on Qatar. The fact that this former British protectorate sounds like a medical complaint is the least of its worries when it comes to being taken seriously as a home for footballs biggest showpiece. There are issues concerning the countrys policies on human rights, freedom of the press and most crucially the availability of alcohol. But the main practical problem is that in June and July (when the World Cup is always held) Qatar is so hot that players and fans could suffer serious dehydration (especially if the English supporters are deprived of their prescribed ingestion of generous quantities of lager). One suggestion was that leagues around the world could take a mid-season break to allow the World Cup to run during the winter. You can imagine how well those leagues responded to that. Your line on this is that the World Cup should be awarded to countries that have a tried-and-trusted record of hosting it, and are conspicuously good at hosting big sporting events such as the Olympics; to pick one utterly at random... oh, lets take for example... England. In the months of June and July, countries like Qatar might, meanwhile, be better left to host the world Frying an Egg on the Bonnet of a Car championship.