Oh Baby Let The Free Bird Fly
So you have twenty posts in mid-draft, and none of them are funny, yet you have less than an hour before Brazil play again. You don’t have a television, but you live in a land where every pub, and even the odd Cafe, do.
So do you go out in the rain, and again look for a free telly as you ready yourself for the requests to turn it off, because golf/hockey/volleyball/quarterhorse racing is on another channel? And do you ready yourself to explain why nil-nil does not mean something bad?
Or why it is for football that you are rooting not one team or another - much as you enjoy a film without necessarily rooting for one of the characters to the exclusion of the others?
You know that Brazil have played like England in disguise, but unless half their team ruptures cruciate ligaments in their knees, you know they can surely remember where they learned to play football.
And you know that one of the greatest Brazilians to ever wear the yellow jersey is managing the opposition, a god briefly in both countries, if only for a diving backward heeled goal in the J league. And you know Japan must win to even have a chance of going forward.
And Brazil have been outshone by Argentina. And Kaka has been outshone by Riquelme. And the ghosts of Toninho Cerezo and Falcao must be bleeding.
But you also know that this Brazilian team is Parreira’s so has failed to play as good as the Brazilian teams of 1986, 1978, 1938, 1950, and of course 1982 - and that’s just when they don’t win.
But then again you might have to listen to somebody sing Ole, Ole, Ole.
Once upon a time, Here we go, Here we go, Here we go was the worst chant in football before it was replaced by Ole, Ole, Ole. There are actually thousands of alternatives, and the BBC is giving you an audio quiz on ten of them.
Great lyrics from those chants translate into things like Shine Your Nationality Brighter - which is something I always try to do, especially in the shower - and Aye, aye, aye. Sing and don’t cry because singing gives a happy heart. Sing don’t cry - which is clearly from supporters used to having a good reason to cry.
All of which reminds me of when Irish fans first started copying Glasgow Celtic and adopted The Fields of Athenry. It was that Anfield play-off when we thankfully lost to a much better Holland team even if the future turned out not to be orange after all.
It was just a wonderful failure; we were saying goodbye to the long-ball game and to going over heads rather than threading passes through gaps the way feet belonging to Brady, Sheedy, Whelan could, and to the endless putting of full backs and midfielders under pressure.
Charlton was going thank god, but such was the quality of tens of thousands of Irish people singing about a rather harsh penal sentence for knicking a bit of corn, that he considered staying. Luckily he didn’t and Ireland were free to play football again. Oh my - look at the time!
But still, those twenty drafts? They need finishing. And they’re still not funny. And they represent the cliched tip of the iceberg compared to the ongoing behind-the-scenes work. And there’s the redesign. And there’s clients. And there’s commissions.
But then this only happens every four years. And it is Brazil. This could yet be 1970, or 1958, or even just that moment in the third place play-off in 1978 against Italy when Nelinho messed with geometry:
See Also:
• Racehorses, Romance, and the Irish
• In the Closet: Tom Powers
• Ireland and the USA: Little Differences #2
Eolaí gan Fhéile:
