Lens, France. Outisde the ground. Cops in body armour, loaded weapons, dogs, riot vans, helmets. English fans everywhere trying to buy tickets, trying to get through the cordon of tooled up French police, revelling in their Mad Max anonymity. No-one to answer to; the trouble caused by English idiots in Marseilles has given the cops here carte-blanche to threaten, intimidate and arrest anyone on the streets. We've blagged tickets by agreeing to film the Funny English People Going To A Soccer Match, for MTV. We might as well be filming in Beirut right now. The bars are shut, there's no big screen showing the match for ticketless fans, and tickets bearing French names are being torn up by the police in front of hapless supporters who've just spent a couple of hundred quid on them. The atmosphere is charged, eery, and unpleasant. No-one singing. I came here for the big international spectacle - the Festival Of Football (TM) - and instead I've got marshall law.

Rochdale, England. Outside the ground. Chip shop open until kick-off. Cops dawdle outside the main entrance to the ground. Easy overtime.

Lens, France. Inside the ground. The atmosphere has lifted; no dogs, no body armour, no helmets. Singing everywhere. Fans mingle easily, everyone wants their photograph taken with the Columbian supporters. Swapping Valderama wigs. Laughing, shaking hands. Cards on everyone's seat to create a huge stadium-length display when everyone holds them up. Applauding each other's national anthem. Great view, high behind one goal... ground two-thirds full of English fans, chattering, excitement, nervousness.

Rochdale, England. Inside the ground. Standing with a thousand Burnley fans, pre-season friendly, the Rochdale fans sing "We hate Burnleeeeee and we hate Burnleeee..." and we all laugh. Burnley fans sing "We're wank - And it's 'cos of Frank", a reference to the dogged and incompetent chairman who is slowly strangling Burnley FC. New season, new sponsors, new strip. New haircuts. Couple of new bargain-basement signings. Rainclouds hang above us. A crumbling concrete n' iron shed of a stand, one pie stall and a toilet in the corner.

Lens, France. The match. Anderton swipes in a near-post goal in front of us, and suddenly England look brilliant - Gazza's return home forgotten in a bright and lively display of control and elegance... and Beckham's free-kick, perfect, Dunstan sitting next to me has forgotten that he's supposed to be filming all this and is jumping up and down and hugging someone he's never met before. One crowd song rolls into another as the Mexican waves flow around the stadium. Fantastic atmosphere, football doesn't get much better than this - the best players in the world on a balmy summer evening - I mean, some people watch players like Beckham and Shearer every other week, but I don't. This is a treat...

Rochdale, England. The match. Burnley have the same three good players they had last season. Everyone else is faceless, or useless, or both. One-nil to Burnley. An own goal. Dreadful marking, awful passing, dire finishing. Rochdale, luckily, are just as nondescript. Thing is - it's a real treat. It's football at it's lowest common denominator, scrappy and inelegant, the not-so-beautiful game. It isn't any more or less passionate than World Cup football - it's as emotional and unpredictable, as entertainingly bad as international football is entertainingly good. These are lower division players fighting to get out, to move up a few notches, desperate and disappointed. I mean, some people watch Beckham and Shearer every other week, and basically I'm content not to. This is a treat, too - you can enjoy watching hilariously crap pub bands without moaning that they're not The Beatles or U2.

Lens, France. Two months later. I'll never forget it. A spectacle from start to finish. I don't know if MTV ever did show the film we made. I don't care, we got the tickets.

Rochdale, England. Two days later. I've forgotten most of it. MTV didn't ask us to film this one.

August 3rd, 1998;
First published on The Footie Page

Back to Index page	Forward to next article

Hosted by www.Geocities.ws