Football
Cup finals
Hans Keller
One of them has just happened. The next will have happened by the time the reader peruses these lines—so! propose to preview it in a way that makes my remarks convertible into a review. As for the most important of them all, the World Cup Final, or rather Finals, my thoughts will fit them like a glove.
The FA Cup was won by Bill Shankly: the impressive anticipation the Ipswich players showed last Saturday was as nothing compared to the foresight of which Shank the madman — 'It's said football is a matter of life and death, but it's much more serious than that' — was capable months ago, when he said that Ipswich would win the Cup. Nobody else said so at the time, and the bookmakers decided that Ipswich wouldn't. They could not shake my confidence in the insight of one of the finest Scottish winghalves in modern times who, as Liverpool's manager in 1962, brought them back into the First Division, and thence to numerous major honours: for me, therefore, it proved a rewarding Cup Final. Not only financially, though: the concerted maligning of Ipswich's talents and skills which had extended into the highest professional circles, and which had enraged me, was exploded to such an extent on Saturday that anybody who had heard the experts but didn't know the teams must have mistaken Ipswich for Arsenal —who, needless to add, found themselves compelled to outfoul Ipswich in what was regarded as an exceptionally fair game. After all, it only contained twenty recognised 'fouls, plus two to which the advantage clause was applied, plus two which remained unrecognised.
But then, we don't talk about fouls between English sides — not even when they're sheer retaliation, as when Allan Hunter was
fouled in the second minute after he had fouled in the first, or when Liam Brady was fouled in the thirty-first Minute after he had fouled in the twenty-ninth.
Mind you, it was not a nasty game. Neither was England v. Brazil the other week, yet all we heard and read about were the Brazilians' fouls. Yes, they have learnt to foul: I suppose that's what has struck them most about the European style, and can you blame them? But what they did in this deplorable dimension was what I see week in, week out, on our own grounds, without our experts going into convulsions (as they should): the delusional difference betweesn a foreign foul and a native foul has to be learnt to be believed.
And there the similarities between the Brazilians and us ended with overdue deference to the best England performance in ages, for which we have to thank Ron Greenwood's own quasi-Brazilian ideals.
For the rest, the Brazilians' game was, as my plumber put it, 'another world: I could have gone on watching them all night'. That's precisely what I had said to my wife, while our experts had gone on and on about their fouls and about nothing else. It's not only their attacking genius. The way they play out of defence, with complex movements, without any trace of a mere clearance as if their own penalty area were their opponents'!
Once they are in ' possession, there is construction and nothing but construction, wherever they are on the field of play. Of course, you've got to have their virtuosity, and their contempt of the conventional pass, to realise any such policy. In my experience, nobody has, and if anybody else is going to win the World Cup fairly, we haven't seen them in recent years.
Meanwhile on Saturday after the match, the ex-Glaswegian John Wark was watching a television playback of his own two bent shots which hit the post (so that Ipswich had to win through a left-foot goal by the right-footed local Ipswich boy Roger Osborne). Wark liked his shots and tried to think of an adequate self-compliment: 'I've been watching Rivelino, you know!'
Was he merely joking? My guess is that Ipswich have been watching Brazil: their towering defence did not confine 4self to defence and long balls, as had been predicted, but invariably got Arsenal into mid field trouble as it got itself out of trouble: the major factor, I think, in a victory achieved while the gods were smirking rather than smiling.
Good luck to them in Europe, where next Wednesday as I write -Liverpool have emerged as our first club fully entitled to win the European Cup twice in succession.
Pace Liverpool's present, outstanding manager, this unique British feat would have been inconceivable without Bill Shankly's preparatory work, his stunning perception. I disliked your fancy-less style, Mr Shankly, but I'm lost in admiration for your sovereign mastery and here our lives overlap your commitment.
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