An alien on the pitch
Simon Barnes
IT was one of those perfect moments. Football can do that sort of thing. It was the last minute of the last game ever to be played at the Dell, ancestral home of Southampton Football Club. That old, out-of-favour favourite Matthew Le Tissier had come on as sub as a sentimental gesture to the crowd, just 15 minutes before the end.
And in the last minute the ball came to him at the edge of the box, He was in an impossible position, his back to goal; but he swivelled and struck a goal of exquisite, curling, looping beauty, and it allowed Southampton to win 3-2. The footballing world wagged its head and sighed once again: ah well, that's Le Tiss.
In every walk of life you get the eager conformists and the rebels, and each type is as conventional as the other. There are rules for being a non-conformist, just as there are rules for being a straight man. Football places a greater value on conformism than do most walks of life. Its traditional eccentric is skilful, volatile, something of a showman. He is praised for his skills, and routinely criticised for lack of defensive effort.
Le Tissier didn't fit either of these footballing stereotypes. He was neither roundhead nor cavalier. He would walk through games in a daze, and then score a goal of
such blinding perfection that sportswriters turned from the Thesaurus in despair.
He seemed to pass through life as he passed through matches: in a world of his own. He has stayed throughout his career with Southampton for the absurd reason that he liked it there. 'People will say that I've got a screw loose,' he once said. 'But perhaps it's just that I'm in the 0.1 per cent of footballers who don't give a toss about unlimited money.'
Years ago, when I saw him close up, I realised that he fitted the description of an alien being: 'His hair was wiry and gingerish. His skin seemed to be pulled backwards from his nose. There was something very slightly odd about him....' This is from Douglas Adams's description of the alien in The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the one who lived on earth but 'because he had skimped a bit on his preparatory research . .. the information he had gathered led him to choose the name "Ford Prefect" as being nicely inconspicuous'.
Throughout his career he has been criticised for his failure to be like everybody else and praised for the uniqueness of his talent. He has always baffled football: 'You are never sure if you want him playing for you,' said Dario Gradi before his Crewe side took on Southampton. 'But you're sure you don't want him playing against you.'
Le Tissier infuriates coaches and managers because they have no idea what he is going to do. He infuriates opponents for the same reason. Conventional players are admired for their consistency, conventional rebels for their predicable trickery. But Le Tissier was always unknowable; and, partly for that reason, he scored miraculous goals on a more or less weekly basis. He never scored a common goal or mean. Such is his nature.
Football simply couldn't deal with such a fellow. Footballers aren't supposed to be like Le Tissier. Like all other institutions, football can deal with the conventional and with the conventionally unconventional. But every now and then you get an alien in your midst, and no one has a clue what do about them. At least, if they come in football, you can cheer the goals.
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