I blame Thierry Henry and I never blame Thierry for anything. He’s funny, charming and was a majestic footballer. But it was his outrageous handball assist for a France goal against the Republic of Ireland in 2009 that ushered in VAR – Video Assistant Referee – technology to rescue on-field refs from ‘clear and obvious’ errors. VAR was meant to end debates over refereeing decisions. Yet this form of VAR, usually a man in a ref’s outfit sitting behind a bank of screens in an industrial unit near Heathrow, has caused carnage in the Premier League. Some decisions take five minutes while fans chant obscenities. Football’s many Luddites blame the technology but it’s really human incompetence. We need to improve the operatives, not scrap the machinery.
My daughter lives in Paris, Henry’s home city, where headlines are full of foreboding about the forthcoming Olympics. Roadworks everywhere. Metro fares almost doubling. The French have a particular issue with the official mascot based on the famous triangular Phrygian cap and the slogan – ‘Let’s drive a revolution through sport!’ Yet there’s a rhythm with tournaments: delight at winning the hosting rights, dismay at the costs and congestion. Then utter joy and pride when Les Jeux de Gloire sont arrivés. A year before the 2012 London Games, parts of the capital shook with rioting; there were headlines demanding the event be cancelled. London’s logo was derided as resembling everything from a broken swastika to Lisa Simpson performing gymnastics. Yet it was a triumph. The sun even came out. Paris will undoubtedly stage a great Games. The one obvious concern is security, and not only from terrorism. Having been pepper-sprayed while covering Liverpool in the 2022 Champions League final at the Stade de France, I know the French police’s idea of crowd management is painfully unsophisticated.
I’ve been invited to talk at the second world war summer festival ‘We Have Ways Fest’. I’m a voracious reader of James Holland’s books and an avid listener to his podcasts with Al Murray. Covering the England football team all over the world, I’ve visited, among others, the Museum of the Battle of Stalingrad in Volgograd, where my copy of Antony Beevor’s Stalingrad was confiscated, and the Hiroshima National Peace Memorial Hall for the Atomic Bomb Victims, where I was glared at by local schoolchildren. I’ve been to Auschwitz and Auschwitz II-Birkenau five times, each visit as grim as the last. Nothing prepares you for the evil inside. It’s vital to go, to learn, to pay your respects, to never forget. It was important when Wayne Rooney and some of the England players left their Euro 2012 base in nearby Krakow to visit. Footballers should step out of their bubble. Rooney asked the most perceptive questions of our guide, including how could the camp director step outside the gates and lead a normal family life having inflicted such horrors (a theme recently depicted in The Zone of Interest)? On the bus back to Krakow, I asked Rooney how he knew so much about the second world war. He said he was obsessed with The World at War series narrated by Laurence Olivier. I’m biased, but there’s invariably more hinterland to footballers than perceived.
I rarely stray out of my football lane. The last time I did was at the Hay Festival when I was flogging an England book. I failed to say no when co-opted to join a political discussion panel in a tent, and quickly found myself out of my depth in a debate about nuclear power. Somebody mentioned Sizewell B, so I seized my lifeline. When Sizewell B opened, I confidently informed an already sceptical audience, they contacted all the local Suffolk village football teams and challenged them to games. ‘We’re quite good,’ one village replied to Sizewell B; ‘can we play your A team?’ I’ve not been invited back.
It’s easy to tell the build-up to a general election. Politicians begin appearing at football matches. Having observed many at close quarters, those MPs I would consider the most genuine fans include Gordon Brown, who wouldn’t stop talking about Raith Rovers, Ken Clarke (Nottingham Forest), George Galloway (Celtic), Tracey Crouch (Tottenham Hotspur), Ed Balls (Norwich City), Andy Burnham (Everton) and Ian Byrne, Rosena Allin-Khan and Steve Rotheram (all Liverpool). The England press team once played the MPs’ XI including Burnham and Rotheram at Chelsea Hospital. I absolutely lost it when they brought on as a super-sub Robert Pires, Thierry Henry’s World Cup-winning teammate. ‘Unconstitutional’ was one of my more polite retorts.
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