My friend Simon has a lovely bench in his garden made up of the blue-painted wooden seats he sat in with his dad when they went to Rugby League decades ago. He bought them when the old Swinton ground was knocked down. That’s what a lot of sport’s about: you mustn’t let the past disappear. But we can’t sidestep the future either.
So naturally Manchester United did a brilliant retro job last weekend for the Munich anniversary derby against City: the plain red shirts were gorgeous, the trad scarves on every seat inspired, only the haircuts had changed — oh, and the performance was rubbish. And of course the minute’s silence was unbroken and very moving, after what seemed to be weeks of frenzied hand-wringing all over the media about how it couldn’t hold. Of course it held: people behave decently, given half the chance. Most of the time, anyway.
How odd then that this feast of retro style in front of 75,000 and millions on TV around the world should be taking place against such a furious backdrop of rage about English football’s very cunning plan to go even more global than it is already. We’re a conservative country, OK, but blimey — sports people can be unbelievable. Man U were only pretending we were back in the Fifties: it wasn’t real, guys. The Premier League’s chief executive Richard Scudamore wants to take a midwinter break of a fortnight in January, four of the 20 teams will each go to one of five warm foreign cities around the world, where they will play two games. The match will be extra, the 39th game, and some sort of seeding will take place.
What’s not to like? For me, the howls of outrage are out of all proportion.
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