Football’s Soul Survives
(This article appeared in The Irish Examiner, February 7)
We didn’t hear the roar of the crowd at first, we felt it. It was a heavy vibration on the ribcage, the shockwave of a distant explosion. We saw Cheick Tiote’s boot flash, like the muzzle of a rifle. We saw the ball whipping through the air, always curling away from poor Wojciech Szczesny, divine retribution for having a name that no-one can spell. Then nothing. An eternity of silence, the contradiction of what our eyes were reporting and what our brains were insisting couldn’t have happened. It was Schrodinger’s Goal. It existed and yet it didn’t exist. It couldn’t. And then the roof of St James Park exploded into the sky like the end of ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’
In the press box, chins fell to the floor. A few souls, more professional than I could ever hope to be, diligently continued to type as the celebrations erupted around them. Newcastle’s head of PR sat agape, hands pressed to the side of her face, wondering what on earth this week could throw at her next. In the rafters, the Arsenal fans were like a Lowry, distant stick figures frozen in time. In front of us, Joey Barton charged at coach John Carver and leapt into his arms, the pair of them tumbling to the floor at the feet of a distinctly unamused Arsene Wenger.
It should have ruined my day. For a journalist, 4-0 leads are, to all intents and purposes, an afternoon off. I’d finished my match report after 49 minutes. Thanks to Abou Diaby, lines like, “Andy Carroll has left town. And hope has left with him,” will never see the light of day. Hope, of course, hadn’t left at all. She’d just nipped out to the shops. I didn’t get any lines like that in the new version, frantically slapped out in the space of two minutes and filed on the full time whistle. In fact, thinking back, I’m fairly sure that some of the words I used weren’t even real. And yet I’m still not annoyed.
Because for all the greed, treachery and corruption, for all the nastiness of the modern game, it’s clear that something of football’s soul remains intact. It still has the power to incapacitate us with shock. It may take a little recovery time, but even Arsenal fans will have to acknowledge that something special happened at St James Park this weekend.
QUOTE – “We went out there and played like lions.” Alan Pardew on the definitive game of two halves.
If Newcastle played like lions in the 2nd half, then Arsenal must have been like lemmings hurling themselves off a cliff.
My mood wasn’t helped by my Japanese missus sitting laughing at me getting more and more livid as first Diaby saw red and then as each subsequent goal went in. As the 4th goal went in, my iPhone came very close to making its maiden flight – from my sofa, through the window, onto the street below. Luckily I spotted a can of beer first and did a ‘Mike Ashley’ on it instead.
I see that you have not talked anything about the refereeing decisions. Maybe you are like any other journalists who does not see it.
I’m not entirely sure if this is a compliment or not. I suspect it isn’t.
I watched the game from the front row of the press box with no monitor for replays. The first penalty looked legit to me, the second was unclear. To be honest, it’s still not clear now. Diaby had to go, Nolan could have joined him but I think most referees would have given a booking. Remember that Newcastle had a perfectly good goal chalked off as well.
With the benefit of replay, sure, Dowd made some bad decisions. But none were as bad as Diaby’s decision to throw Barton to the floor. And if anyone has ever seen a team react worse to losing a man, I’d love to hear about it.
Oh, and before anyone starts, I’m a Southend fan. I live near Newcastle, but I covered Arsenal for three years at The Emirates when I lived in London. No bias here.
I must say I am hugely disappointed with your remarks on Newcastle versus Arsenal more so because you are great writer.
You say that “Sure, Dowd made some bad decisions but none were as bad as Diaby’s. That remark fails to grasp the fact that while Diaby paid for his bad decision, it was Arsenal that paid for Dowd’s incredible call for the second penalty (a complete utter joke) and the free-kick before Newcastle’s fourth. In both occasions, Rosicky barely touched, ket alone push his opponent.
I am sure it must have felt great to neutrals that Newcastle made that comeback just for romantic reasons, but I see nothing romantic in a come-back helped mostly by the referee’s decisions.
Close your eyes for a minute and imagine that Dowd did not blow the second penalty and pointed for a goal-kick as any competent referee would do. There would be no heroic comeback, just more huffing and puffing from Newcastle for an honorable 4-2 defeat.
Thanks for your reply Iain!!!
An Hallo from rome, i’m the admin of stadiogoal.com, a soccer site in italy. I wuold like to make an exchange of links with your site, is it possible? visti mine and let me know if you are interested in it…thanks mate
p.s. I follow you on twitter, i hope you’ll do the same…thanks
The behind the scenes stories always seem to be more interesting. I can’t help but laugh when I read that you had your report done after 49 minutes. That’s what you get for not being a procrastinator.
Ah mate your article deserves better than te typical referee question (arsenal fan then!) and an Italian writer looking for a twit-exchange!!
Sometimes you’ve gotta step back say, “that was amazing”, regardless of the teams involved. All trhe gooners at work laboured the ref point today as well but like you said, Best was onside for the “goal that never was”, and in case anyone was unsure, you’re not allowed to grab anyone around the neck and throw them to the floor, sothe red card was fair too. In summary I dontthonk either sidewouls have been 100% happy with the refereeing – Newcastle could’ve won it really, god forbid!!
Ganes like this show why football is the best sport going. Comebacks like this are Special and should rightly be savoured.
Finally note on tiofe. What’s goal! Ball dropping down and he fairly pinged it past their keeper, going straight at him and then swerving away into the corner – work of art!
I too follow you on twitter, but this is the first blog I’ve read; it won’t be the last. Thanks.
Typical sports ‘journalist’ nowadays.
I can take a fair beating like Westbrom but that match yesterday was a farce. As much as it gave you joy and more to write about as much I wanted to turn away from football.
The comments from Arsenal supporters on here are hilarious and completely miss the point.
As Iain pointed out, with the wonderful benefit of hindsight yes, some decisions were close, but I’d like to see (in particular) Saltuk Ozerturk call that one at the time. Surely a monumental collapse which registered so highly on the richter scale, was not solely down to Mr Dowd’s whistle – Wenger’s boys slightly soft, slightly squidgy underbelly perhaps?
Nice post Iain and wonderfully descriptive in your first two paragraphs, something Brian Phillips has been talking about recently on runofplay.com as well and something to which many people on Ye Olde Tinterweb would do well to aspire to.
It almost seemed (I was listening to this on Soccer Saturday with Geoff and the boys rapidly losing the plot, I should admit) that it was pre-determined (put your hat back on Saltuk, the match wasn’t fixed) as soon as Newcastle’s second goal went in. It was one of those “they couldn’t could they?” games, where you kind of knew they bloody well would!
Great play from the Magpies and made even better by the fact Joey Barton came out after Pardew’s “Lions” comment and simply said they were trying to keep it respectable!
Where on earth did I claim the match was fixed?
Yes, refereeing is a hard job, if that’s your point. But that does not make it more fair when they make bad calls.
I also did not claim it was all the referee’s fault. Arsenal collapsed and the referee somewhat facilitated it (not on purpose of course, since you have difficulty understanding plain English let me emphasize it explicitly), and the referee’s contribution is somewhat missing from Iain’s enthusiastic review.
As a neutral, that was bloody amazing. Couldn’t care less ’bout the refereeing decisions. As far as I’m concerned, that was the most exciting match I’ve ever seen.