Articles of Faith Read Free Page B

carry on playing beyond the point of German exhaustion. I feel the hand of history, not on my shoulder but cheekily goosing me out of respect.’
    Let’s hurl more millionaire footballers onto this bonfire of the lame; why wait till they arrive at West Ham? Just give Eidur Gudjohnsen a sack of money then smash him in the balls with a pool cue. Let’s buy a wing at Whitechapel hospital and send an army of thugs with chequebooks and chainsaws on a tour round Europe to assemble a hobbling chorus of convalescents. I wish Dyer a speedy recovery. It’s a shame, and as an offer of appeasement to the angry football gods I shall sacrifice the next virgin I meet on Green Street. It could take a while.

5
Never mind Israel, I’ve been beaten by Bohemia
    I am writing this at the Chelsea Hotel in New York, where Arthur Miller wrote A View from the Bridge , where Sid Vicious killed Nancy Spungen and where Leonard Cohen received ‘head on an unmade bed’ from Janis Joplin. As is the case with most hotels trading on history, it’s a bloody dump.
    When I phoned reception in the dead of night to ask for water, water, I was told: ‘There’s a deli across the street.’ In Maslow’s hierarchy of needs water is right there with shelter and excretion at the pyramid’s foundation; they may as well dispense with the toilet and the building; they could just have a bellhop stood in the street charging you $200 a night for crapping in the gutter and snuggling up with Oscar the Grouch. Comprised neatly in this scenario is the perennial issue of the romantic versus the pragmatic – you don’t stay at the Chelsea for room service, you stay because you’re renting a little counter-cultural history for the night.
    ‘Rio said not qualifying is “unthinkable” but that just sounds like Chris Eubank describing the Titanic ’
    Today England face Israel at fortress Wembley, God help us. A draw against Brazil, defeat against Germany – it’s not exactly impenetrable. Steven Gerrard has his own romance v pragmatism choice to make – does he play with a fractured toe, knowing his significance and skill are vital to Blighty, or does he heed the advice of his club and convalesce?
    It seems that Stevie will play, which worries me for a couple of reasons. I hope no one treads on his foot in the game of football he is playing against Israel’s national football team on a football pitch. Also it is difficult not to be concerned about the state of our squad when sickbeds have to be trundled to stadiums like wheelbarrows and tipped on to the field so we can scrabble together 11 men.
    In addition to Steve McClaren’s grave-robbing selection policy – this week Emile Heskey, next week Dixie Dean – it leaves me thinking that not qualifying is a realistic possibility. Romantically, I think, ‘No, England shall qualify, ‘tis our destiny. None shall pass.’ But bloody hell it don’t look good. Rio Ferdinand said that not qualifying is ‘unthinkable’ but that just sounds like Chris Eubank describing the Titanic . It is thinkable, too bloody thinkable, I’m thinking about it right now in Yanksville, Americee, where in ’94 a World Cup took place in which there was nobody speaking proper English and Alexi Lalas was just a Hanna-Barbera flesh sketch, a living Shaggy, not yet the manager of another resurrected McLazarus selection.
    It’s awful when England don’t qualify; I’d rather watch every woman I’ve ever loved drunkenly fellating handsome idiots at a bus depot than sit through another USA ’94. Actually the bus depot thing could be quite sexy, inducing a masturbatory experience that flits between jealousy and intense excitement, where one cries, despite oneself, during the act of onanism. I believe it’s popularly known as a ‘cr-ank’. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to crank my way through Euro 2008. I’m older now and more dignified.
    How are we to avoid this phantom of a nation lost in sexual flagellation – which would be