They say that every end
is a new beginning, and all this recent talk of retirement – of
boots hung up, of whiteboards tucked away in dusty cupboards –
probably goes to show just how much of an honest, painful and
ultimately befuddling truth that may be. As David Beckham, Paul
Scholes, Jamie Carragher and Michael Owen – the familiar faces of
our footballing youth – pack in the day jobs and head for the golf
course, the rest of us are in essence only just starting out on that
rocky road know as a 'career', which is an odd dichotomy to consider.
It's easy to forget just how intertwined the professional lives of
these stomping football behemoths of the Premier League are with our
own private timelines of failure and fortune. Today we find ourselves
mourning an era which began in our adolescence, gathered steam during
those pesky hormone-fuelled wonder years, and now emits the final
flares of it's dying light as we stare down the barrel of
thirtysomethingness, worrying about mortgages and filling out our
suits a little more snugly than before. Never mind ascending career
ladders and diminishing sexual peaks: where the hell did the last
fifteen years of football go?
Take, for example,
Scholes, a man whose entire professional career I have now lived
through. I have a weak memory of sitting close to a radio somewhere,
ear pressed to the speaker, transfixed by a crackly, medium-wave
description of his two-goal debut against Port Vale, wondering with
youthful inquisitiveness as to the identity of this ginger Cantona.
Now, as I watch his typically no-frills disappearance down the
Hawthorns tunnel, I feel provided with an odd sense of perspective. I
used to wonder what it must have been like to have watched a great
like George Best light up English football then disappear to be
replaced by a new breed. How it was to be there at his emergence, to
see him dazzle defences across the land, to witness the very public
spectacle of his slide toward A-list decadence, to scrutinize the
gradual, sad tapering-off, to experience – from a sporting
shelf-life point of view – a whole existence flicker, fire and fade
before my eyes. Today I feel like I've watched Paul Scholes grow from
boy to man. I've packed him off on his first day at school, endured
by proxy his growing pains and his rise to the top, and now I gaze on
misty-eyed as he trots off into the great sporting beyond. Off the
pitch Scholes and Best couldn't have been more different of course –
not so much chalk and cheese as champagne and Lucozade – but
the departure of such talents brings with it a curious sense of loss,
and certainly feels more like the end of something that the start.
Beckham's departure
from the beautiful game is a bigger headline grabber for sure, such
is the basic transcendence of the man's very being from sporting icon
to cultural superthing. His farewell to the game came replete with
grandiose – if undoubtedly sincere – tearful farewell, the final
music-swell of the meta-soap opera that has been his life for the
past two decades. As the most discussed, dissected, despised (for a while at least) and defied player of his generation, Beckham has, for
the longest time, been so much more than a mere ball-manipulator.
Rest assured, Brand Beckham will live on long after his studs leave
the turf for the final time.
Meanwhile, Carragher's
final day on the pitch appeared to be everything you'd expect from
abdicating Anfield royalty: captain's armband neatly pinned,
waterworks stoically plugged, hand no doubt a-quiver as he reached
for the This Is Anfield sign one final time. And all of this against
the backdrop of a thankful and devoted Kop – if that post-bound
shot had gone in I think the city might have imploded in a heartswell
of pure valedictorian ecstasy.
As for Carrahger's
former Liverpool team-mate Michael Owen, his departure felt a little
sadder, a little greyer, a little less fairytale. His stock having
fallen so far, his retirement ultimately sat as a rueful sidebar to
the sacking of Tony Pulis and various salty pork-based dressing room
tomfooleries (all very un-Owen, for he was a man who always
played by the book). Stoke was an odd choice of venue for Owen's
career to play out. For a man who spent the vast majority of his
professional life performing (injury permitting) on the grandest of
stages, his decision to while away its twilight hours as a Brittania
bit-part always felt judderingly incongruous, like a hitherto
wholesome Richard Curtis romcom plunging skew-whiff into a
nightmarish and confusing final act of giallo-tinged
psychosexual depravity, replete with smashed glass, severed porcine
craniums and naked, head-charging men-folk. The BT Sport sofa's gain
is, if nothing else, the strained analogy's loss.
And then of course
there's the biggest retirement of the lot. Much ink and paper has
already been spent trying to accurately discern the value of Sir Alex
Ferguson's legacy to British football, but that's no reason to stop
me having a go too. Some will see him as a hyper-skilled management
alien, arriving from a distant land (or “Govan”) to impart wisdom
and a skill set previously unknowable to mere earth-bound footballing
simpletons, that unceasing desire to win – to give the people of
Manchester and beyond the triumph they so desired – feeding not
only his own appetite for distinction, but that of all those he
managed too. Others, however, will point to a fierce culture of
sharp-tongued anti-officialdom, brutal and brutish, ruling his manor
with a clenched iron fist, one forever upturned to enable a better
view of that oft-checked watch of his. We never really got too many
slow motion close-ups of Sir's notorious timepiece – it never
featured on Player Cam, as far as I'm aware – but it did become as
synonymous with it's owners peccadilloes as the man himself.
To that end I feel it
might be the idiosyncrasies and the neat phraseology which we'll miss
the most – the small touches which have filtered almost unnoticed
into the footballing lexicon, so entwined are they in the hive-memory
of United's dominant years. Beyond the much-debated “Fergie time”
there were the passive-aggressive (emphasis on the latter) press
conference smackdowns and the fear of God he put up countless
microphone-brandishing comment-seekers. Then there was Liverpool and
their “fucking perch”. The 'noisy neighbours'. Squeaky-bum time.
The endless, endless gum chewing. Those are the things which he
should be remembered for, and that's by no means a glib dismissal,
but rather a very British tribute to just how completely one man can
infiltrate and effect a stand-alone culture as far-reaching and
deeply-loved as football.
It'll stand him in good
stead too, as there's probably a lucrative post-management gum advert
in there somewhere – Sir outside tending to his allotment,
planting hydrangeas, or indoors trying his hand at watercolours,
forlorn and forgotten. He checks his watch. Don't we all wish we
had just a little more time? And
then, before it all gets too Alan Bennett, he reaches for the gum and
all that masticated minty-freshness imbues in him a renewed sense of
purpose. Casting aside his easel, thundering past a bewildered Cathy,
he strides out the door, down the garden path and away to take on
some new quest or another. A
sideways turn to camera – Retirement? Bloody hell!
His successor, David
Moyes, will of course require time to develop his own global
spotlight character ticks. Who knows, in twenty years time we may be
sat around discussing the cultural relevance of the Moyes
touchline-chicken-wing-flap, or the Moyes
imaginary-dressing-room-horseplay-towel-swipe. Perhaps he'll start
dipping into a snuffbox as he paces the Old Trafford touchline or
begin referring to journalists by their pornstar names. One can only
dream.
In the meantime, and
after a lifespan of United fandom without first-hand experience of
managerial change, the efficiency with which Moyes was appointed was
almost a touch disappointing, perversely excited as I was by the
chance to drink in the replacement speculation, to repeat those
rumours of clandestine top brass meetings with succession contenders
held in darkened car parks on the edge of town. Not for United
supporters the dizzying ride of the managerial merry-go-round. All of
this is to the club's credit of course, and upon reflection I realise
it did spare me one gruesome right of passage for supporters of
manager-less clubs – namely, that dark weekend of the soul spent
burning candles and kneeling in quiet prayer in the hope that the
reported approach for Alex McLeish turns out to be nothing but
baseless rumour. Small blessings, I suppose.
In the greater context
of his managerial magic, perhaps the timing of Ferguson's retirement
was his greatest trick of all. Having wrestled the league crown back
from across the garden fence, perhaps Ferguson could feel the wind of
change rustling the conifers in the near distance. With Mourinho's
imminent return, City's huge investments, Spurs' careful growth,
Liverpool's gradual re-emergence and the apparent rise of the modern
German supermachines of Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund, the
moment may have felt right to go before the challenges exceeded his
strength.
It's easy to forget
just how life has changed on and off the pitch since he took the Old
Trafford reins. He steered United out of the darkness of the 1980s,
through the brave new world of the BSkyB era and successfully into
the post-oligarch landscape of now, collecting trophy upon trophy
along the way. Yet arguably Ferguson was at his bullish zenith around
ten-to-fifteen years ago. This was his classic period – a more
aggressive creature then, his sides infamous for their ruthless
goal-hungry efficiency and a disciplinary balance which occasionally
toppled over the line. In recent years he has mellowed somewhat,
elevated to the position of respected elder statesman, the hairdryer
set to mid-range gust rather than ferocious roar, as better befits a
man of advancing years. Ever the manager two moves ahead of the rest,
he chose to leave before the enemy regrouped once more, and as such
left behind a legacy which stands almost without equal. As ever, the
timing was all important – he never burned out, but he chose not to
fade away either.
British football
probably won't know Ferguson's like again, and the same could be said
of Beckham, Scholes, Carragher and Owen too. Each transfer a
headline, each goal an exact piece of history, these were the
original Premier League baby boomers, making hey in the golden light
of English football's post-Sky recruitment drive; the great inventors
in a time of new ideas, accumulating their returns and retreating –
decorated and divined – into the shade of mid-life before the
entire thing eats itself whole. Football will go on, propelled
forward by far flung cash injections and mysterious handshakes, but
we now inescapably see top-flight football as a breeding ground for
pretty millionaires and noxious playboys. It wasn't quite like
that when the aforementioned stars began their journeys to the top.
Of course Beckham is
perhaps the prettiest millionaire of them all, but everything that
made him him – the rags to riches rise, the graceless falls
and the hard-won recoveries, coupled with his sporting talents –
had such a deep impact the world over that it birthed and ultimately
preserved a legend that few players will ever better. I wonder if
another will ever rise to straddle the globe quite like Beckham? I
wonder if English football's next generation of superstars will
provide us with the same memorably etched, era-defining personalities
and traits as Becks and his departing peers did, or a manager as
charismatic, infuriating, divisive and as downright all-conquering as
Ferguson? I wonder what new beginnings these endings will bring?
These are probably questions for another day. For now, tip your hats
– these men mattered to us, and probably more than we'll ever know.
~ Matt
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