SATURDAY’S CHILD: One for the Rudd

“Football is like a car. You’ve got five gears and the trouble with England teams is that they drive all the time in fourth or fifth.”  This was the view of Ruud Gullit, the once “dread-locked” Dutch footballer and Chelsea manager. Had Gullit said that when he was a player, some English fans would have been tempted to take the advice of footballer Vinnie Jones who, when asked how to mark Gullit said: “If all else failed, you could wait for the first corner and tie his dreadlocks to the goalpost.”Gullit left his mark on everything but the World Cup where his team always promised more than it delivered. As a supporter of lost causes, I am sticking to my orange guns and hoping that the Netherlands would win this year.  However, an old elephant joke warns me not to expect too much even if all orange guns blaze. The joke goes: “What kind of gun would you use to shoot a green elephant?” The answer is, “A green elephant gun.”  The next question is: “What kind of gun would you use to shoot an orange elephant?” This time the answer is unexpected. “There are no orange elephant guns. You have to capture the orange elephant, paint it blue and then shoot it with the blue elephant gun.”England has been luckier than the Orangemen. They won the World Cup once and that was on English soil. According to Maxim (November 2000), “England beat West Germany in 1966 for its only World Cup title thanks to an overtime ‘goal’ that hit the crossbar, bounced straight down, and straight into infamy. Despite protests, Soviet referee Tofik Bakhramov allowed the goal. Old World War II wounds may have been a factor – when asked to explain his call, Bahhramov said: “Stalingrad.”  England has been lucky, too, in acquiring Fabio Capello as manager and getting rid of Sven Goran Eriksson, who first went to Mexico and is now with Ivory Coast. His girlfriend, Nancy Dell’Olio, once revealed that Sven recited the names of his entire squad during sex. “It’s the whole squad,” she told GQ magazine. “All 22!” Now, I hear it is only one name, “Drogba, Drogba, Drogbaaaa, Drogba!”England also had its share of bad luck. In 1982 Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands and war was declared between England and Argentina. England won that war so that when England met Argentina in the quarter-finals of the 1986 World Cup there was absolutely no love lost between the two countries.According to one source, Argentina “won a measure of revenge, thanks to two historic goals by Diego Maradona.  The second was the result of one of the most brilliant displays of ball-handling ability in the history of soccer”.The first, however – as a television replay later revealed – was clearly a foul ball, punched over the head of England’s goalkeeper by what Maradona later called “the hand of God”.Curiously, Maradona later declared that, in many ways, he preferred the first goal to the second. It was, he said, “like picking the Englishman’s pocket!”The Argentines also had a problem with the United States in the 1930 World Cup semi-final in Uruguay. The story goes that Argentina scored a disputed goal against the United States. Shouting abuse at the referee, the American trainer dashed out to tend to an injured player. The crowd of 80 000 roared with approval as he ran onto the pitch, threw down his medical bag, broke a bottle of chloroform, accidentally anaestheised himself, and was promptly carried off by his own team.Both England and the United States have a way of getting back at Argentina if either has to face that country and its squad of talented players, like Lionel Messi and Carlos Tevez.Issue an all expenses paid invitation to former Argentine President Carlos Menem. Offer him some money, too, since this is what got Menem in trouble and gave him the reputation of being a “Jonah” or jinx.  It is said that by the end of his last term, Argentina’s former President Carlos Menem, was widely perceived to be excessively tolerant of official corruption. He was also widely believed to bring “the curse” to anyone with whom he came into contact.  Indeed, such was his reputation that Menem was once banned from attending the matches of both the national soccer team and his favourite River Plate side. There is one other person who could be worse than Menem and who would be bad news for everyone. Anecodtage.com reveals that in early 1994, notorious terrorist Osama bin Laden spent three months in London.He visited supporters and bankers in search of funding for terrorist ventures. He also went to see the famous British soccer club Arsenal play four times [even buying his sons’ gifts from the club’s souvenir shop before narrowly avoiding extradition to Saudi Arabia and returning to Sudan]. Bin Laden, who was involved in a plot to massacre the American and British teams at the 1998 World Cup in France, once told friends that he had never seen passion like that of soccer fans. According to bin Laden biographer Yossef Bodansky, Al Qaeda bombed the United States embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998 [killing 224 people] in part because of “the failure of the primary operation, an attack on the soccer World Cup”.Hopefully, neither Osama nor his minions would be there. However, David James is there as one of the England goalkeepers. Most people believe that had he been in goal for the first match against the United States, England would have won.  l Tony Deyal was last seen saying that two flies were playing football in a saucer in a teashop. One said to the other: “Our game better improve soon. Next week we’re playing in the Cup.”