Football coming home - #2

England's failure to qualify for the 1974 & 1978 World Cups helped to ease them to the back of the countries collective consciousness. Whilst we had a rubbish national team or club teams started to assert themselves on the European stage. With Liverpool, Nottingham Forest (I know) & Aston Villa (I know) all helped themselves to the European Cup, whilst England bumbled along until 1982 in Spain when for a brief while things looked to be heading in the right direction unlike Kevin Keegan's misplaced header, that saw us crash out in the over complicated second group stage. Mind you the progress to the finals themselves had been fairly harrowing... How can anyone forget Bjørge Lillelien? 

"We are the best in the world! We are the best in the world! We have beaten England 2-1 in football!! It is completely unbelievable! We have beaten England! England, birthplace of giants. Lord Nelson, Lord Beaverbrook, Sir Winston Churchill, Sir Anthony Eden, Clement Attlee, Henry Cooper, Lady Diana--we have beaten them all. We have beaten them all.

"Maggie Thatcher can you hear me? Maggie Thatcher, I have a message for you in the middle of the election campaign. I have a message for you: We have knocked England out of the football World Cup. Maggie Thatcher, as they say in your language in the boxing bars around Madison Square Garden in New York: Your boys took a hell of a beating! Your boys took a hell of a beating!" 

Bjørge Lillelien - Norway v England Oslo 9th September 1981 

The 82 World Cup was mostly memorable for the celebrations of the numerous Italian students who used to spend their summer holidays learning English on the snoozy Sussex coast. They went Tonto! 

Whilst Chelsea bounced around between the top two divisions barely threatening to win anything, England had plumped for mediocrity: Ron Greenwood replaced the despicable Revie and Brian Clough was left to rot in a bottle at the City Ground. Greenwood in turn was replaced by the affable Bobby Robson (who like Sir Alf Ramsey had had the misfortune to manage Ipswich Town prior to the England job). I on the other hand had missed the formative months of punk rock, embraced a Modernist lifestyle, swerved the New Romantic scene and settled on a Mod/Post-Punk/Funk/Jazz vision of the future!

Occasional trips to The Shed were accompanied by visits to Kensington Market & Carnaby Street. Fred Perry & a Chelsea pin badge - nice! 

Thankfully, England managed to qualify for Mexico 1986. We even had a decent couple of players, the mercurial John Barnes and the clinical Gary Lineker. We managed to escape the group stage in no part due to Lineker (Line-acre according to Mick Channon). "It's finally happened in Monterey..." courtesy of the magnificent Barry Davies. Next stop Argentina in the quarter-finals, what could possibly go wrong?