The beguiling story of one boy’s dream to play in goal, that most British of positions, culminating in the moment when he faces the mighty Zico …If the French are the flair in midfield, the Germans the attack from the inside channels, the Italians the cry-foul defence, then Britain is the goalkeeper: stand alone, the bastion of last resort, more solid than spectacular, part of the team – and yet not. And Britain’s place in the world is epitomised by its goalkeepers: post war austerity is embodied in Bert Williams (Walsall and England) , a wartime PT boy whose athleticism scarcely concealed a masochistic edge: he ended his training routine with a full-length dive on to concrete; the end of Empire abroad came as the army and politicians were being humiliated in Suez and the football team, despite the best efforts of Gill Merrick (Birmingham and England), were being humbled by the Hungarians at home; the thawing of the cold war is begun not over Cuban missiles but over Lev Yashin, the superb and widely admired Russian whose arrival for the world cup in 1966 changes the attitudes of a nation – the Reds cannot be all bad if they have such an exemplary keeper. And for Peter Chapman (Orient Schoolboys and one appearance in the World Eleven to face Brasil), like his father before him (Armed Forces), it is always the goalkeeper who is the indicator of national well-being. A genuine, touching story of a nation’s affection for football’s perennial underdog, of a childhood obsession and of a glorious footballing tradition from Kelsey to Jennings, Swift to Trautmann, Bonetti to Shilton that culminates – perhaps ends even – in the last truly British goalkeeper: David Seaman.
Оглавление
Peter Chapman. The Goalkeeper’s History of Britain
The Goalkeeper’s History of Britain
Dedication
Epigraph
Contents
Chapter 1. A Determined and Heroic Defence
Chapter 2. More Flash than Harry
Chapter 3. In Swift’s Succession
Chapter 4. End of Empire
Chapter 5. Neck on the Block
Chapter 6. Into the Fire
Chapter 7. Booked
Chapter 8. The Distant Orient
Chapter 9. Death on the Cross
Chapter 10. Highways, Cemeteries, Cleansing and Baths
Chapter 11. The Demise of Old Industrial Britain
Chapter 12. On to the Pole
Chapter 13. Long Game
Chapter 14. Um Goleiro Inglês
Chapter 15. Nation of Shotstoppers
Select Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgements
About the Author. The Goalkeeper’s History of Britain
Copyright
About the Publisher
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PETER CHAPMAN
my mum and dad,
.....
For our first couple of Empire Days we had to march in the infants’ playground and salute the flag. This flew from the pole of the BDH building across the canal, beyond the lock-keepers’ cottages. In my mum’s time at the school, Empire Day was a stirring occasion, with kids dressed in assumed styles of the dependencies. Her girlfriend over the road who had bushy, curly hair went as the ‘Wild Man of Borneo’. Now it was difficult to see the point, or the flag. It hung limp and damp, amid the more potent atmosphere let off by the BDH.
Shortly before the coronation, when my sister was born, my grandad had given my parents his house two doors away as a wedding anniversary present. He could neither handle nor afford the repairs any longer, so told my dad to take it and do it up. Before the war many houses had been occupied by single families but multi-occupancy became common as people bombed out of their homes were relocated. The family of four on the top floor were rehoused by the council, while the two old ladies in the property stayed. My parents had to persuade them to give up their gas mantles for electric light, which they’d refused as too expensive. Houses had been badly shaken in the war years. Even now it was a feature in the street for some people’s front doorsteps to collapse in on them in their basement kitchens or bathrooms. With my grandad’s help, it took my father two years working nights and weekends to get the house ready for us.
