Читать книгу Football Extreme - Rob Crossan - Страница 7

George Best, Pelé, David Beckham… none of these people need any more medals, garlands and praise bestowed upon them, and you won’t find many mentions of them, or any of the other famous footballing greats, in the following pages.

Rather, this is a book dedicated to the unsung heroes of the game who, in their own myriad ways, have earned a small but special place in football fans’ hearts as being part of or culpable for some of the most extreme moments in football history.

Some of them will be familiar to you already, some you will never have heard of before. For me, however, the true spirit of the game doesn’t lie with watching endless YouTube clips of the Brazilian 1970 World Cup side. It lies with wondering just who the couple of hundred people were who turned up at Stirling Albion on an ordinary Saturday in December 1984 and ended up witnessing the biggest thrashing in British senior football in the 20th century. Are they still celebrating now? Are they aware of their unique place in history? Were the pies any good that day?

We can’t ever know any of these things with certainty, but it’s moments like this which provide football with its soul in all its eccentric, obsessive glory – far more than yet another Champions League penalty shoot-out or lucrative multi-million-pound shirt sponsorship deal.

I’ve always dreamed of being a spectator at an ‘extreme’ football moment, like the ones you’ll read about in the following pages. The closest I have come was in 1992 when, as a typically gauche and callow 12-year-old I was at the Racecourse Ground to watch my team, Wrexham, beat Arsenal 2-1 in the FA Cup third round – one of the biggest cup shocks of all time.

Sadly, this moment doesn’t make it into the hallowed pages of Football Extreme as the story is just a little too well-known. So instead, this book is full of stories of characters like the Torquay manager who was boss for all of ten minutes – the shortest managerial reign in British football history – or the non-league football coach who guided his team to the FA Cup fifth round by forcing them to drink something that he called ‘speed oil’.

Many of the people featured herein will be proud of their small place in football history. Many will be utterly ashamed. Either way, it is these extreme moments, full of idiosyncrasy, farce, hubris and genius that make football the beautiful game it is. So next time you’re enjoying an afternoon in your local pub watching Gerrard or Rooney in action on the big screen, spare a thought for those lower down the footballing pyramid. Perhaps you could even make more of a point of taking a closer interest in what goes on away from the tabloid back pages. For here lies football in all its strangest, most alluring and often completely bizarre glory.

Rob Crossan, London, 2011