Rhythm and radio: World Cup (in mid-sensation)
Where once I suspect rock 'n' soccer could sync, were oppositional rhythms: a band with a beat, a game with none at all.
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Gordon Strachan at altitude, 1986: Leeds at the World Cup ⭑ It was the fashion in Mexico for players to celebrate goals by hurdling advertising hoardings, but when Strachan ran to the crowd the boards were almost up to his chest.
Gordon 'Naranjito' Strachan, 1982: Leeds at the World Cup ⭑ "I had heard the name of Gordon Strachan before," said Eusébio, "but did not know he was that good. He was better than some of the Brazilians."
We're about to have the best time with Harry Wilson ⭑ Harry Wilson's skills should have put him in someone's pantheon by now. Someone more interesting than Fulham. There's nothing else for him to do, at Leeds, but to make it here.
I'll take two memories away from the 2026 World Cup, each from the later stages, when I was giving the games least attention but they made more impact.
Egypt's game against Argentina upset a lot of people but it was a thrill for me. I didn't watch it. I still haven't seen the highlights. It was underway when I boarded a train from Leeds to London and, through a combination of mild delays and Lionel Messi's brilliance, finishing as King's Cross drew near. My company throughout was BBC Radio 5 Live, and their commentator John Murray.
His co-commentator was former Leeds United goalkeeper Paul Robinson, so my other companion was old father time: when I was younger, BBC Radio 5's analysis came courtesy of former Leeds manager Jimmy Armfield, who made his playing debut in December 1954 and left Elland Road in in 1978, a whole life lived before I was born. Paul Robinson's debut was October 1998 and I remember it well. I'm not old, I'm not old, I'm not old.
Radio commentary will always throw me back because it's how I grew up. In United's first two top-flight seasons of the 1990s their games were selected for live terrestrial television a handful of times, before the Premier League and BSkyB made them impossible to watch at all. So, on the far side of the Pennines, I'd put my Sony radio-cassette player on the highest shelf I could, extend its aerial as far as it went, and point it across the cloud-ridden Pennines towards BBC Radio Leeds. Between bouts of static and fuzz Dave Callaghan, Peter Drury and Bryn Law, and always Norman Hunter beside them, were my barely audible inculcators in the ways of Leeds United. Sundays were easier, sort of: I could get Central TV, from the Midlands, on a black-and-white portable in my bedroom, so while everyone else imbibed Football Italia I'd watch a Midlands match in hopes of seeing an ex-Leeds player (Mike Whitlow, Bobby Davison, Simon Grayson; basically Leicester), then switch to Radio 5's commentary on the Premier League. Or play out, I wasn't a total hermit.
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