The sound of Goal!, the World Cup and the people and their feet
Players aren't on the list, let alone given a close-up in sight or sound: it's everything but the game. Zoom in and overdub them if you have to, but I'm yearning for this World Cup to give me lingering long takes over the knees of Ao Tanaka.
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My first World Cup was Italia '90, so that's where my nostalgia begins. The first televised football games I can remember watching were a little earlier, when Crystal Palace, with Nigel Martyn and John Pemberton, took on Rod and Ray's elder brother's team in the FA Cup final, and a replay, and lost: the first match in particular was a humdinger that gave us Ian Wright. So the 1990 World Cup final, between West Germany and Argentina, was the first big football occasion to thoroughly let me down.
My other immediate memories of Italia '90 are of one moment of wonder, namely David Platt's last minute volley against Belgium and Gary Lineker's celebratory eyes in the pile-on. The rest includes rushing home from school to discover the latest mistakes: René Higuita losing the ball to Cameroon's Roger Milla some miles from the Colombia goal he was supposed to be guarding; Cameroon's defenders as a group scything Claudio Caniggia down; Frank Rijkaard spitting at Rudi Völler. Ray Wilkins wanted my parents to turn the telly off to protect young me from the last one.
The incidents most deeply affecting to the people of England were all in the semi-final, Chris Waddle's miss and Paul Gascoigne's tears. The last in particular stayed with me, not because of Gazza so much as Gary Lineker. I didn't know much about football back then (or now), and knew less about human emotions, because football had not yet taught me about them. But this was one of my first lessons, watching Gazza trying to choke down his sobs, then seeing Lineker's face filling the screen as he turned to the bench with an expression of sympathy and warning. I was nine years old. I knew absolutely nothing. I understood everything Gary Lineker was communicating in that close-up.
I thought about that close-up again last week when I re-watched Goal!, the official film of the 1966 World Cup. I was aiming this nostalgic experience, though, at my ears. It's years since I've watched the video cassette of it that I found in a charity shop way back when, and I don't have a tape player for it anymore. But I've always had a memory of the sound of this movie, in particular the noise of boots hitting grass, that I could call to mind any time without the pictures anyway. I know how they look: close-ups, of just those boots on just that grass. And I can hear how they sound: thudsh thudsh thudsh, thudsh thudsh, thudder thudder thudder thudder.
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