“Daddy?”
“Yes, Osc.”
“’66 is when England won the World Cup.”
“You’re right! It was. But don’t take that as an omen.”
“Daddy?”
“Yes, Osc.”
“What’s an omen?”
he wallchart went up in mid-April, with its delightful centrepiece
of Cristiano Ronaldo captured mid-orgasm, having presumably just
scored a goal, or possibly caught sight of himself in a mirror. It’s not
positioned in some out of the way corner of his bedroom, but — to
the quiet consternation of his mother and his older sister, who are less
persuaded by the atractions of the beautiful game, and the Portuguese
popinjay’s gurning visage — downstairs, by the back door, in full view
of all of us, all the time.
he Panini album — you know they hand these things out for free,
like a crack dealer ofering complimentary samples near the school
gates? — is separated from its staples already, thanks to Oscar’s con-
stant flicking of its pages. I’m in the hole for hundreds of pounds in
stickers — and we still haven’t had a snif of the man Oscar refers to,
very properly, as “Neymar Jr”. (Got about eight Eric Diers, though, if
anyone’s in the market for swaps.)
Oscar’s love for football is pure: he sees drama, colour, excitement,
adventure, triumph and disaster, and larger than life characters per-
forming dazzling feats of almost impossible skill and daring. To coin
a cliché, what’s not to love?
He knows the World Cup is taking place in Russia, and as a result of
that he can pronounce Kaliningrad and even Nizhny Novgorod: we’re
playing Panama there, on 24 June, he tells me, having once again con-
sulted the all-knowing Panini. Previously, his knowledge of Russia was
limited to the fact that it is very big and very cold and has been in
some wars — sometimes on our side, sometimes not. (He’s very inter-
ested in wars.)
I’ve told him that Russia has produced some of the most amazing
writers and artists and musicians and that it has an astonishing his-
tory, rich in drama, colour, excitement, adventure, triumph and disas-
ter, all that stuf he likes. And he is impressed by this, a bit, as much as
you can be if you’ve no real idea what a grown-up is boring on about
and you just want to get back to your football stickers.
The truth is, Russia is one of those countries that’s harder to
get a grip on, if you’re five (or, indeed, 45) than the places Oscar is
already sold on, like Italy — pizza, ice cream, Ferraris — or America —
superheroes, hamburgers, Michael Jackson. (Massive Jacko fan; I blame
the parents.)
Would he like to go to Russia? He would. Why? To watch the World
Cup, silly. Yes, but otherwise? Otherwise he’d rather go to Africa
(lions), or India (tigers), or Brazil (rainforest), or Italy (reasons listed
above) or France (Disneyland) or Japan (Disneyland) or America (rea-
sons listed above, plus Disneyland). Russia? Far down the list.
You are aware of the diference between hard and sot power. he
present Russian government uses both. It invades sovereign states,
sponsors the gassing of Syrian children and assassinations by poi-
soning on British soil. At home it jails critical journalists and political
opponents, or worse. It holds sham elections. Also, it throws fun sporyon 14 may 1938, the england football team played Germany
at the Olympic Stadium in Berlin. It was five years into Adolf Hit-
ler’s rule of the country, just two months since the German annex-
ation of Austria. Prominently positioned in the crowd of 110,
were Rudolf Hess, Joseph Goebbels and Hermann Goering. As the
German national anthem played before kick-of, the England players
lined up and raised their arms in a Nazi salute. he order for them to
do so had come from the Foreign Oice, which claimed to be acting
in the interests of Anglo-German relations; this, our schoolboy his-
tory reminds us, was the period of appeasement of Hitler, under
Neville Chamberlain.
he players had protested against the idea before the match, it’s said,
but been overruled. hey did what they were told, as footballers, for
the most part, still tend to do. he blame lies not with them, not really,
but with those who allowed them to be used as high-profile pawns in
a geopolitical game that deliberately legitimised a regime that — while
not yet in the full maturiy of its grotesque degradation — was already
well on its way to levels of barbarism rarely previously imagined.
The only possible message that could be taken from this dis-
play of respect and friendship to the German government (this was
a “friendly” match, ater all): if Stanley Mathews and his teammates
think it’s OK to play with Nazis, to “Heil Hitler”, then why shouldn’t
every other reasonable English man, woman and child? It was a prop-
aganda coup. he England players, willing or unwilling, were its stars.
World Cup fever started early in my house, this year. This was
thanks to our resident five-year-old football fanatic, who talks of litle
else but England’s chances against Belgium in Kaliningrad on 28 June.
Slim to none, I’ve warned Oscar, but he hasn’t yet been through the
endless cycle of hopes idiotically raised and then bathetically dashed;
he believes in the power of Harry Kane — who is, as he points out,
almost as good as Kevin de Bruyne.
“Daddy?”
“Yes, Osc?”
“How many days is it until the tweny-eighth of June?”
“Er, let me see, Osc... 67?”
“So yesterday it was 68 and tomorrow it’ll be...”
“66, yes.”
The editor. (Prior to ruling himself
out of this summer’s World Cup
on moral grounds)20
Editor’s Letter
June 2018