There were apparently discreet inquiries to see whether the Manchester United midfielder might play for England again. We have been here before
Like most European countries, Britain still has a smattering of offering caves, pagan ancient grottos where leaving gifts is believed to bring good luck, or simply stave off plague, pestilence and misfortune. You may think such practices would have ended long ago – replaced by more scientific approaches to ensuring our physical and psychological wellbeing such as immunisation, or bingo – but, according to a friend of mine who's an archaeologist and specialises in this kind of thing, even today, in times of extreme trauma, people tend to turn back to the old pre-Christian rituals. As a consequence, experts are still able to determine from the volume of offerings in the caves the periods when a community has been in crisis.
It is my belief that in future centuries historians will be able to do a similar thing with English football, identifying times of turmoil for the national team using the frequency with which the media starts talking up the possibility of Paul Scholes coming out of international retirement. The Manchester United midfielder – who, according to leaked Whitehall documents, may be forced to play on until he is 68 as part of a package of Government austerity measures that may also include a swingeing new tax on hair gel and teeth-whitener which many believe is designed specifically to deter Cristiano Ronaldo – the Donny and Marie of elaborate wing-play – from ever returning to work in Britain.
Like the offering caves, the Scholes‑gauge of the national mood appeared to most of us to have outlived its usefulness following Don Fabio's doomed attempt to seduce the Mancunian away from the comforts of the family hearth with the promise of being locked in a luxury South African compound with Wayne Rooney for six weeks. After all, it is only last summer that we waved farewell to the ginger scowler for what we were assured was forever.
And then suddenly he was back again at United and apparently as good as ever (I say apparently because to me Scholes is one of those figures whose genius I just have to take on trust – a footballing Ricky Gervais. I can't see it myself, but everyone tells me he is fantastic and I'm sure they can't all be wrong. Can they?). This unexpected yet typical surge from deep was enough to stir folk memories in the new England gaffer, Roy Hodgson. Currently besieged by the Four Horsemen of the Football Apocalypse (Injuries, Exhaustion, Tabloid Ridicule and the Left-side of Midfield situation), the wise old coach performed the sporting equivalent of laying a gold bracelet in a sacred hollow. Just as the national boss's forebears might have sought to ward off evil spirits by talking up the possible return from injury of Bryan Robson, so he felt moved – rumour had it – to make "discreet inquiries about whether Paul might be available for selection again".
We have been here before, of course, with the gallant Robbo – a hero whose achilles heel was his entire body – and more latterly with Paul Gascoigne. Even at the tail-end of the Geordie midfielder's career when he was huffing and puffing around the pitch at Middlesbrough and Everton looking for all the world like a middle-aged uncle entertaining a birthday party of pre‑schoolers with his Thomas the Tank Engine impression, it was still common to hear the incumbent England manager muttering the sacred imprecation: "The door is still open to Gazza." Gazza, though, was never a man to come in through an open door, if he could risk severe injury by entering head first through a plate-glass window, and so it never happened.
Nor is football the only sport affected. Back in the 1970s the England cricket selectors reacted to every fresh crisis brought on by the pace bowling of Australia and West Indies by doing the equivalent of slaughtering a chicken and burning its entrails in the belly of a statue of Baal – they brought back a very old batsman. Colin Cowdrey, John Edrich, Basil D'Oliveira and Brian Close were all bruisingly offered up in an attempt to appease whatever angry Gods had granted the opponents Lillee, Thomson, Holding and Roberts, while giving England Mike Hendrick. Nowadays the England and Wales Cricket Board is made of more logical minds and even when things were going slightly wrong last year they resisted all appeals from the Shaman of the Popular Prints to bring back Mark Ramprakash.
Nor is English sport alone in displaying an occasional irrational adherence to Eldritch lore. In Germany's darkest sporting hours – at the European Championship 12 years ago – they showed much the same mad faith in Lothar Matthäus as medieval peasants did in corn dollies. Watching the 39‑year‑old sweeper at Euro 2000 it was impossible not to think of the old joke about Franco: "The general is dead."
"Yes, but who's going to tell him?"
Playing ability is not the issue here, however. Lothar was a talisman for the Germans and if Jens Jeremies's legs and lungs had to be offered up to him then so be it.
Speaking of the offering caves, my archaeologist friend commented: "I'm not sure if people actually believe in it. But I think it does give them the sense they are doing something about whatever fears are afflicting them." We can only hope wily campaigner Roy Hodgson was practising some similar form of comforting psychological self‑dosing. Read More
انسخ الكود التالى و ضعه فى موقعك او مدونتك.
