The Atlantic Ocean by Andrew O'Hagan

Author:Andrew O'Hagan [Andrew O’Hagan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780571266128
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2010-11-08T05:00:00+00:00

I hate to cut out of the debate at such a crucial juncture, but you get the idea, and it does go on for thousands of hours. I have to say, though, perhaps surprisingly to some, that this kind of sophistication has yet to cause the generally football-appalled like myself to see the light.

I have this bunch of pals in London who are mainly Scottish but who play in a team called the Battersea Juniors. They are more persuasive in this regard. The team is a bit up and down, a bit part time, even for a Saturday league, but I went to see them recently with a view to turning them on to the virtues of figure-skating. It didn’t entirely work out: a feature of the genuine egomaniac is that we can’t ever truly understand other people’s obsessions, but these boys were absolutely for real – I recognised their determination from my youthful days with Mr Scullion. ‘You’re a fucking pure tosser,’ said Alan to the referee, a Christian who gives up his Saturday mornings for £10.

‘You keep it shush!’ said the referee.

Paul was trampled on by the home team and screamed like a pig and got a twisted ankle. Raymond was out of breath and shouted to me that he’s been on a pizza and fags diet for the last six months and had just crashed his TVR Griffith into a central reservation.

‘A low-slung car for a high-profile guy,’ said Russell.

The linesman was smoking a gigantic joint and shouting down the phone to his girlfriend in the rain. A young English player called Kez was up and down the park: ‘He’s new to the team,’ said the injured Paul, ‘young, fast and talented – unlike us. Oh. My leg’s fucked.’ He stared into the mud and the driving rain. ‘I wonder if I should take a sicky.’

Alan eventually got a red card. The referee said that repeatedly being called a ‘knob’ was like being accused of sexual deviance. Alan apologised. ‘OK,’ said the referee, ‘I’ll let it go this time, but any more of that and it’ll go through.’

‘Cheers, Ref,’ said Alan. And when the Christian departed the field of play Alan turned to his team-mates. ‘Knob,’ he said.

Meanwhile, these last weeks, the World Cup has come to spread the values of commitment and fraternity at an international level. I remember my dad buying me and my four brothers Celtic strips one Christmas; my brothers doing keepy-up with the new balls and tearing off their pyjamas as quick as possible to don the green and white, and me, standing at the door, looking into all this carnage with eyes like My Little Pony. ‘I told you he would hate it,’ said my mother, who reached behind a green sofa, producing a Post Office set to gladden the heart of any housebound hooligan.

I phoned my father the other day in a fit of questionable delight after England beat Argentina. ‘England are a shite team,’ he said philosophically. ‘They get one goal and they think they’re the champions of the universe.

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