I KNOW THAT WAS THEN [356]

The biggest laugh I ever had watching a football match.

I am so glad that even David Baddiel wants “Three Lions” to be “put to bed”.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s “Today” programme the day after the Lionesses won Euro 2022 at Wembley Stadium, saying that “the women have reset the clock” gives me hope that England can finally lose the nostalgia that has wound a part of the national identity around the 1966 men’s World Cup final. 

I never liked the line “thirty years of hurt never stopped me dreaming” – that sort of pain can really only be felt by the players, not the crowd – but knowing that 1996 eventually became the half-way mark of hurt is really quite funny for someone who never had reason to like football. For a country that goes on about being the inventor of football as much as England does, for this to be an England team’s first major trophy in an international competition in my lifetime should be embarrassing, but the victory overcame the problems that blighted English men’s football finals: there was no obnoxious band playing in the crowd, no “two world wars, one world cup” goading of the opposing side, and they didn’t even need to play penalties.

This all made the team’s gatecrashing their coach, Sarina Wiegman’s press conference all the sweeter, singing “it’s coming home, it’s coming home” both as the team that actually did it, and as the team that was formed due to forward thinking that took place after 1966. The Women’s Football Association (WFA) would be formed in 1969 to establish a national team and league, and UEFA forced the [men’s] Football Association (FA) to end its fifty-year ban on women’s teams playing at FA team grounds in 1971 – the Lionesses played the first team against Scotland the following year.

I still don’t know if the Lionesses’ victory will make me want to watch more football, although that is the hope of the FA, which took over from the WFA in 1993: with only an average of two thousand spectators per Women’s Super League match, and a lack of investment at grass roots level, achieving parity with men’s football will require the support of the record audiences that watched the final on television and at Wembley, something that simply continued as before following 1966.

It is important to use history to understand the point we have reached, and where events could lead. With the history of football being dominated by the men – and men’s football will have to be distinguished as “men’s football” from now on – my hope is for the money and attention that will now be sent towards the Super League does not turn it into the bloated and repellent monster that the men’s Premier League has always felt like to me. 

With business and sport bound together so much that player salaries and transfer costs are statistics almost as important as match results, the opulence and distance felt in men’s football makes it feel like the prog rock Emerson, Lake and Palmer versus the Sex Pistols punk of women’s football. I can only hope this “punk” period can last longer than the 1970s punk did before it was co-opted and sanded down into “new wave”. I will always know more about music than football.

WE’RE ON THE BALL, WE’RE ON THE BALL [189]

I normally have no interest in football, mainly due to the amount of attention it already demands, but the current form of England’s football teams, in both World Cups, has meant even I have needed to take notice. If the current performance of our team pays out in tourism and culture in the UK, then that’s fine, but I will only even learn the offside rule against my will.

So, why would I talk about football when I should be talking about film? It is because that, when I usually think of football, the first thing is the unexpected turn of events closer to home, when Portsmouth Football Club was bought by Michael Eisner. It is more accurate to say it was The Tornante Company, named by Eisner after the Italian term for a hairpin bend in a road, that bought Pompey for £5.67 million in 2017, but Eisner’s signature is the company’s logo. A quote from Eisner at the time was, “When I passed through the Fratton Park turnstiles I felt like I did when I stepped through the doors at Disney - a sense of excitement and of a rich history.”

The primary result of this news was that I began to watch “BoJack Horseman,” made by Tornante’s TV division. It is strange to see, on Tornante’s website, the Pompey crest listed on the same line as BoJack’s head, and next to the Topps trading card company, also the makers of Ring Pops.

Because Eisner is primarily known as a businessman, even if it was The Walt Disney Company for which he was in charge, this was how his takeover of Pompey was viewed. The club had been through a succession of unscrupulous owners before being put into bankruptcy protection in 2010, while also falling three football divisions within five years. The club only survived when members of Pompey Supporters Trust paid £1,000 a head to take ownership, so for anyone to literally take the club away from the fans can only be painted in a bad light.

However, Eisner’s promise of continuity and further £10 million investment sealed the deal, meaning he will still be spending far less than on “BoJack Horseman,” although the value of a football club is usually measured in goodwill, along with fixtures and fittings.

The inevitable fears of a “Disneyfication” at Portsmouth Football Club have been unfounded – in fact, it may benefit from that kind of rigorous work. Eisner’s tenure at Disney leavened its princesses with a great deal of sport, not least in its taking over of the TV networks ESPN and ABC, where Eisner helped to place American football in primetime: the “Mighty Ducks” series of ice hockey films led to Disney creating a real-life team in 1993, although they would not win the Stanley Cup until the year after they were sold, and the baseball film “Angels in the Outfield” led to Disney buying the California Angels team, itself originally founded by the country music singer Gene Autry. A literal quote from Eisner upon completing the Pompey deal was: “All of Disney's sports films had the same theme - the triumph of the underdog. With Portsmouth we hope to get it right in fact, not fiction.We will get there - being slow, steady and smart.”

So, Eisner’s taking control of Portsmouth F.C. is not like the Ark of the Covenant being left in a warehouse – I only make this reference because Eisner was CEO of Paramount Pictures at the time of “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” as well as “Grease,” “Saturday Night Fever,” and the start of the “Star Trek” franchise. He may not be the one writing and directing these films, but he knows how to pick a hit.