The way in which we view football changes over the course of our life.
As youngsters, we look up to footballers in awe. We pretend to be them in the playground. We all remember who we pretended to be when we played at school or after school in the park.
As teenagers we do pretty much the same although we may drop the pretending to be players and we seek out interesting types - for me, Ivan de la Pena, Alessandro del Piero and co. We still collect the stickers but we aren't quite so open about it in case the cool kids see.
In our twenties we still identify with players even if it is vaguely surreal to consider that the men you identify with earn in a day what you earn in a year.
And as we progress towards our thirties, things change again. We tend to identify with players of our own age and slightly older - players we remember from our teenage years, men who were men before we were. We begin to identify with managers more than we do with the men kicking the pig's bladder around a frozen park.
And therefore retirement becomes increasingly poignant. A generation of men's youth will come to an end when Ryan Giggs retires from football. I was a child when Ryan Giggs started playing for Manchester United. In that time I have been through high school, university, a gap year, two jobs of a reasonable duration and been married. Life is what happens to you when you are watching Ryan Giggs.
Therefore, it is fitting to consider Nicky Barmby who has announced his retirement. Barmby was one of those players, like Danny Murphy, who was always probably a little under-rated. It is sad that his greatest achievement in the game was being the one that no one can remember in the England starting eleven in that amazing 5-1 game against Germany. It perhaps typified his career - a performance of quiet excellence overshadowed by the glowing talents around him.
It is easy to bash footballers. It is easy to mock the way in which they spend their vast wealth. It is easy to find their man-child behaviour churlish. One can become sickened with their on-field and off-field behaviour. But there is a generation of players - a generation labelled as golden by some in the media - who, to an extent, are throw-backs to an gentler age.
Gerrard, Carragher, Scholes, Terry, Giggs and Neville have all spent, or are likely to spend, their entire career with the clubs that they originally signed. For all their personal flaws - either on or off the pitch - there is something admirable about a one-club man. Barmby wasn't one of those but there is something romantic, something loveable, about him being a driving force about taking his home-town club and the club that he loves into the Premier League for the first time. There is something charming about him being a player-manager. It really is Roy of the Rovers stuff. And there is something wonderful about the thought of him - quiet, old, family man Barmby - having a punch-up with Jimmy Bullard because Bullard was leeching cash out of a club that was withering on the branch.
Hull City used to be the answer to a pub quiz question. The honour of the biggest city without ever having had top flight representation now lies elsewhere. Barmby played a part in that and I would imagine that matters more to him than the England caps he gained and the cups he collected.
There will not be many of his sort in the future. I can't imagine many talented professionals who return to their home-town club to help write a comic book fairytale.
Why do these retirements sting? Well, partly because of the stories Barmby and co provided. But moreoever each time one of our generation - or one of the generation slightly older than ourselves retires - us poor deluded fans realise that our still lingering dreams of becoming a footballer are dyinh. We, of course, know in our more lucid moments that these dreams are a nonsense but that doesn't matter. We know in our more lucid moments football is nonsense but it is a wonderful escape from mortgages, interest rates, the school run and all the other tedium that clutters the rest of our lives. But moreover, it represents a change in how we watch the game. The men playing the game aren't like us any more. It is a psychological shift. We want these men to keep playing because if they do we feel young.
We do not identify with Emmanuel Frimpong and his 'Dench' (NB: he was born in 1992. How do we identify with anyone born in 1992?). I am sure Frimpong is a perfectly pleasant man but he is not a man of my time. I am sure he would feel the same way about me. We do not identify with Ravel Morrison. We worry about him. We project men of our generation onto him. We say he is the new Gazza and that Ferguson will be good for him.
Of course, one should not get too mawkish or maudlin about the men who retire even if each one stings and changes how we enjoy football. Scholes, Barmby and co all get to retire to their mansions and enjoy a life on the golf course or in the studio. No, our generation has been rocked by the deaths of Gary Ablett and Gary Speed. These men weren't supposed to die. These were men who had made their mark on the game as players and who would, in time, excel in management. It is always shocking when a man you looked up to dies. It is ever more shocking when they die young. It reminds us of our own mortality.
And it is all so very sad.
RCM
2 comments:
It'll be a strange snapping when Giggs retires - I was in my early 20s when he got started, and I think he's now the last of the players who I'd watch on huge CRT tellies hanging in frames from pub ceilings in Clapham in the John Major era. That ends soon, and if I was at all worried about ageing, that would be when it would come home to roost.
It's my impression that there have been a lot more one-club players amongst the Golden Generation than was true of the game when they started. Not just the Giggs, Scholes, Gerrard group, but also those players who moved, but quickly found a club to stay at for the rest of their careers - Ferdinand, Lampard. Part of the reason is surely that the arrival of the Premier League made it impossible for them to better their wages elsewhere: it's hard to prise a player from a top Premiership club, or was until Manchester City found new backers.
I think there'll always be Nicky Barmbys, though. My suspicion is that he'd not have ended up at Hull had Hull not become a comparatively well-off, successful club for those specific years, enabling an actually well-travelled player to end up at his "home". I remember him more for Euro 96 and his close relationship with Venables back when Venables was Venables rather than for the 5-1.
More than ten years since the 5-1, but 8 of England's 18 are still playing at the top level if you count Beckham, and a season ago it was 12..I don't think there's ever been such a longlasting consistent core to the England team - Lampard was already an international by then too, but wasn't in that squad.
Perhaps it's just me but I find the romance transfers to players no matter your/their age. From being a kid, I know I loved legends such as Le Tissier even before I was 10, then that transferred to Zola and Bergkamp to now, where it has transferred to Messi et al.
I know for my wife (a Man U fan) she felt more connection with Scholes when he retired than she does with Giggs, as Scholes is a Salford lad and as he was such a classy player. Her favourite current United player is Berbatov, because he's such an enigmatic talent.
I think half of the romance we associate with players is based upon their style of play and their position. Defenders aren't thought of this way (aside from Maldini) as now, when a defender hits a certain age, they are hopelessly unable to keep up with the pace of the game (like Gary Neville, Carragher and, as we are starting to see now, Rio Ferdinand). Midfielders and strikers are able to be carried to an extent, so the ravages of age on their talents aren't that visible.
As for Nicky Barmby, my memories of him are more as someone who always seemed to be on the fringes of the starting eleven at every club he played at, rather than as a great player. If there is a "legend" currently playing whom it will feel odd when they retire, it has to be Kevin Phillips as he has been everywhere, done everything and been unassuming and out of the spotlight, much like Scholes was.
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