Todays Herald writes

Grimy world of football has no place amid splendour of Lyon

HUGH MacDONALD, Chief Sportswriter October 06 2007
Lyon is a city so old it predates the start of the current rugby world cup. En passant, mes amis, I have to wonder what the rugby authorities believe constitutes a cohesive entertainment package. France hold the tournament. But there are games in Wales and Scotland. The brave fans decide not to buy their own Trident missile and go for the more expensive option of shelling out for a ticket against New Zealand.

Scotland, in a cunning ploy that confounds the All Blacks so much they only win by more than 40 points, decide to play a team consisting of the latest graduates from a hip replacement programme. The whole shebang is made all the more watchable by both teams playing in the same strip and, it seems, shooting in the same direction. Wonderful. Vive le rugby.

is old. It is also beautiful, cultured and gently welcoming. It is, therefore, no place for a football team. Extensive research involving hours in the city reveal it unsuited to the purpose of hosting the grimy game. Lyon is the gastronomic capital of the world. They don't kick pigs' bladders, they eat them.

My theory is that football should be played in ugly places. It is the proletarian sport, born in the industrial heartlands and raised on a diet of soot and factory waste.

The best football clubs should come from cities so ugly my mate Dazza would not even go out with them. That is so ugly said cities avoid mirrors on the off-chance they may just catch a glimpse of themselves, sit at home blubbing on a Friday night when other cities get taken out to host the Olympics and finger the gaps in the semi-demolished centres wondering if any convention may stop by and pick them up.

The best football clubs should come from cities so ugly that my mate Dazza would not even go out with them


But, no, they get older and more dilapidated and all they have is that football club and the dream of one day moving on to that gaudy, sexed-up retail park with its tight, sleek curves and . . . Anyway.

My theory is that football, like weeds and half-bricks, has its proper habitat in the dirty inner city. If the beautiful game was all about the aesthetic, then Ullapool would be the best team in Scotland. Stratford would be the proud leaders of the Premier League, with its Shakespearean connections reflected at the club with the enigmatic Scot, Macbeth up front, a clinical finisher, a damned spot on the jersey and Gabby's dad as the ill-fated manager (Alas, poor Yorath . . .).

Instead, football is at its biggest in Liverpool, Manchester and Glasgow. It needs the close comfort of poorly constructed inner city housing. It needs awkward corners where vans selling hot slices off the under-performing favourite in the 3.30 at Wincanton can flourish. It exults in insufficient parking. It glories in pot-holed streets with dim lighting and pools of noxious liquids that shimmer in the floodlights.

Now the sceptics will say that football can exist in beautiful cities. Granted. Florence has Fiorentina but it does not have AC Milan (the clue is in the name, I suppose) or Juventus (the clue is not in the name but in the directory of Italian clubs and where the stadium is located, namely, in this case, Turin).

Ah, I hear the naysayers murmur (memo to column's resident psychiatrist: I really must talk to you about their incessant whispers and why can't they just stop, stop, I ask you, stop). Anyway.

The naysayers will point out that Madrid and Barcelona are beautiful cities and they have great football teams. Yup. But all Spanish cities are beautiful and if the best club played in the most beautiful city it would be called Alhambra and we would be singing the praises of Granada instead of renting tellies from it.

Nup. Football belongs in the sewer. It is why the favelas produce great players with the same ease with which Oxford and Cambridge produce absolute tossers. It is why the Maracana gently crumbles amid decay that makes Glaswegian teeth look as white as a Ku Klux Klan wedding reception.

The trouble with Lyon and football is that the game was only introduced there in 1950. Yup. Just before the start of this rugby World Cup. There is nothing too wrong with that. Lyon, after all, survived the best part of 2000 years without a bunch of resident scufflers. It takes consolation, I suppose, in its two rivers, a marvellous old city, a plethora (a sort of pick for a guitar, I understand) of museums, and restaurants that strangely make food you want to eat.

But a football city is a different matter. It demands football stays in the heartland because that is where it belongs. It is where its history is. And history and tradition means everything to the fans. It must be maintained.

Otherwise football will embrace tournaments that never end, teams playing in the same shirts and reserve sides taking on the best outfits in the world. That way lies madness. And rugby.

This article was posted on 6-Oct-2007, 08:25 by Hugh Barrow.