The problem with English football

The clock ticked past 2.15 on a Wednesday afternoon. This was a biology lesson. The teacher was explaining eagerly why photosynthesis is crucial to the ecosystem. I did not care about biology. I did not care about photosynthesis. At that time, I did not really care for the ecosystem. Yet here I was with four other third set lads waiting to leave.

 The school had an important football match. It was the semi-final of the district cup. My year was particularly good at football. I was usually a substitute. But the three others in this class were outstanding. The team could have done without me. But the team could not have done without them.

 The game was being played two miles away. As usual, we would travel there by walking for half an hour. There was no funding for a school bus. Being early spring, darkness was falling at around 6.30.pm. In order for school football matches be completed in time, the kick off had to be early. In theory, it occasionally meant that classes would have to be sacrificed. Surely it would be no big deal. Surely missing one or two biology lessons would not alter the destination of a human being. There were ways of catching up on lost time: over lunch perhaps - maybe just doing extra homework.

 But no - it would not be so simple. Sport does not really fit into the state education system – especially something like football: unruly, aggressive and competitive. Attending one or two more biology classes will teach you more in the long term than being a part of a successful group. Apparently.

 I was never going to be a footballer. I was never going to be a biologist. Although the other lads were never going to be biologists either, they were determined enough to become footballers. With the right guidance, it might have happened.

 That did not matter here. By leaving at 2.15, it would have allowed enough time to reach the ground, get changed, warm-up properly, have a laugh in the dressing room and get going. Yet the message had not been transmitted. The school had always boasted successful football teams. But this was an era of OFSTED reports, education, education and education. Maybe it did not intend to turn out like this, but football did not seem to be considered as education. It was all about achieving the right results, pass rates being hit and a path to university. Any person or any institution that did not conform was left behind. Sixteen-year-olds did not have apprenticeships. Schools were shut down. It was an industrial education with scant consideration for the individual.

 Perhaps this all contributed towards why, at 2.50, the teacher finally permitted our departure. It meant we arrived 30 minutes late: no time for a warm up - just straight into the game. One of the budding biologists got injured early on. Another just wasn’t his usual self. It went to extra time. We were not prepared. There was no energy left. We lost. We deserved to lose.

 This week, I discovered that one of the boys in the opposition was scouted by a professional club, partly as a result of his performance in this game. Now aged 30, he has enjoyed a reasonably successful career and is currently playing abroad.

 The point of this story is simple. We say football is engrained culturally in this country. Yet this is at odds with what is really happening in education and above that, in government.

 For football to flourish, there needs to be a shift in culture. The FA could, indeed, do a lot more. But the problems in football run deeper than the decisions made by those in charge of the sport.

 There was so much wrong with Greg Dyke’s speech about the future of English football this week. He claimed there is a need for radical action within football if the England national football team is to remain competitive. It was timed conveniently before a period, which will decide whether England under the management of Roy Hodgson will qualify for next summer’s World Cup in Brazil. If England fail to reach that target, there now is a ready made excuse. Hodgson is excused. The people who appointed him are excused. Self-preservation rules.

 Alarmingly, there was a lack of focus from Dyke on the primary reason why there are so few English footballers of genuine international class. Grassroots football is failing. It is just too expensive to play football. Participation figures suggest that football remains as popular as ever. It isn’t. There are fewer English players in the Premier League. But there are fewer kids playing football. Figures are misleading. Every amateur league demands that a player – be it a youth or an adult – signs forms at the start of every season. Most clubs will also charge signing-on fees, which, contribute towards the cost of the pitch, the cost of the kit, the cost of administration, the cost just to enter a league and the cost of facilities like changing rooms, which, reliably, are as inviting as a cell in a Turkish prison.

 The team I currently play for on a Sunday morning has more than 20 registered players. By the end of the season, that number will have fallen to 13 or 14 at most. Several will drop out, understandably fed up with shelving out petrol costs just to attend matches only to be selected as a substitute.

 The FA should find a way to subsidise costs – particularly at junior level. For the money involved in playing a full-season of amateur football you can buy a season ticket at Anfield or Old Trafford. That’s how expensive it is.

 The FA is awash with cash. It needs to play its part. But so does the government – those in charge of education. If you are good at football, you should be encouraged to play it – just like they are in other leading countries: Spain and Germany.

 Education is important. But football is an education. By being able to participate, a young person learns important transferable individual and team skills. Like in any other area of industry, a footballer won’t get very far without hard work.

 Maybe if the clock wasn’t allowed to drift onto 2.16, the landscape of football might not appear so desperate.

Shankly, Busby and David Peace...

It says much about Bill Shankly’s regard for the person as well as the job Sir Matt Busby did at Manchester United that when Liverpool directors first approached him asking whether he’d like to take charge of the ‘best club in the country’ he supposedly responded sharply: “Why, is Matt Busby packing up?”

 A year earlier his Huddersfield Town team had beaten Liverpool 5-0. He later recalled Liverpool’s directors leaving the ground “in single file with their shoulders slumped, like a funeral procession.” Undeterred, Shankly accepted the role at Anfield and would change the history of football. Fifteen seasons on Liverpool had emerged from the old Second Division to win three league titles, two FA Cups and the UEFA Cup. They had became the most consistently successful team in England. At the start of the same summer that Shankly retired, United were relegated – a mark of the shift in power.

 Shankly’s reign was not without its struggles, however. He fought with board members, people he believed were just there “to sign the cheques.” He accused Liverpool of lacking ambition. Players like Johnny Morrissey were sold behind his back. He offered to resign several times.

 Shankly was a talker. He’d relish telling other managers how good his team was with phone calls late into the night. He’d talk on and on, rarely affording an opportunity to interject. Only Liverpool mattered. But that was his passion.

 In the bad times, he’d talk then too. Busby was a confidant. More than once it is thought that Busby convinced Shankly not to walk away from Anfield. When the Liverpool board searched for Phil Taylor’s successor, they canvassed the opinions of eminent figures. They spoke with Geoff Twentyman, the Liverpool captain and a former player of Shankly’s at Carlisle United. They spoke with Walter Winterbottom, the England manager. Then there was Busby. Because Busby too had been a Liverpool captain, he understood the people of the city; he understood the Anfield crowd. He understood it was the right place for a person with Shankly’s character to thrive.

 This aspect of Shankly’s story is, perhaps, one of the most intriguing elements to David Peace’s outstanding novel Red or Dead. At 720 pages long, the book covers a 22-year period. It begins in the wintertime at Huddersfield with Liverpool chairman TV Williams and his accomplice Harry Latham walking towards Shankly at the old Leeds Road ground, carrying what they believed to be an interesting proposal. It ends with sobriety at Shankly’s death in 1981.

 The first half is especially tough to read. There is a visceral power rare in football-themed books, which are usually created for entertainment, distancing us from the true impact of the sacrifice that went before the glory. By using repetition Peace sustains the story. You begin to feel how Shankly must have felt – proud, drained but determined to do it all over again for the greater good.

 It is possible, though, that had it not been for Busby’s intervention at crucial times Liverpool would not have become the sporting institution it is now. Possibly Shankly would have gone elsewhere and achieved greatness. Red or Dead suggests Aston Villa approached him to be their manager. Perhaps Villa could have won all of those titles instead. Liverpool may have remained in the second tier of English football – it could have even got worse. Maybe.

 The relationship between Shankly and Busby was unique in the sense the pair were rarely photographed together. In his time Shankly must have been the most photographed person in the North West of England. Shankly was pictured with everybody – with players, with family, with friends, with unfamiliar adults hoping just to be near the man they believed was the greatest, and with children who just wanted an autograph. But there are few with Busby.

 The pair would meet in private, often inside offices at Old Trafford rather than Anfield. They sympathised with one another. Through the eyes of Busby, the book tells the story about a time when a director sitting behind him during a match asked the United manager why he wasn’t playing a certain player. Busby apprehended the director later on in the toilets and in the next board meeting placed an issue at the very top of the agenda. It read: no interference by directors.

 Shankly and Busby must have seen each other as comrades: Scottish men of mining stock, away from home trying their best to be the best they can. In Red or Dead the relationships between others of similar backgrounds are explored. There is Jock Stein, the Celtic manager, who Shankly always calls ‘John’. In the second half of the book Harold Wilson, the Labour Prime Minister, features heavily.

 Peace believes Shankly’s, Busby’s, Stein’s and Wilson’s upbringings helped them emerge as leaders. “It certainly shaped the way they viewed work and team,” he says. “Especially where Bill came from, you can’t go back and romanticise the conditions. There was harshness and poverty. But there was an idea there that everybody had to help each other out, rely on each other. Otherwise you weren’t going to succeed. The only way to move forward was to get everyone to pitch in. From that experience they were able to inspire other people. I don’t think Shankly saw himself as a leader. He just saw himself as the person that was trying to move the whole thing on.”

Shankly could relate to other managers. They had something in common – a union. If he fell out with any of them it did not last for long. Liverpool, Manchester United and Leeds United were regularly positioned towards the top of the league. Yet those in charge at each club would remain in regular contact.

 “Most Saturday nights, Bill would ring Don Revie and they’d talk about the games they’d had that afternoon,” says Peace. “Revie was really insecure and completely different from Shankly. One year Leeds had a bad start to the season and were really low down in the league. Revie was worried about relegation and he told Shankly about these concerns. Shankly told him that he had Billy Bremner – one of the greatest players in the world. ‘Of course you’ll be fine, Don!’ Bill put down the phone but five minutes later he calls him back. ‘Don – all that stuff I said about Billy Bremner was right – but don’t forget he’s not as good as Tommy Smith’.

 It is true that some managers in the modern game speak to each other regularly. Sir Alex Ferguson for instance had associations with David Moyes and Sam Allardyce. Peace believes it is very possible that Ferguson adopted the skill of developing alliances from Shankly and Busby. “Again, their backgrounds and histories are similar.”

 Ferguson has recalled behaving like a groupie on the evening he was welcomed to Anfield by Shankly. Shankly shook Ferguson by the hand and overwhelmed him with compliments before warning that his Aberdeen side had no chance against “our great team” in their forthcoming European Cup tie. Ferguson regarded the former Liverpool manager, along with Stein and Busby, as a deity, which made his suffering all the greater when, over the weeks that followed, Shankly’s prediction was proved right. Aberdeen were beaten 1-0 at Pittodrie before being taught a few awkward lessons on Merseyside, losing 4-0 to a team who, under Bob Paisley, were on course for a third European Cup in five seasons.

 “Had Busby not been there for Shankly, perhaps Liverpool mightn’t have grown,” Peace wonders. “But had Liverpool and Shankly not emerged, perhaps Ferguson wouldn’t have learned his lessons early in management too. I suppose you could say that’s ironic.”

Red or Dead is published by Faber and Faber is available from most book stores.