Massing and all that

They say the first World Cup you remember will always be your favourite. They don't, actually, but they should, even if I don't know who 'they' are. I was 7 years old during Italia 90, and I'd completed the sticker album. It was more than just stickers though. It wasn't even your run of the mill Panini book. It was one of the 'buy the first issue for 99p and the rest for about £67 each week' collectibles with a sticker album as the centre-piece, made by 'Orbis', a company that I've never seen do anything else. It probably near bankrupted my dad buying them all. It looked fantastic, with a massive ring binder to collect all the magazines in. I read it from cover to cover at least 1,000 times, and learned by rote all the winners, top scorers, every stat you could imagine. I nagged my dad's mate to quiz me on anything and everything from it, and snapped the answers back out within a tenth of a second. He probably thought I was autistic. He was probably right.

The whole package of the album blew my tiny mind. It was fantastically written - it knew the target audience would be kids, but didn't talk down to or patronise them. This will sound incredibly arsey, but it was genuinely the best football education a kid that age could get, if they were at all interested. I barely knew anything about international football - I didn't know much about the game at all, being 7. Match magazine telling me about Lawrie Sanchez's favourite band (UB40. Possibly.) didn't interest me. This was an awakening to Mussolini threatening the Italian squad with death, Puskas being kicked to high heaven, Garrincha having dodgy legs (don't think his extra-curricular activities were dealt with, though), and loads more. The section about the 1986 World Cup seemed in the far distant past, given I couldn't remember a thing from it. I imagined Maradona to be impossibly old, as he was already being described as some kind of demigod, yet I still expected him to dance around every defender he faced. For some reason, I expected him to be taller than everyone else, and was disappointed in him being a shortarse. If only I knew Duncan Ferguson was only 4 years away, the massive loon.

Cameroon were the team for me, though. They all had huge smiles on their sticker profiles, and I loved the names of the teams they played for (Canon Yaoundé, JS Saint-Pierroise, Tonnerre Yaoundé). The first ever game I remember watching on the TV was them vs Argentina, and it was just amazing. I'd read that the Argentinian keeper had torn his finger off in a training ground accident, and thought that was the reason why he conceded this. I thought I was Jimmy Hill after saying that. But what was stupidly described as tactical naivety on Cameroon's part was ace for a watching kid, who just wanted to see players legging it around as fast as they could trying to score, not teams sitting with 2 banks of 4. And in any case, the criticism (if not that, then there was certainly a lot of damning with faint praise) they recieved for this just doesn't stand up. England were incredibly lucky to get past them, who in turn were unlucky to not reach the final. They were likely the last team that were truly unknown beforehand that have made an impact in a World Cup, and have came closer to any other African side to winning it. I blame Pele for the lack of anything since, the hugely virile idiot. Anyway, it's probably for the best that Cameroon got knocked out in the quarters, I would have exploded with joy if they had won the thing. Their kit was brilliant too:



Apart from the Cameroon games, nowadays I only clearly remember watching England v Ireland (my dad laughed his head off when Sheedy scored), Ireland winning on penalties v Romania (I made my Holy Communion the same day and had vomited cake and crisps everywhere), the England v Germany semi (my dad's birthday - we had a packed house watching it) and a little bit of the final. My grandad told me to listen out for a massive roar when Matthaus lifted the trophy; I told him I'd heard a bigger noise when Tony Cottee scored a pen vs QPR the previous season. This was clearly balls, and I'd like to issue a severe reprimand to my 7 year old self. I half remember being interested in Colombia's games, just to see if Carlos Valderrama's hair really was like it appeared in his sticker. Oh, and South Korea's too, just to snigger at their names. Don't judge me. Just reading Gu Sang-Bum is like a Richard Pryor routine for the under 10s.

If it wasn't for Italia 90, I doubt I'd be as interested in football as I am. (Looking at blerts like Ashley Cole, this may not be a good thing.) Don't underestimate how much of a pain in the arse it can be as only 1 of 3 blues in a class of 30 or so at school. We knew we were better people even at that age, but still, heavily outnumbered. I could have only have been disappointed expecting Neil McDonald and Ian Snodin to play like Milla and Omam-Biyik, but this young fan could only hope for it after the whole thing finished. Every World Cup match I've seen since (as a terrified about starting secondary school 11 year old, bit more cynical 15 year old, slumped in a uni bar for most of the tournament 19 year old and disgusted at having a full time job 23 year old) stirs up a little of what it felt like to watch these players that I'd studied for 2 or 3 months before it started. I'll have now watched more of the players, know more about what they're meant to be doing and make what I think are knowledgable quips about how high a defence is sitting. That's right, I'll sound like a simpleton. But if I see a random Honduran scything Torres down, or some speedy unknown Paraguayan winger skinning a hapless Italian defender, a little part of me will be feeling like I did when I saw football properly for the first time. And for that, I thank Orbis and Benjamin Massing.

*Chino - The Fall*