BILL WOULD LOVE THIS

I need the beau­ti­ful game. More so now than ever. As I write this, on May 13th, I am some­what ex­hausted hav­ing just watched Lev­ante jus­ti­fi­ably end Barça’s un­beaten run. But there is still so much still to live through in the com­ing days. Foot­ball car­ries me to a dif­fer­ent place men­tally not to men­tion phys­i­cally (among our friends in the crowded moun­tain vil­lage bar and oc­ca­sion­ally to the Camp Nou). By the time you are read­ing this we will all know the re­sults and the adren­a­lin will be abat­ing, so it is vital to bot­tle the buzz right now to pre­serve it a lit­tle longer.

Bill Shankly, a more sig­nif­i­cant name in my child­hood than any politi­cian, film, pop or sports star, the defin­ing ad­vo­cate of why soc­cer mat­ters, would be en­thralled and de­lighted. He was the ul­ti­mate ob­ses­sive, the man who said “Some peo­ple be­lieve foot­ball is a mat­ter of life and death. I am very dis­ap­pointed with that at­ti­tude. I can as­sure you it is much, much more im­por­tant than that.”

If, per­haps, you are not aware of this wry, tough Scots­man who at 15 years of age went to work in a mine, then just let me say he be­came one of the great­est club lead­ers, a purist, iron on the out­side, soft in the mid­dle, loyal, prin­ci­pled and an ab­solute Liv­er­pool leg­end after what he achieved dur­ing the 1960s and 70s.

What am I get­ting all emo­tional about?

An­dres Ini­esta, whose be­witch­ing turns, passes and goals have been wor­thy of the Bal­lon D’Dor at least once in his long ca­reer (I de­spair), is about to leave the fam­ily. As we wit­nessed be­fore, that which is far more than just a club will ho­n­our one of its own like no other club can. I ex­pect I will cry. The man is a ge­nius, free of van­i­ties, the ul­ti­mate pro­fes­sional and like Pele the beau­ti­ful game per­son­i­fied. The mu­tual loy­al­ties of man and club speak vol­umes for both.

An­dres has al­ready lifted the league and cup tro­phies and cap­tained his side to a record num­ber of un­beaten games. A shame the run could not have lasted the whole sea­son, but Lev­ante were wor­thy win­ners today.

There is one last thing.

Ex-Liv­er­pool man­ager Shankly would want his team to wipe the board with Madrid, to run rings round them in the CL final. It has to be. I will be in the bar wear­ing red. If Liv­er­pool have not won don’t talk to me about it.

And as for the game it­self and why I have no doubt what­so­ever Bill would have loved the Barcelona teams in which An­dres has been in­te­gral, he once said this: “Foot­ball is a sim­ple game based on the giv­ing and tak­ing of passes, of con­trol­ling the ball and of mak­ing your­self avail­able to re­ceive a pass. It is ter­ri­bly sim­ple.”

Yes it is. But nigh on im­pos­si­ble to do con­sis­tently.

Thank you An­dres.

opin­ion