By Laurence Inman.
– So, Spain won then.
– Did it ? When ?
– Last Sunday.
– What did it win then ?
– The football.
– One football. A whole country.
– You’re just being a prat now.
– I’m not that bothered.
– You were bothered when Villa won the European Cup.
– No I wasn’t.
– Villa! Villa! Come on Bluenose! Join in!
– Youthful exuberance.
– You were thirty-two!
– Alcohol exuberance. You’ll be the same when….oh no, you won’t will you ?
– Don’t start.
– Because a team from a lower division has never won Europe’s top football trophy.
– I’ve told you.
– Never scaled the rarefied heights of football glory.
– I’m getting my axe.
– Never looked out, silent upon a peak in Nechells, and realised that it’s all a meaningless memory.
– That’s what you’ll be in a minute.
– It’s different over there of course.
– What is ?
– Football. The fans have real power. Pick the team. Interview the manager.
– Really ?
– Yeah. It’s in their contract. You can phone them up and have them round playing with your kids in the back garden.
– Honest ?
– Oh yeah. If they’re free, obviously. They’ll even mow the lawn. Do the washing up.
– You’re pulling my pudding.
– Who’s the prat now ?
– I wish it was more like that.
– Give it ten years. Blues’ll be in the East Birmingham Paper Boys League. Playing down the park. Jumpers for goalposts.
– Stop it.
– You’ll only be seventy-two. They might give you a game.
– Seventy-two!
– Terrifying isn’t it ?
– I wonder how much I’ve spent since 1957 to be wet and miserable for two hours every other Saturday.
– Same as me probably.
– And now it costs fifty quid or more.
– Straight in the pocket of a multi-millionaire.
– Who lives in a moated mansion in the country.
– Imagine turning up there and asking him to come for a kick-around with the kids.
– He’d probably let his Mossad-trained Rottweilers loose.
– Shake you warmly by the goolies.
– Doesn’t bear thinking about.
