Excerpt


Chapter 1: Offside


I went to a football match once. It was a pleasant evening at the tail end of summer, that time of year when the sunscreen has been safely stored away in the bathroom cabinet while the woolly hat and gloves still lie hidden beneath folded T-shirts in the bottom drawer. The kind of day that could pass by almost unnoticed, yet one that remains in my mind as a day when I did something a bit different. You see, I’m not really a football fan.

However, when I say I went to a football match, it wasn’t just a start-of-season provincial game. It was a friendly international at Wembley Stadium: England versus Colombia. To be honest, I simply couldn’t imagine attending anything as mundane as an everyday football match. It had to be at least a little out of the ordinary. I mean, I never do things by halves.

My reason for going was also far from usual. Although it was that back-to-school time of year, I’d spent all summer at a school teaching English to foreigners, a job I had been doing for several years and a profession that put me among people of many different nationalities. But in addition to my cosmopolitan environment at work, I often mixed socially with my students because after spending a large part of my adult life abroad, I now felt most at home when in the company of foreigners. I soon began to look upon some of these students as friends, and due to my weekend job as a salsa DJ the majority of my new companions were South American.

Consequently, through a summer of socializing with a great many Colombians I’d learned all about their lifestyle, customs and Latin American passion for football. So when they had told me about the forthcoming fixture, I’d thought it might be fun to accompany them. As the only Englishman in our group, I also offered to arrange tickets and transport to my nation’s capital, and on the big day we set off in two rental cars, tickets in hand, having planned exactly where we would park before boarding the London Underground to complete our journey to the famed stadium.

Even so, in spite of my thorough planning of transportation and ticketing, I had given very little thought to the game itself. In fact, I only show a limited interest in this sport for two weeks every four years – the World Cup holds the same inescapable appeal for me as I imagine it does for many people – though back in 1986 I became noticeably more attentive during the Mexico World Cup. But it wasn’t the football that had caught my attention; it was the fans. This was due to my interest in Latin American percussion, an obsession my father had instilled in me at a very early age, and ever since the 1986 World Cup the thought of football has always filled my mind with many fond memories of those rhythmic Mexican spectators. As a result, when we packed the cars for our trip, I had believed it appropriate to take my surdo, an enormous hand-held bass drum used by Brazilian samba bands.

Upon arrival in London, we met a few more Colombian friends at a pub and took the tube to Wembley Stadium. It was a journey I found somewhat troublesome, since it wasn’t that easy to travel on an overcrowded train hugging an oversized drum, but I considered this burden to be more than worthwhile. I fully expected to be surrounded by Latinos with similar rhythm-making apparatus once we’d arrived, yet when we eventually reached the turnstiles of the stadium, my path became blocked by a heavy-set security guard.

‘I’m sorry, sir, I cannot allow you to enter with that, er, thing,’ he politely announced. ‘It’s too dangerous.’

‘What? It’s only a drum! And don’t worry, I promise not to hit anyone with it,’ I joked in the hope of easing the situation with a bit of humour.

‘I know you won’t, sir,’ he replied indifferently, ‘because you will leave it in our office.’ Then he proceeded to request backup on his radio while I waited with my Colombian entourage, feeling rather bewildered by this unforeseen outcome.

Just at that moment a female security officer arrived and asked our disobliging ‘doorman’ what he was doing. He explained the problem but her immediate response caught everyone by surprise: ‘What do you mean?’ she exclaimed. ‘Of course he can come in with a drum. He’s Colombian!’

Well, it appeared there was someone else who still remembered the Mexico World Cup. She truly believed me to be a passionate South American football fan, here to support my nation in the only way I knew how. And I wasn’t about to correct her misconception. To tell the truth, the love I had of Latin America played such an important part in my life that I almost felt privileged to be perceived as a citizen of the country whose team I had come here to watch.

We were subsequently permitted entry (with the drum) and made our way to the Colombian end. Once we had taken our seats and got comfortable, I looked across the immense stadium before me and found myself momentarily enthralled by this enchanting vista. Illuminated in blazing floodlights, row upon row of bright red chairs surrounded a pitch as green as a billiard-table, creating a view very remote from my own associations with the game of football. It was really quite beautiful.

Finally, the players came on to the pitch, the referee blew the whistle and the game began. His whistle was also the cue to start beating my drum, and even though the official attendance for this match was the lowest ever recorded at Wembley Stadium, that night the Colombian end was crowded with several thousand South Americans, all clapping in time to my rhythms. On the evening of September 6th 1995, I started to think that I might have actually found a good reason for going to a football match.

The high point of the game came in the first half. It was when the charismatic Colombian goalkeeper Higuita did an extraordinary trick that had earned him the nickname ‘The Scorpion’. The English forwards managed to slip past the offside trap, making a creative attack that climaxed with a powerful, 25-yard shot on goal. Higuita took a half-step backwards, then launched himself into the air, diving forwards with outstretched arms, an arched back and legs curled up behind him, and made an unbelievable save by striking the ball with the soles of his boots. It was so gracefully and masterfully executed that there was a brief moment of silence before the spectators could react to his unexpected display of dexterity. Then the stadium filled with deafening applause and this remarkable incident was repeatedly shown on television as the highlight of the nil-nil draw.

I never actually saw it happen. At that time I was too preoccupied with percussion. Nevertheless, several months later my memories of that day returned whilst I was walking down a street in the Colombian city of Medellín and I happened to bump into the acclaimed goalkeeper.

‘Wow! You’re Higuita!’ I exclaimed in broken Spanish. ‘I was at Wembley Stadium last year when you did the Scorpion!’

He seemed at a loss for words, perhaps through the surprise of being recognized by someone who clearly wasn’t from his part of the world. Even so, he still went ahead and shook my hand, gave me a bemused smile and then continued on his way.

Higuita’s magnificent save was the high point of an otherwise uneventful first half, and when the 45 minutes were up ...


... the referee blew the whistle for half-time. Then Miguel turned to me and asked, ‘Do you mind if I change the channel?’

‘No, you go ahead. I wasn’t watching it anyway,’ I replied in effortless Spanish.

No, I wasn’t watching the game. I wasn’t even sure who was playing. In fact, I didn’t even know where I was. I appeared to be in a small, two-bedded, hospital ward with a Spanish lad in the adjacent bed and a man seated at my side, but I felt so confused that nothing made any sense. Was it half-time?