Going Back to My Roots: Football Before Technology

Going Back to My Roots: Football Before Technology

It’s been a busy summer, and three things happened to me over the last couple of months to make me feel old. Firstly, I moved house. Granted, that was stressful, but it didn’t put years on me. No, what was disconcerting is that when I moved, I downsized, and had to get rid of loads of things. One of them was a plug-in telly gizmo which allowed you to play Sensible Soccer, the computer football game which once ruled all.

The chap I gave it away to was slightly older than me, and he raved about it, telling me how he used to play it ‘back in the day’, and being so amused by the little pictures of the game on the box that I might as well have thrown in a zoetrope of a man jumping over a puddle. Part of me wanted to whip it out of his hands and smack him with it, but he was wearing a Wolves shirt, so I figured he’d suffered enough.

The second and third things happened when I was on holiday in Cyprus. While wandering round the tat shops, I saw a fair number of them selling rip-off shirts for Barcelona and Madrid. A trained eye could spot the difference, I suppose, but to me, these copies you could buy for ten Euros had everything: sponsor, league badge, proper lettering. If only I played like Gareth Bale, the illusion would have been complete.

While on said holiday, Villa played Manchester City, and you would have had to have been living in a cave not to know what happened. Well, I was in a nice hotel room, trying to ignore the football and focus on my break, but I couldn’t, and in a rare concession, I decided I wouldn’t go and watch the Al Jazeera broadcast in a local bar, but follow it on Teletext. German Teletext.

That ZDF lifeline was as tense as a James Bond fight scene. With nothing to guide me but the possibility the scores might change at any moment, I held and refreshed the page like I was Keanu Reeves in The Matrix, certain that some combination of button pushing and timing would open a pin-sharp perspective on the game. The remaining time after Andreas Weimann’s winner was torture.

And it’s these three things that have made me strangely nostalgic. Be honest, how long is it since you played Teletext Football? Listening with the radio on as the pages cycled endlessly through, updating two or three minutes after the fact? Most Saturdays before I had Sky were spent like that, which may be the reason that I never had a girlfriend through my teens, and most of my friends won’t tell me their addresses even today.

Before the internet, I relied on local news and Teletext gossip throughout the summer for news of potential signings. When Stan Collymore made his debut for the club on a pre-season tour of the States, I had to wait two days for the Express and Star to tell me he’d played. And if I wanted to express my opinion? I had to send a hand-written letter to Teletext’s physical address in London, and check every day until it was published. Even then, they spelt my name wrong.

Like I mentioned before, my football fix on the computer was a marathon of seasons on Sensible World of Soccer, or Sensi, on the Amiga 500. It took up two 3.5 inch floppy discs, and because I had an external disc drive, I knew when the opposition was about to score, because the second drive would start going crazy as it loaded up the celebration noise. But I persevered, even when my best mate worked out how to score from the halfway line straight from kick off, because it was the best game ever, and I still maintain that to be true.

My first Villa shirt was a copy of the 90-92 Mita Copiers issue, which had no sponsor and my mum had to sew on the round Villa badge. I wore it everywhere. Later on in life, feeling flush, I bought the actual version from eBay, and still wear it to matches. Somehow, it’s not quite the same as that copy, which came in a presentation box, wrapped in tissue. I used to take it out of the drawer and look at it in anticipation, waiting for the day my mum would attach that lion rampant and I could be David Platt.

As a childhood Villa fan, every link to the club was special, because it was rare. My granddad used to drink in the same pubs as some of the players, and he bought me home signed footballs, compliments slips; even an annual report on the club’s finances autographed by Graham Taylor. My granddad’s copy of the 1982 European Cup Final programme was akin to a holy relic.

Nowadays, finances permitting, I can absorb myself in any aspect of Aston Villa. Programmes for games that I’ve lost, old shirts, newspaper clippings bound together. I can read any online match report for the last ten years, buy archive photos. I can express my view in less than a sentence, or sell them for a price.

My console gives me the most photorealistic Villa side yet created. I can add Lionel Messi up front with the right jiggery pokery. Win a trophy, and the background erupts with a violent torrent of confetti. In Sensi, you were matter-of-factly informed you’d won a cup, probably called the Sensible Cup.

Football fans do pointless nostalgia better than anyone, but what’s wrong with a little wallow when sometimes, the sport seems so bland? Every match is hyped so much that the concept loses all meaning, so that Barcelona-Bayern takes on the same significance as Everton-Wigan. Every website is full of over-the-top love or hate for every conceivable opinion. The club badge is available on everything: the limit is up to you.

It’s pointless saying things are better now, because some things are, and some aren’t. Besides, there will be readers certain that I’m describing the moment football started turning sour for them by invoking the bells-and-whistles sequel to the earlier Sensible Soccer. I just like being reminded that sometimes, football wasn’t so exhausting, and that it used to be fun, by being ramshackle, anonymous and all the more exciting for it.

Ubiquitous football hasn’t ruined the game, but we don’t always need to know everything, and the odd surprise keeps us refreshed. A little distance goes a hell of a long way.

Chris Stanley