Football - Shoot! It's all for the cameras!

Like most sports, football has undergone humungous changes in my lifetime. When I first took an active interest, my enthusiasm beyond the family was fed only by special dispensation to stay up late for BBC1’s Match of the Day and London Weekend TV’s Sunday afternoon rival The Big Match. All in blazing black and white.

The only football coverage in colour came courtesy of the Shoot! magazine. From October 1969 to 1972, it would arrive every week with our Daily Express (not the UKIP mouthpiece it is now!). Originally costing a shilling, rising to six pence post-decimalisation in ’71, it was worth every penny of my meagre pocket money. 

 I would greedily devour every page, from ‘Bobby Moore Writes for You’ (it never occurred to me that they weren’t actually his words) to ‘You Are the Ref’, ‘Football Funnies’ (cartoons), quizzes, ‘Focus On…’ and a host of player photos and articles. My collection of back copies survived more than three decades before lack of wardrobe space dictated that a clearout was necessary. I retained a handful for nostalgia’s sake (see the above composite photo) but the rest went to a local charity shop. The owner may have made a killing as I note that those early editions can now sell for £2.99 on eBay! 

At around the same time, my friends and I would also collect cards depicting players. You could buy packets of six (I think) in the newsagent’s for a few pence and any duplicates we would swap at school: “Have you got a Mike Pejic for an Ernie Hunt” (I always seemed to have a Coventry City surplus), and so on. They were the forerunners of the familiar Panini stickers which still delight kids to this day.

Now, of course, there are dedicated TV channels, many more periodicals and, in particular, countless websites, YouTube videos, etc, etc to satisfy every conceivable craving of the football fan, 24/7, 365 days a year.

Looking back at these much-loved treasures from my childhood reminds me how the player photos have changed. Most of those early Seventies portraits featured either blank passport-type head-shots, the self-conscious folded arms, or the squatting in pristine club kit, fingers resting on a ball, half-smile beneath newly-combed hair (see Alan Woodward below). Not a tattoo in sight, thank God! Nowadays, besides displaying the obligatory inked 'sleeve' which I so forcefully despise, players clearly practise their open-mouthed roar, as such shots seem to be the only ones printed. I know it’s symptomatic of the current obsession with ‘passion’ and “giving it 110%” but forgive me if I don’t want to see endless pictures of Sergio Aguero’s tonsils on Match of the Day. 

                              

These days, goal celebrations are more than baring your fangs for the pitchside cameras. Where once upon a time, raising one arm (a la Alan Shearer) or two (Kenny Dalglish) and being hugged by your team-mates was sufficient. Even Mick Channon’s windmill action was considered a bit ostentatious in the Seventies. Then in the Nineties, the World Cup gave us Roger Milla’s corner flag hip swivel, Bebeto’s rockabye-baby and, when Jurgen Klinsmann brought his diving reputation to Spurs, the bellyflop slide.

Thereafter celebrations became ever more fancifully choreographed. Some were amusing (the Aylesbury Town synchronised duck waddle), some mildly embarrassing (the Peter Crouch ‘robot’) and some frankly ill-advised (the Robbie Fowler white line snorting). In more recent seasons, players seem to have cottoned on that an individualistic move or gesture can be worth more than a few photos on the back page or the club website. 

Daniel Sturridge’s hip-hoppy wavy arms are so famous, it’s easy to forget he barely gets on the pitch any more. When a player becomes better known for his celebration than actual feat of scoring, there's something fundamentally wrong. Gareth Bale has even taken the whole 'making it his own' phrase to the extreme. His once-cute, now-irritating hand heart shape has even been legally trademarked. Even Jesse Lingard has developed his own JL gesture which will presumably be repeated on adverts for years to come. That’s providing he actually gets to deploy it on the Old Trafford pitch when he’s on bus-parking duty.

Actually I’d much prefer to see a goalscorer just get caught up in the moment, either with a wild-eyed mazy run to the bench (Marco Tardelli in the ’82 World Cup final) or a bog-standard, turf-ripping kneeslide. Better still, a Lomana Lua Lua-style backflip is hard to beat for entertainment value, and the prospect of such joyous gymnastics going horribly wrong! Even more impressive was Julius Aghahowa. In the Nineties I would long for Nigeria’s forward to score in the World Cup, just to witness his incredible multiple somersault routine. You couldn't get away with that whilst sporting a shaggy Seventies barnet.

Goals are great but even I have to admit that sometimes the celebrations are even better.