Pitch Imperfect

"Tradition" is one of those words I've always viewed with some degree of suspicion. After all, it used to be traditional to stick an arrow at high velocity through the neck of any Scotsman who wandered South of Carlisle. Nowadays, thankfully, the Tartan Army are free to travel into a brave world of colour television, decent football and non-"Heavy" beer*.

Speaking of football, it also used to be traditional for the two teams playing in the FA Cup final to knock out a dodgy song apiece. My own team have been guilty of some horrors, especially when they tried to get clever and hire Pete Waterman on Move Move Move (Big Red Drum) in 1996. The fact Eric Cantona decided soon after that he'd had enough of football cannot be a coincidence. Throughout that decade, I can remember a few teams getting in celeb fans to beef up sales: for the ’97 final you had Suggs for Chelsea and Bob Mortimer for Middlesbrough. The latter did a cover of Chris Rea’s Let’s Dance, thereby exhausting the town's entire creative pool.

I could be wrong, but I think the pioneers for this kind of atrocity were Chas and Dave, always ready when their beloved Tottenham Hotspur made the final. In 1981, they (cough) hilariously made midget midfield maestro Osvaldo Ardiles the centrepiece of the number with his line “in ze cup for Totting-ham”, sung in his native Argentine tones. Bizarrely, when they made the cup final again a year later, Spurs forward Steve Archibald (a man whose bumfluff beard made David de Gea look tough) achieved the obscure feat of appearing on Top of the Pops with two different (ahem) artists on one show when he did his bit for his club team before rocking up with the Scottish national team for their World Cup anthem We Have a Dream. Personally, I've never dreamt about my two centre halves crashing into each like drunken hippos, leaving the Soviet forward a clear run on hapless keeper Alan Rough and sending the team crashing out, as ever, in the first round**.

Anyways, football teams don’t seem to make records these days. Not even the England team, which used to knock out a crock of shit every time they qualified for the World Cup, as did Scotland. Some of these travesties include 1982s This Time (We’ll Get It Right) – which they didn't, obviously, unless getting it right meant Kevin Keegan missing a sitter against Spain to see them knocked out. Four years later, the boys were proclaiming that We’ve Got The Whole World At Our Feet, which seemed a bit presumptuous. Not that it mattered, as Diego Maradona had the whole ball at his hand after he managed to outjump England ‘keeper Peter Shilton, despite being a fat shortarse.

Using a previously unseen degree of common sense, in 1990 the Football Association decided it may be an idea to involve people with experience of writing cutting-edge pop music. Hence, we get New Order singing a song with a wisely tenuous connection to football, vague allusions to the current prevalence of ecstasy in the clubs and John Barnes rapping about nothing in particular. Which, incidentally, was the sum total of what he did at the tournament itself.

But if you want the old school done right, then check out Old Trafford Blues by Martin Buchan, the b-side to Manchester United's 1976 cup final record. Written by the man himself, he tells us all about his teammates, including such lyrical crackers as "then there's Brian Greenhoff, he's got lots of skill/And he really needs it to play with Gordon Hill". Meow, Martin! Despite the title, the backing track is more like incidental music from George and Mildred. Still ace, though.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtazqV2apzA

*Only joking, Scots readers.
** Sorry, again.