It’s Still Time for Something Totally Different

Soccer in England has always been considered a culture unto itself, one that had no reason to fear intrusion--or even more than occasional scrutiny--from those who presume themselves to be truly cultured.

But as writer Tom Shone recently reported in the Sunday Times of London, even though England is absent from this summer’s World Cup, soccer is more popular than ever as a subject for authors, playwrights and composers.

One of the most humorous and poignant books of recent years, Nick Hornby’s “Fever Pitch,” which details his lifelong love affair with the English team, Arsenal, is touring as a stage play and is soon to appear on the big screen, and two plays--”An Evening With Gary Lineker” and “Fair Game”--have been adapted for television. Another play with a soccer theme--”Come On, Stan!”--opened last week.

One rock group named itself after a French team, St. Etienne, and another named itself after a Portuguese star, Eusebio, and still another, The Wedding Present, named an album for the former bad boy of British soccer, George Best. Billing itself as the first soccer opera, “Playing Away,” is playing in Leeds.

In the Sunday Times, Shone wondered if perhaps those searching to find more to soccer than the game itself have gotten carried away, noting that the London Review of Books recently featured caddish Paul Gascoigne, known as Gazza in soccer circles, on the cover and called him a “priapic monolith.”

That reminded Shone of the classic Monty Python skit involving Eric Idle as a pretentious interviewer and John Cleese as a soccer player.

Idle: “Jarrow United came of age in a European sense with an almost Proustian display of modern existentialist football, virtually annihilating, by midfield argument, the surely obsolescent defensive philosophy of Signor Alberto Franfrino.”

Cleese: “Well, I hit the ball first time and it went in the back of the net.”