I’m not about to say : “The World Cup is the Biggest Event on the Planet” then make out, through my involvement, that it’s no big deal really, that we shouldn’t get so carried away really. That what is needed is some perspective. That there are far more important things.
I have struggled and probably strived to reach this point in my life when I, ME, am about to go there, on official business. To an event that comparatively few will attend, but as many as half the people on the planet will see (on tv). I have a role to play in his World Cup. In a sense I am a player. I can affect it. Now, that’s a thought. That’s an honour. That’s a responsibility.
Loads of people want to ‘carry my camera-bag’’ (more of that later).
I’m thrilled about the World Cup. I’m thrilled that other people are thrilled. That everyone seems interested. It is after all ‘the World Cup’. People have tried to call it soccer and in so doing to marginalise it, make it a product game, a game played outside of US America. Indeed, US America, the most powerful country on earth does not take the world game to heart. The world game, football, as opposed ‘American Football’ (which is why it is called American, to clearly say that it is not the Football which everyone else plays) is by far the most popular game, activity and cultural event on the Planet, calling on substantial participants and audiences from EVERY single country… including the U.S.A.
And I am pleased the US Americans do have an interest in football. I would not want them not to.
The world game outstrips the popularity of the Olympics, quite easily (also held every 4 years) and of almost every other game/activity put together. But I wouldn’t want people to hate the game because it is popular. Indeed most popular. It is an inclusive game. A game of underdogs. Of giants. Of teams. Of types of teams. Of tests. Of sleeping giants. Of fairy-tales, of shocks, of boring games, of struggle. Ultimately, put it all together, as happens every 4 years in World Cup competition format – AS OF NOW – and we have a great coming together, of every nation under the sun, on Planet Earth. Planet Earth LOOKS like a football. If only we could hold it! But not kick it!! It’s already taking the knocks.
Sixteen years ago I dreamt up “The Homes of Football” as a photographic / artistic / people-watching / football-watching labour of love… and expected to take years to put it together. I am not sure it will ever be finished. I recently made a concerted attempt to make it truly GLOBAL, visiting countries worldwide to extend its appeal and audience and scope. My understanding of the World had previously been with the occasional foray abroad, for football World Cups. Now my own personal world cup is a never-ending world cup , whilst the real World Cup, repeating every four years, is really the icing on the cake.
For whatever reasons and concerns, cometh 2006, I have decided to change my direction and look to The World. This new website “Football, Photography & The World” aims to show off my new direction. (Designed by Phil Powell). If it was borne of The Homes of Football, was the son of it and will now become parent to it (England’s Wordsworth said “The child is the father of the man”).
Those of you that have come to like The Homes of Football and follow its progress (I Thank You), will know something of its path so far. For those that don’t excuse me a paragraph or more to explain it…
The Homes of Football , as devised by me, set out to show that football was special in the land where I grew up : in England and in its near neighbours Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland. That it had possibly ALWAYS been special and currently was extra-special but undergoing a radical change. Being something of a story-teller, mostly in imagery, I wanted to tell a story about what it meant to me and probably many people like me or around me. I wanted to honour the ‘fact’ that my England and my Scotland particularly were responsible for giving such a fantastic ‘game’ to the World by exporting it through sailors, through trips abroad. And I wanted to show that the game was in these countries of its birth, still as brilliant as anywhere.
… And if it turned out it wasn’t then I could play my part in MAKING IT LOOK as if it was as good as anywhere. So there was and is a sense of competition about me and what I am doing : I am quite happy for others to play with the ball, have a great time, experience the best there is, as long as we do too and as long as we remain respected.
That’s what I LOVE about the World Cup : mutual respect. Every team it seems brings something to the party. It might be the best team in the case of Brazil… who as it happens also deliver great colour, imagination, music, fans. Perhaps because of all of these things they deserve to win it. Other countries have much to offer, if sometimes only opposition : a test.
I so much want England to do well on the world stage because we invented the organised game (and for that matter a very amazing disorganised version that preceded it) and because we imposed rules and standards (for others to play along with, test and surpass) and finally because , as of 2006, or as of 1990 to 2006, the span of my doing The Homes of Football, we have had a brilliant turn about – a quite brilliant , admirable and courageous climb away from destruction : the English game was on the brink back in the 1980’s. We have a wonderful game now, attracting interest and players and money and respect from all over the globe. I think for these emotional reasons, England should at the very least get to play in the 2006 Final and that Final should be against Brazil.
I would rather not have to go into that small matter of the ‘draw’, ‘the route to the Final’, whereby England can’t very likely meet Brazil in the Final. One can make it – but not both. Shame really.
Each few weeks leading up to this point, before a single ball is kicked in the final stage of the Finals in Germany (the entire competition did actually begin over two years ago) I get out yet another wallchart World Cup group and match planner dropped out of a newspaper, and predict every score of every match right unto the Final, not copying what I wrote last time but eventually comparing to see how my view has changed over the weeks and days. If it indeed has.
After a full week’s competition, as per my wallchart planners concensus, Brazil and England are still en route to the Final. Or at least one of them is. They will surely meet in the semi-final. Italy I had down to get to the Final. Switzerland, Ukraine and Australia were the only countries I was preparing to be wrong about : that any or all three of them might do better than I anticipated. How are they doing…?
I have been to a match everday from the opening onward. I have seen many more matches on big screens in the Fans Fest areas of various cities and even more on television. The Germans are proving great hosts. They have taken the opportunity to make “make friends” ahead of showing how well organised they can be. This do this cleaning up in the morning , AFTER the fans of all countries including their own have had a good time. This shows some imagination. What Germany may well have been lacking in recent times is imagination.
On the pitch thay are no great shakes. If England get them in the knockout round, England shall surely win. England have been superb, pacing themselves against the cruellest heat within the stadium. As disappointed as tv fans may be, the matches are not played on tv but in searing heat.
WHAT MAKES A WORLD CUP PHOTOGRAPHER? HOW DID I GET HERE??
I live in the very north of England, almost on the border of Scotland. This is the English Lake District and in my eyes England’s very best. Northumbria , next door, is surely England’s second best spot – and a very good second. Where I live is rural with a few small towns close by and bigger ones 60kilometres or more away. Manchester and Newcastle are the nearest internationally-famous cities.
It’s here in Ambleside I have my gallery : “The Homes of Football at Ambleisde”, currently being rebranded “Football Photography & The World”. It’s around here mostly that I work, and play, when I am not abroad photographing. I live alone. Sometimes I have visitors. Often, Sally my personal assistant stays over as she can’t decide whether to move up here yet. Houses are expensive and in short supply. It’s a preservation area (few new buildings allowed). Mobile phones struggle to work amidst the mountains. I get tv from all over the World via (Sky) satellite. And there’s the internet which in itself gives us the world.. There’s not many football pitches and teams around here, as there are comparatively few people. So I have my own pitch in the garden. Occasionally we stage international matches… a bit like the World Cup!
Just as people are intrigued as to what squads have been picked for the countries in the World Cup, and which teams come to take the field, I have had a look around me to see who are the other photographers and where they are from. One could check them out even before arrival in Germany as the FIFA 2006 website hold details of ALL the media including some 1500 photographers : what games each has applied to attend and which ones they have been granted access to (and which ones they are on the ‘waiting list’ for). And whether they have a car parking pass. This makes me think this could lead to one sharing a lift, perhaps with a photographer from the other side of the globe in his or her hire car. Or they with me in mine. I’ve hired an Opel, a German car, since I am in Germany.
Back in The Lake District, where I live, I have been without a car or van or 4-wheel drive beast of my own for most of the year. And I have grown to like not having one. I have hitch-hiked in this time, when and where I haven’t fancied walking. It has probably meant I have had to think more carefully about my fitness (usually quite good anyway) and my diet and my water-intake. And what I am to carry…
As a result my packing for recent trips has become increasingly minimalist or survivalist. Some would say daring. For trips to Trinidad and before that Mexico (both a week long) I had a small shoulder bag plus my cameras, which could all go as hand-luggage on the airlines.
For the World Cup, FULLY 5 WEEKS AWAY FROM HOME, I packed and took the following :
2 Bronica and 1 Widelux medium format cameras (the tools of my trade); no lenses, filters, light meters, flashguns;
40 rolls of film (I am the only one of 1500 photographers as far as I can tell who is on film);
One pair of trousers;
3 t-shirts;
Sandals;
Toothbrush;
Shaver;
Mini torch;
Diary;
Map;
Documents.
On me I set off with a pair of shorts, a waistcoat with loads of pockets, and a jumper tied round my waist.
Admittedly some copies of my books and postcards (to show or give to people and the other assembled media) went to Germany via Steve and the tv crew who are trailing me for over half the period (filming me filming people for a DVD). Steve and Sean and Steve’s brother set off by car from Barrow, near where I live in Cumbria and met up with me on the 2nd day at the England game. Meanwhile Carl, who works for me at Ambleside in the gallery, carried to Germany the Ambleside Homes of Football flag. He is staying on a campsite having won some tickets to be here courtesy of Budweiser. In fact he’s returning to England any day now (holiday over).
I’m busy photographing for my next book and exhibition, both on the World Cup, to show in Ambleside from August 1st (later on it might go abroad). Yesterday the BBC showed a montage of my pictures (we had planned this some time ago) ahead of the days games. I think it was well received and I was very proud to have made it to tv in this way as stills-photography, albeit set to pop music, might not work on screen. A second montage will be aired on July 1st. Additionally there is a German tv station doing a feature on me and a crew from Sky getting me in front of their cameras. At the end of the World Cup a 10 page spread of mine will appear in various editions of “Four Four Two” football magazine. Apart from my almost daily speaking to BBC Radio Cumbria (and my doing this ‘blog’) I don’t have the daily need to put my pictures before anyone, as do almost if not all of the 1500 other photographers at the World Cup. I am pleased : it would not suit me to do so.
Say goodbye to Ghana in the rain; say bye bye to the film crew who have been following me thus far.
Spend day getting my films processed in Cologne at lab founded by my hero August Sander between the wars.
Spent the day with farming friends near Hanover, on the old east-west border.
Rang my uncle from Luchenwald where he was imprisoned until 1945 when the Russians arrived. Later: tears on losing best team from World Cup…German kept pushing me down, poking my eye with his flag.
Heat, referees, penalties and portuguese have all beaten us again. I am due at a party in Brussells…hosted by the Portuguese I met at Euro 2004.
Kept awake by squaddies fighting amongst themselves and with the local girls from Bergen-Belsen. Visited the camp. Went swimming.
