Sunday, I was 10, it was the World Cup, it was England. I was incredibly excited and there was a long day to get there. It’s a famous match, but also the first one that I have a clear memory of watching all of.
I’d watched the FA Cup final all the way through, although the memories aren’t there: only the replayed footage of that guy swinging, 40 feet in the air into a window of one of the twin towers. I’d watched earlier games in this tournament, on an old, tune-to-turn-over, black and white unit that my dad had installed into their wardrobe.The MFI panel bowed with the weight, the signal was bad, and everywhere satellite pictures would drop and we would continue in sound only. Isolatedly, I remember the spider-like shadow from the camera in at least one of the stadiums. I remember Ray Wilkins taking a long slow walk (did he take off his armband, was he captain, after Robson went off?) against Morocco. I had to look it up to find out it was Morocco, and we drew, I thought we’d lost.
22nd of June 1986. Six o’clock was late, Sundays were empty then. Douglas Adams refers to ‘the long dark teatime of the soul’, when there is literally no distraction. All I had was anticipation. The TV coverage started at five, and I didn’t really have the concept of a build up: I was sure that I would miss something, the match would start. I can’t check this properly, the World Cup Quarter Final wasn’t even penciled in to the Radio Times. In a parody of nostalgia Rolf Harris’s Cartoon Club takes the slot.
In later years, I’ve built a knowingly irrational belief that where I am, what I’m watching, even what I wear or what I drink, is important to how England perform. This doesn’t happen with other matches, other teams, or world events. I was just as happy with the exit poll in the 2017 general election when I heard it on the radio in the car, as if I’d been perched on the arm of the sofa, ready to stand, glasses and 1982 home shirt, square on to the TV. I’ve been to World Cups and England matches all over, and wins are few and many air miles in between, on average we do better when I’m at home, like the team. Then, I just knew I was scared to miss a moment.
I can’t remember what she wanted to watch: probably something on VHS, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, or The Sound of Music, recorded off the telly, or was it ITV? But my seven year-old sister wanted the TV. I could not cope, would not listen to reason that the match wouldn’t be on for an hour.
I shouted, she shouted. My Dad took the nuclear option.
We walked the three to four hundred yards to my Nan and Grandad’s house, uninvited but welcome. This was better anyway, more people, more unusual. Grandad gave my Dad a beer, he wouldn’t have had one at home. I sat on the carpet, close to the kick off and the match is not much more than a blue – Argentina, England’s shorts – green fuzziness. Later on in the game Gary Lineker did not understand how he’d not repeated his first goal for an equaliser, he ended up in the net after a John Barnes cross: but unlike minutes earlier the ball wasn’t with him. I don’t recall seeing the ball either time.
In my mind the first goal was before half time, I was convinced there was discussion of the handball. I know I was convinced, craning my neck back to the sofa, pleading almost with my Dad that fairness would be the end result. It was pretty clear from replays, but the match went on. I was too devastated by the fact of Maradona’s second to admire it.
It wasn’t the goal of the century at the time, it was a goal that at least four players, including Villa’s Steve Hodge who I knew because my Grandad and uncles were Villa fans, could have stopped. The Hand of God hadn’t yet been beatified, it was just a cheat. A cheat that according to my Dad Shilton should have stopped anyway.
I know it was the first match I watched in full as there was no chance to look away.
We went home, it was bedtime. I wasn’t too disappointed, we would win the next one, when was that again? I asked for an Argentina shirt for my birthday, which was just over a week later. I didn’t get it: I got an England one and wore it untucked like Chris Waddle.