Tag: fiction

  • Stomping in the Coubertin

    Stomping in the Coubertin

    I went for a stroll before the match around Sunday tea time in search of likeminded football supporters. You can sense them from a mile off. I won’t be the first to have said it but, no matter what country, what level of what pyramid, football fans have a certain urgency about them on a matchday. Indeed, attending my first Sunday match at Anger’s Raymond Kopa, I realised just how blatant this walk is. Among the church goers and the market stragglers were others, like me, strolling to the match with two hours spare, yet at an inexplicable rhythm which resembled more to that of one of Napoleon’s soldiers. I knew I was in the right place. I sipped my can of Orangina at a measured pace and watched my fellow match goers walk their march to the Raymond Kopa, thinking myself invisible. But I was fooling nobody. My sipping was just about as nonchalant as that of a striker taking pre-match shots at the substitute goalkeeper: casual, sure. But focussed, ready.

    Walking up to the 5000 seater/stander Coubertin

    I had time to spare before I met up with the others, so I did the marching walk that everyone else was doing through the pleasant little park in view of the ground. On the modest pitch which took up most of the green, a few lads kick a ball about. The goalkeeper makes a good save yet it’s one he doesn’t appear to be fond of. He wants to be taking the shots; he’s only in there ‘cos he’s tall. He must have the patience of a saint. They were doing full blown drills in front of him; dribbling down the wing, cutting inside but then not taking the shot due to the interception of an invisible defender. He’s got a future in mime, I tell myself. Then he skies the rebound (off of the invisible full back). Yep, definitely a career in mime.

    In the park, I see families, dogs, prams. Surely this is all a show, all an illusion of divine family organisation, this unfeasible ability to just…be. Of course they’ll all be in the terrace come 17.15, baby swung in the air in the absence of a black and white scarf, or perhaps the baby will be wearing it? Pram thrown at the opposition goalkeeper, dog content with a hotdog and a scrap with a Metz supporting Dachshund. I comfort myself with these images, for the alternative is unsettling. I no longer blame my parents’ cat for wishing the family to all be in the same room all of the time because I realise that football supporters, in their own way, have the exact same mindset. One foot in the wrong direction is one too many. There is nothing else anybody could or should possibly be doing. We should all be going to the football. Where are your scarves and where is your Orangina?

    An hour or so later, I take the same walk back to the ground. Outside, there’s the deafening sound of stomping feet on the steel kop. The French, at the football, will do anything but clap. I imagine that they’d kiss the substitute on both cheeks if they could but ten thousand Angevines doing that would be entirely unpractical so the only viable solution is aggressive feet stomping. The problem is that when you’re a football fan, you start to think that everything is because of football. I wonder whether the stomping business is the reason they’re all so thin here. A lady asks me for my ticket and I react clumsily, distracted by my unseizing cultural reflections.

    Tonnes of stomping, tonnes of denim and three megaphones

    Angers are a decent side and a decent set up all in all. They’re punching above their weight in league 1 (although they’ve had a few stints up there since their formation in 1919) and this season they’re uncomfortably comfortably mid table. They welcome Metz, who haven’t won for four games and sit rock bottom of France’s top division. Yet the first ten minutes see chances for both sides; if Metz score first, we could have a game on our hands. That’s until the big stupid television gets involved and a Metz player is sent off for what looks to be a decent challenge. High? Probably. A sending off? I think most reasonable football fans would question whether it was even a foul. But we’re far from reasonable in the tribune Coubertin so we all go absolutely mental: tonnes of stomping. I say we: VAR is actually the only thing that will effectively regulate my treasonous ability to pretend to support another football club just because I happen to be living in the town. It’s an awful system wherever it’s used but in Ligue 1 they seem to use it about half an hour after the incident concerned took place and then take another half an hour to review it. “I wish that the French took as independent a view on VAR as they tend to on geopolitical matters of importance”, I think, and promptly decide to jump up and down on the rattling Pays de la Loire steel. Stomping? I can stomp alright. They’ll never know.

    The red card doesn’t help Angers. Metz, predictably, go very defensive and Angers are overcomplicating things. After their best spell yet, they go in front in the 25th minute. Metz must sense that the SCO aren’t at their best, because they come out with renewed vigour in the second half. A couple of gilt edged opportunities are missed and Angers, relieved, get all three points. Whether it was always going to be a tough day for Angers or that it was the unmerited red card which changed the mindset of the Angevins, I am not sure, but Metz look disappointed at full time.

    I will cautiously posit that if not for the early sending off, we could’ve had a game illustrative of Ligue 1’s chaotic panache. Yet it was regardless illustrative of something else: Ligue 1 was always known for its unpredictability, its unapologetic eccentricies and its flaws. I would suggest that introducing VAR into the league has, far from perfecting it, whatever that means, merely added another layer of chaos. Yet unpersonified, it is no longer quirky, no longer admirable. I have witnessed that very same effect on the Scottish Premiership. There are certain matches which make you forget but this was not one of them. When VAR intervenes so early, so chaotically and so arbitrarily, the chances are that the match itself will be undermined.

    Walking out into a chilly Angers, there’s an air of contentment which will carry us all back home. And it’s a good job. We stagger and dwindle because there is no longer a destination in mind. Tomorrow’s a Monday, after all. Like ourselves, thoughts of VAR linger. If it wasn’t for that, this moment would be perfect.

    He held this up for about 10 minutes.

  • Misguided adventures in Flanders

    I was recently asked to write a piece about literally anything for a journalism class. I admit that this blog is turning into visitbelgium and I concede that I am powerless to do anything about it.

    First, I saw it on a map. Poperinge: it rolled off the tongue. I’d been in Hazebrouck for a couple of weeks at this point, and my confidence was ever improving. With a Gallic shrug, I resolved. Somehow, I would get to Poperinge.

    My small northern French village was well connected. I was only a brisk 10 minute walk away from the train station. From there, one could go to Paris but that wasn’t an option for me, since I wasn’t going to the train station. Outside was the bus stop. I had never seen the 61 departing and for that reason I didn’t believe it did.

    With its cartoon like headlights, the number 61 wouldn’t have looked out of place on CBeebies.  It possessed a certain elegance and as I walked on, I could almost feel its iron construction struggling to give me a nod and a wink.

    I asked the driver for a ticket to Poperinge. A greying man with a friendly face replied that it would be two euros and that I could pay only by card, on the scanner behind me.

    I noted that he didn’t pronounce it in the Gallic way I did; not with the guttural R one would usually associate with the French language, but a softer rolled version. His G was equally surprising; not soft, but harsh, an abrupt release of air that I don’t think either of us expected.

    We winded through the Flanders countryside and the vista was predictably wonderful. We rolled through seemingly empty villages and to keep myself company I imagined them coming to life on a Sunday afternoon. Without characters, I didn’t believe they existed. Like figurines on a model railway, I concluded they’d be added eventually.

    All of a sudden, the dress code turned grey and the roads and buildings were happy to oblige. All around were corrugated iron buildings which could’ve been industrial beehives, yet just as much entirely hollow polygons housing nothing.

    Shocked, I began to wonder what Poperinge was: a slight town with picturesque alleys, or an ambiguous sprawling jungle where I would struggle to find pleasure? I didn’t hold my breath when we finally entered the slight town I’d desired. We’d passed through many a pleasant village, none of which were my destination.

    I only shuffled out of my seat on the sound of the engine turning off; here I was, in Poperinge.

    I hadn’t questioned that I was in a picture postcard northern French town; that’s what everything was up here. Yet, inside the Spar shop I’d entered in search of a lunch time snack, not everything was as expected. The alcohol section was vast, which was far from unusual, but the garish colours of the bottles and cans was striking. A tower of red Jupiler cans stood ominously. The voices around me sounded foreign. Was the lager skyscraper affecting the room’s acoustics?

    At the checkout, I realised that they were speaking a language more like English than French. The realisation that they were speaking Flemish and that I was in Belgium hit me with a thrilling flood of realisation. On leaving the premises, I noticed what I hadn’t noticed before. In front of me was the Belgian flag.

    I took full advantage of my bizarre predicament and went in search of the sort of divine obscurities one finds on an accidental bus trip to Belgium. In a stationery shop, I purchased a Tin Tin ruler and made plans to return for the expensive staplers. The shop lady told me of all the places I should travel to and insisted on noting these recommendations on a nice piece of paper.

    Outside of the shop, I saw that a green space had been furnished with large photos of people on colourful backgrounds. The elections had been a few months earlier and the faces of the more moderate candidates were only just starting to fade. The harsher ends of the political spectrum had been, well, treated more harshly.

    Down the road, I found myself in a tiny bar which seemed only to serve Jupiler. I took a half pint and watched the Brugge game as two younger members of their fan club fought on the table beside me. I didn’t quite know where I was, and that was alright.