As politics and the footie are two major components that contribute to my lack of personality and social skills, I've always scrambled around for any link - however tenuous - between football and politics; politics preferably with a lefty flavour.
In truth, it has largely been a fruitless search: An interview from a yellowing copy of the independent left journal, 'the Leveller', from the seventies revealed that Jackie McNamara* was from an old Red Clydeside family, and at the time of writing was a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain; One of the few times I bought a copy of the Grant/Woods paper Socialist Appeal** was because it carried an interview with Jorge Valdano, a member of Argentina's 1986 World Cup winning team***, and now something to do with Real Madrid. (I believe he's the bloke who has to write the press releases for when they get a new Head Coach. Trust me, it's a full time job.); and an SPGB comrade, then living in Lancaster, once claimed that the secretary of the Scottish PFA, Tony Higgins, was a Party sympathiser, but I think that roughly translated as he occasionally had a drink in the same pub as members of Glasgow Branch, and once mistook a SPGB leaflet for a beer mat.
Therefore, I was immediately intrigued when I first found out that Maoist politics came with Paul Breitner's Afro, sideburns and Zapata moustache in the mid-seventies when he was at the height of his footballing success with Bayern Munich and scoring in the 1974 World Cup final for Germany.
I probably first read about Breitner's claim to lefty fame in When Saturday Comes, or it might have been Stan Hey writing in the Guardian or, at a push, maybe even Danny Kelly mentioned it on the much missed 'Under the Moon', so when I spotted the above pic of Mr Breitner at home on the Leftist Trainspotters discussion list - hat tip to Johannes - it raised a wry smile.****
However, it turns out that perhaps Breitner's left reformism wasn't as deep rooted as the rolled down socks first suggests. Apart from promptly taking the Franco peseta by signing for Real Madrid immediately after the '74 World Cup, he also later committed that most henious form of apostasy for the seventies left when :
". . . before the 1982 Football World Cup (held in Spain) former "leftist" Breitner caused a major uproar in Germany when he accepted an offer by a German cosmetics company paying him the - what many Germans regarded at that time as a "scandalously high" - sum of 150.000 Deutschmark if he shaved off his fluffy full beard, used their fragrance and advertised for the company. For a lot of Germans the whole incident - being paid 150.000 Deutschmark for just shaving off a beard - was an obscene thing to do."
Wanker.
*McNamara is the father of Jackie McNamara, an excellent player for Celtic, before being unceromoniously dumped in Moulineux for some unknown reason. If I remember the interview rightly, McNamara Senior, who started his career at Celtic, claimed that he was shown the door at Parkhead because of his political views. He did go on to be a folk hero at Hibernian and, the last I heard, he was a Pub Landlord and a member of the Scottish Socialist Party. What with the mess that the SSP have currently spun themselves in over the Sheridan versus the News of the World libel action, I bet he could make a small fortune if he offered discounts on beer, spirits and hemlock to those customers able to show their SSP membership cards.
** If there was ever a magazine title that should be prosecuted under the trades description act . . .
*** If there was ever a World Cup winning "team" that could be prosecuted under the trades description act . . . Arguably, one of the few examples in the history of football where you can make a case that one man actually won the World Cup. Football is a team game, but in 1986 Argentina was a Maradona game.
**** Why the hell am I raising a wry smile at the thought and image of Breitner indulging in seventies radical chic? This brilliant footballer waves to the crowd and is rightly denounced as an arsehole, and there's me conjuring a whimsical post out of the fact that an exceptional talented footballer from the seventies also happened to indulge himself and his egomaniacal desire to wind people up by talking up a vicious regime that caused the death of millions of people. I'm an idiot sometimes.
