The humiliation of being the last person picked for a team tends to stay with you
HARRY PEARSON COLUMN
Earlier this month my mum handed me a large orange carrier bag containing traces of my life. Among the contents was Bobby Charlton’s 1968 autobiography This Game of Soccer, which I ordered with my seventh birthday money. It was the first grown-up book I ever read. Not that I confined myself to simply reading it. Dissatisfied with the oblique style of the author’s captions I filled in missing information, so that the photo showing the England No 9 about to unleash one of his thundering shots titled simply “The famous left foot in action” has “Bobby Charlton (man utb)” written next to it in pencil. The photos throughout are in black and white except for the ones that have been “hand-tinted” using crayons (a lack of a light blue plainly the explanation for Manchester City’s mint green shirts).
It wasn’t just me who made reading the book an interactive experience either. On the diagram showing the team formation for the World Cup final, for example, somebody – probably my friend Deano who was a year older than me and had the burgeoning self-confidence that comes with being eight – has written “is pumpy” next to the name “Hunt”.
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