Polly's Pause for Poetry: Part I

'Variety is the spice of life', or so the saying goes. With that in mind I am happy to say that Polly's Pause for Sport is offering something quite different for its latest post. While I have been writing a couple of pieces for backpagefootball.com and lesrosbifs.net (those posts, or links to them, will follow later this week), Pardaad Chamsaz has been on hand to offer us the first in what will hopefully be a series of poetic insights into the game of football. Whilst you may gasp at the concept of poetry and football, I would hope that we are all able to stray from the stereotypical view of the football fan as a primitive creature... at least for long enough to read this piece. Enjoy.

The fur-coated dictator peers out onto the smooth green-felted surface he has just acquired.

He thinks of the nights of gambling ahead, the dollars, yens, roubles he will throw down – and how much he will leave with.

Through the window he sees the cameras staring back from the opposite side, hundreds of them, focused on the empty green below.

The line of cameras divide the thousands of empty plastic seats from the rooms above, like the one he is in.

I need more, he thinks.

More.

In front of his reflection, the front-page star adjusts his appearance hair by hair.

He has never, and never will, employ himself better.

He will retire soon after all. Not long now, he thinks.

He dreams of his emancipation from the production line, the release from the 3 – 5 on Saturdays. He packs his uniform in his leather hold-all and heads for work

– his driver has just arrived.

Like an academic, the “tactician” loses himself in piles of paper and reads his scribblings by lamplight.

He studies the back pages and throws down the paper, the rest blow to the ground, where they stay.

They are all untouched anyway, untouched templates, untouched formations of that familiar game.

Everything sacrificed for profitable reputational gain.

Instead he picks up the newspaper once more.

The weekend has arrived for the regular – he is there every week.

Handing over what remains of his pay slip at the gate he enters his second home and heads to the bar.

It is midday.

Four hours later he stands inside and watches the spectacle. It is not a game any more, he says.

He sits down for the rest of the hour and looks at his half-arsed heroes play.

The pitch lights up with the sporadic sparks from the cameras.

Adverts dominate his view.

This used to be real, he says.

Now he watches a show, an episode of a long-running show that has no longer any semblance of what it was before.

He leaves.

They won.