Days of Iron

Profoundly envious of those making the trip tonight. Bugger depression for fucking me up so badly that I had to sacrifice the season ticket to stay afloat.

A few years ago I wrote this, as part of a  paying gig for one of WHU’s advisers. I was there for that goal:

It was football as poetry. At 3:10pm on Saturday 23 March 2000 Marc Vivian Foe played the ball out to Trevor Sinclair on the right wing. Sinclair’s lofted ball to the far side of the penalty box should have been straightforward for any reasonable player to trap and lay back into the box, for the advancing Frederick Kanoute.

Paolo Di Canio is not a reasonable footballer.

As the ball made its 35-yard flight, Di Canio slipped past the retreating Wimbledon defenders, never taking his eye of it. Near the far edge of the box, about twelve yards from the touchline, he leapt into the air, adjusting his balance constantly – while in the air – and struck the ball on the volley with the outside of his right foot. It flew just inside the far post. To Hammers fans it will always be “That goal”. More than 25,000 of them gasped in astonishment, before exploding into wild cheering.

It’s that gasp, as people tried to work out what they had just seen, that those who were there remember.

Anyway this is lovely and the best of many videos from people exorcising their sadness:

And this is wonderful, via David Squires at the Guardian: Designing Herbie The Hammer, and other stories.