Football Poets

Nat Lofthouse
Bolton Wanderers
Patron saint
Of aerial combat
His tireless lion heart
Pursued lost causes
With the passion of St. Jude
And gave them all a home.

‘Trump Baby’
Pumped full of hot air
Blows football off the pages
Grabs the Ingerland press headlines
High Flyin’ in the London sunshine
A gargantuan blimp
In the best mode of Carnival
The crowd howls with […]

Gareth Southgate and his World Cup boys
Gave us an England free of snarling yobs
And instead a smile a hug a warm embrace
Of eternal hope over short lived hate
And the heart of football found its home
In a […]

The Welsh Spaniard now flown
Elegance of a Bolivian no.2 cigar
By his boots ye shall know him
Unlike lesser kings
Who chase the white rabbit of fame
Rangel found his aelwyd hearth
Within the grace of […]

The scent of the white owl cigar
Pervades the Firhill dugout
Of a different time and place
No fire without smoke

His name resolutely hewn
From the same immortal rock as
Shankly Busby Stein, football […]

I love Gareth Southgate’s M&S waistcoat
And Harry Kane’s (almost) golden boot
And Harry Maguire’s bullet head
But although we cry ‘God for Harry….’
I won’t say “Football’s Coming Home!”
Not no nae never, […]

Football loves its trinities
And like the Holy Ghost
Always feels more at home
When the other two are close

Hansen, Souness and Dalglish
Or the 3 Jocks as they’re known
Leaped right over Hadrian’s Wal […]

Who knows what will happen when England play Sweden
Nae more Turnips v Swedes that’s fae sure
And yon Southgate in his smart waistcoat
Put that ghost of ’96 to sleep
A lesson in patience resilience […]

The incredible Inexplicable
Unexplainable bewitching
Ineffable passion of football touches us all
In some way somehow somewhere
Bigger than @realDonaldTrump
Wilder than Rock & Roll
Bosser than […]

In the twist of human logic
Between the guilt of bloodied hands
Now points the finger of the truth and frees
The voice of 96 lost fans
When the stronger arm of Justice
Stretches longer than the law
There’s […]

Bowie in Berlin
Flew high from Low in Hansa
Nae mentioned Fußball.

Williams flips the bird
Nae rockin’ robin more t*t
Putin on the ritz!

Maradona magician with a neat sleight of hand
Moore quite immaculate the emperor commands
Beckenbauer libero the pitch in his boots
Zoff a colossus even Caesar salutes
Deschamps so graceful gave sight to the […]

The man in black
“The Octopus”
with the feline vertebrae
whose elastic muscles flexed
with lithe perfection
to slide through skin
into legend
smooth
like the decadent slide
of a jazz trombone.

In 1930 the World Cup was born
And its birth pangs sang its joy
Jules Rimet the midwife and nurse
The victors Uruguay

The strength of Meazza and Monti shone free
1934 in the glory that was Rome
Zamora and […]

There were so many roads home
For the brilliant Belfast boy
But the only real home for this
Dazzling swaggering wee genius
Was upon the football pitch
For here, and only here,
Let loose on those Elysian […]