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Poems tagged ‘Football’

Top of the Premier League albeit briefly

joe morris

Saturday, September 2nd, 2023

Oh for the heady aroma of
Being top of the Premier League
The best team in the Football League
West Ham United
But albeit so sadly briefly
It was always the story
Once top of the old First Division
During the 1970s
How golden was that 12 hour sojourn
We had a riotous party
To celebrate its brevity
As opposed to its longevity
City back in charge
Pep in command of fate
Oh the familiarity of it all
But the claret and blue
Troops will soldier on
Heroically
You could never fault them
For that
Continue David Moyes

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Erling Haaland

joe morris

Wednesday, August 30th, 2023

Erling Haaland
The ultimate accolade
Recognised by his admiring
Peers, colleagues united
In mutual appreciation
PFA men’s players player
Of the year
Tungsten steel and thunder
In his centre forward’s boots
Manchester City’s inimitable one
A goal machine
Firing and sparking
On jet propelled heels
With electrifying speed
Goals like a million raindrops
Pouring down from tearful Manchester
Skies far from the limit
You can imagine Big Mal
Malcolm Allison puffing
Havana cigars, celebrating
The Norwegian Viking ransacking
The lands and penalty areas
Of old First Division havens
Joe Mercer and John Bond
Heartily giggling in remote
Hard bitten dug outs
What a find, a gem,
Haaland, a Norwegian nugget
A diamond for years to come
Never to lose his lustre
City fans besotted by their
Latest pin up boy
He’d have been idolised
At Anfield, Old Trafford,
Highbury and White Hart Lane
Haaland would have gorged on
Second and third helpings of
Goals, cracked and thumped home
Clinically, shamelessly
In the eternal mud of the 1970s
At least 40 or 50 from head and feet
Handsomely and exquisitely
Bouncing off Chopper Harris,
Dave Mackay, Norman Hunter’s shins
With effortless effrontery
How dare he?
Hurdling bloodthirsty tackles,
Shrugging off the red blooded
Savagery of the hard men
The men who stood for no nonsense
Murder in their eyes
But never in their heart
Then the flaxen blond Haaland
Scored again and again
A striker of peerless power
Prominent always on the score sheet
The centre forward defenders
Loathe and dread for 90 minutes
And then injury time that now
Seems to last for eternity
Until late night dinners beckon
Erling Haaland now striving to
Match his gold embossed predecessor
Aguero, a goal scorer from his cot
Goals by the gallons
Upon the final blast of the referee’s whistle
When City won their first Premier League
In modern times
And Manuel of Chile
Worked his mastery
From the first kiln of clay
Now though Erling Haaland
Accepts the bouquets of praise
With petals of approbation
Fluttering in the Etihad breeze
Haaland a phenomenon
From Pep’s encyclopaedic mind
Not so much a discovery
More of a birthday present
Celebrated like the Messiah
Goals for breakfast, lunch and tea
Players player of the year
The PFA acknowledges your charm
Offensive
Here and now
Your colleagues revere
Who you are, targets
Achieved and broken
Records
There is so much more to come
Perpetual petrol in his tank
Beware the City bolt of lightning
Striking 52 so far
We can only assume a century
Is in his insatiable hunger
Haaland, this boundless appetite
Glutton but not for punishment
A glorious gourmand
Who always eats his greens
Erling goals in his blood
Pumping and pulsing again

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The Women’s World Cup Final

joe morris

Sunday, August 20th, 2023

So here we are
Over the hills and moors
Village post offices
Spiritual churches,
Lighthouses at sea
Monumental mountains
Towering and glowering
In the murky mists
The ladies are in the
World Cup Final
England awaits
Its epic narratives
Spreading their comfort
Blankets across the land
We can sense and then
Hear these memorable trumpets
Victorious and charging
Across tumultuous skies
Soaring over the Lake District
And then plunging into
The Pennines where even
Excitable gulls
Can hardly contain their
Vocal expectation
Girls will seize the day
A pall of embarrassment
Falls forlornly
Across the male machismo
This has to be the moment
When icons are born
Back page heroes
And femininity rules
Lads, chaps this is
One in the eye for you
How joyously aware we are
Of our faults and foibles
Are we ready to hold
Our heads shamefully
Behind a veil of self consciousness?
Curtains and living rooms
With nothing to disguise the hurt
And pain stretching across
Sorrowful eyes
Piteous cries of why?
Hoping that none will see us
Now shifting uneasily
Hiding privately
In remote corners
Oh woe. Men of England
It’s 57 years since Bobby
From Barking lifted the male
World Cup
Nothing since then
But the ladies do it overnight
No doubts, no hesitation or
Deviation.
European Champions
A year ago
Now and world champions
Quite possibly today
Soon to be revealed
Gentlemen be prepared
To hide behind sofas
And settees again
Dazed and dumbfounded
Before accepting the status quo
Reduced to a quivering wreck
Anything they can do
The girls can do infinitely
Better
Silenced by the passage of time
57 years of satire, figures of fun
Laughingly lampooned by the great
And the good
Parodied mercilessly by
Innumerable comedy wordsmiths
But the girls can be
World Champions with
A flourish of fanfares
Down Under
Aussies finally
Accepting defeat
After Ashes cricket
Had been rammed down
English throats
Quite decisively
Only a Spanish armada
Stand between
English battalions
On the horizon
Ready to Ole and
Then stylish siestas
England, World Champions
For 1966, read 2023
Decades of emptiness
Finally lifted
Come on Lionesses

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Citizen Kane

joe morris

Saturday, August 12th, 2023

Oh Citizen Kane,
Harry Kane
Bayern Munich bound
A penny for the
Thoughts of
Orson Wells
From way back when
When Hollywood
Revelled in its golden
Age. Yes movie magic
But for now Kane
Is destined for
The land of efficiency
Teutonic thoroughness
Leaving his boyhood idols
Behind him with a shrug
Of regret perhaps
Spurs he knew from his cradle
But needs must
Football’s imperatives
A trophy in his cabinet
It always seemed to slip away
From Citizen Kane
Never quite there
On the threshold of something
Big, loaded with significance
Triumphant boulevards of
The Seven Sisters Road
Never quite seemed to fit
Harry Harry Kane
So the choristers at Spurs
Chanted with such powerful
Abandon
He was one of our own
But now no longer
Citizen Kane
Tireless but fruitless
In North London streets
And avenues
But never an FA Cup
Or Premier League
The agonising questions
On the cusp of Champions League
Glory, glory glory
But not, so near but far
For the boys at White Hart Lane
The club he worshipped from
Tender youth
That Spurs academy
That gave him the
Foundation stone
This was the club
Of Perryman, Knowles,
Hoddle, Ardilles and
Villa, Dyson, White
And Greaves
Engraved with royal
Inscriptions
Footballing knights
Of the realm
Blessed with all the
Faculties and gifts
Galore
This morning though
Harry Kane
Opens up another page
The home of Breitner,
Beckenbauer, Muller
Who once embellished
Our thoughts
Of German supremacy
When World Cups
Came so naturally to them
Bayern Munich
At one point
Unsurpassable,
Unbeatable, a force of nature
Then slumps and sloughs of Despond
Defeat would become
As an electric shock
To their system
Bayern Munich
Those European giants
Still slumbering
For a while
But Citizen Kane
From Tottenham Hotspur
Will be among us
Among German terraces
We wish you well

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The Community Shield- football again, definitely.

joe morris

Wednesday, August 2nd, 2023

You can feel it in the bones
Your red and white blood cells
Your leucocytes, your hormones
And chromosomes
Football in your face again
Overwhelmingly in
Charge of proceedings
Half times, kick offs
Corner kicks and free kicks
Choreographed in
August’s traditional paraphernalia
Its ornate embroidery of the
Unexpected
And then it hits you again
The Community Shield
This weekend
The enchanting curtain raiser
Formerly of course
The Charity Shield
When, in the green fields
Of notoriety,
Billy and Kevin once
Came face to face
With each other
Burning with fury
Animated with animosity
Shoving, pushing, staring
Deep into red retinas
Eye balling with genuine
Hatred, comical aggression
Worthy of Chaplin or Keaton
Then Bremner and Keegan
Storm away with righteous indignation
Electrical sparks of loathing
Shirts whipped off revealing
The Bremner freckles and the
Keegan hair predating the Hamburg
Afro, coinciding
With Our’Enry Cooper’s after shave
It was another microcosm of
The 1970s fashion fest
The 1974 FA Charity Shield
When humanity was much more benevolent
And Mud were simply clean
Leeds and Liverpool
It still occupies
A perfect corner of your
Saturday night nostalgic
Match of the Day mind
And so the nation braces
Itself for fun, frivolity,
Players and managers with
Understandable egos and pretensions
A Premier League season
The bagatelle of joy, pain,
Heartache, heads bowed and then
Lifted by false hopes
City and Arsenal
Back in the molten lava
Of fierce competition
Going hell for leather
Hammer and tongs
Jabs and tentative hooks
At first. Then vital points
Are accumulated, then thrown
Away, away, lost in the moment
Arsenal determined to get it right
This time
Rice, stiffening up the Gooners
Defence and attack
With insane millions weighing
Like the heaviest burden of all time
Pep at City has nothing to prove
Aiming for the stars for the quartet
Of the Premier League title
Champions League champions
That’s engraved into football’s
Fabled heritage,
Incomparably so
So Liverpool, Manchester United,
Chelsea and of course Arsenal
Your gauntlet has been laid down
Accept the challenge
It’s football again

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Sponsored friendly games

joe morris

Tuesday, July 18th, 2023

You must remember the
Frisson of anticipation
Football once again
Feverish always
Champing at the bit
Longing for its quaintness
The Texaco Cup, the Watney Cup
Football’s pre-season frivolity
The games that may have passed
Over our heads
But were just there
Ludicrous in their
Insignificance
Rather like training ground
Exercises without any point
Or purpose
Tacked onto the end of summer
Like the fading breezes
That once stiffened our sinews
And heightened the senses
For opening day of the season
Contests of football’s August
First chapter and
Level playing grounds
The Watney Cup
Questions abound
As to origin and provenance
Football briefly under the influence
Of alcohol but somehow
Unconnected to anything in particular
Nothing concrete, almost abstract
Important for those who were concerned
But never registering on anybody’s radar
A convenient excuse
For footballers to stretch calves and legs
Top up the swarthy holiday tan
Gingerly tickle football’s funny bone
Tentative introductions to a football
After a three month hiatus
Hop, skip and jump
Keepie up indulgences
Your weekly heroes
Have still got it you know
No ring rust there
But have they got a Texaco Cup
Winners medal in their cupboard?
Surely a glaring omission
The oil and petrol of their lives
Or some such accolade
Then there was the Watney Cup
From whom none of us can imagine why
It ever existed
Then there was the Anglo Italian Cup,
The Makita Cup and then
During football term time
The Zenith Data Systems Cup,
The Sinod Cup, the Milk Cup,
The Littlewoods Cup
Football shaking hands with
Rampant commercialism
Eyes lighting up with wads
Of delirious cash
But then we giggled at
Its summery futility
Or maybe not
Oh football so friendly
To one and all.

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Declan Rice- the summer break

joe morris

Saturday, July 8th, 2023

Declan Rice
For £105 million
I know, it’s an obscenity
A crime against humanity
Millions of starving children
Pleading for their next meal
Football lining its pockets
Once again
Grossly underfunded hospitals
Aching under the weight of it all
A crying shame
And football just sits in its
Avaricious seat, swimming in greed
While the world looks around
In forlorn need
Money leaves its faintly repulsive
Stench, stink, oblivious to
The rest of society
Football is no longer the rattle
And scarf game.
For our community, your market
Your town, the village
You grew up in
The street we played
With rags amid flickering
Orange lamps
And mums scrubbing doorsteps
Proudly folding arms
As their little boy sprinted
Across the cobblestones
Swerving and darting past
Defenders as if they were
Just invisible and apparitions
Back then the kids
With dirty, filthy faces
And tank tops with sweaty
Feelings and sentiments
Head towards arrivals and destinations
Destiny and fate await them
Their club, their crest and badge
On the opening day of the season
Just over a month to go
Before the children of the world
Converge on the terraces
Again, again
But way back then
The kids of the summer
Kicked and tackled
To their hearts content
Smudged faces, greasy hair
A mess and mass of dishevelled
Delight, deliriously unaware
Of mum’s despairing plea
To come in now son
Tea’s ready kids
For in 1950s Britain
You could still hear
The stentorian roar
Of industry, the factory
Horn blasting almost
Incessantly
But they played on
No mobile phones or
I Pads then
Just gleeful simplicity
Kids wearing summer shorts
Grubby as the socks
And shoes with holes
But none of them cared
Scurrying and scampering
The tempo of their times
Crying out for the reverse
Pass inside the full back
There were none of those distractions
That hampered our stride
Football was street football
Before you were born
Yelling, voices bouncing
With complete freedom and
Lovable buoyancy
Across back to back smart
Terraced houses
No TV aerials and Sky
To furnish our neatly knit
Living rooms in those days
Throughout those summers
Pools Coupons were always
Ready for completion
When dad settled down for
Egg omelette on Saturday
Evening and we knew
Where we stood
Trundling trams and trolley buses
Now rumbling into the past
For Dixon of Dock Green
Read Declan Rice
In the characteristic 21st
Century swing
Football, a barely heard whisper
Training for new season
Against picture postcard
Mountainous backdrops
Bibs and vests for company
Stretching rusty limbs
Leg kicks, short, sharp sprints
Giggling through the pain
Quick passing jabs and flicks
In circular games
Then for the claret and blue
Geographies, short and long
Distances, Rush Green
For the Hammers
While football bathes in
Its sultry July warmth
Declan Rice
How we miss you
Farewell now
But permanently in our
Hearts
Arsenal you have our blessing
But we’ll see you again

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No football for a while

joe morris

Wednesday, July 5th, 2023

The world is still, silent
Sleeping peacefully
On echoing terraces
Where once the loud and tribal
Voices of unrest and agitated
Thoughts thrust out the arias
Of victory and defeat
Now reduced to whispers
No longer the influential mob
The collective approval
And disapproval
Football now in reflective mood
Contemplating its navel
While the Beautiful Game
Takes a back seat
To the resounding cracks
Of red ball and willow
The Lord’s Test match
Ashes burnt through the ages
Billionaire burnished egos
On sun coated islands
Global havens
Where football’s summer
Beach boys
Quite possibly
Good vibrations
During July vacations
Now Premier League playboys
Or just studious when
Tactics and formations
Were just yesterday’s news
Now football on the side lines
Taking a welcome breather
Against the idyllic backdrop
Of Wimbledon’s tennis
Easy going gentility
Its temporary statesmanship
During the summer lull
While football nurses wounds,
Battered tendons, hurt pride
The close season
Now reverting to the charming
Language of closing in on
New signings, advanced talks
Yet more rousing rhetoric
Constant communication
Then the endless round of
Friendlies, good natured
Knockabouts.
Then the alleged medicals
The knotty negotiations,
Discussions and formalities
For this is football today
Mind blowing millions
Declan sadly leaving his
Claret and blue nest
For the graceful Gunners
£105 million, surely not
Tom Finney must be weeping
In his grave
Mourning the loss of the
Innocent and unsullied
When football and plumbers
Shared the same journey
To thousands of grounds
Maybe a thought or two
For newly promoted Leyton
Orient
Luton Town in the limelight
For the first time since
David Pleat galloped across
Maine Road and Happy Harry
Haslam smiled through
The gritted teeth of
Obscenely expensive players
Breaking the glass ceiling
For Orient and Luton
Are football’s whimpering
Underdogs, capable
Of miraculous feats
Then painfully aware of
Their station in football’s
Natural order of things
Think for a while
Of course
About seaside salubrious
Southend United
Once of the Football League
Now no more than some passing
Stranger, wandering through
The bleakness of Non League
Anonymity, swallowed
By all enveloping mists
Of sombre auras
Unforgiving wastelands
In the middle of nowhere
But Manchester City
At the other end of the
Spectrum
Find themselves poised
To complete a sensational
Quartet of Premier League
Titles
While Arsenal, Manchester United,
Liverpool and Spurs
Surround City
Hunting in packs
Ready to pounce on a minute’s
Vulnerability
Concentrate instead
On payment structures
August again
When the game unwinds
Its rested torsos
On billiard table pitches
And yet on thick, lush
Grass for the season’s duration
No longer the allotment sites
We used to mock from near and far
Football, just over a month
Away from saturation coverage
On Tablets, TV and social media
Drenching our coffee tables
With gallivanting gossip
Across Sunday morning’s seething
Rumour factory
City or Arsenal?
It could be either
Local derbies with
Spice and steel
Crashing, clashing
Long held feuds
Deep set, traditional
Rivalries, rampant
Passions, then a
Refreshment or two
To soothe a fevered brow
But football at the moment
Quiet as a summer meadow
Where only buttercups glow
And corn fields reside
While centre halves and forwards
Plan their agendas
On lofty hills far and wide
Managers moan and groan
It could only be football
Shortly, again

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Autism FC

joe morris

Wednesday, June 28th, 2023

So here I am
First name on
The team sheet
Autism FC
Bursting with
Pride and satisfaction
Gratitude for who I am
The same as you
But different mindsets
Initially out on the wing
Then marginalised
By those who felt
I was surplus to requirements
A lonely child
But still in the manager’s plans
Free scoring in the reserves
But rejected as a defensive
Midfielder who sat back
And just surveyed, analysed
The wider picture
Those diagrams that made no sense
Diamond formations
Pressing high up the field
Dropping back again
Cautiously, carefully
Don’t risk the lethal counter attack
For I’m Autistic
And the game has geometries
That look like misshapen angles
But at the Higher End
Of Aspergers, the game
Has clarity and transparency
Structure and routine
The Beautiful Game
Indeed it is
Art on all its surfaces
Textures, deep within
For once there used to be
Empty playgrounds of your youth
During summer’s rehabilitation
You kicked your ball against
Concrete, soulless walls
Content with who you were
While rationalising with the world
Bloody Vietnam, the IRA
But you were on your own
Pretending to be Latchford,
Keegan, Francis, Barnes
And Coppell
Repeatedly and persistently
Striving for acceptance
And not knowing why
No care or concern
Since Autism was now your forte
Masquerading as one of Ron’s
22
A World Cup maestro
Dribbling through canopies
Of flailing legs, tackling
With your undiagnosed issues
Autism FC,
Your world was not theirs
But still you were left
With timeless images
Of goals that left us
Breathless, injury time
Winners when all hope
On the pitch seemed lost
You stood defiantly on
The Hammers South Bank
Oblivious to voices
Of meaningless defeat
And boundless joy
When FA Cups were won
In 1975 and 1980
Autistic in your heart,
Kidneys, liver, blood
Cells of red and white
You never questioned why
For life is precious
And sweet as candy
I recognise me
From a mile away
Left back, right back
Overlapping boldly
Into the unconquered
Territories
Hit it from 35 yards
And never be afraid
To venture into those
Autistic lands
Where nobody had marked you
Volleyed wondrously
From distance
Into goal after goal
Autism rules
I’ll always be who
You are
Let’s celebrate

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City, City, treble winners

joe morris

Sunday, June 11th, 2023

Oh City, City
Maine Road seems
Like only yesterday
But now Pep
Delivers the ultimate
Talk
Champions League winners
Yes emphatically the treble
Is yours
Trophy hunters
Par excellence
The best of the west,
The rest, the definitive
Test,
Turkish delight
By the Bosphorus
Istanbul acclaims
Its sweetest confection
And to think
It was Gillingham
At Wembley
When everything
Looked so bleak
During that distant week
But now it’s Manchester City
Kings of Europe
Finally at long last
What a blast
Inter Milan though
Disciplined as the British
Army. Attention!
Throw barbed wire
Across the City
Platoon of well drilled
Soldiers, stampeding, then
Gracefully tip toeing
Across and around
The Milan cavalry
Last night City had
To do it the hard way
For Milan threw the most
Stifling blanket
Over the City showmen
Unyielding to the bitter end
Pestering, surrounding, blocking
The Manchester guardsmen
War of attrition
City pickpocketed on more
Than one occasion
And even Lukaku almost
Broke the iron clad
Light blue and white
Resistance
Somewhere you could
Hear Joe Mercer and
Malcolm Allison
Chuckling into their
Half lager and scotch
Dug out legends pleased
As Punch
If only the City of old
Bell, Lee, Summerbee
The holy trinity
Could have been there
To witness City’s
Stylistically perfect
Entertainers
Or maybe they were
But failed to tell us
So Rodri scored the clincher
And milked the plaudits
The winner does indeed
Take it all
Blue Moon, City
Blue Moon City
History opens its
Doors again
For Manchester United
Read Manchester City
A hat-trick of footballing mastery
The Treble
It hardly seems possible
But take a bow
Gentlemen
You deserve it

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Source: http://footballpoets.org/news/poem-tags/football/page/2/