Football Poets

England – Brazil

¶ 1 Leave a comment on verse 1 0 So here’s the deal
Football’s Harlem Globetrotters
Are in town over the weekend
Art and beauty
Merge as one
A splash of yellow
Across football’s
Kaleidoscope of vivid
Colours
Brazil, yes Brazil
Footballing royalty
Gracing the most
Exalted stage
The country who
Once left you spellbound
When a child of nature
Searching for a meaning
And finding fields of
Lace and silk in
Filigree finery
Brazil flaunting majestic
Purple and ermine
Cloaks of greatness
Defying similes and analogies
Metaphors and verbs
Animated adverbs
Pungent pronouns
In 1970, a sudden
Awareness of style
Serial World Cup winners
Adored by the purists
Classical exponents of the
The Beautiful Game
At its most aesthetic
Gerson, Tostao, Rivelino,
Pele surely pre-eminent
Carlos Alberto, what a goal!
Sending palpitations through
Our breathless heartbeats
Like oil paintings and
Watercolours
Degas and Matisse visiting
Sao Paolo and the
Copacabana just for a while
This was our first glimpse
Of genius incarnate
From far off Mexico
When commentators sounded
As if they were reporting
From another planet
Brazil though
Parodies of their former selves
Perhaps
In 1974, 78, and 82
Although Zico made us swoon
With delicious delight
Socrates of course the
Cerebral, thought provoking one
But now it’s Lucas Pacqueta
Live from the East End
Claret and blue imagery
Although on Saturday
Inheriting the mantle of
His wonderful predecessors
Rodri of City
Supple and subtle
As they come
Touch and vision
Inked in his soul
Naturally inventive
Always picturing in his mind
Almost instantaneously
The geography of goal, net
And post, etched in his mind
Passing to melt your heart
Foreknowledge and
Male intuition
Wit, guile and craft
Second nature
To any Brazilian
Sensing goals from
Far off districts
Postcodes and continents
But English observers
Will hug to themselves
The slinky, weaving,
Jinking and dinking
John Barnes
In the Maracana
Adopting the samba
From his opponents
For 90 minutes of
Dancing before slicing
Through Brazilian defenders
Pirouetting on fleet of feet
As if privately longing to play
For those South American
Sorcerers
Before scoring that
Heavenly goal
England against Brazil
A friendly in name
But a springtime herald
On our early morning window
Where daffodils lean across
And wave to passing humanity
A picturesque potpourri
Of football at its
Most scented and perfumed
With the loveliest of smells
The essentials of feathery
Touches and latticework of
Passing patterns
Wembley can hardly wait

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