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Seville

Mark Thornhill

Thursday, May 22nd, 2003

1 Leave a comment on verse 1 0 Seville
was art Deco and Alenichev
five great goals
two headers from the immortal Swede
on a patchwork pitch
where Bobo saw red
and O’Neill had a couple of dugout fits.

2 Leave a comment on verse 2 0 Big Rab
Agathe et al
toughed it out in a hundred degrees
where Porto’s goalie looked more like a jogger
and the fumbling ref
blew the whistle up every diver’s ass
with enough minutes between spot kicks
to boil a kettle.

3 Leave a comment on verse 3 0 Extra time
visions in green
inspired quotes on the BBC
the obligatory streaker
sombrero fallouts
and a bumper week for air travel

4 Leave a comment on verse 4 0 In fact
I heard it was taxi hell
as two-thirds of Glasgow cabbies went AWOL
and sparked a run on pint glasses.

5 Leave a comment on verse 5 0 And in the Estadio Olimpico
enough hoops
laid end to end
to reach the moon and back
via the hero-worship school playgrounds of the East End
but with no length to spare
to snare
the silver goal.

6 Leave a comment on verse 6 0 This poem was destined
to have an unsatisfactory ending.

Notes

written the morning after the UEFA Cup final.

Source: http://footballpoets.org/poems/seville/