Fitba Hell

I CUT a pathetic figure on Boxing Day. Stranded in rural Ireland with nary an internet connection nor Radio Scotland reception in reach, I had only one way of keeping up with the Aberdeen score. While others supped hot port in front the Cary Grant matinee, I spent the best part of the afternoon glued to Ceefax, page 321.

There's a minimalist pleasure in watching the changing football scores on teletext. You turn the TV onto mute and settle down with a paper, glancing up now and again to see how things are going. It means you don't to put up with prattling pundits, instead enjoying a purer type of commentary. All you are told is when goals are scored, who scored them, and whether anyone has missed a penalty or been sent off. It's a surprisingly efficient way of conveying the excitement of a game: its twists and turns pop up on screen without warning, lending a sense of chaotic excitement to an afternoon lounging on the settee.

That's unless your team is turning in the latest of a series of embarassingly inept displays. Then, your chosen way of passing the afternoon is thrown into stark and unsympathetic relief, no less arcane an activity than shivering on a remote railway platform for hours in hope of glimpsing rare serial numbers on passing freight trains. On Boxing Day I spent the afternoon learning that Aberdeen were to be thumped 3-1 by Motherwell. The news of each goal hit me like a pixellated gob of disdain.

ONE of the most peculiar words used to deride a Scottish footballer is 'fancy'. It's a word that, going by the definition in the Chambers dictionary, sounds quite alluring: "Capriciously departing from the ordinary, the simple, or the plain." When spat out by a disgruntled season-ticket holder at Pittodrie, however, it takes on a new form.

"Dinna try ony o' that fancy rubbish," is a phrase I've heard intermittently throughout my football-watching days, always directed at one of the more skilful players on the pitch. It betrays a distrust for the the fleet-footed and the nimble; Scottish football supporters have more admiration for for the battlers and the triers. Watch football abroad and you won't hear the same lusty roar of appreciation you get in Scotland for a player who's sprinted 50 yards to make a sliding tackle and put the ball into touch. Tension levels rise among Scottish fans when a player tries to hold onto the ball, to probe, to outwit an opponent. If that same player manages to keep possession, the applause that follows is born as much of relief as appreciation.

Two of the most revered Aberdeen players of the modern era are Neil Simpson and Lee Richardson, names that are often cited on fans' message boards to contrast the feckless displays of today's Dons squad. Richardson is an odd choice of hero. He was only at Pittodrie for 18 months in the early 90s, during which time the team won not a single trophy. Yet his tenacity, hard-tackling and notoriety - Richardson felt his combative style made him a marked man among referees - ensured that, in Kevin Stirling's history of Aberdeen FC, Richardson was in a very short list of players rated by fans as the best of all time.

Compare Hicham Zerouali, easily the most naturally gifted footballer I have witnessed in an Aberdeen shirt: he had to die in a car crash to earn the same level of adulation. Zerouali had astonishing ball control, scored spectacular goals and sparked an audible crackle of excitement when he took to the pitch. But he was also sulky and liable to disappear from games if the mood took him. When he was hauled off at half-time in his final game for Aberdeen, after a dismal performance against Dundee in 2002, few tears were shed. He was talented, yes, but not a team-player; that was the consensus I heard at Dens Park that day. Only at a memorial service two-and-a-half years after he left the club, when he was venerated in a video that replayed his many breathtaking goals on endless loop, was he elevated to more than an interesting footnote in the club's history.

Scots are stubbornly Calvinist in their faith in the work ethic, and the football pitch is no exception. In other countries, the No 10 shirt is a gift bestowed upon a playmaker - a Hagi, a Maradona, a Stojkovic - but it doesn't carry the same significance here. This season Aberdeen handed the No 10 shirt to Darren Mackie, a local boy who runs fast and tries hard, but offers little more. The symbolism is fitting.

ANDY Walsh doesn't go to Old Trafford anymore. He was a Manchester United season-ticket holder for years and recalls the Law, Best and Charlton era with a hushed reverence that borders on the religious. But he doesn't go to Old Trafford now because he got fed up. He became uneasy as the Stretford End's atmosphere was dowsed by all-seater rules and the pursuit of corporate bucks. He was irked by a new and inaccessible training park that symbolised the increasing distance between player and fan. And he decided he'd had enough when an American family decided to offset its debt by taking over a dinky little soccer club across the Atlantic.

Andy now follows the newly FC United of Manchester, a team he formed with other disaffected Manchester United fans last summer, and of which he is general manager. The side plays 10 leagues below his old team and attract crowds of 4,000, dwarfing the gates of their opponents. He was interviewed on Radio 4 yesterday, and expressed no regret that he'd sacrificed the annual pursuit of Premiership and European glory for the muddy toils of the lower leagues. It wasn't about the winning, he explained, it was about the lifelong bond that existed between a fan and a club. The problem was that Andy just didn't recognise the same club he'd started supporting decades before.

On Monday, I didn't watch the Scottish football highlights. The SPL had reverted to predictable type: Rangers and Celtic won, Hearts and Hibs stumbled. The season to that point had the been the most exciting in more than a decade, despite my own team's unremitting mediocrity, but the old patterns had re-emerged and I headed to bed early.

The interview with Andy Walsh made me reassess things. I can turn up at Pittodrie five to three (usually on a Saturday) and get a seat near the half-way line. It's on the expensive side, but if I sacrifice that DVD I was thinking about buying I've just about got the ticket price. Were I a few years younger, I might go down during the week and watch the players train on the open spaces of Seaton Park or Balgownie. I can speculate that Stewart Milne only got involved at Pittodrie because he saw an opportunity for his mass-produced homes, but I won't deny that our chairman grew up just a few miles from Aberdeen and can reasonably claim to have been a lifelong Dons supporter.

The standard and competitiveness of Scottish football have plummeted since my first game in 1980, but in many ways things haven't changed all that much at Aberdeen FC. The Andy Walshes of the north-east of Scotland are still to be found at Pittodrie.

THE kicking of the ball from play whenever an opponent develops the faintest semblance of an injury is one of the great irritants of modern football. Last night Inter Milan's players went apoplectic after one of their number fell to the ground and Rangers had the temerity to continue playing. When the game eventually stopped, TV cameras zoomed in on a sheepish-looking Chris Burke being subjected to an ostentatious display of finger-jabbing by his opponents.

Yet Rangers were right to play on. If an injury requires the game to be stopped, the referee should make that decision. It's a relatively recent custom for opposing players to put the ball out, and what started out as a well-meaning gesture has mutated into a travesty of sportsmanship; instead, it's often a cynical tactic designed to disrupt the flow of a game.

The clearest proof of this I have witnessed came in a bizarre match between Aberdeen and Dundee back in 2000. Dundee were in the midst of Italian manager Ivano Bonetti's honeymoon period, as pundits fixated on the glamour of extravagant signings like Claudio Cannigia - who made his debut at Pittodrie that day - rather than the inevitable downfall that was to follow such profligacy.

They also glossed over the less savoury aspects of the game imported by Bonetti - including the abuse of their opponents' goodwill. In the game in question, a Dundee player went down in apparent agony after about 10 minutes and Aberdeen duly kicked the ball out to allow treatment. The same thing happened about 10 minutes later, and again 10 minutes after that. Each time the break in play ended with a Dundee player bouncing back to his feet, only for a team-mate to plunge to the turf 10 minutes later. By full-time you could set your watch by the regular tumbles.

Dundee won a turgid game 2-0, but the abiding memory was of Aberdeen's young team looking flummoxed as yet another player lay on the pitch. They tapped the ball out each time, frustrated by the obvious time-wasting tactics but unwilling to break a taboo and retain possession. In doing so, they were outwitted by wily opponents and allowed the referee that day to abdicate his responsiblity to control the game.

As it turned out, the Inter player who writhed on the Ibrox pitch last night was genuinely injured. No matter - the Rangers players are to be congratulated for breaking with a pointless and abused convention.

GEORGE Best was the greatest of all footballers, or so it's been claimed in the days since his death. Pele himself said so, as we've been reminded ad nauseam.

Puskas, di Stefano, Cruyff, Platini, Maradona and Zidane are just a few of those who might beg to differ. But any attempt to rank such greats is futile. Most people only know Puskas and di Stefano from grainy footage of Real Madrid's 7-3 European Cup final thumping of Eintracht Frankfurt in 1961. Younger fans will have seen little of Cruyff other than the execution of his famous turn, and, of all Maradona's goals, they will only be able to visualise a couple that he chipped in with against England in 1986.

A few years after retirement and any footballer, no matter their talent, will see their career distilled in the collective consciousness into a small collection of moments. Even the singular talent and persona of Eric Cantona, only eight years after his retirement, has for me been reduced to his strutting, faux-incredulity after a sublime chipped goal, the karate kick at Crystal Palace, and a fluff against Borussia Dortmund in the 1997 Champions League semi-final. When the talents of George Best are pitted against those of Pele, few of us can say with any authority who was superior - but we can use a handful of highlights to decide who was our favourite.

So, Pele: an outrageous dummy; a shot from the half-way line; that perfect pass to Carlos Alberto; and the most aesthetically pleasing header you're likely to see - all through the haze of a Mexican summer. Oh, and that black-and-white footage of a precocious 17-year-old lobbing a befuddled defender to score in the 1958 World Cup final.

And Best: glee at trundling the ball home on the way to winning the European Cup; the dab of the right boot that saw 6' 5'' Pat Jennings lobbed while just feet off his line; keeping his balance to round a keeper a millisecond after Ron 'Chopper' Harris tried to break his leg; hugging the post bashfully after one of his six goals against Northampton; stealing in to pinch the ball off an unsuspecting Gordon Banks and flick it over the England keeper.

Pele might have been the better player - I don't know. But I prefer the George Best scrapbook.