Old Garchonians F.C show they are more than just a football club

In amongst recent stories of millionaire footballers complaining about Manchester because it’s cold, and volatile fans evoking memories of the dark days in the recent north London derby, the heart-warming tale of Old Garchonians F.C has emerged; a Sunday league football club set up with the aim of commemorating the life and loss of football mad 22 year old Freddie Garcha.

Old Garchonians club badge commemorating Freddie Garcha

Only recently formed by a group of Freddie’s closest friends and family, the club has it’s own home ground, Burton Hole in Mill Hill, and now boasts two full squads, both teams playing friendly matches in the Southern Amateur League for the season. The continuation of a run of good performances, and an even better attitude, should lead to the reward of a place in the league proper next year. No mean feat on its own, considering some clubs have had to wait fifteen years before they are considered ready for the division, Old Garchonians is also being carried by a group of young men and recent university graduates, who are struggling to combine keeping that elusive first job with the day to day administrative tasks needed to successfully run a football club. From booking a referee to arranging a regular training pitch, the founders have been taken aback by quite how much time and effort is required to make the club successful. However, with Freddie always at the forefront of everyone’s minds, there is a steely determination to make this more than just a club. From talking to Luke Tripp, the vice-club captain, it is evident that this is about creating a legacy; a life-long, material memorial dedicated to the life and passion of their friend.

The Old Garchonians first team celebrate a goal after another flowing team move

As well as constant administrative pressures there is of course a footballing side to things, and without a coach in sight the boys have managed to amicably, and successfully, create two teams. Each has fostered its own team spirit and style of play, but there remains a club ethos which shines through; both teams stay to watch and support the other, and the financial burden of starting up the team has been shared by every member of the club, helping make Old Garchonians an institution all involved feel a part of.

There is an unspoken acceptance that everyone is doing their best to ensure people are playing in the right team. The players seem content - ask Alex Ferguson, this is no easy task - and this is a glowing testament to the hard work and commitment of those in charge of running the club, and the patience and attitude of the club’s thirty plus players. Having recently won a local tournament the club is looking strong both on and off the pitch, and barely six months old, Old Garchonians have good reason to believe they can go from strength to strength.

First team captain Tom Lytton-Dickie lifts Old Garchonians' first piece of silverware 

Seeing this level of community and camaraderie in a group of young men who are making nothing from their endeavours is a beacon of light in a footballing world increasingly darkened by the greed and attitude of those at the top of the game. And more significantly, it is an impressive and worthy tribute to the memory of Freddie Garcha.

Handling of the Blanc debacle means an opportunity has been missed

Let me start by making it clear that this is not an attempt to defend the indefensible; regardless of the views of French football’s most successful player, Zinedine Zidane, and their most successful coach, Arsene Wenger, Laurent Blanc’s comments were both ignorant and racist. However, Blanc’s remarks were also indicative of the views held by key members of the French Football Federation and a large proportion of French society. Nationalism has played a central role within the dominant political discourse of French progressivism since the French Revolution in 1789, and the fact that Blanc was having a serious discussion about a quota to limit the number of black and African players in French youth football during a meeting with the head of the FFF, and has since been cleared of any wrong doing by the same association, epitomises how deeply this patriotic narrative runs within the upper echelons of French society, and how smoothly it tips over into the realm of discrimination. Blanc may have been recorded and published in a manner akin to Richard Keys and Andy Gray’s career-costing musings on women in English football, but his comments were not off-the-cuff remarks made with friends in a boulangerie.

It is therefore important to focus on the question at the heart of the latest episode to tarnish the footballing reputation of a nation that was, only a decade ago, celebrating a World and European double based on the performances of players from a multitude of backgrounds: would sacking Blanc have solved anything?

The easy answer is yes; it sends a clear message out that racism is not acceptable and everyone at the FFF can pat themselves on the back, pleased that they appear to be taking a firm stance against discrimination in football. However in reality it would have solved little. Firstly, history has taught us that the sacking of those involved in the meeting is a conclusion that belongs in the world of fantasy. The fact Luis Aragones was cleared of any racist wrongdoing in 2007, despite being recorded calling Thierry Henry a ‘black shit’, epitomises the naivety of those who have called for the upper echelons of French football embroiled in the scandal to quit and hang their heads in shame. We do not live in an ideal world and France, like Spain before them, would rather defend a coach enjoying success with the national team than hang him from the rafters.

Blanc has been acquitted of racist remarks by the French Sports Ministry

The FFF’s decision to acquit Blanc of all wrongdoing epitomises the typically, excuse the terminology, black and white reaction from governing bodies to this kind of incident; if Blanc is guilty of racism he has to be fired, so therefore the FFF have to support him if they want to him to stay. There needs to be an in-between, and a far more realistic and beneficial conclusion would have been for Blanc to admit he was wrong and explain not only why, but also what he was going to do in his role as national team manager to broaden his perceptions and reform his opinions.

Rather than sacking Blanc the focus should have been on educating him, not only on why what he said represents the outdated views of a backward post-colonial society, but also on how incorrect his views actually are. Through doing so Blanc could have been used as a tool to reform members of both the FFF and society that nodded their approval at his comments. Maybe a meeting with World Cup winners Patrick Vieira and Lilian Thuram could have helped Blanc reassess his view that young black powerful players are the problem with French football. Or better still he could have sat down to watch a video of the diminutive and technically gifted Makelele in his pomp, a player so intelligent in his positional play that his name has become synonymous with the holding midfield role.

Sacking Blanc would simply have brushed the issue under the carpet, and drawn to a close an incident that needs to be talked about out in the open. Through clearing Blanc of any wrongdoing the FFF have weakened what was actually a very strong position, but they did not need to fire him to capitalise. Racism in football cannot be eradicated by means of the knee jerk firing of managers, and banning of clubs and players, because such conclusions provoke anger amongst supporters, which in turn serve to reinforce ignorant views and create a sequence of reoccurring prejudice. No matter what role an individual holds within society, they are never too old to be educated, and the more significant their position the greater the sphere of influence a reform of their views would have. The Laurent Blanc debacle was the perfect opportunity to start a new period of reflection in both French football and society.

A day in the life of... Andy Carroll

7 am I’m really enjoying living with the Nolan's so far, we all seem to be getting on so well. I think Mrs Nolan was a bit miffed when those lads torched my Land Rover outside, but she does still wash my kit.

12 pm I think Kev’s got another day out planned... our last trip to Glasgow to watch Celtic Rangers was so exciting, especially when it all kicked off in the crowd in the second half! I really hope we’re off to Alton Towers today, I just love them teacup rides.

7 pm The Nolan's were supposed to be going for a quiet dinner tonight. Kev said their relationship had been under some strain recently and they needed to relax. I told them though, that in my experience the best way to relax was with a good FIFA tournament on the xbox so we’ve decided to do that instead. Mrs Nolan really needs to improve - she’s on her third letter of apology to me ma after I beat her 7-0 again!

A day in the life of... Tiger Woods

7 am Woke up and had toast for breakfast. My councillor has banned me from having my usual fried eggs though, something to do with their sexual connotations.


12 pm I had a great practice round at pebble beach this morning, only on the xbox unfortunately. I would have gone out the house and had a few proper rounds but I couldn't get the car off the drive.


9 pm Out for a few beers with the rest of the ryder cup squad tonight. Should be a good laugh, the last club I saw was the one swung at my head by the missus.

A day in the life of... Arsene Wenger

9 am I’ve got the boys working on their passing again this morning. Pat Rice and I came up with a new drill where you need to get to 723 passes with every player having a touch before starting all over again.

12 am A quick lunch and then I’m off to the opticians. It’s the second time this season that Roger Burden and the guys at the FA have booked me an appointment.

9 pm Taking Manuel and Lukas out for dinner again tonight, they’ve been so down the last few weeks. Hopefully we won’t have a repeat of last time. It was really embarrassing when Manny knocked his glass of wine all over that nice waitress.

A day in the life of... Jose Mourinho

7 am I just don’t have an appetite for my frosties this morning. I mean how can I be expected to eat when there is such an obvious conspiracy against me? I’ve done some more investigating and it’s worse than I first thought. It appears FIFA have infiltrated my defence, offering them free tickets to the Champion’s League final if they don’t tackle Messi when he gets the ball. It’s the only logical explanation for his two goals against us.

12 pm Just finished telling the kids how special I am in time for lunch. After spending a morning throwing darts at that photo of Pep I put up in the garage I’m pretty hungry now. I can’t believe he pulled my chair away when I tried to sit down at our last news conference. He won’t be expecting my sneak attack wet willy at the Nou Camp though!

7 pm I’m taking Ronaldo out for dinner again tonight. Poor sod just can’t get over being second best to that little Argentine. I keep telling him to keep his head up, I mean he’s got the best coach the world has ever seen - what more could he need?

Bristol's hidden stars: Matt Dathan ultimate frisbee

For the latest installment of Hidden Stars I caught up with Ultimate Frisbee star Matt Dathan, who has an impressive seven years playing experience under his belt. Matt took time out of his busy university schedule to give me the lowdown on what is becoming an increasingly popular sport within the UK.

Firstly, what is your role within Bristol University’s Ultimate Frisbee Club?

I’m the most experienced player at the club so I help out with coaching and tactics. (As I was injured last year I’m not on the committee). In terms of position, I’m a handler.

Ultimate Frisbee is quite an unknown and some would say unconventional sport. For our readers that do not know much about Ultimate how do you play and what are the rules?

Ultimate is a limited-contact team sport played with a 175 gram flying disc. The object of the game is to score points by passing the disc to a player in the opposing end zone, similar to an end zone in American football. Players may only move one foot while holding the disc by pivoting and can only hold the disc for a maximum of 10 seconds at a time. A change of possession occurs each time the disc hits the floor or is intercepted by an opposing player.

How did you first get into the sport and how long have you been playing now?

I started playing with a group of friends after school and at weekends when I was 14/15 (7 years ago). The older generation at our school taught us how to play and then we passed it onto the younger generation. I was just as sceptical as most at the prospect of chucking a frisbee around being a sport, but as soon as I went to my first tournament I was hooked!

What sort of set up does Ultimate Frisbee have at Bristol?

Bristol University has a well established set up with at least 30 people turning up to training every Wednesday and Sunday at 2 p.m. on the Downs. Some of the experienced players also play for senior teams outside of the university.

What sort of following does the sport have within Britain?

Ultimate has slowly grown in Britain over the past two decades, and in recent years it has become recognised, played and watched by an increasing number of people across Britain. It is becoming more professional each year in terms of training regimes, tournament events, sponsorship, and media coverage. The sport is recognised by the UK Sport of England and has an estimated 10,000 participants.

How time consuming is Ultimate? Do you regularly have to travel all over the Country for competitions?

As a university team we train up to 4 times a week working up to tournaments, and there are two main tournaments this term for Bristol University. As for the open and international divisions, I’ve traveled to the USA as well as all over Europe, so yes it is very time consuming and expensive, although there is a limited amount of funding available.

Matt Dathan makes another successful catch for Bristol's Ultimate team

Do you get a lot of guys coming in from other sports? And if so which sports would you say have skills that are particularly transferable to Ultimate?

Ultimately (pardon the pun!) the most important transferable skill is a player’s natural sporting ability. But as for other sports in particular, we tend to find rugby and ultimate are quite complementary. Although they’re completely different types of sports, the fitness training that’s required is quite similar. Racket-sport players tend to have an advantage with the throwing technique because of the wrist and arm action.

Most of us have spent a sunny afternoon throwing a Frisbee about, but how long would it take a casual frisbee thrower to get to a standard suitable for representing the University?

Everyone who regularly attends training will represent the University at some point in their first six months, as there are many tournaments to suit all standards. However, to get into the first team it depends on the natural ability of the player. A lot of people can learn to throw a decent forehand as well as backhand, but the positional, tactical and disciplined side of the game takes longer to grasp. Sometimes fresher’s make it into the first team, as Sam Jones managed last year.

With your typical student only doing a degree for three years, how much could a fresher expect to improve in what is a relatively short space of time?

Massively. There are players in the Great Britain senior squad who only started playing Ultimate at university. Bristol University’s very own Claire Desbottes is in the GB Women’s squad this year after only starting to play at the university three years ago.

If you reach the higher echelons of Ultimate Frisbee could you make a living from playing the game?

Not yet! There are scholarships in America and there is talk of professional contracts being introduced over there. One day I hope to see athletes getting paid for playing Ultimate in the UK but due to the fair-play nature of the game, money may taint the sport.

Finally, what is the aim for Bristol’s Ultimate side this season?

To qualify for national student championships! The South West Region is very competitive though, so we have a lot of work to do. If and when we get to nationals, my aim for the team is to get to the quarter finals at least. But, considering the strength of University Ultimate, a top 8 finish would be a great achievement for Bristol University Ultimate.

Bristol's hidden stars: Louis Cooper-Robinson skateboarder

This week’s installment of Hidden Stars  has gone slightly more underground, meeting up with semi-professional skateboarder and University of Bristol student Louis Cooper Robinson. Louis gives us Hidden Stars the low-down on the skate scene in Bris­tol, as well as explaining what it takes to stay at the top of the skateboarding game whilst studying for a degree.

Skateboarding is quite an under­ground sport in the UK and not your stereotypical sport. Are there many different types of skateboarding?

Yeah there is massive variation between skaters. The main distinc­tion is between vert skaters who do all the bobby big airs kitted up with pads on half pipes; and then you have the competition skaters who win big bucks through placing well in the nationals and European championships. The other, more common category, which I fall into, is the street skaters. I tend to focus on doing photo shoots for magazines and filming around cities using stairs, blocks and large urban spaces.

For those that don’t know that much about skating what does be­ing a semi-professional skater and a university student actually entail?

Being sponsored means I have to represent the brands of shoe and board companies by skating in their products in photo shoots, events and videos. Skateboarding is a physi­cally intense sport which you can get pretty rusty at if it’s not done daily. It can be hard to balance the pressures from your sponsors nagging you to get photos for magazines and film­ing for promotional videos on top of getting your reading done for uni­versity and maintaining a social life!

Skateboarding is not a society or club at Bristol, why is this the case?

I think the skateboarding identity is quite unique as a sport because it becomes a lifestyle affecting all areas of your time, in addition to having quite an exclusive set of values. Skateboarding often goes against mainstream sporting norms ...and tends to keep away from be­ing institutionalised and corporate. Therefore having a society for skate­boarding wouldn’t really fit in with skateboarding culture. However, having a university society could be a good possibility for beginners.

What is the skate scene like in Bristol?

Bristol’s got a really decent scene and is right at the top of its game compared to other UK cities. This is mainly due to the architecture of the city and the lack of a crack down on skating in public places, unlike in London. People have been killing it for years here in Bristol, all centered around the notorious 5050 skate shop on Park Street.

Are there designated skateboard­ing areas? Do you ever have any trouble with the police or univer­sity security?

Yeah Bristol is littered with good skate parks mainly on the outskirts, such as Horfield, St. Georges and Dean Lane. These are obvious places for skaters to chill, however part of the skateboarding phenomena is to adapt to the streets which aren’t made for skateboarding, creating another use for the streets. In this way a simple set of stairs becomes a breeding ground for skaters. There are huge clashes with skaters want­ing to do tricks on areas that are private property and being chucked out by security guards. Often it can lead to quite confrontational situ­ations where the old bill is called!

How often do you try and skate?

I usually try and skate daily either hanging out with mates around the city or at a skate park. Or, if I’m more up for it then shooting photos. How­ever at the moment I’m recovering from a pretty hefty scaphoid frac­ture in my wrist so I’m taking it easy otherwise arthritis is on the cards.

Considering it is such an indi­vidual sport is there any rivalry or competition between skaters? Would you say there is a divide between different types of skate­boarders?

There’s not serious rivalry but dif­ferent sponsor’s teams have a bit of a laugh with each other at events and parties. In terms of the type of skaters themselves you get the more gnarly ones who leap down big sets of stairs and grind handrails as opposed to the more technical skaters who focus on more flips, grinds and difficult tricks.

How do you get recognised as a skateboarder? Do you enter com­petitions?

If you mean identified as a skate­boarder maybe the plank of wood under my arm gives it away? More seriously, often the clothes, shoes or hats skaters wear are particular skat­ing brands and so if you are in the know you could spot a semi-pro or pro skater in a crowd. I’m more of a street skater than a comp dog, but I enter the UK championships and other local competitions from time to time. I’ve previously won a video competition in Side Walk magazine, which was judged by US profession­als. It played a big part in me get­ting my current sponsorship deal.

Skateboarding can be quite a dan­gerous sport, have you ever had any serious or career threatening injuries?

As I was saying earlier about my wrist that’s probably the biggest blow to my skateboarding as the recovery time is a long one. It can also get you into sticky situations with the authorities, for example when I was in Vietnam I was skating this square and my board flew out from under­neath me and smashed an ancient flower vase. Instantly I was grabbed by the military and police and told I was going down to the station, I was absolutely bricking it, but a small bribe convinced them to let me go, although that was a pretty big hiccup!

What is the worst thing about skateboarding?

Injuries have got to be the biggest downfall of skateboarding, my shins are constantly getting knocked about and chucking yourself down a flight of stairs over and over does quite a bit of damage to your body. Another aspect is the negative attitude towards skat­ers from the authorities, after a while constant clashes are really tiresome.

Late drama means title dream is still alive for plucky Bristol

Following Bristol’s 3-1 defeat to UWIC earlier this season, manager Alan Tyres penciled the arrival of the Welsh side at fortress Dingle in his notebook. Tyres had an inkling a good run of form could see the home tie become the defining match of Bristol’s season, and his players were determined to see that optimism become a reality.

Bristol responded better than even the seasoned Tyres could have imagined, and with a mixture of panache and steel, went on to score twenty-nine goals in their next 540 minutes of football without conceding. They also fulfilled Tyres’ prophecy: victory in the return game would snatch the fate of automatic promotion from UWIC’s clutches, while defeat would extinguish Bristol’s hopes once and for all.

Man of the match Matt Smith starts another Bristol counter attack against title rivals UWIC

Finally the crucial game arrived, with Bristol brimming with confidence following the previous weeks 6-0 thumping of Cardiff. The opening exchanges, however, fulfilled Tyres’ pre-match expectations that UWIC would prove a different caliber of opposition. Strong in the tackle and quick to every ball, the away side adjusted quickly to a sticky pitch and set a frenetic tempo that was maintained throughout. Despite UWIC’s early dominance, it was Bristol’s lethal attack that drew first blood. Winger Nick Webb skinned the UWIC left back before slamming a cross-shot goalwards. Lurking at the back post Alastair Gourlay duly swept home the opener. UWIC rallied, but, prepared for a dogfight, the Bristol boys more than matched them. Their efforts were epitomised by debutant Will Russell, who put in a focused and committed performance despite playing in an unfamiliar left back role.

The Coombe Dingle pitch was affecting Bristol’s passing game, but captain Oz Osbaldeston proved the game does not always have to be played on the floor when he crashed home Bristol’s second on the volley from 35 yards. Osbaldeston’s stunning strike gave his side some breathing space, but going into half time Bristol were well aware that it was only their potency separating the sides.

Desperate for a goal, the second half was a more open affair as UWIC switched to three up top. Bristol responded, with centre back pairing Leo Sharer and Alastair Gourlay joined in their battle to protect Toby Smyth’s goal by holding midfielder James Chiang. Despite this momentous defensive effort UWIC scored, reducing the deficit and forcing Tyres into a reshuffle, with Sean Price and Alim Rahemtulla replacing Nick Webb and Jay Mistry. The change helped swing the game back in Bristol’s favour, with the desire shown by Price and Rahemtulla a reflection of the sides burgeoning team spirit. Saying that, the finishing prowess of striker Matt Smith probably deserves a mention as well. Getting ahead of his man it was Smith who tucked home a low Price cross to score his first of the day, restoring Bristol’s two goal advantage in the process.

However, UWIC are not top of the league for nothing. Somehow they forced themselves back into the game, their second goal setting Bristol hearts racing late in the half. Moment’s later Bristol hearts were really thumping as a long-range strike hauled UWIC back to 3-3.

Bristol First Team celebrate captain Oz Osbaldeston's stuning forty yard volley

In a frantic last ten minutes it was Bristol, through the indomitable Matt Smith, who struck. Dispossessing UWIC’s tiring centre-half Smith raced through to fire home the crucial fourth goal. UWIC were shattered, Bristol elated, but it took another from Smith, completing his hat-trick, before victory felt truly tangible. The final whistle did not spark the wild celebrations many had expected, but the exhausted, mud-splattered smiles that plastered the faces of the Bristol boys spoke volumes. With a cup quarterfinal, varsity and five league games to come, proper partying can wait; this victory is just the beginning.

Lionel Messi is not messing around

Pele, Maradona, Best…Messi? A first touch as if playing in silk slippers, the ability to go from naught to sixty and back down again in the blink of a dizzy defender’s eye, majestic with his left and right, and despite what many think, head; everything about Lionel Messi belongs on this illustrious list.

Messi’s detractors argue he has to perform at a World Cup before he can be regarded as this generation’s best, however too many unchangeable variables affect international football for it to be the crucial element used to gauge the world’s finest talent. Great club sides are built through the developing, buying and gelling of great players; great international sides are built on the off chance that you get a great generation. Ryan Giggs’ career attests to that. While the Argentina sides of recent years have had a forward line capable of supplementing Messi’s outrageous talent, a back four built on Newcastle United’s defensive rocks Jonas Gutierrez and Fabricio Coloccini puts Messi’s lack of success with Argentina in context. Not to mention the fact it took the Argentinian FA two years to work out that Maradona wasn’t quite as good with his head off the pitch as he was with his feet on it.

Similarly, an argument that the Argentine wizard needs to win more trophies to be considered the best player of his generation can be left on the turf like the majority of defenders he has come up against. Gary Neville and Clarence Seedorf have won 37 major honours between them, but few would place them on this short-list. Regardless, Messi has already collected 13 major trophies, including two champions League titles; only one European Cup less than the evergreen Seedorf twelve years his senior.

                 

Moments of magic define the careers of Messi’s two closest challengers for this title, Brazilian Ronaldo and Zidane, with their legacies built on goals and performances in the finals of the world’s biggest two tournaments - think Zidane’s volley in the 2002 Champions League final or Ronaldo’s double in the World Cup final of the same year. But moments of magic should never be placed above prolonged levels of genius when judging the best player of a decade. As Ferguson and Mourinho always state, the league is your bread and butter, and no true football fan would rank a stunning cup run alongside a brilliant march to a league title. It should be no different with players. While Messi’s career is littered with similarly breath taking moments of magic, take his four goals against Arsenal in the champions League quarter-final last year, his mesmerising run from the half way line against Getafe that brought comparison with his hero Maradona, or his header against Manchester United in the Champions League final that put Barcelona out of sight, it is within this sphere of ‘prolonged brilliance’ that the young Argentine really stands alone. Both Zidane and Ronaldo suffered dips in form at points in their careers, but for the past three years Messi has sparkled in almost every game he has been involved in.

In many respects stats speak for themselves, and 92 goals in his last 93 games is an outstanding return, but with Messi one must go beyond them. Like the greats before him Messi has taken football to what people thought were the highest possible echelons and then gone higher. This season Messi has performed at a level beyond anything seen before in the modern era. Not only has the youngster already recorded 47 goals and 21 assists in just 41 games, (Ronaldo’s best ever season saw him score 47 in 49 with 11 assists), he has managed to do so with an irrepressible level of panache and skill. Messi has managed to combine repeated moments of magic comparable with Zidane in his pomp with goals at a greater rate than Ronaldo at his most prolific; a combination no one in the last decade has come close to achieving.

The BIG Interview: Paul Merson

Full of quips and one-liners, it would be easy to dismiss Paul Merson as a wide-boy; the joker amongst the pack of ex-footballers who dominate football punditry. But underneath the loud and comical exterior, Merson is refreshingly frank about the current game and the mistakes he made as a player. A throwback to the days when players were brave enough to say what they actually thought, our interview is punctuated with hilarious, if slightly alarming, stories, most implying that Merson got away with things Wayne Rooney could only dream about. Merson’s tales about his playing days with Paul Gascoigne typify the eccentric behaviour that has become a hallmark of his career; “Me and Gazza, when I signed for Middlesbrough, used to buy a packet of sleeping pills and a few bottles of red wine after training on a Thursday and then sit on the sofa at his flat betting thousands on who would fall asleep first.”

With Merson happy to joke about his misdemeanours off the pitch, it is easy to disregard his career on it. Yet his achievements with Arsenal alone, where he picked up 5 major trophies and scored 99 goals in over 300 appearances, would stand out even in the most illustrious company. His greatest career memory, Arsenal’s title clinching victory at Anfield in 1989, epitomises his achievements. “That game’s the one that really sticks out. I mean, everyone who’s old enough remembers where they were.” Despite this, Merson’s 21 caps for England rank as his greatest accomplishment. “It really is an honour, being in the top 11 players in your country on that day. I never played loads and loads but the way I lived my life off the pitch I was lucky to play even once!” Merson’s upbeat answers on England embody his perpetual cup-half-full attitude. But having emerged in the early nineties as one of the countries brightest prospects, many observers would point towards the impact of drink, drugs and gambling, rather than bad ‘luck’, as explanations for why such a precocious talent had a minimal impact on the international stage.

But this is not how Merson works. Candid and surprisingly self-critical, at no point in the interview does the Londoner blame anyone but himself for his mistakes. “I’d say leaving Arsenal when I did was my biggest mistake. I went to Middlesbrough for the wrong reasons. I regret it because I left for the money, I mean Middlesbrough offered me a lot but as soon as I’d done it I just wanted to ring my dad [a life long Arsenal fan] and tell him what I’d gone and done. When you leave the Arsenal’s and Man United’s of this world you are only really ever going downwards.”

Even when discussing his three-month absence from football in 1994, following revelations at the height of his Arsenal career that he was suffering from both alcohol and cocaine addiction, Merson appears at ease with his past. “The FA did all they could for me really, they gave me the time away from the game I needed and they put me in touch with the right people.” He is less positive about the FA’s current policy regarding player problems though. “Banning someone for two years, I just don’t see how that helps anyone. I mean even if you get caught with steroids, help the lad. If you’re banned for two years you’re practically finished, you’ve basically lost your life if that happens.”

Merson is somewhat contradictory when questioned on modern football. His opinions on the spate of serious injuries that have blighted football recently epitomise his blend of acceptance and despair regarding changes to the game he lit up so brightly. “The game is so much quicker now that being only slightly late for a tackle can lead to serious injury. But they all wear bright flimsy boots these days which doesn’t help, whoever has got proper black boots on now will stand out - you even get goalkeepers wearing white boots!” Snazzy new boots are not the only way that Merson feels football has changed, and it soon becomes clear that he was one of the last footballers who lived life to the extreme both on and off the pitch – winning trophies and drinking out of them in equal measure. His career parallels the changing nature of English football. From larking around but winning trophies under George Graham in the early nineties, where “Every Friday, day before a game, instead of training we’d always play cricket” to being one of the old guard having to learn new tricks following Arsene Wenger’s arrival at Arsenal in 1996. “Arsene came in and he changed everything, from our diet to the way we trained. Everything was on the clock, even if eight VS eight was 1-1 he’d stop it at full time, we’d never be allowed to play on. It was always one touch or two touch, and your second touch always had to be forward, you always had to be thinking. He brought in all these unusual stretches, plyometrics and all that. We used to just do the odd hamstring!”

What is even more evident is how much Merson loved that era, that period in the 1990s where football began to break with the drinking and smoking culture, just before becoming the highly professionalised game we see today. “I couldn’t do it now, I couldn’t live the life they live, I really do feel sorry for a lot of them. They must be so bored, this Xbox generation, never leaving their mansions and being under so much media scrutiny.” Spoken with honesty, it appears Merson’s sympathy reflects the difficulties he faced himself when dealing with the media spotlight. The now typical Merson wisecrack that follows alluding to this. “It wouldn’t really have mattered how much I earned anyway, the only person who would have been happy with an increase in my wages would have been William Hill!” This is typical Merson, a swift repost quickly recapturing the jovial atmosphere that he creates during the majority of the interview.

Despite the obvious impact Wenger had on Merson he regards George Graham as the best manager he ever worked with. “George was phenomenal; if it wasn’t for George we wouldn’t have won anything I don’t think. He made us solid, a great tactician. Everything was so organised, we always knew exactly what we were doing on the training pitch. If I was still playing and he was the manager I could tell you now what I would have been doing last March on a random Tuesday.”

Merson speaks as glowingly of his former teammates, as he does of his managers, and it is not difficult to see why the 42 year old is so liked. “Ian Wright was so unlucky not to play a million times for England. It was only because he had Shearer and Sheringham ahead of him. But he was the best finisher I’ve ever played with. He just loved scoring goals. He’d celebrate a goal in training as if it was the winner on a Saturday, running around with his shirt over his head. And he was a top bloke, I don’t know anyone who doesn’t like him.” Despite his affection for the former Arsenal number eight Merson is unequivocal when questioned on the best player he ever worked with. “Oh Bergkamp definitely, he was so good, so good it was scary. When he trained the whole standard of play just went up ten-fold. He saw things before everyone and his touch was out of this world.”

Despite past troubles it is clear Paul Merson is a man content with his career. “I honestly think I had the best job in the world being a footballer and I think I’ve got the second best job now. I was lucky enough to be part of some great sides and to have my job with Sky…I mean I’m dyslexic so I never really wanted to be a journalist or anything but I really love what I do with the guys on a Saturday. Jeff Stelling’s just so clever and I’ve known Le Tissier years.” And with that we are out of time, but Merson cannot resist another joke as we bring what has been a whirlwind interview to a close: ‘Phil Thompson as well, everywhere he goes now everyone always says what’s happening big nose but he’s the nicest bloke ever.’