Today I was pointed in the direction of a tumblr page that's a real treasure trove of lovely images from times gone by - times when perhaps the sport of association football really was a beautiful game. Disheartened as I am by the recent events at my own dear QPR, recent promotion to the Premier League notwithstanding, it is perhaps natural that a bit of soccer nostalgia feels rather welcome right now for me.
Fellow fans of the game are urged to have a look at these well-chosen pictures, some of which are of the sport as it was played and enjoyed way back at the turn of the twentieth century. The most recent ones I've spotted are from a time that I'm old enough to remember fairly well, the 1980s.
Images from the seventies resonate even more, however, perhaps because they bring to life a period that's altogether hazier in my mind. Recollections of earlier childhood, if my own are typical, seem to be vivid but patchy in the extreme. I recall certain individual moments or conversations with what seems like perfect clarity. But of course I can't know whether the memories are real or if I'm just remembering how someone else described the incidents in question to me at some later stage. Keep telling the same story to yourself and to others and it becomes real. Language creates reality. You make your own past. These bright, isolated little memories are set against the fuzzy context of entire years that are little more than a blur now.
Images from the seventies resonate even more, however, perhaps because they bring to life a period that's altogether hazier in my mind. Recollections of earlier childhood, if my own are typical, seem to be vivid but patchy in the extreme. I recall certain individual moments or conversations with what seems like perfect clarity. But of course I can't know whether the memories are real or if I'm just remembering how someone else described the incidents in question to me at some later stage. Keep telling the same story to yourself and to others and it becomes real. Language creates reality. You make your own past. These bright, isolated little memories are set against the fuzzy context of entire years that are little more than a blur now.
If I had to pick a favourite from this impressive monochrome set, of the ones I've looked at so far, I'd go for the 1974 shot of my very favourite maverick, Mr. Stan Bowles, clowning around with Kevin Beattie during a training session ahead of one of Bowles's scandalously rare appearances in the England team.
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