The Gooner or There and Back Again

The Club is changed. I see it on the pitch. I feel it in dreams.

There’s the same feeling hovering over the forums.

Many of those who were around are gone, but there are still some who remember it.

And you cannot escape what is going to happen.

It began with the goal bursting.

Three were given to the Pamplonese, the most dangerous and smartest of all beings from our group. Seven to the lords of the Czech breweries.

And nine… nine goals will be forked out to somebody else.

But all of this was just a preface, you know. Because they were, all of them, outshone for another goal was scored. In the land of Trafford, beneath the surface of the scum field, an ordinary gooner Willy Gallas scored another goal, to control all other gooners…

Аn unexpected guest?

In a house on a hill-side there lived a gooner. Well, he didn’t know he was a gooner then that’s why at the time of our introduction he was a Chukchi. So, he lived not in a nasty, dirty, wet house, filled with a load of some bastards and a shit smell, nor yet a dry, with central heating but bare house with nothing in it to sit down on or to drink. It was a true gooner house, and that means comfort.

It had an ordinary door like all the other houses had, with scalps hanging on it and a shiny yellow copper cannon for uninvited guests in the exact middle. The long hall looking like a long hall, very long in fact, was not soiled at all, with panelled walls, and floors tiled and carpeted, provided with polished chairs, and lots and lots of pegs for hats and coats — the gooner was fond of Armani and Dolce & Gabbana.

The hall was rather long and many little doors opened out of it, first on one side and then on another. No going upstairs for the gooner: bedrooms, bathrooms, cellars, pantries, wardrobes, kitchens, dining-rooms, all were on the same floor, and indeed on the same passage. The best rooms were all on the left-hand side (going in), for these were the only ones to have windows, glamourous wooden windows looking over his garden. Also, the Stamford Bridge and boutiques sloping down to the Thames could be seen out of it.

This gooner was a very well-to-do gooner, and his name was Gallas. The Gallases had lived in the neighbourhood of the hill not for so long, but enough to be considered by people as very respectable, not only because most of them were rich, but also because they never had any adventures or did anything unexpected: you could tell what a Gallas would say on any question without the bother of asking him. This is a story of how a Gallas had an adventure, found himself doing and saying things altogether unexpected. He may have lost the neighbours’ respect, but he gained — well, you will see whether he gained anything in the end.

The coach of our particular gooner — by the way, what is a gooner? I suppose gooners don’t need any description nowadays, since they, or at least those who consider themselves as gooners, have become widespread. They are a little people, even smaller than scousers. They dress in bright colours (chiefly red and white); they have long clever legs, good-natured faces and laugh deep fruity laughs (especially after the matches which they have twice a week if they’re lucky). Well, I think, now you know enough to make an image and go on with.

As I was saying, the coach of this gooner — of Willy Gallas, that is — was Mour Josephinho, the second of so far the three coaches of Roman Abramovich, head of the Chukchi clan, who lived across the Thames. It was known in other gooner families that one of the gooners wasn’t a true goner in fact. That was, of course, barefaced bullshit, but certainly there was still something not entirely gooner-like about him. First of all, he played for the Chukchi side.

Not that Willy ever had any adventures after Mour Josephinho married became a coach of Mr Abramovich’s clan. But it is probable that Willy, who looked and behaved exactly like a second edition of his solid and comfortable father, got something a bit queer in his makeup from his father’s side, something that only waited for a chance to come out. The chance arrived when Willy Gallas became quite matured, being about twenty-eight year old or so, and living in the beautiful house built by his Chukchi club (which I have just described for you). It seemed that he’s going to be with the Chukchi forever.

By some curious chance one morning long ago in the quiet of the world (at that time there was less noise and more green, and the gooners were rare, and they sat in the 4th place of the Premiership table) as Willy Gallas was standing at his door after breakfast smoking an enormously long joint that hung below his neatly shaven chin — Wengalf came by.

Wengalf! If you had heard only a quarter of what I have heard about him, and I have only heard very little of all there is to hear, you would be prepared for any sort of remarkable tale. Tales and adventures sprouted up all over the place wherever he went, in the most extraordinary fashion. He had been down that way under the hill not so long ago, last spring in fact, and the local Chuckhi hadn’t forgotten what he looked like. He had been away over the hill and across the Thames on business of his own since they all were champions. All that the unsuspecting Willy saw that morning was a tall man in a black suit, with silver hair.

“Good morning!” said Willy, and he meant it. The sun was shining, and the grass was especially strong this time. But Wengalf looked at him from under long bushy eyebrows and said: “What do you mean? Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I want not; or that you feel good this morning; or that it is morning to be good on?”

“All of them at once,” said Willy. “And a very fine morning for a joint out of doors, into the bargain. If you have a cigarette about you, sit down and have a pinch of my grass! There’s no hurry, we have all the day before us!”

Then Willy sat down on a seat by his door, crossed his legs, and blew out a beautiful grey ring of smoke that sailed up into the air without breaking and floated away over the hill.

“Very pretty!” said Wengalf. “But I have no time to blow smoke-rings this morning. I am looking for someone to share in a champion race that I am going to win with the Gunners, and it’s very difficult to find anyone.”

“I should think so — in these parts! We, the Chukchi, are the champions and have no use going to the Gunners. Nasty disturbing uncomfortable cunts! You can even concede a goal to them! I can’t think what anybody sees in them,” said our Mr. Gallas, sticking one thumb in his nose, and blew out another even bigger smoke-ring. Then he took out his laptop, connected to the net via Wi-Fi and began to read ‘Sport quotes of the week’ on the BBC website, pretending to take no more notice of the tall man and waiting for him going away. But the man did not move. He stood, gazing at Willy without saying anything, till Willy got quite uncomfortable and even a little cross.

“Good morning!” he said at last. “We don’t want your champion titles here, thank you! You might try over Holland or across Africa.” By this he meant that the conversation was at an end.

“What a lot of things you do use Good morning for!” said Wengalf. “Now you mean that you want to get rid of me, and that it won’t be good till I fuck off.”

“Not at all, not at all, my dear sir! Let me see, I don’t think I know your name?”

“Yes, yes, my dear sir — and I do know your name, Mr. Willy Gallas. And you do know my name, though you don’t remember that I belong to it. I am Wengalf, and Wengalf means me (wow, that is some speech!). To think that I should have lived to be good-morninged by the Chukchi, as if I was picking up bottles at his door! Fuck my ol’ boots!”

“Wengalf, Wengalf! Good gracious me! Not the great coach that beat a pair of magic shits out of Josephinho? Not the fellow who used to tell such wonderful tales in the pub with a pint of Guinness, about how the Gunners became champions of England winning 26 games, drawing 12 and losing exactly none?”

“Dear Me!” he went on. “Not the Wengalf who was responsible for so many quiet and young players going off for mad adventures. Starting from playing while still in the kindergarten to visiting the Kings and getting calls to the national teams! Bless me, life used to be quite interes... I mean, you used to turn things up-inside in these parts once upon a time. I beg your pardon, but I had no idea you were still in business.”

“Where else should I be?” said the coach. “All the same I am pleased to find you remember something about me. You seem to remember my games kindly, at any rate, and that is not without hope. Indeed for your future I will give you what you asked for.”

“I beg your pardon. I haven’t asked for anything!”

“Yes, you have! Twice now. My pardon. I give it to you. In fact I will go so far as to send you on this adventure. Very amusing for me, very good for you - and profitable too, very likely, if you ever get over it.”

“Sorry! I don't need any adventures a fucking bit, thank you! Not today. Good morning! But please come to smoke a joint - any time you like! Why not tomorrow? Come tomorrow! Good-bye!”

With that he turned and scuttled inside his door, and shut it as quickly as he dared, not to seem rude. Coaches after all are coaches. “What on earth did I ask him to smoke a joint for!” he said to himself, opening a box with sweet opium poppy. He had only just smoked, but again he thought a joint or two and a drink of something would do him good.

Wengalf in the meantime was still standing outside the door, and laughing long but quietly.

8 January 2008