Stand by for over-the-top reporting, hyperbole and speculation to fuel the nation’s obsession with football, writes a veteran sports reporter

Football coverage in the national newspapers can possibly be considered to be over the top already and it will be ludicrously so during the competition. How many hacks does it take to cover a World Cup match involving England? Five or six usually: a match reporter, a columnist (sometimes two of them), a quotes man, an analyst (usually an ex-player) and perhaps, in the case of the Daily Mail, an ex-referee for a forensic breakdown of the man-in-the-middle’s decisions. Plus any available celebrity with a tenuous football link.

The newspapers will be dominated by the World Cup – and not just on the back pages. In March David Beckham featured in photographs twice in one week on page one of The Times. He is (or was) an outstanding footballer, achieving extra celebrity status on the arm of his wife, the former Spice Girl Victoria Adams. When Beckham was injured playing for his Milan team the headlines told us it was “the end of a dream”.

As the World Cup gets ever closer, White Van Man will be fluttering mini flags of Saint George from his vehicle. Larger flags will drape from windows of his home. During the competition the country will, on occasion, stand still as the England team, coached by the Italian Fabio Capello, tries to win the World Cup for the first time since 1966. Was media interest different then, less of an exercise in xenophobia, perhaps? And how much is the media, particularly the press, responsible for the hype and hysteria that will envelop the country as “England expects” so much from those on duty down there in the Rainbow Nation?

There will of course be World Cup pull-outs, page-upon-page of opinion, statistics, reports of press conferences, detailed bulletins on metatarsals, groin strains and pulled muscles, tales of WAGs (wives and girl friends) with the almost distinct possibility that a red-top will dig up a story of at least one player’s off-the-pitch misbehaviour involving a member of the opposite sex. Enter Max Clifford, hawker of the lurid and protector of culprits. Max is almost certain to have a surreptitious role to play in this World Cup.

Footballers’ private lives are under intense scrutiny as never before and they do not like it. The excellent Arsenal player, the Russian Andrey Arshavin, is a bright young man, a follower of the arts who studied clothing design in his home city of St Petersburg. He said recently: “In England you are killing the national team with the level of intrusion. Everyone wants England to become world champions but you are destroying them at the same time. Give it a few more weeks and they will put a camera in a footballer’s pants in order to get a story. I think you should leave your stars alone and give them the freedom to be human.” In an interview in The Times he added: “It is not our fault that we earn big money. We should not be made to feel like criminals. If the clubs pay us it is because they know they will earn more money because we are there. All through my career I have heard people say: ‘You must set an example. Don’t smoke, don’t drink, don’t swear, otherwise the children will copy you.’ They want you to live like a monk, but this is impossible. Everybody has a right to live in the way they want to. That is what it is to be human.”

The implication there is that newspapers are the guilty ones for reporting such scandals as John Terry’s and Ashley Cole’s infamous infidelities, Rio Ferdinand’s failure to attend a drugs test and the assorted indiscretions of the likes of Joey Barton and Marlon King, both of whom have been detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure. But in that same interview Arshavin declared: “The problem is not fame and money, because if you have a good education and good parents these things will not corrupt you. It is about having the right values.” Good thinking, but events continue to prove that where some footballers are concerned there obviously weren’t enough good schools and right values to go round.

Yet there can be no doubt that the media have changed. When I first went on an England tour in 1974 there were probably a dozen writers and a couple of radio men who were able to form trusted relationships with the players. On another tour, when I wanted to interview the cultured Colin Bell it was normal just to phone his room and be invited up. Other journalists enjoyed the same co-operation. After matches press and players drank together. A confidence was never betrayed. As Hugh McIlvanney wrote on one occasion: “The players were so spectacularly relaxed they could have been mistaken for journalists.” When England won the World Cup in 1966, team member Jack Charlton and I went out on the town in London, ending up being invited to a party in Walthamstow, east London, and sleeping on the floor before returning to the team hotel. As late as 1985, on England’s last night of a tour in Chile, press and players partied together. When I woke up next morning I was suddenly aware of somebody in the room’s other bed. It was England’s captain, Bryan Robson.

All flights alcohol free

These days everybody wants a story and supply has to satisfy demand. Players have agents who are in touch with favoured newspapers. Leaks are everywhere, deliberately placed. Opinion is, inevitably, black or white. Most newspapers like nothing more than a good row story with any salty “slagging off ” regarded as a bonus. Xenophobia reached new depths when, in June 1996, ahead of a match against Germany, the splash headline in the Daily Mirror was Achtung! Surrender!, and on another anti-German occasion a sports editor could be seen goose-stepping through his office in a Prussian helmet.

Is the hysteria that the public gobbles up peculiar to England? Most foreigners I speak to believe so. Capello says he has been surprised the intensity. During the World Cup he will be under more scrutiny than most. If he makes what is perceived as a mistake in team selection or a substitution the pack will pounce with laptop invective. Our continental cousins are also frequently mystified by England’s ability to export ugly, foul-mouthed behaviour of “fans” in the disguise of “patriotism”. Did the media create, and does it fuel, such unedifying invasions?

The stigma they bring does appear to be an English problem. Rarely does international hooliganism feature the Scots, Irish or Welsh, perhaps because the national teams of those countries hardly ever travel very far down the roads to a World Cup or European Championships. When the Scots went to West Germany in 1974 and Argentina four years later – England stayed at home on each occasion – the Scots’ fans did develop a poor reputation, but it seemed that as England’s followers became more malodorous, the Scots pulled themselves together. The transition appeared complete when at the end of a match in Norrkoping, Sweden, during the 1992 European Championships, the police stood in front of the Tartan Army and applauded them for their good behaviour and the inoffensive nature of their singing.

The Irish, north and south, have always taken a pride in being well behaved. When the Republic qualified for the 1990 World Cup in their final match in Malta, there were 7,000 Paddies in Valletta. That same Jack Charlton, by now the Irish manager, fancied a beer but feared the bars would be teeming, unplayable for him and his squad. He took the chance and walked into one, marching behind the bar and, to the bemusement of the innkeeper, calling for hush. “Right,” said Jack, “I am going to make a small speech and sing you a song and then I would like to sit quietly with a pint in the corner.” Silence fell. He told them they were the best supporters in the world and sang his favourite Irish song, Dublin in the Rare Old Times. Penny whistles and spoons pulled from pockets provided accompaniment and his only disturbance thereafter was a succession of pints arriving at his table.

Although their teams have had their moments, the Northern Irish and Welsh fans have always regarded themselves as happy underdogs, whereas the English – players and fans – tend to strut as though they are world champions year in, year out. Media hype must take some of the blame for an obsession with the England team that is too intense to be healthy and the transition of the love of the country’s national game into uncontrolled passion can perhaps be traced back to when newspapers began to send news reporters to major sporting events.

Quite legitimate of course: newspapers thrive on stories and the news reporters, who seemed to have an unofficial leader in the veteran John “Jacko” Jackson of the Daily Mirror, were capable of digging out off-the-field nuggets that headline writers could polish into diamonds. Their unpopularity with their sports colleagues – for many, the game was all that mattered – and the Football Association led to them becoming known as “rotters”. “Has anyone seen my rotter?”, and, “I wonder what my rotter is up to today?” were questions often heard from the sports hacks. The newsmen themselves cared so little they had T-shirts made bearing a “Rotters” logo – and the reporting of big sporting events changed forever.

The rotters had to work for stories and they did not grow on trees, especially those planted in foreign soil. Newsdesk demand meant a trawl for angles. When the England team moved into their hotel in Bilbao ahead of the 1992 World Cup, one or two rotters persuaded manager Ron Greenwood that it might be a good idea if they brought a handful of British dancers to meet the players. The girls, they said, were classic professionals performing in a theatre in Bilbao. Pictures were taken before the England entourage discovered that the girls were of the pole and lap-dancing variety.

Can the appetite be sated?

The streets will empty when England play. There may be statements in the House of Commons. The country will be united in hope. And then... and then things quite likely will start to go wrong in the opening phase that involves England trying to qualify ahead of the United States, Algeria and Slovenia for the knockout stage of the competition. In our newspapers when will “Glory, Glory, Glory” become “Shame, Shame, Shame”? When will Capello’s tactical genius be venomously dismissed as abject failure? How long before euphoria turns to despair in South African stadia or on English streets?

Should England fail, it will be a brave media soul who points out that press and public constantly sidestep the reality that perhaps the likes of Argentina, Brazil and Spain are more often than not better than us and gently suggest that perhaps a quarter-final is a realistic target rather than another Bobby Moore moment that sees Rio Ferdinand caressing the trophy on final day, July 11. Or that purple prose praising “our boys” for “putting their bodies on the line” should be reserved for “our boys” really doing just that in Afghanistan.

Only outright victory in South Africa is likely to cause a hiccup in newspaper circulation figures that continue to head south. And outrageously partisan coverage and the feeding of our disturbing national delirium will thrive. Just ask the rotters.