Madrid’s football in black and white: worse, except for the rules

The Community of Madrid has had the good sense to set up an exhibition in one of the city’s traditional neighbourhoods (opposite the Delicias metro station) of football photos from the black and white years. It’s well put together too, divided into themes, players, pitches, referees, fans… There are some fun games in there and some scenes from the 1958 Madrid-Manchester United game. A good test for the memory banks, to see us (well, some of us) as we were ‘back then’, as Umbral would say.

When I went to see it, encouraged by a friend, I saw that it was proving very popular, with young and old alike, and that it was generally being well received.

Everything was worse, except…

But I don't want to write a Madrid-focused article, but instead want to take do it for more general interest. Nor do I want this to be an exercise in nostalgia. What is captured in the exhibition works for everyone: younger people because of the picturesque delights and us older folk because it reminds us of happy times, although if we think seriously for a moment we will admit that everything was actually worse then. The pitches, the balls, the boots, the cameras, the clothes we wore, the transport we used… everything was worse.

Well, everything except for two things: the age we were then, which won't be returning, and the common consensus on the rules of the game. We all knew what handball and offside were.

Natural laws, lost in modernity

As I looked at those endearing images, that's the only thing that we have lost, I thought. The rules were clear to us from when we kicked a ball around in the park, because they were natural laws, just like the Ten Commandments: thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not kill, thou shalt honour thy parents…

That's how simple it was, before the biblical rain of precision was unleashed by David Elleray, something, ever less precise, that has been pouring for some time now, and it’s dampening the thing we enjoy the most. And I fear that, like the youthful age that is lost forever, it will not be possible to get this back either.