A World Cup for all ages

​For much of the last six months, I have been writing the fifth title in my History of Football series, which has now been published.

The World Cup Story captures key moments as short-form history snapshots – the players, the locations and the late dramas – with a narrative that draws these disparate events together into a story. It is a curation of many stories, my own included.
As we look forward to FIFA 2026, writing this book enabled me to go back, not just to the origins of the World Cup and its first incarnation in 1930, but to four tournaments through which I clearly remember the progression from child to adult.

When I was six, England won the World Cup. It felt like a birthday present, just for me. I can remember my father and grandfather shouting and smiling at the back and white television set in the corner, fuelled by multiple bottles of Watney’s Brown Ale. ‘Watney’s Brown: Drink it down,’ the TV ad said, so they did. That memory is more vivid than the scenes at Wembley that were being broadcast into our little house.

My first ‘proper’ World Cup came in 1970. I joined other boys in the playground as we held an imaginary cup above our heads, chanting, “We’ll be running around the Azteca with the cup…” I didn’t know what the Azteca was then, just feeling really happy to be allowed to join in. I remember the Gordon Banks save much more than the Jairzinho goal; Gerd Müller more than Peter Bonetti. After the classic Carlos Alberto goal in the final, my mother remarked that lots of the fans in the crowd were wearing cowboy hats, just like mine. There were no Red Indians in Mexico (though probably a few Native Americans), and none by the time I lay down my cap guns and took my football to the bottom of the garden that evening either.

In truth, I hadn’t wanted that glorious summer to end, because it heralded my last year at primary school, and I was already apprehensive about going to ‘big school’ the following year.

Short trousers being long consigned to the past (bigger boys always got picked for the football teams), my long trousers were matched with long hair in 1974 as I read my ‘World Cup Special’ magazine over and over again. I think that part of me wanted to go back four years to relative safety, especially with everyone at school now talking about options for O-Levels rather than the different football kits of the countries that would be playing in West Germany.

I was at an age where lots of things were changing on and off the pitch. The tournament wasn’t as I had remembered it, and I wondered if 1970 had been a trick of the memory after all. Johan Cruyff and the Dutch team offered flair and excitement, even in the monsoon-like conditions at times, but they were beaten by a workmanlike host nation. Perhaps this, too, was a metaphor to stop daydreaming and work even harder. I did well at school, but I still hadn’t completely jettisoned my dreams.

By 1978, things had become much more serious, not just because of Argentina’s military junta in charge of the tournament, but because A-levels and the university place depending on them coincided with the World Cup in a shocking piece of JMB Examining Board/FIFA scheduling. I rationed my time carefully, allowing the occasional bit of revision while being glued to moving pictures from the other side of the world. I took careful note of the Miracle of Córdoba, where Austria made up for forty years of history and also the apparent collapse of a Peruvian team against Argentina, who, of course, won the final they had paid for.

In 1982, I was recovering from loss. First love had come and gone, as had my university years. It felt like I was on my own now, without the support system I had known and relied upon since I was four years old. As England scored against France after just 27 seconds, pleasing my father all over again (and nothing to do with football this time), I watched them then struggle to score, going out with a limp rather than a stride. It mirrored my own struggle to find anything meaningful to do in life. Paolo Rossi represented hope, but, in truth, I just wanted to be Marco Tardelli, screaming with carefree happiness.

By 1986, I had met my lovely future wife and settled down to a working life. Our first son came along in 1992, and he sat on my knee as we watched EURO 92 together. He doesn’t remember much about those pictures on the television either, but I do; again, more through a sense of my own presence in the world than a world coming together. By the time his little brother had arrived to join in with the 1998 excitement, David Beckham was being evicted from France. It seemed a long way from England’s players singing joyfully about us watching their exploits from ‘Back Home.’

Those four tournaments are better than any photographs of the time. I can press the Play button in my head, and they’re all still there: the moving images that made an impact on the World Cup stage and on my life as I coped with changes which I was largely unable to control.

Those of us who love football – especially football history – can remember events in our own lives through matches and results. My father used to write conscientiously in a five-year diary every day. I’m not sure if anyone does that anymore. If so, mine would be a four-year version, and it would include his comments on Mario Kempes’s unkempt hair, and his deliberate mispronunciation of Wim Rijsbergen as ‘Jim Rice Pudding,’ which he knew would make me laugh. He died 12 years ago, and I hope that one day I’ll be able to read the diaries he left to me, as well as one from Grandad, who died fifty years ago this year.

I have retired now, which is why my dream of being a writer is now a reality. The World Cup Story is my story too. The next chapter of it, however it manifests itself, is there for me to watch without the insecurities of school, college, work life or unrequited love. The book has indeed been a voyage of discovery, but also a reconnection with who I was then and who I have become. 

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​You can buy The World Cup Story on Amazon. Just search for the title or 'Mark Rasdall' in any Amazon store and the title will appear. You can download the digital version to a Kindle or Kindle app on PC, iPad, iPhone and other devices. 

The book is available in Kindle Unlimited too.

​The print edition is also available from all good bookshops, worldwide.

ISBN: 9798254170907

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