FAMILY:Playing the beautiful game with Chelsea's millionaires is the dream . . . writes AIFRIC CAMPBELL.
GORDON BROWN’S LETTER arrives just before we set off. Number Eight (aka my 10-year-old son) examines the envelope while the two of us look on eagerly from the front seat. “I’ll read it later,” he says, strapping on his lucky shin pads. He has some urgent business to conduct before he deals with correspondence from 10 Downing Street.
I have detailed directions on my lap, but SatNav (aka my husband) is already punching in the postcode for our first stop: Chelsea’s training ground in Cobham, where Number Eight is playing in a tournament. In the rear-view mirror I can see him steeling his chin. He is slipping into pre-match mode – a state resembling hypnosis – and I know better than to butt in.
I have learned a few essential rules for mothers in my apprenticeship on the sidelines. For example, never run on to the pitch to tie your son’s bootlaces; never imagine you understand the agony of missing a penalty and always remember that whatever you think you know about football, you’re wrong.
“I’m below average height for my age,” Number Eight reveals one evening after school. “Who said that?” bristles six-foot-one SatNav.
“Mom’s titchy,” says Number Eight, eyeing me suspiciously, as if this newly discovered shortcoming might be due some genetic deficiency on my part.
“She’s the same height as Lionel Messi,” says SatNav, a fact confirmed when I posed beside the cardboard cut-out of Barcelona’s star winger at Camp Nou.
“You know Kaka, who plays for AC Milan?” says Number Eight, as we slip on to the motorway. “He has ‘I belong to God’ written on his boots.”
“D’you think it helps his game?” says SatNav.
Number Eight shrugs. He knows from personal experience that divine intervention does not extend to match-fixing. On the other hand – just like with hair gel, earrings, tattoos, Ferraris, Cheryl Cole and brawling in night clubs – it’s sometimes hard to be sure what gives a footballer the edge.
The Oracle of Misdirection orders us off at the wrong exit, but SatNav suspects an error in Chelsea’s instructions. “Like they don’t know their own address Dad?” quips Number Eight.
Despite strict instructions not to arrive before the appointed time of 10am, we are early. The security guard shakes his head when asked if there is somewhere to hang around and have coffee. SatNav-in-a-strop wrenches the gearstick into reverse. The car stalls, blocking the entrance. And suddenly there is Frank Lampard, looking on from behind the smoked glass of his cavernous SUV. Number Eight slides down mortified in the back seat, as Chelsea’s legendary midfielder is held up by his Dad’s seven-point turn.
The boys are led off into a palatial building and we join the parental huddle on the tarmac in a howling wind. Some of the women are sporting full make-up and stiletto boots. These are not Wags but Moffs (Mothers of Future Footballers), with body-hugging black tops made from some fabric with mysterious thermal properties
“Welcome to Cobham,” says a square-jawed 20-something. “Now the thing you need to know is that there are more can’t-dos than can-dos. You may not enter any building. And there’s no coffee cups or water allowed anywhere.” SatNav sneaks the Starbucks behind his back.
“Now the first team is here training for tomorrow’s match.” Heads swivel frantically and there in the distance, partially screened by designer landscaping, are some of football’s biggest names jogging around the pitch in a slow-moving convoy. I recognise Didier Drogba, Petr Cech, John Terry and a bunch of other men who earn £130,000 a week. “You may not call out to a player,” continues our guide. “You can wave, but you should not expect him to wave back. And you must keep to that footpath there . . .”
“I suppose that means we can’t let the dog out for a piss,” says SatNav, looking back at Roxy, who stares out mournfully from the boot at the vast expanse of manicured green.
The pitchside air crackles with the hopes and dreams of little boys. I think of the story Number Eight’s coach told us last week about the 11-year-old goalie who was scouted by Chelsea and then dropped when an X-ray of the bones in his hand predicted he wouldn’t grow tall enough.
The whistle blows but the tournament is curiously anticlimactic. All the matches are watched in an eerie silence, as if the parents are afraid we’ll be kicked out for cheering. The boys acquit themselves with honourable draws. There is a brief photoshoot with the coach and we are invited to leave. Promptly.
Three hours later we arrive at our friends’ house in Somerset and are met by their seven-year-old daughter cradling Sleepy the hen in her arms. Number Eight and his mate run off with a ball and Buster the border collie, who plays in goal. The little girl takes me up to admire Sleepy’s three fluffy chicks – Jose (Mourinho), Frank (Lampard) and Tinkerbelle – who live in a cardboard box in the kid’s bedroom.
The following day we watch Chelsea throw their name away in a goalless draw. “My granny could play better than that,” SatNav roars at the screen. “Your granny is dead,” says Number Eight.
While we’re packing up the car I spy Roxy slinking across the yard with her ears pinned back and a white feather stuck in her snout. The downy trail leads through the orchard to a partially disembowelled and still-warm corpse underneath the trampoline, where Sleepy made her last stand. Naturally the boys feel obliged to immediately break the tragic news to Sleepy’s owner, who comes running out of the house in her pyjamas bawling her head off. I give her a hug, SatNav slips her a tenner in lieu of Sleepy’s life and promises some very stern words for our mother-killing labrador who is locked in the car staring longingly at the crime scene.
Number Eight finally picks up his letter from the back seat, reads it in silence.
“You know that Gordon Brown bloke? He didn’t even answer my question.”
“What did you ask him?”
“If he thought that Rangers should use the transfer window to sell some players.”
“Oh well,” says SatNav, “the prime minister can’t really say what he thinks because it might get into the papers.”
“So what’s the point in being prime minister then?” Number Eight sighs and tosses the letter aside. “I’m never going to vote for someone who won’t tell the truth.”