Travelogue
The Great Brazilians Part 1 - Félix, Jairzinho, Pelé and Rivellino - 19 February 2022
They say that falling in love is better than being in love as it can bring the wonder and excitement of discovery for the first time. When I was at school, I had a poster of the Brazilian football team on my wall taken in the Azteca Stadium before the 1970 World Cup final. The poster was produced by Adidas proud that most of the players chose to wear their footwear and signalling the start of global marketing for sportswear. For me though it was about something else entirely and that would change my life forever. It was through that poster that I fell in love with football the favourite game the world over. and had embedded in me the wonder of far-off places with exotic sounding names and the desire to wander, all of which have stayed with me to this day. For many the 1970 World Cup stands as the apogee of football with the winners the greatest side the world has known or will ever know. People watching the games shown live for the first time around the world in colour on television (even in packed movie theatres in the USA) and those in the stadia in Mexico thought they were witnessing a golden age, the start of something bright and beautiful as the neutrals’ favourites won what was called the battle for football’s soul. What they were in fact seeing, though no one realised it at the time, was the end of an era the likes of which would never be seen again for the game of football had changed. The World Cup would never be the same again and Brazilian football had
Football and the Teams at Mexico 1970 - 4 December 2021
The 1970 World Cup in Mexico is widely thought of as the tournament against which all others are measured – a celebration of free-wheeling football where the winners Brazil triumphed with a team of sublime artists over the more disciplined, physically tactical Europeans who were represented in the Final by Italy with their pincer defensive
Mexico World Cup 1970 - 6 November 2021
Someone once said watching football is about bold, primary-colour emotions: the pursuit of joy and the endurance of pain. The ninth FIFA World Cup held in Mexico (31 May 1970 – 21 Jun 1970) had all these factors and is widely thought of as a seminal sporting event for lots of reasons; a World cup against which all others are measured. In many
Gérson and the 1970 Brazilians - 25 September 2021
Great football teams have many elements in common. They have timing, and the right balance of dedication, organisation, and a commitment to a common cause. Great teams like great players can marry inspiration with industry—they work hard. They also usually have an ability to make the difficult seem easy, like no effort at all because they always
Fla-Flu at the Maracanã - 8 July 2021
I once criss-crossed swathes of South America for four months by road, rail, and on water, with some flights in-between travelling from place-to-place, city-to-city, and country-to-country. The overwhelming impression you get of South America is one of diversity followed by its scale, it’s huge; Argentina is the eight-largest country in the
Brisbane to Cairns - 6 June 2021
When I first went to Australia as a teenager I hitchhiked from Melbourne to Cairns, about 3000kms (roughly 1800 miles) by road. You get a sense of the size of Australia when you realise that as far as north as Cairns (pronounced by the locals as “Cans”) is from Melbourne, there is still another 1100kms before you reach Cape York at the Torres
Ten Songs - 5 May 2021
Music can be a very personal thing. For a lot of people music is associated with specific events or times, with people and places, various phases of relationships – good and bad. Music can cover a whole range of emotions. It can be uplifting or soothing but is rarely both in the same song or piece of music, unless your name is Beethoven
The Bình Xuyên and the Battle of Saigon - 7 April 2021
By 1954 Bay Vien (“Bay the Seventh”), an illiterate gangster once impoverished and homeless, had become the richest man in Saigon with immense wealth at the head of a criminal-military organisation thousands strong, and the key to the French presence in Cochinchina. He was the leader of a powerful Vietnamese criminal enterprise decreed by the
The Bình Xuyên – River Pirates from the Swamp of the Assassins - 10 March 2021
The history of organised crime in Cho Lon-Sai Gon (Anglicised as Cholon-Saigon and these days Ho Chi Minh City) last century can be told in stages. The 1960s was the era of the “Four Great Kings” so-called after the four dominant mobsters in the city who collectively ruled Saigon, the most prominent of which was Dai Cathay, leader of the Chinese
