Until the 1980s, England vs Northern Ireland was a calendar annual. Then the ‘Home’ championship was brutally abandoned. So to those of a certain generation last week’s soccer fixture seemed surreal. As surreal, I daresay, as the play which opens in Stockholm next Friday — British playwright Nick Grosso’s depiction of a randy Swedish coach of an England soccer team described, deadpan, by the theatre spokesman as ‘a relationship-comedy twisted into the realms of the absurd’. Methinks Nick will have to be on top form to ratchet any new ‘twist’ from our sexy Sven’s real-life relationship absurdities. England’s World Cup qualifier against Northern Ireland was followed closely by another in Azerbaijan, which itself would once upon a time have been an irrationally conceptual notion. But there you are; reality moves on. As does surreality.
Before this latest batch of World Cuppers, ageing flame of a legend George Best renewed the call for an All-Ireland soccer team similar to its national rugby XV which embraces the whole island.
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