Carlos Polimeni – Argentine News
In 1967, in the heat of beatlemania, John Lennon said in a journalistic interview that he preferred that Racing Club beat Celtic of Scotland in the final of the Intercontinental Football Cup, which would face them in a third match in Montevideo.
In the interview, which became legendary, although there is no copy of the video that Juan Alberto Badía claimed to have seen in London, the author of “Imagine” would have said: “What is the name of the team that plays against Celtic? Racing ?. Hey, I like Racing. Long live Racing, I’m from Racing ”.
The expression, which must be framed in a historical political rivalry between Scots and English and in the always wayward character of John, came after one of his typical jokes in front of journalists, when he commented that he actually liked cricket more than football.
“My goal was celebrated by John Lennon,” said Juan Carlos Chango Cárdenas, who recalled that match in Uruguay, when he recalled that match in Uruguay. “Because of the hatred between the English and the Scots, Lennon didn’t even want Celtic to win. How are you? Even the genius of The Beatles cared about my goal ”.
At this point in history, and with the upheaval caused in the world by the premiere of the documentary Get bak, by Peter Jackson, it is public that the members of the band did not speak of their soccer preferences due to an imposition of their manager, Brian Epstein, who knew that any pronouncement would take away public.
But the truth is that Lennon had not only dreamed of being a footballer as a child, but he also caught on in the dive, and had his heart set on Liverpool FC, the team with the red jersey that today has fans all over the world and three years ago. years he wore a white alternative in homage to The Beatles.
Paul McCartney, on the other hand, is a supporter of another of the teams in the port city where the four members of the quartet were born, Everton, while Ringo Starr seems to have inherited from his stepfather the sympathy for a London team, Arsenal, although his sons be a Liverpool fan.
Those who claim that Lennon did not care so much about football because he spoke little about it, should check the cover of his fifth solo album Walls and Bridges, from 1974, with a rare design that features a drawing of his from 1952, when he was eleven years old.
In that drawing, that boy with few friends immortalized a scene with four players and a ball that illustrated the goal with which Newcasttle had won the FA Cup final against Arsenal, with a rarity, a header from a Chilean striker named Jorge Robledo.
“We weren’t especially skillful, although John was, undoubtedly, the best with the ball at his feet,” said drummer Pete Best about the relationship of the members of the group with the active practice of soccer, the one who left for his destination because he guessed they would not be successful.
“One day he confessed to me that he had always dreamed of playing in Liverpool,” said good old Best, who lived with Lennon the most bohemian stage of the band, before the explosion. “I, on the other hand, preferred Goodison Park,” he added, thus mentioning the Everton stadium.
It is very likely that Lennon celebrated Cárdenas’ goal in Uruguay in private, as Racing fans would like, but instead there are photographic documents of how the following year he went out on a binge to celebrate winning the European Cup for part of Manchester United, where his friend George Best played.
“I spent a lot of money on cars, women and alcohol. The rest I just wasted ”, declared at that time the devilish forward born in Ireland, one of the best dribblers in the history of football, who was then called the Fifth Beatle, above all because of his hair arrangements.
That the group cared about football and that the hometown of the four was a passion had become clear two years before Racing’s intercontinental title, when they sent a telegram to the Liverpool squad, which was playing in an FA Cup final.
“Best of luck, guys,” read the telegram, sent on behalf of legendary coach Bill Shankly, who ended up celebrating a 2 to 1 match against Leeds United, the team currently led by Argentine Marcelo Bielsa. “We will be watching them on TV. John, Paul, George and Ringo ”.
When the iconic LP cover was brewing Sargent Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band Lennon wanted to include a Liverpool player, Albert Stubbins, at his father’s request, but McCartney said it would only be possible if an Everton star was added as well, so the initiative was without effect.
The shyest of the four, George Harrison, was also the most disinterested in football, although in Anthology recalls his enthusiasm for the 1957 English Cup final in which Aston Villa beat Manchester United 2-1 when he was 14 years old.
The demos of the track “Glass Onion” included a cut of the voice of the rapporteur Kenneth Wolstenholme yelling “It’s a goal!” in one of the broadcasts of the campaign that led England to win their only World Cup at home in 1966, but the idea was later scrapped by producer George Martin, the real Fifth Beatle.
The football rivalry between Lennon and McCartney appears as a brushstroke from the 1968 animated film Yellow Submarine, if one takes into account that in the scene of the song “Eleanor Rigby”, two football teams appear with the jerseys of the colors of Everton and Liverpool.
In the TV movie Magical Mistery Tour, premiered by the BBC in 1967, you can see random images of the four musicians having fun with a soccer ball, always within the framework of the explosion of passion for the sport that victory in the 66 World Cup had brought to the country.
It is easy to imagine that perhaps some of the Fabulous Four celebrated the rare expulsion of the captain of the Argentine national team, Antonio Ubaldo Rattin, in the quarterfinal match of that World Cup, in which England ended up winning by 1 to 0, supported by him for nothing impartial arbitration of the German Rudolf Kreitlein.
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