Steve Claridge – why the long face?
Is it the gambling, the speeding convictions and the narrowly-avoided jail sentence? Is it the memory of tempestuous relationships with chairmen and managers, Tales from the Bootcamp, a whoreishly popular football career, or the fact that the high point of that 1000-plus career games was achieved on the crest of a wave amidst the razzmatazz and glitz and glamour of . . . . Leciester City. Was it that you rose from the unfashionable south coast town of Weymouth and rose all the way to the heady heights of the unfashionable southern East Midlands.
No matter Steve, put all that behind you now for your expert punditry doth make all that irrelevant in my mind. Or does it?
It is Steve’s life journey to the studio, his playing career and his personality faults which make me like him so much. What I really like about his succinct, measured and occasionally platitudinal and two-dimensional observations, whether in print, on The Football League Show or via Ask Steve on the BBC website, is that they have been fashioned in the melting pot of real football, honed at the coalface of back-of-beyond clubs.
In his playing days – which appear to backdate to approximately last Thursday – Steve attempted to complete the alphabet of league and non-league clubs, appearing to fall short of a full pack missing out just J and Q. Nevetheless, it is my belief that his scruffy, socks-round-the-ankles playing days earned him the right now to offer his opinions to anyone who’ll listen and he does know all about the playing side of the game.
Steve’s one of those slightly shady, black-sheep-of-the-family uncles you had when you were a kid in the 70s, much loved despite turning up at family functions once in a blue moon, always living at a different address with a different partner, arriving in a different car but making your day perfect with a new handful of Esso world cup coins, a bag of conkers and a Sherbert Dib Dab.
And Steve knows the pros. Manish will ask Steve how a particular player may feel after a poor game and Claridge ponders the question, hesitating just long enough to make us believe he’s wrestling with a complex philosophical conundrum which has tantalised man since time began, before offering: “I know Deano well. I’ve played with him on several occasions and he’ll know he hasn’t performed as well as he could have done today . . .” or perhaps “That’s a difficult one, Jacko’s a very bright lad, I was speaking to him last week, and I’m confident he’ll do what’s best for the club in the long term.”
If allowed to roam free among the African Cup of Nations Steve would have offered further gems: “I played alongside Osaze Odemwingie many times, we were together at Weymouth and often went down arcades on the pier on our days off, and now he’s doing a great job for the Super Eagles.”
I admit that it’s not, by any stretch of the imagination, insightful or incisive. It’s certainly not deep, it lacks Garth’s boggle-eyed, mad-dog-on-the-loose intensity or Hansen’s steely and knowledgeable assuredness, but it’s kind of what you need when you’re discussing Aldershot’s back four or Grimsby’s loanees on the Football League Show (FLS). It’s bespoke punditry and it fits the progamme neatly and that’s why I like him.
Never mind that I could virtually write the script for him, he’s just the perfect man for the job and, watching the FLS, he makes me feel comfortable, I know that all the planets are in alignment, global warming won’t make Hunstanton disappear overnight and the pie’s in the oven. I know what I’m going to get with Claridge: it’s clean, it’s considered, and it’s coming out of the mouthpiece of an itinerant, journeyman striker who managed to hit the back of the net a few times (you didn’t think I would get through 750 words on Steve Claridge and not use the words itinerant and journeyman did you?)
It’s no mean feat summing up the various merits of 72 football league clubs outside the top flight but, like Everyman, Steve manages to offer a little something for one and all. He’s kind of saying what every schoolboy footballer thinks in his head whilst he’s commentating on his own performance in the park. And, for some reason, I like that.
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