Observations on surreal sport
Few would argue that there is a poetic quality to British football team names. The likes of Hamilton Academical, Sheffield Wednesday and Queen of the South veritably trip off the tongue. So when the Sunday kick-abouts I have been involved in with friends for the past year formalised into a competitive five-a-side team recently, there was a high standard for us to follow when it came to picking a name.
The early favourite, Duck Pond Albion - reflecting our damp training environs on Clapham Common - was eventually discarded in favour of the silly- but-appealing Surreal Madrid.
We have since discovered that this name has been subconsciously plagiarised from either a Spanish pop group or a well-established Sunday league side from Hackney, depending on who you believe.
No matter: it is fixed now. We are Surreal Madrid, and we are committed to doing justice to our name. But how to do so? We already employ some fairly abstract tactics, though uncharitable critics may replace the word "abstract" with "poor". Playing with Dali moustaches drawn on with marker pen seemed like a good idea briefly, until someone pointed out that our opposition would probably have enough reasons to laugh at us without the team looking like art students on a stag weekend.
The only way to pay homage to our inspirations in the surrealist movement seemed to be with some well-worded chants. As I was carrying an injury for our opening game, I volunteered for the task. Incorporating an ideology into something as epigrammatic as a football song is not easy. I once encountered some amiable politicos in Oakland who comprised Kronstadt FC, "the Bay Area's premier anarchist soccer team" (not a crowded field you would think). They were fun guys, but their chants towards their local Marxist-Leninist rivals Left-Wing FC lacked a certain finesse, to put it mildly.
The worst of a bad lot was probably: "You say you look to Mao for salvation? What about the Xinjiang workers' situation?!"
With this crime against the English language in mind, I scratched out my first attempt: "You're constricted by reality and conscious thought - and you know you are!" "Fish-nil, to Surreee-eal", to the tune of "Go West", also got the red pencil for being a bit too eagerly surreal.
After an evening abstracting my conscious mind from the strictures of modern capitalist society, I eventually hit on three I was happy with: "Existence is elsewhere . . . and so is your defence"; "The referee's a window" (guaranteed to confuse the man in the middle); and "It's just like watching Breton" (as opposed to "Brazil", the more common chant).
Finally, we needed a drinking song to lift our surrealist spirits after the game, and this, ladies and gentlemen, is it:
"I've got a girl called Carly,
Likes the music of Bob Marley,
I'll have a line of charlie,
Go on holiday to Bali,
But my one true love
Is Mr Salvador Dali."
Maybe we should have stuck with Duck Pond Albion.
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