Those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer

THERE’S a moment every summer holiday when the brain snaps off and, like Tennyson’s Lotos Eaters, leaves you isolated in “a land in which it always seems afternoon... where all things always seem the same.”

News from outside meanders slowly in on the breeze across heat-baked mountains carrying with it the scents of olive groves and wild thyme, but just beyond auditory range and meaning.

Did I hear that Wyclef Jean is planning to run for president of Haiti? What’s all that about? He couldn’t even keep The Fugees together, let alone a population of nine million.

What was that story about Naomi Campbell, blood diamonds, and a war crimes trial? Did Fabio Capello really announce on TV that Beckham would never play for England again before telling the player himself? Unbelievable.

Actually not, given the transition of the most famous son of San Canzian d’Isonzo from Italian Iron Man into the tragi-comic figure of Pagliacci. Plenty of Commedia but not much dell’arte about the England set-up since last May and the final act cannot be long delayed. Someone once said that opera was a noisy way of telling a silly story and much the same accusation could be levelled against the Football Association.

Another bizarre tit-bit of news, which I can only think I misunderstood during a second bottle of retsina, was that a mysterious Asian businessman with legendary wealth headquartered in the Gulf States (are there any other kind?) wants to take over Blackburn Rovers, and give Big Sam Allardyce a transfer kitty of more than €120million.

Ostentatious wearing of Bluetooth headsets aside, I’ve got nothing against Big Sam — who was looking pretty pleased with himself, as well he might, when he visited Cork this week to promote Carl Davenport’s book.

But the mooted takeover of Blackburn for €350m appears a little short of economic rationale in this post-financial meltdown world.

Quite the most jaw-dropping statement came from Indian tycoon Ahsan Ali Syed who said that he thought Rovers had “more potential than Liverpool.” Has anyone told the Chinese government’s financial arm this as they pursue their interest in Anfield? It may well be that this comment is an homage to that longstanding Premier League tradition of “mind games”, and far be it from me to spoil a good story with some facts, but let’s have some anyway.

It’s true that Blackburn (population 105,000) was the first boom town of the Industrial Revolution and was once known as “the weaving capital of the world.” But it has been in decline for more than half a century and is now home to the third largest Muslim community — around 25% of local people — in Britain.

With a surreal sense of the wheel turning full circle it was the Ewood Park club who ushered in the value system of the Premier League when the millions invested by local steel baron Jack Walker in 1991 helped Kenny Dalglish assemble a title-winning side by beating Manchester United to the signing of Alan Shearer for what now seems the bargain price of £3.3m.

Dalglish joined as manager just eight months after leaving Liverpool saying that he wanted an extended break from the game. It remains one of the more mystifying decisions in the past two decades of football. Chris Sutton — then Britain’s most expensive player at £5m — arrived in 1994 and the strike force was supplemented by Mike Newell, Kevin Gallacher and, the unsung hero, winger Stuart Ripley recruited from Middlesbrough.

Jack Walker’s investment was rewarded in 1995 when Blackburn won their first league title since 1914 on the last day of the season when Manchester United, surprisingly, could only draw 1-1 at Upton Park. At the start of the next season Dalglish moved upstairs as Director of Football and it was downhill all the way. Blackburn were relegated in 1999 under the hapless management of Brian Kidd who had taken over mid-season from Roy Hodgson.

Walker it was who established the modern mould of wealthy owners and he has been followed by a series of millionaires and billionaires. Some have been benevolent despots (Abramovich and Al-Fayed); others appear to have lost the plot (Randy Lerner); some have produced passable impersonations of not having a clue (Briatore, Ecclestone and Mittel); others have yet to reveal their true colours (Kroenke and Usmanov). There have been those who have profited greatly (the Glazers) while there have been unmitigated disasters (Gillett, Hicks, any one from four at Portsmouth).

As I sat outside a taverna in an Aegean port in 35 degrees of heat last week, with my circadian rhythms ticking over nicely, I was playing my usual summer game of counting the number of replica shirts drifting past my gaze. Barcelona, Man United and Chelsea were the Big Three as far as Zorba the Greek was concerned.

Astonishingly one retro Liverpool shirt passed by emblazoned with the name Alec Lindsay. It must have been a relative. I hardly had time to blink before a pair of locals wandered up wearing new Olympiakos tops and carrying the name Derbyshire, once of the parish of Blackburn and, as of Monday, back in the English Midlands on loan at Birmingham. Don’t you just hate it when that happens? You lash out on a 10-character name, and then your hero gets transferred. Those lads could do with an ouzo.

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