My family used to regard me as the ultimate football fanatic. They had some evidence to justify the classification. We rented a black and white television for me to watch every match in the 1970 World Cup in Mexico, most being played in the early hours of the morning. There was, however, a compromise negotiated for the 10-yearold: bed by seven; up by midnight.
During daylight hours, replays in the back garden were re-enacted with histrionics as players doubled up as commentators and trees were deployed as goal posts. The dribbling skills of a losing player never featured. An exit from the competition was enough to immediately condemn stars to history. Football could be a cruel game. This most definitely was the time of Jairzinho, Pele, and the boys from Brazil.
One of the must disorientating experiences of my life came during that bleary-eyed time, being woken to the dazzling rays of a television parked at the end of my bed in a dark room and a roaring RTE commentary - the prank of some football-weary sisters.
But football fanaticism somehow faded. The seed of change was, I suspect, a suggestion that a professional footballing career could be combined with a university education.
Lecturer of sorts
As an ardent Liverpool supporter, I was endlessly impressed by the argument that Steve Heighway had been to college and was commanding a first team place, not to mention one on the Irish soccer team. He is a lecturer of sorts now, but as director of youth at Liverpool FC.
This summer, France '98 - vive la France, vive le foot - and all that, has made me realise that such fanaticism pales besides that of the new generation, my two young sons included, and do I feel old! Marcus (8): "Did you see Gordon Banks make that save from Pele in 1970?"
It was particularly interesting to learn that Chile actually staged the World Cup in 1962, for it is more than doubtful that it could have mustered up the £700 million or so to stage the 1998 equivalent.
Scintillating Brazilians may be a tangible link with that past but the new footballing rituals have become so radically different to those of "our day" (I always promised myself I would never succumb to using such patronising terms. Alas they have become necessary). So much so, that there is a strong sense that it is a different game.
The Guardian helpfully suggested, notwithstanding the wonderful drama of France '98, that change in the English game, for its part, was a product of "Thatcherised and Murdochised Britain, where sport and celebrity and money and the media are locked together in a dervish dance". In that frenzy, it suggested, a sense of proportion appears to have been suspended.
It is, after all, the footballing age of designer/teenager superstar-dom; teenybopper players with celebrity status exceeding those of pop singers. No place here for Nobby Stiles sans front teeth or Bobby Charlton with his lonely strip of hair patched across his forehead linking one temple to the other. Can you imagine Jimmy Greaves being seen going for a holiday stroll wearing a sarong, a la David Beckham with Posh Spice in tow? He probably would not have been able to take to the field again.
Soccer fan eyes
The statistical analysis of an eight-year-old has moved onto a new plane too. Every goal, booking and sending-off is recorded meticulously. The official World Cup guide has been re-read so much that the history of the world since the 1930s can be recounted through soccer fan eyes. "Dad, did you know that in 1990 when England were beaten by West Germany, Gascoigne cried?"
France '98 was, however, a glorious opportunity too to impart geography lessons dressedup as serious football deliberation, to provide an introduction to the conjuring-up of odds on games and, above all, to make moralistic pronouncements on inappropriate human behaviour, even if stereotypes were availed of a little too easily.
Moreover, being in France on a family camping holiday at the same time added authority to my utterances. Being located just 140 kilometres from a match venue (Nantes) was even a source of satisfaction for the new young fanatics. It was almost as if they could smell the green turf.
The moralising ran like so: Gazza had been dropped because he was simply too unfit, drank a lot and indulged in too many late night kebabs. That really rang home. His English colleague Teddy Sheringham being "found on" at dawn in a Spanish nightclub days before travelling to France was a little more difficult to explain away.
But Beckham's petulance and sending-off against Argentina was a cinch to put in context: "Please look at the page one headline in The Mirror (next day); `10 heroic lions, one stupid boy'."
But there was a low point. As we sat in the car listening in the dark to BBC Radio 5 Live and Romania rebounded to win 2-1 against England, Dermot (6) said in a matter of fact tone: "The English fans will wreck the bar (on the campsite)."
Ageing football fan
Some stereotypes will take a long time to eradicate. Yet the highs most definitely won out. From the perspective of an ageing football fan - in the eyes of the new fanatics - and being in the writing business, one particular joy was a quote from Le Monde. It displays a delightful combination of measured French praise and score-settling when England were out (tee...hee!) and France were still in.
Before noting there would be tears in the tabloid-reading villages of England, it went on: "Michael Owen is the extraordinary little blond which England had up its sleeve - still a teenager - with good clean looks, the model of a well-behaved young man. Everything to make his parents, coaches and country proud of him. And while we're at it, everything to restore England's image which was becoming that of a simple factory of tattooed hooligans and alcoholics."
Some Gallic glee is discernible in there too, I contend, and given the host team's performance, a tournoi par excellence which more than most rewarded the passionate and the creative footballing side, such indulgence can be easily justified by Les Bleus.