Oh, I loved George Malone.

 

A death normally takes a good few days to reconcile. The five stages of grief.

But we all knew immediately. From the first minute at Anfield, we all knew what we were watching. It was one of those chilling flashes of realisation when a world you believed to be pure showed its true colours. A cheat, guilty as sin, no sense of shame, simply glorifying their infidelity with denial.

It’s really easy to summarise. Ugly. Truly ugly. Isn’t it meant to be called the beautiful game?

That classless bad faith from the Manchester team, and those owners, is simply an insult to every person who has ever loved this game and, as sporting jeopardy goes, the fixture could not have been any more of a meaningless sham. The EPL, the dominant football league in the world, is now selling its very expensive product to broadcasters, sponsors and fans, with no sporting context. That’s like playing the third day of an Ashes Test match not knowing the scores at stumps-up on day 2. A dramatic blow to the very essence of English football’s soul. Jarring and unacceptable in equal measure.

And it all adds to a terrible 2026 for football. From Boehly to Infantino, Juventus fans at the Sandro Mazzola minute’s silence, clubs loss-making and insolvent, pricing old fans out, the definitive triumph of money over morals everywhere you look. Even my own beloved Celtic, fully “transitioned” as a Gaza political football.

Our game, ravaged by these parasites, hasn’t been well for a while, but Anfield, Shankly’s Kop, was when I personally saw it definitively pass. It looked me sweetly in the eye, smiled, and sighed its very final farewell.

They say that your whole life flashes before you in these moments and I too, these days, have seen my own 55 years of fandom scroll before my eyes.

So our Column today isn’t about processes, appeals, and KCs, it isn’t even about punishments, titles, and independent regulators. Many others can opine on all that, looking for a future, and a spiral of hope. I wish them well. 

For me, today is a Requiem Mass for all those beautiful memories, to the solemn hymn of “Abide With Me”.

Because the game has indeed gone, and many friends are gathered here today to lament.

 

A Eulogy for George.

A funeral is usually a couple of weeks after the event, which gives time for people to gather their thoughts, reflect upon who that person was, prepare to say a few things.

All these tributes for loved ones are always very personal, and never work if just reading a prepared piece of paper. They need to arrive spontaneously from the heart, with raw emotion, often blurted out through angry tears. 

So bear with me, be understanding, if the football we bury today is called George Malone.

Oh I,… I loved George Malone. He was the best man I ever knew.

“Boys from the Blackstuff”, BBC.

 

Difficult to believe these days, but at one time the BBC was, by a distance, the greatest, bravest broadcaster in the world. Trusted organ of truth, genuinely innovative comedy, the home of sport, and the best drama department anywhere. In the early 80s, as peak Thatcherism devastated old industrial cities like Glasgow and Newcastle, they offered us a series called “Boys From The Blackstuff”. The bittersweet story of a community of tarmac labourers from Liverpool, struggling with the economic winds of change, falling back on the simpler things in working-class life.

Things like association football.

George Malone is the old community sage, reeking of salt-of-the-earth decency and authenticity, truly loved. Reliable, loyal and dependable, the exact way a man feels about his football community.

Blackstuff somehow managed to find that remarkably delicate balance between pathos and humour, best celebrated in the classic episode “George’s Last Ride”, included in its entirety here, because this is truly great “content”. 

People like George Malone might never be rich or important, but their integrity will always carry respect and honour. Seeing the Manchester City set of values on display in Liverpool, his city, I thought of him. 

Because Khaldoon and Soriano are just the opposite of old George. The very opposite. 

 

A ship called Dignity.

We each have our own personal memories and anecdotes to tell about George.

Today, in front of you, these are mine.

All football fandom starts early, about 6 or 7. That’s when you become “aware”. I was just too young to experience the true glory that was Glasgow Celtic, a team built from 11 local working-class lads like George, led by another one, the miner Jock Stein. Too young to remember Lisbon ‘67, the dismantling of the great, damned Leeds United in 1970, the Final lost a month later to the rise of Dutch football.

For me it started in Mexico. Vivid colours springing out from newly-rented TVs, images of men called Pele, Moore, Riva, Cubillas. Breathless commentators, giving us their all, knowing they themselves were living their own salad days:

Here’s Carlos Alberto,… 4-1.

Even 56 years later, with all the progress in sport production and marketing, Mexico 70 still seems unreachable in terms of gravitas and impact. Or maybe it just hit my generation at the right age?

And then there was “the save”!

So memorable a moment that I’d go on to use that very clip 45 years later in all our professional lecturing on sports leadership:

Managing sport is about the unexpected, and how you react to events.You have a tiger by the tail and you will never master it. It will always surprise you. Watch Bobby Moore in this clip. He’d seen it all by then, and yet he hadn’t. Look at his reaction.

Either way, from whatsoever direction it comes, you’re hooked by 8. This game claims you before you are out of short trousers.

And we wouldn’t have it any different.

 

Love at first sight!

I got to visit Celtic Park for the first time that same Autumn. My late father, fed up with his wife’s shopping plans for a Glasgow Saturday, uttered the immortal words.

Let me take you to Paradise, son.

A short walk past the Gallowgate, up the London Road, paying in at the turnstile amongst a crowd of Lowry men all “going to the match”. The archetypal working-class experience, the moment you climb the stairs for the first time, the intense green of the pitch, the stereophonic noise of the fans.

Every single reader today is remembering the true wonder of that exact instant, but also whose hand they were holding. Because that person opened the magic door, and we are forever in their debt. Our own personal George Malone.

Football is fucking beautiful.

Or was.

 

Belonging to a proper club.

It’s all around you from before you realise. The men of your family already addicts, and the choice of your team isn’t yours. Because it isn’t a choice at all. 

It doesn’t need to be the biggest club, it just needs to be proper, something of which to be proud. For always. 

Undeniably, Celtic was something really important. More than just the joy of being untouchable in Scotland, and unarguably one of the top 5 teams in Europe for a good handful of years. It was the authentic club of the Irish immigrants, many of them laying that very same tarmac as George, all looking for belonging and sanctuary. It was our brand, and it showed us that there were actually no limits in life. Nothing to hold you back, even if you were born on the wrong sides of the tracks, went to the wrong school, and kicked with the wrong foot. Celtic people didn’t need DEI, their obvious excellence was fully earned, and that team gave every Glasgow catholic boy of ambition a glimpse of what was possible beyond the bottom of their street. You could compete with anyone. 

Many of us very much took note.

It felt very good to be Celtic, a winner tribe, albeit in its dying embers. They lose two European Cup semifinals in the early 70s, to Inter Milan and Atletico Madrid, and you are introduced to the dreadful pain of your passion. Because that is what being a football fan is. The more you love, the more it hurts. Sadness and laughter go hand in hand, like they do here today, remembering George.

In the close season, annual summer-long holidays in Tuscany teach you a different version of the game. Playing to win, organised tactics, not conceding, passing in pretty triangles. You’re now attending the Italian school, but you have the respect of the locals, also because you are wearing a strip they recognise, and fear. The green and white stripes. “Lo scozzese gioca bene. Per forza… Celtic.” You don’t understand the language, but ability with a ball has always been the entry ticket to acceptance, and football has opened more life doors for us all than we realise.

Back home, a Govan man is turning your world upside down. It’s just not easy for a boy of 14 to suddenly lose certainty, and bragging rights. The playground becomes a much harsher place as a loser. But this is football, the life we have chosen. The stunning rise of Alex Ferguson was, on reflection, the zenith of Scottish football. Aberdeen, Dundee United, Rangers and us, all competing for a championship of real quality. Endless head-to-head classics, great days.

Dalglish and Nicholas, your own “Roy of the Rovers” heroes, leave for bigger stages, and you realise that football is a brutal food chain, where you are actually a small fish. The coldest of cold showers.

Young adulthood beckons at this exact moment, and you need to decide which game is for you. It would turn out an easier choice that you imagined. 

 

The 1970-80s.

Nothing beats growing up in those decades, and football was a major part of your development. It defined who you were, and the people you hung out with. You’re building your currency of footballing credibility, a valid unit of exchange in any country of the world. The fan sniff test, knowing your stuff, spotting the tourist-fan imposter.

Cruyff in a red vertical stripe floating over the grass, Kaiser Franz outside-of-the-boot passes, the Bremner miss against Brazil, Ally MacLeod gaslighting, midnight ticker-tape in Buenos Aires, the scream of Tardelli, the hand of God, Italia 90. 

Vivid, vivid memories. Your football DNA. Your youth. 

Shankly and Clough in Wembley suits, Charlie George, Chopper Harris, The Last Waltz, Jim Montgomery, Lou Macari, the Home Internationals.

Names and images whizzing past faster now, like a Billy Joel lyric, as you fix your damp eyes on George’s coffin. 

Dickie Davies, the teleprinter, Shoot magazine, Football Focus, Saint and Greavsie, knowing your Gerald Sinstadt from your Brian Moore.

Football utterly defines you. Your firm, your tribe, your colours. Those rare moments where the impossible does actually come true.

Michael Thomas.

It’s up for grabs now.

Fever pitch doesn’t cover it. The buzz of the pub after a big win. The mates are there and you all know that this moment will last forever. You can change almost everything in your life, but not this. It’s an oath of blood that can’t be manufactured by some marketing twat on a white board. It’s fucking deep. It’s proper fandom.

Heysel, Bradford and Hillsborough. All working-class lads like us, who never stood a chance.They were all just “going to the match”. English football a pariah in exile.  

Glasgow Rangers sign half their national team, and the writing for Celtic is definitely on the wall.

Time to get out.

 

Il Calcio.

A move to Italy for work at the start of the 90s. It’s still football though, the employer is Panini.

The exotic Serie A university. Platini, Diego, the three Dutchmen, the Seven Sisters, Trapattoni, the romance of Verona and Sampdoria, every top player in the world on your doorstep. This is the big stage  

The bug bites hard. You put on some hustle and pretend to be a proper sports hack, 35 years before Substack. “Gis a job, I can do that”. And Christ they even believe you. 

Dictating match reports down a San Siro phone for London deadlines. Sundays at IMG for Sky, canteen lunches with Martin Tyler and Ray Wilkins, on location to Bari for David Platt, a Milanello weekend embedded with the team, the Berlusconi interview, on screen with Hansen and Inverdale.

Mid twenties, in demand, the middle of the action, you’ve got the pretty girl, and you’re mad for it.

But everything in our game, and our lives, was about to change.

 

The 1990s.

Losing the Serie A rights to Channel4, James fucking Richardson, the merger with BSB, subscription TV, the start of a totally new era for sport and media. Exclusivity and paywalls.

The rise of the Premier League, first-mover advantage in Europe, live English football on tap, the virtuous circle of rising media rights buying more quality players. The privilege of being right there for the origin story of the EPL. 

Vic Wakeling taking our game to an entirely new level, with the poetry of Sean Bean.

Life… it can be difficult. You know that. We all need someone to rely on… It’s ecstasy, anguish, joy, and despair. It’s part of our history, part of our country… It should be predictable, but never is. It’s a feeling that can’t be explained, but we spend our lives explaining it. It’s our religion. We do not apologise for it; we do not deny it. They’re our team, our family, and our life. Football. We know how you feel about it… ‘cos we feel the same.

The greatest sizzle reel ever made. Utterly compelling. No apology, no denial, no gentrification. English football. Our team, our family, our history, our country.

“Oh I,… I loved George Malone.”

 

When it calls, you just can’t refuse.

An unexpected offer to run the national game in your home country. A job you never wanted, in a country you had no desire to return to.

Panic in a car outside Tynecastle Park after the last interview for the job. You know the offer is coming, but you hope that it won’t. Peers telling you it’s a poisoned chalice, not a serious business, unmanageable knee-jerk irrationality. And you know they’re dead right.

The doubts of someone who never has doubts. A new experience. But it’s football, serious football, and you would always regret not taking it. 

And then it starts. A big-boy game. The realpolitik of the tribes, feral fickle fans, merciless press packs, dining with cabinet ministers, pressures from club owners (“after all, you’re Celtic and this is your club”), no quarter asked or given, studs down the shin, sink or swim, lose/lose every day, always a cunt.

Man up and get on with it. You find out who you really are working in big football. Working with George. 

New league formats, Arkan the Tiger, Claudio Caniggia in Dundee, Sir David Murray, 80,000 Celtic fans in Seville, Nyon. Labelled a failure for an idea 20 years ahead of its time, betrayed by your own club. And that’s just the cliff notes.

Every day for 4 years holding that tiger by the tail. There is nothing like it. No education or sport MBA will ever prepare you for that job. And in the end almost none of us get out alive. At some point the “beautiful” game spits you out.

But at least you were there. You wore it well. You were authentic. 

George would be proud. 

 

The new millennium. Life as a neutral.

You withdraw the emotional capital from your team, because you realise that Celtic strips do shrink to fit lesser players. You’re not having that. That wasn’t the promise.

You are a neutral. You see George with different eyes.

Still the greatest game on earth, the best show in town, the last appointment-to-view, football is at its peak. It has its issues, but the game still seduces all, with a galaxy of leading men.

The Special One, Pep, Klopp, Carletto.

Kaka’, Pirlo, Totti, Modric, Iniesta, Maldini, Ramos, Messi, CR7.

Nothing like it. 

The footballing gods even deliver the unexpected last hurrahs of that glorious old Italian school. And man are they powerful? 

Gianluca dies, and his loss is still felt profoundly by everyone. He was pure. One of us. The only meagre consolation is that he didn’t see the last few years of football’s new direction.

A road for sure paved with gold, but a road that has led to today.

To George’s coffin right in front of us.

 

Tilting at windmills.

Como. 2006, the summer of Fabio Grosso.

You’re 42, with the scars to know how this movie will end. You’re no longer in the front line, more consigliere, more commentator, but you see it all so clearly  

You try and warn folks.

You know all this new money, from media rights and cold capital, will do nothing but bad. You know it is the devil’s work, the root of all evil.

Lead us not into temptation.

The fabric of balance in the European game will disappear. First the Big 5 leagues, then just the EPL, and ultimately a super league. Like night follows day. Chasing all this money won’t make the football community healthier and wealthier. It will just create a new breed of insanely rich, spoilt players and agents, who will hold the game to ransom. Seeing football turn itself into a business, chasing revenue growth, for absolutely no benefit. It will attract the wrong type of owner, those wanting fame and respectability, with no idea who George Malone was, or represented. These people will not care for the well-being of the game and will act with extreme prejudice to achieve their own aims. By the time all this becomes clear, it will be too late to remedy, without ripping up the entire history book and resetting completely. Sadly this will not be acceptable to those investors who have deployed significant capital in this world of endless revenue CAGR, and nonsense asset valuations, that they can now not realistically write down. These people can’t afford a detox cleaning of the entire game.

You put in a decade of work as Don Quixote, in podcasts, columns, summits, a book. You try to write clearly and honestly, also for people like George.

But always the same warnings:

*
Don’t invest in what you can never understand.

 

**
Don’t apply business and investing axioms to something that can never be an asset class.

 

***
And especially don’t forget football is really a representation of communities like those of George Malone. People with not a lot else in their life. So don’t ever price them out, and don’t ever sell their passion to the highest bidder.

 

I will miss you George.

To those gathered here today, I don’t stand in front of you for personal gain, or to seem virtuous and smart. I’m just one of you, a proper fan. 

But I do want people here to know that I really tried, most of all I want George to know. Because he was the best man I ever knew.

Oh I,… I loved George Malone.”

I failed, we failed.

Despite everything he meant for all of us, we took him for granted, we didn’t protect him, and now he is gone.

We are left with Anfield. Forgive us George, for we knew not what we did.

We got greedy, and closed an eye to what’s good. We let in any carpetbagger looking for glory and relevance. The oligarch, the nation state. (China, Qatar, UAE, Saudi), the greed-is-good Wall Street flash boys.  

We let the “wrong ‘uns” into your house George. For a few farthings.

And now everyone can see that error.

But sometimes this is how things need to go. There needs to be death before rebirth, the Winter before a Spring.

Remember that today’s funeral is a Catholic mass, and within that we are optimistic. There is no Easter Sunday without the cross on the Friday.

George will be back, the tomb will be empty, the “Passion” will return, and we will all rejoice.

We just need to be better people the next time.