Those who are my age – just after the Boomers… – surely still remember it with a few stars in their eyes. It was the time of “L’Equipe du Dimanche” on Canal + and it was really good. In one hour, late on Sunday evening, the encrypted channel toured all the stadiums of the major championships. We’re talking about a time not so long ago when it was impossible to see all the matches, where you didn’t need 17 subscriptions to be able to watch everything and where Russian or Chinese streaming didn’t exist.
During that hour, for some reason, there were certain teams that fascinated you more than others. Like, on my side, Werder Bremen, La Coruna, Lecce and… Bolton. Don’t ask me how it happened, I still don’t know, that’s how it is. Concerning this last club, it must be said that there was something to dream about. At the time, he played geniuses like Jay-Jay Okocha, Hidetoshi Nakata, Youri Djorkaeff, El-Hadji Diouf, Nicolas Anelka and even Fernando Hierro, Ivan Campo, Eidur Gudjohnsen and Fredi Bobic. That alone is a dream.
And then there’s this name… Bolton Wanderers. The “Vagabons”, a name chosen in 1877, because the club then no longer had any ties to a fixed ground (that’s not what made me become a Servette fan, though), eh), winners of four Cups in 1923, 1926, 1929 and 1958, were among the founding members of the Football League. We also like them because in 2010, they began their 72nd season in the elite, which made them the club having played the most seasons there without ever having won it! The team was founded in 1874 under the name “Christ Church FC” by schoolchildren from Christ Church Sunday School, whose first president was the local vicar. But enough of the story.
Because after years of dreaming of this name, I ended up going to this great suburb of Manchester for this series, but also and above all for my personal culture. After its years of glory and big names, Bolton went downhill and even found itself in League Two (4th division) at the end of the 2010s. The Wanderers are now in D3 and that hurts. heart. However, when I went to visit them in what is today called the Toughsheet Community Stadium (after Reebock Stadium, Macron Stadium and so on), located in Horwich, about ten kilometers from the city center . Best decision of my life (yes, I’m adding a little, but feel free to watch the video below).
Because we’re talking about a 3rd division match – against Blackpool, almost a derby, it’s 45 minutes by train – in front of a whopping 22,500 spectators, including around 3,000 opposing fans, and it was huge. Don’t think that because it’s League One it’s not trying to play football. At the start, we had two magnificent 3-5-2 families in place, kick-offs, passing passes… The problem was that it was 2 degrees (felt -1°), that it It was raining buckets and it was falling horizontally. You see what that means: I finally had a kind of water wrestling.
But with a victory for Bolton in the 94th minute, after being behind early, nine yellow cards for the road, goalkeeper blunders, long touches at the far post from 30 meters celebrated as a goal, tackles from the depths of the ages… Well it was magnificent! And then the icing on the cake: in this league, there is no VAR. So, when you celebrate your goal, you really celebrate it. And when the referee makes a mistake, there is no one to correct him and that’s a joy. Supporters can thus let him know that he is a fan of onanism and everything is very good that way…
Balloon between turkey and champagne
During the holiday period, lematin.ch accompanies you between turkey and champagne, like the Premier League… But England is more, much more than just the country’s first division, the billions what it is brewing and what you see in your continental European media. The heart of English football, “Real Football”, is not found in Liverpool, London and Manchester.
Dive with us into the lower divisions that are the lifeblood of locals’ weekends, during this series “tour” a month ago in the aisles (and around) the stadiums of the Perfidious Albion. She started with this article in Nottingham and will then take you to Stoke-on-TrentLeeds, Derby County and Bolton. And if you don’t understand everything, that’s okay. The accent in these places is very special…
