WILL ENGLAND COME TO PLAY IN THE WORLD CUP?
Pierre Junqua | 28/10/1936

A beautiful autumn day, bright and cold, typically English. We are strolling in the garden. A sun without heat gives the last roses a brilliance that we no longer expect in October.

— It's too fine to talk about football, Mr. Pickford tells me mischievously.

He knows only too well that I have a lot of questions for him about the game.

Earlier, while we were having tea by the dancing fire in the hearth, I asked the vice-president of the F.A.:

— Do you think England will come to Paris in 1938 for the World Cup?

Pickford: I don't think so.

And Mr. Pickford changed the subject.

We return to it, however, when, while visiting the park, I discover, above the door of a small hut, a wooden panel on which important-looking figures have been sketched in the most diverse national costumes, from the French ceremonial morning coat to Tyrolean attire.

Above it, a title reads: the real International Board.

English humor, you see, never loses its rightful place.

Pickford: Mr. Delaunay will have a lot of work with the World Cup. What an organization for the F.F.F.A. I wish him great success.

— But, Mr. Pickford, why shouldn't England come?

TOO MUCH NATIONALISM IN INTERNATIONAL MATCHES.

The vice-president of the FA then confided in me the concerns of the world's largest federation when it comes to off-season international matches.

Pickford: We have an extremely busy schedule. Consider that a professional plays an average of sixty matches in nine months. When the last league matches arrive, he no longer thinks about vacations; he's drunk on football. Even the World Cup won't reawaken his enthusiasm. Let him rest. Think about the clubs too. They lend us players who are "worth" at least 500,000 francs each. Let them be injured in an international match on the Continent! What a loss for their club. I know what you're going to tell me: they can be just as seriously injured playing in the league. That's true. But here, they're defending the colors of the club to which they belong. Moreover, the continent's national teams have a reputation for playing, let's say, too energetically. You put too much nationalism into your international matches. The ideas of homeland and flag are all well and good, but that's also how we spoil the game.

A REVENGE ON HISTORY.

I look at this 75-year-old man who has remained astonishingly youthful. A smile on his lips, his washed-out blue eyes sparkling with mischief, he continues.

Pickford: There is one country in Great Britain that tends to play like the Continent: it's Scotland, when it meets England. At Wembley, there are sometimes 20,000 Scotchmen who come to encourage their players to take revenge not on England but on history. Ours know it.

» They are no more moved by it than the husband whose wife had blackened both eyes and who declared to a friend: "It amuses her and it doesn't hurt me."

» Football is a game. For us, it will remain a game. If others make mistakes, too bad for them. We will stay at home. Besides, one day the Continent will have to return to the spirit of the game. Wanting to win, knowing how to lose; that's all there is to it!

A silence. Then Mr. Pickford continues.

IF WE GO TO PARIS, IT WON'T BE TO WIN.

» As for the World Cup, I repeat, I don't think we'll be participating. But if we decide to send a representative team to Paris, we won't be fooling ourselves. We won't be going to win. I know what kind of preparation the national teams from the continent undergo. I know — because I read Football regularly — that selection matches are followed by training matches. This method, which is questionable anyway, is impossible in England during the season and even more so after it. And which team should we send? We don't have a Wunderteam. But we do have 80, 100, 120 footballers who are more or less equal. We can put together ten teams of equal strength, and it is not impossible that the seventh team could beat the first.

THE BEST FOOTBALL OF ALL-TIME.

We return to the smiling Mount Pleasant cottage. On the vast lawn in front of the house, a gardener, whose strange silhouette seems to have stepped out of a Tom Webster drawing, is repairing the rips in the green turf with thick squares of turf.

Pickford: He knows more about modern football than I do. I feel old. I'm less interested in matches than I used to be. Make way for the young, and wholeheartedly! I've seen the best football ever played.

— Which one?

Pickford: Preston North End 1889.

A UNIQUE LIBRARY IN THE WORLD.

I took leave of the English manager in a small office in his villa. This room is unique in the world. It's the finest football library in existence. Every book published on our game since 1880 is there. I found the "Gloire du football" and the "Livre d'or de la Coupe de France." Here, albums of photos and drawings — including "A la manière de," by Red — there, notebooks of newspaper clippings, further on, a complete collection of entry tickets to the Cup final since its inception, menus, about thirty gold badges, and what else...

In this chapel of football, so many memories of distant times, of the recent past, of the present! Isn't there already something written somewhere, between a yellowed photograph and a dried flower, about tomorrow's developments?