From the Art Deco theme of the exhibition’s branding through to its immaculate Subbuteo-laden gift shop, the exhibition’s aesthetic buys big-style into the fetishising of retro football designs as high art. But you don’t have to appreciate the angular architecture of an Archibald Leitch-designed crush barrier or hanker back to the handiwork of a Thomlinson T-panel football, made in Glasgow and used during the 1950s, to find something of value here.
A tatty wee thing called the Stirling Ball might not be much to look at, but it dates from the 1540s and has a lot to answer for considering it is believed to be the oldest surviving football in the world. Equally evocative, framed by an Industrial Revolution background of which LS Lowry would be proud, is a portrait of Lily St Clair, scorer of the first-ever goal in the first-ever women’s association football match for Scotland against England in 1881 (though a footnote suggests women could actually have been playing football in Carstairs, Lanarkshire, as early as 1628).
The exhibition dovetails with the Scottish Football Association’s permanent museum at Hampden Park, but the greater dimensions of the space available at Kelvingrove allow, quite literally, for some moving of the goalposts. Any Francophile visitors to Glasgow, for example, are likely to take cognisance of the old square design posts at Hampden, which St Etienne fans to this day swear cost them the 1976 European Cup final against Bayern Munich. Crowd-pleasers for the Under-16s – who get free admittance – include online installations which allow them to Be The Referee, and play a virtual football match with a computer-generated ball.
But where this exhibition really hits the target is when it wanders into the terrain of full-blown social history – for instance, the military livery of the Third Lanark regiment, of which every player of the now defunct Glasgow-based football club originally had to be a member. Or even more startlingly, there is an interactive world map which reveals how Scottish soldiers, settlers and engineers preached the football word to every outlying outpost imaginable during the time of empire.
That is how Glasgow railway engineer Jon Harley became known as “the reformer of Uruguayan football” for the work he did with Penarol; how an Argentine radio station donated an embossed plaque in honour of prestigious Scottish schoolmaster Alexander Watson Hutton, and how another man of engineering stock, Charles Miller, effectively brought the game to Brazil. A similar story relates to Singapore, Trinidad and Nairobi, and there are even grainy images showing Scots using soccer to break the metaphorical ice out in the Arctic and Antarctica.
On a natural history theme, there are the bare bones of predictable enough tributes to Scottish football’s distinguished dinosaurs, including Sir Matt Busby, Bill Shankly, Jock Stein and Sir Alex Ferguson, while a nod to the more recent past is provided with the Adidas boots worn by James McFadden that fateful night in Paris in 2007. But perhaps what will most fixate any children of the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s most of all is the constant video loop of Scotland international sides back when they could still win football matches at major finals. Now that really does seem like a museum piece.
More Than A Game: How Scotland Shaped World Football, at the Kelvingrove Art Gallery Museum, Glasgow, runs until August 18. Entry £5 adults, £3 concessions, under 16s free
Celebration of this sporting life
Không có nhận xét nào:
Đăng nhận xét