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Southampton goalkeeper Paul Smith is causing something of a stir
up and down the football grounds at the moment as and when he gets
chance to stand in for Antti Niemi, for the Saints’ ‘keeper
is one of a very select few players ever to sport the number 13.
Football is a game where tales of superstitions are legion. Players
have to put their boots on in a certain order – usually after
their socks – they have to come out of the tunnel in a particular
sequence, even if you wonder why some bother to come out at all.
Even supporters embrace these bizarre rituals, most notably the
phenomena of the lucky pants – yes, that’s the funny smell
wafting your way, not the meat pies.
So strongly do these dark arts grip the great game that it comes
as no real shock that so few teams do actually include a player
wearing number 13 in the squad, and nor would too many players relish
taking on the figure that yields only to 666 – think of three
Claudio Gentiles standing next to each other – as the Number
of the Beast.
The irony of the reluctance to embrace the 13 is that, of course,
it was the number favoured by one of the great players – or
great goalscorers at least – of all time. “Unlucky for
some” was the bingo calling phrase that only extended to goalkeepers
when Gerd Muller was wearing it for West Germany, England’s
Peter Bonetti the unluckiest of the lot when he was drafted in as
a late replacement for Gordon Banks and then got the blame for losing
our grip on the World Cup in the quarter-finals of the Mexico tournament
in 1970, Muller striking the final, fatal blow. But that was hardly
all Bonetti’s fault for he was up against a player so great
that Germans still talk in hushed, reverent tones of “Der Bomber”.
Football being as much about fashion as superstition, it’s
a wonder that Muller didn’t spawn a generation of imitators,
players only too happy to stick the same number on their back. But
copyists were few and far between, perhaps wary of comparisons with
him, and the number was once more consigned to third choice goalkeepers,
or somebody who wasn’t going to get a game.
Others, of course, doffed their cap to Gers, though only to put
him down. Surely Johan Cruyff wore number 14 to underline his superiority
as Europe’s greatest in a Spinal Tap kind of way – because
it’s one higher, just as Cruyff was one better.
But players still resolutely spurn the number 13, nobody willing
to take on its voodoo powers, even when things are going wrong.
Maybe Michael Owen should ask Real Madrid if they could change his
number – his luck out in Spain couldn’t get much worse,
could it?
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