MANY PEOPLE SEE THE DEFINING GOAL of John Barnes’ career as the one he scored for England in Rio de Janeiro , at the Maracanã against Brazil, in June 1984. While undoubtedly a fine goal, it wasn’t one that changed much in the life and career of Barnes. For a footballer who never quite hit the same heights at international level as he did in the club game, that goal is deemed by some to have been more a curse than a blessing. Barnes himself once stated that he never saw it that way, however.
There tends to be a lack of appreciation of that wonderful goal at the Maracanã. Detractors will express upon the lack of a challenge from Brazil’s players, as Barnes meandered with intent into their penalty area. The argument against the brilliance of that goal is disingenuous. It is an argument that seems rooted within an agenda. To this day, Barnes goes under-celebrated when you consider the talent he possessed. Sometimes, his contribution to the game of football is actively downplayed.
There is another goal that defines Barnes much more accurately. A goal that broke prejudices; a goal which helped remove some generationally-constructed divisions; a goal that set the tone upon a title-winning season; a goal with rich and bewitching beauty; a goal that won him the everlasting devotion of at least one set of football supporters.
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Dateline: October 1987. Picture: Anfield Road and the visit of Queens Park Rangers. Liverpool are leading 3-0 and the game is approaching the final five minutes. The home side are toying with their disorientated guests from West London. The stadium is still crackling like a Geiger-counter due to the manner of the third goal, which has been scored five minutes earlier, a goal dispatched by Barnes, side-footed into the top right-hand corner of the Kop end goal, but one which owed much to a spectacular piece of footballing sleight-of-hand from Ronnie Whelan that took no fewer than five QPR players out of the equation.
Dispossessing Kevin Brock on the halfway line, Barnes advances and three further touches of the ball takes him towards the penalty area. Right foot, left foot, right foot, as if the ball is a natural extension of his body.
From 25 yards out, Barnes transcends the laws of natural movement. Alan McDonald lunges forward, going to ground right foot first, as Barnes moves the ball to his left with the instep of his left foot. He is now a low-flying footballer and minimally clears McDonald, who skims past beneath Barnes’ feet – the QPR defender raises his right leg high in a last-ditch attempt to stop Barnes, but the attempted foul is evaded.
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In mid-air, Barnes’ torso angles to his right, yet his hips direct his lower half to the left. He lands on his right foot, 20 yards from goal with Terry Fenwick coming across to cover him – the second of three central defenders lined up to take Barnes on in what had, until this day, been a secure and effective QPR sweeper system, which had been implemented at the start of the season by their manager Jim Smith.
As Barnes lands he drags the ball back across his body with the inside of his left foot. It all looks effortless, yet is anything but. There is hard work in appearing effortless. It seems that Fenwick has sold himself cheaply, but against any other player he would have his bases covered. Fenwick turns quickly but Barnes has momentum, a momentum powered from a planted start. It makes little in the way of visual sense.
Paul Parker is the third central defender and has been drawn to the right-hand side of the penalty area by the loitering John Aldridge. There is around 12 yards of space between Fenwick and Parker. A chasm has been created where very little space was previously afforded. It is hypnotic. Parker recognises the situation too late. He gains ground, but not quickly enough.
Sentell F. Barnes
From 12 yards, Barnes opens his body up and with eye-of-the-needle precision he rolls the ball between Parker, who closes from the right, and the advancing David Seaman in front of him. The perfect balance with which this manoeuvre is completed doesn’t seem possible. It almost seems an optical illusion.
As the ball nestles in Seaman’s bottom left-hand corner, someone finally catches up with Barnes. Aldridge and Craig Johnston are the first to reach him in celebration. He is embraced by the astounded Whelan and Steve McMahon, as he jogs back to his own half for the restart. Peter Beardsley, who had shadowed Barnes’s burst for goal, eventually gets to him too. Seaman sits on the turf, rubbing his nose with the thumb of his right hand, taking a glance over his left shoulder, just to double-check the ball really is where he thinks it is.
This was the pace-setting, league leading QPR whom Barnes and Liverpool had just dismantled. This was a Liverpool side that had been written off during the summer months when Ian Rush had left for Juventus and Kenny Dalglish was preparing to sideline himself as a playing option. The purported one-footed Barnes had just scored two of the most artistic goals Anfield had ever witnessed, with his supposedly weak right foot.
Ben Barnes (schauspieler)
The game marked Barnes’s coronation as the new king of Anfield. It was something that barely seemed possibly a few short months earlier.
Barnes’ arrival at Anfield had not lacked turbulence. Coveted for his skills but rumoured to be reluctant to move north, some Liverpool fans had taken against him before he even joined the club. Barnes was cast as a man who was using Liverpool to force the London clubs – or even clubs on the continent – to show their intentions towards him. In reality, Liverpool were the only club to make a formal bid and Barnes was more than happy to make the move.
There was also something more unsettling at play. Barnes was Liverpool’s first major signing who also happened to be black. For some people of a narrow-minded nature, this was a red rag to a bull. The talented Howard Gayle had broken through the ranks at Anfield at the beginning of the decade but his star had risen only briefly and he had drifted away from the club long before the Jamaican-born winger’s arrival.
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Offensive graffiti had been daubed on walls and even some employees of the club had struggled to extend a warm welcome to the player. From an extreme minority, barely concealed hostility would at times bubble to the surface. A generation of unenlightened behaviour had made some of Barnes’ contemporaries display a blatant lack of comprehension. From his very outset at Watford and beyond, some teammates could be protective of Barnes, yet openly racist towards black players from opposing teams without seeing any relation between the two ideals. At its most extreme, Barnes would be on the receiving end of pure racism on his own training pitches.
Barnes had long suffered abuse at various away grounds, just as other black players had too. There is an infamous photo of Barnes back-heeling a banana from the turf at Goodison Park. It was held up as the new all-shaming low, but the same occurrence had happened during his Watford days at Millwall and West Ham without public pronouncement.
Barnes had been booed at Anfield as a visiting Watford player. This wasn’t a problem located to a small number of clubs: racism was endemic, and intolerances, if not constantly erupting, always simmered just below the surface.
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Barnes, however, was arguably the man who changed the preconceptions of a great number of people. He bridged two very different eras. He made his debut for Watford as a 17-year-old in 1981, helping the club to promotion to Division One for the first time in their history, in his very first season in professional football. It was a meteoric rise from the amateur ranks of Stowe Boys Club and Sudbury Court, where he’d initially started out as a central defender.
On-pitch achievements escalated further still. Distant runners up to Liverpool in that first ever season of top flight football in 1982-83 brought a first England cap that summer. An FA Cup final and a UEFA Cup campaign followed the next season, and of course came the Maracanã. Even that experience was marred by abuse from a section of England’s travelling support.
Barnes’s exploits in Rio won him a regular place in the England side during the 1984-85 season, but the emergence of Chris Waddle at Newcastle United saw him back on the periphery of the national side by the summer of ‘85. While his personal form and contribution to the Watford cause never dimmed, the club itself had reached a plateau. Mid-table respectability and fleeting cup runs would not be enough to push his claims to a place in Bobby Robson’s starting line-up.
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