Alan Ball made me a Blue

THE town of Round Lake, Illinois (pop.15,000) has a little corner that will be forever City Blue, the Mayor Bill Gentes.

Bill’s love affair with the Blues can be traced back to the World Cup in Mexico and his favourite player at the time, City’s former boss Alan Ball.

Now in his second term as Mayor of Round Lake, found just to the north of Chicago, he still finds time to track down match results and even mention City on his blog.

Below Bill writes about how he started playing football in Mexico, watching the World Cup and of course Man City:

I support City with passion and a mild level of insanity. There! Having said that let me tell you how I got to that point. I was born in New York City and until I was nine-years-old had no idea that football even existed.

My parents both took early retirement in 1968 and rather then do the usual New York thing of retiring to Florida they went a wee bit further south, to Mexico. Guadalajara in fact. So I was exposed to the Olympics in 1968 and then of course the 1970 World Cup.

My parents got me tickets to all the matches in Guadalajara which of course meant Brazil and England. Seeing these games cemented my life long passion for football. My parents also lived about 200 yards from the hotel the England team stayed at, and the country club we were members of was where they trained!

Needless to say I was watching them in training and unlike today could get up close easily. I got virtually everyone's autograph and when I was getting the autographs talked to them. The one who was actually the nicest, and also the easiest to look in the eye, was Alan Ball. He also recognized me a few times, which to an 11 year old was all it took!

All of us are familiar with what happened in Guadalajara and of course later in Leon. But I got to see all the games in Guadalajara along with the quarterfinals and semi-finals also played there. I was now hooked. However I had no reason to even know City existed.

In fact after the World Cup I followed Alan Ball as best I could and automatically was a fan of the team he played for. Everton, Arsenal and Southampton.

Now living in a third world nation and a footie backwater like Mexico in the 70's was not conducive to following European soccer, so I gravitated to the home product and passionately supported the Univerisidad de Guadalajara (UDG) who had a great run in the middle to late 70's. Every Saturday at 8:45pm was kick-off and Guadalajara had five teams playing in the first division at one time with all of them in the Jalisco Stadium.

I then went to university in Texas and played for my university team, who were coached by two Englishmen, who were United fans. They thought I was too ‘Latin’ for the team and stuck me on the bench or right wing, where I could do the ‘leg-over crap’ as they referred to it.

The fact that I scored the goal that kept the school in top division of the Texas collegiate soccer league was overlooked I would add. It was a tap in from 6 inches, but hey! Needless to say I could not stand them and of course we Blues know why! It was the United in them.

I was able to watch Match of the Day on Sunday night on local TV now and followed and even caught glimpses of Alan Ball in the highlights when he was with Southampton. I drifted away from English football and football in general in my mid 20's watching the World Cup but that was about it.

Until the 1990's or so when I discovered the internet and did a search for Alan Ball and lo and behold he was taking Southampton almost down. But right at the time he jumped ship for City. I discovered the email called Manchester City via the Alps that arrived 2-3 times a week in my inbox at work and I was hooked (still get it as a matter of fact).

Long story short, but Ball went (God awful as the boss) and I stayed as a true Blue. The level of insanity I have displayed has involved a memorable scuffle in a bar in Chicago with three Gillingham fans after 90 minutes of full time. That's a story in itself. Scheduling business trips for hotel and cities where bars televised the games, the full compliment of paraphernalia of jersey's scarves (knock offs from China).

Along the way I have been to three World Cups 70, 86, 94 two World Cup finals, seen games in about 30 countries. River Plate v Boca Juniors was the all-time wildest. But never once have I been to see the team in my blood, City! I am plotting one however at some point.

Five years ago I was talked into running for Mayor of Round Lake, Illinois a community of 15,000 40 miles north of Chicago and as best I can tell the only City fan up here.