LONDON. May 4 (Reuter): No one has ever made a decent film about soccer because soccer has the capacity to Sus
pend belief in a way film-goers would dismiss as fanciful nonsense.
That's because soccer has Its own soap opera with some of Its main characters so extraordinary they defy belief. Diego Maradona. Eric Cantona and Bernd Schuster have proved classics of the genre, but Paul Gascoigne is something else again.
Gascoigne is the 28-year-old Geordie whose life is lived out .on the front and back pages of the tabloids, a man capable of the most sublime skill and crass stupidity and upon whose shoulders rest the hopes of host nation England in this summer's European Championships.
While "Gazza' the tabloid star has just became a father for the first time and taken to wearing bizarre oversize suit-iackets that come down to his knees. Gascoigne the footballer is currently riding a wave of success he has not experienced for six years.
His first season with Glasgow Rangers reached a glittering climax at the end of April when he was named Scotland's footballer-of-the-year and scored a hattrick to secure Rangers their eight successive title on the same day.
On May 18. as long as he does not get booked in Rangers last league match, Gascoigne will try and help Rangers complete the double with a Cup final win over Hearts.
If he plays well and picks up a winners' medal, his wheel of fortune will have turned full circle.
For it was in the English Cup final on May 18. 1991 that Gascoigne, then playing for Tottenham, launched himself at Nottingham Forest's Gary Charles in a suicidal tackle that smashed the cruciate ligament in his knee and almost cost him his career, shelving a proposed eight million pbunds (12.07 million dollars) transfer to Lazio in Italy.
The transfer eventually happened a year later at reduced fee of five million pounds (7..55 million dollars), but not before Gascoigne smashed the knee again in an incident in a nightclub.
He had a bitter-sweet time in Italy, playing only 40 league matches in three seasons. I>e fore returning to Britain and Glasgow last summer
In all Gascoigne had 14 operations before recovering full fitness and many warned against the move to Scotland, suggesting Rangers domlna tion of the Scottish league and the relatively lower standard of opposition would harm his own game.
That appears not to have happened. even though Gascoigne has undoubtedly lost some of the blistering pace over the first five yards that mace min sucn a wonaeriui player earlier in his career at Newcastle and Tottenham.
His recent performances for England have been solid but unspectacular. He has worked hard, kept his temper and created opportunities, but is not quite the devastating, commanding player he was when he possessed that Initial burst of speed.
He still had that pace when he Inspired England to a semifinal place in the 1990 World Cup in Italy, the summer his teas of frustration following a booking which would have kept him out of the final had England qualified, endeared him to a nation
Since then the nation has had a love hate relationship with him. much like his long suffering girlfriend Sheryl Kyle who ended their relationship for the umpteenth time after he spent the night of the baby s btrth celebrating with his pal Jimrfiy “five bellies" Gardner in an all night drinking session 300 miles away
But Sheryl, like England coach Terrv Venables keep on coming back to Gascoigne for all the positive things ho. can give them.
Venables and the England team will be looking for Caserne's exuberance, his skill and his God-given gift for charming a football to take them all the way to victory in June. Whether or not he can do that remains to be seen. Will he be playing a central role in the drama about to unfold or will he retreat to the. sidelines and offer mere glimpses of his undoubted talent?