By Myles Palmer
Since Ian has just retrieved FB22 from the outer galaxy of cyberspace, maybe I should explain what FB 22 is.
Back in May 1998 I was offline. I did not know what an email was. I did not know what a website was.
Then I went online and we were on a high after Arsenal did the double and Ian said,”Why don’t we do a World Cup website?”
So I said, “Well,I never do much work during the World Cup anyway. I watch the games and talk about them all day long to my mates who ring up, and then I watch more games. So we can just stick my phone calls up on the net and let other people read them.”
My first impression of the internet was this : It reminded me of American students. It was about community. It was about sharing. I thought sharing was good, so I decided to share.
It was only later, much later, that I realised that France 98 was a 32-team World Cup.
This meant FAR MORE matches than ever before.Dozens and dozens of matches. So it was crazy and I made a lot of mistakes.
But, against that, FB22 had material that nobody but me would have written.It was, in places, more like talk than writing, more like a phone call than a letter or an article.
And it got thousands of hits every day, even though it was a totally spontaneous and whimsical website with no plan,no funding, no ads,nothing.
We called it FB22 because we started work on it the day the managers had to name their final squads of 22 players.
We did not plan anything. We did not plan to have pictures. But Ian discovered he could put up pictures.
FB22 went online the same day, I think, that Brazil played Scotland in the first game. I’m writing this from memory, off the top of my head, as usual.
So there are many typos and some scorelines are wrong. Like Holland v Brazil was 1-1 and penalties, not 1-2.
It was the World Cup raw, day by day, game by game, impression by impression.
Not cramped into a format, not edited into something that we did last year, just reactions and ramblings, sometimes inspired, sometimes misguided.
After the World Cup FB22 lost direction.
It became a diary, an allotment, a place where I went to plant a few carrots on Sunday mornings, a loft full of old junk, as I scribbled about anything that took my fancy, which was usually my nights out with Jeff Dexter,going to gigs around London, or England games at Wembley.
It all seems….a long time ago !
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Myles, 3rd January 2002.