The Cure frontman Robert Smith recently spoke about his relationship with football and revealed that having a curry with the late Stan Bowles was “the highlight of [his] life”.
Robert Smith opens up on the matter
Former England and Queens Park Rangers forward Bowles passed away in February, having been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2015. He was 75 years old. Bowles played more than 560 games in English football and was capped five times by England. He made 315 appearances for QPR and scored 97 goals for the club, per BBC News.
During a recent interview in support of The Cure’s upcoming new album ‘Songs Of A Lost World’, Smith recalled being a longtime QPR supporter before he “fell out of love with football about 10 years ago for lots of silly little reasons”.
He also recalled meeting his childhood hero Bowles and talked about his current feelings towards football in general. He said that it has become “very corporate” in recent times.
“Each season becomes more and more predictable or tedious. I don’t support anyone else, I just don’t really bother with football anymore,” Smith explained.
“I met Stan Bowles. He was doing a meet and greet at Rangers the last time I went to a football match. I went out for a curry with him, which was the highlight of my life because he was my idol when I was a kid!”
He continued: “I fell in love with football when it was a completely different thing. It sounds really curmudgeonly, but it was about other stuff: going to football matches in the ‘70s was a bit of a rite of passage and a different experience entirely. The footballers themselves were funnier; they were in the pub before the game at QPR. It was a different world.
“It’s just very corporate. Football is about selling stuff; everything is about sponsorship and betting. It doesn’t move me like it used to. I still watch the Euros and World Cup. I hosted a Euros final night. I watched every game and England stumble into the final. I was the only person drinking Spanish beer and I was the only one smiling at the end!”
Smith went on: “At heart, I am still a football fan because Spain were the best team in the competition. They should have won the competition and I was happy.
“I’ve fallen out of love with international football for the same reason I’ve fallen out of love with a lot of international sport: because you either buy into the idea that ‘it’s my country against your country’, or you don’t. If you do, it’s kind of inherently stupid and flies in the face of everything I believe in!
“If there are members of a national team that have barely even been to the country they’re playing for, then it goes into the absurd!”
