In case you don’t know, the film Scum is a brutal, harrowing portrait of violence inside Britain’s borstal system for young offenders, unflinching in its depiction of rape, racism, abuse, suicide, and the corrosive effects of power. Banned from television when it was first made, it remains one of the most shocking British films ever produced.
It also launched Ray Winstone’s career.
Which is why revisiting it ahead of this football interview feels important but unusual.
Then again, this is not a normal football interview.
Two weeks before the World Cup, Winstone strolls into The Athletic’s London headquarters early and raring to go, ready to talk about the World Cup, England, and his beloved West Ham United for our special interview series, Why I Love The Beautiful Game.
“Let’s get this started, son. I’m looking forward to it,” he says with that familiar East End growl.
Why I Love the Beautiful Game With Ray Winstone
Lee Clayton and Lauren Morales-Jones
Winstone is an authentic, lifelong football fan, not a Johnny-come-lately, joining the queue of fashionable Hollywood A-listers who have recently become attached to the game.
Though he admires what Ryan Reynolds and Rob Mac have achieved at Wrexham during their Disney-documented rise through the leagues to the Championship, he has some disappointing news for West Ham supporters hoping for a similar celebrity-led rescue mission.
“Football ain’t what it was like when we were kids. We all want to moan. Look at my club (West Ham United), but we’ve got to understand: People who own football clubs, especially in the Premier League, buy football clubs because it’s a business.”
“It’s their business, which gives them the right to do what they want to do,” says Winstone, who was speaking 10 days before allegations emerged about West Ham’s co-owner David Sullivan. “They don’t care about me or you, or the fans. Forget about that. Football, sometimes, is the last thing on their mind. It’s a business! Whatever their business is.
“You look at some clubs, big clubs, I don’t want to name them because I will probably get nicked, but they were taken over when they were in the black and now, because of the way they are being run and the way the money is being used from that club, they are in the red.
“You sit back and wonder why these people get involved in the big clubs in the Premier League. Some of them are very successful.
“For me, I go to watch my team; I couldn’t afford to (buy West Ham), but I go to watch my team play for the enjoyment of watching the game. I have no wish to be involved with the people who run those clubs, not for me.
“As far as the others (in the movie business), it depends on what they are doing it for.
“What the guys at Wrexham are doing is quite fantastic. Great for Wrexham, great for the town and I guess it’s very good for football, good luck to them.”
Not everything he sees is good for football, though.
This World Cup across the United States, Canada and Mexico is causing him grief.
“It doesn’t feel to me like it’s the World Cup I have always known. It’s become so political. I don’t want to get into that because I am not interested, but it’s become about something else rather than football.
“And the price of it! To go and watch a football match is… when I was a kid, it was for us. For the want of a better word, the working men, for all the working men to be able to afford to watch the biggest stars. Now, the prices to go and watch the World Cup and the European Cup (Champions League) and a Premier League game… It’s not the game we knew.
“I love watching it but it kinda leaves a bad taste in my mouth sometimes. You have to question the competition right away. It’s like the European Cup, now there is this league stage. There was a vote a few years back, do we want a Super League in Europe? No was the answer. But they got it anyway.
“The World Cup is a great spectacle, but it’s just so big now. I will (still) love watching it, I’m an Englishman and I will be supporting England and will love every moment of watching it and I will forget all this stuff I am saying now, because we are football fans, but it’s just that side of things…
“I listen to UEFA and FIFA and I listen to them talk like they are their own political country somewhere, like there is one rule for them and one rule for us. The way it’s gone (the commercialisation), it’s gone to an extreme that really leaves a bad taste in the mouth. If you talk to most football fans they will agree.”
Ask Winstone for the player who best embodies the history of the World Cup and his answer is immediate: Sir Geoff Hurst (who scored a hat-trick for England when they won the 1966 World Cup final against West Germany).
“God I loved watching Pele and I love Messi, he’s beautiful to watch, but the Hand of God?” he says of Diego Maradona, who scored the most controversial World Cup goal of all time against England on this day (June 22) 40 years ago. “I can’t get the words out to explain. He upset me so much, I’d have chopped off his arm and put it in a museum.
Diego Maradona’s ‘Hand of God’ goal at the 1986 World Cup (Allsport/Getty Images)
“But Geoff was… Course, I am biased, well, three goals in a World Cup final. Says it all.
“I want to be inspired by a fellow countryman. That’s where I am from and if anyone inspires you, they’ve got to come where you’re from because they’re the people who show you’ve got a chance in life.”
Ray Winstone: “I’d have chopped Maradona’s hand off and put it in a museum”
Lee Clayton and Lauren Morales-Jones
In preparation for our meeting, I’ve been revisiting Winstone’s films, some of the finest work from a career spanning more than 50 years. Scum. Sexy Beast. The Departed. Nil by Mouth. More recently, there have been strong reviews for his fabulous performances as drug baron Bobby Glass in Netflix’s The Gentlemen.
He’s worked with iconic film legends, including Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg and Guy Ritchie and appeared with Anthony Hopkins, Robin Wright, Angelina Jolie, Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson to name but a few.
On screen, Winstone has spent much of his career playing men to be feared. Across our time together, he is polite, nostalgic and utterly in his element.
Soon enough, the conversation turns to his football highlights; East London, and the rituals that define matchday. For Winstone, no trip to watch his beloved West Ham is complete without pie and mash, ideally accompanied by jellied eels.
The dish might require some explanation for an international audience. Pie and mash is East London’s ultimate comfort food: a minced beef pie, mashed potatoes, and a parsley sauce called liquor. It is the kind of working-class staple that fuelled generations of dockers, market traders, and football supporters. For Londoners, it is more than a meal — it is a taste of the city’s history.
Pie, mash and liquor at M.Manze’s in Southwark, London (Dukas/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
Winstone could be its poster boy.
“I’ve got to have pie and mash when I am watching West Ham,” he says. “It’s like going back home, because I don’t live in the area anymore.
“Now when I have friends from up north coming down to a game and I introduce them to pie and mash, they can’t have it. Just like when I can’t eat tripe when going up north.
“But, for me, West Ham and pie and mash go hand in hand.
“They tried to take the idea to the U.S., tried to take it global. I think Rod Stewart had something to do with it. They shipped it over and opened a shop in LA as there were a lot of Londoners over there. I don’t know if it’s still going. I never had any there. I get mine from a little guy in Waltham Abbey now and it’s very, very good.”
Winstone, pie and mash and West Ham are never far apart.
“My greatest ever West Ham player was Bobby Moore. He epitomises everything about the club, being brought up in an area more famous for gangsters and then you see a man wipe his hands before he shakes hands (to collect the World Cup) with the Queen, representing a place where I come from, was something very, very special. I’d have to say, Bob.”
Moore shakes the hand of Queen Elizabeth II before the World Cup final in 1966 (PA Images via Getty Images)
When England won the World Cup, Moore, who was the captain, and both goalscorers, Geoff Hurst and Martin Peters, played for West Ham.
He corrects me.
“Excuse me, who won the World Cup in 1966?”
“England?”
“Sorry?”
“West Ham won the World Cup.”
“Thank you.”
He continues: “I was brought up in Plaistow. It was 1964, I was seven years of age, when I first went. The club won the FA Cup in 1964, the European Cup Winners’ Cup in 1965. I remember standing at the bottom of my road, seeing the coach — we did not even have a double-decker bus. I remember seeing these people singing I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles and that was it for me.
“It’s not just about the team, the club. It’s when I am away from home and, it used to be a newspaper but now a tablet is the fashionable thing to do, and you look for the score — win, lose or draw — and the name West Ham takes you back to where you have come from.
“We always said that we won the Cup in ‘64, the European trophy in ‘65, and the World Cup in ‘66. I went to the first game at Wembley (England v Uruguay), and we drew 0-0. I bought the World Cup Willie pendant, which I still have at home. Going to the games with my dad, they are the memories of a lifetime.”
Jimmy Greaves dribbles with the ball against Uruguay in 1966 (Allsport/Getty Images)
He felt connected to both club and country from that golden age of trophies.
“I loved the 1970 England strip, the all-white kit; nothing fancy, it was just the three lions with a badge, white shirts, white socks. That’s England. That’s a beautiful kit.
“It was the same with West Ham. The claret and blue shirts… always claret sleeves. I’m not in love with this shirt without claret sleeves. Let’s have the shirt as it should be.
“That’s what it was in those days, it was about your manor, your place where you were born and raised. That’s what the team meant to you. Just turns out my team gives me a lot of pain.”
This season, the club was relegated from the Premier League amid much acrimony, falling into the second tier for the first time in 14 years. There is an expected fire sale of talent to come, while supporters are angry at poor recruitment and bad management from the board of directors. There may be more pain before gain, according to Winstone.
“Yeah, West Ham fans are suffering at the moment. That’s why we are West Ham fans. As far back as I can recall, that’s the way it’s been.
Dejected West Ham fans react to their relegation from the Premier League (Charlotte Wilson/Offside/Offside via Getty Images)
“I look back on a player like Billy Bonds and that team when it felt like they all had beards and long hair, looked like a bunch of pirates. It was as if someone had kicked the ball up in the air like a rugby match and they came running at you. It wasn’t that, but it seemed like that. It was so exciting to watch. We weren’t the best team in the world but, yeah the best beards. I love a beard.
“My favourite player for a night out? Frank McAvennie. Got me in a bit of trouble, but I loved him.
“Among my other favourite players we had Paolo Di Canio, who was a genius. Dimitri Payet was a top player. I look at a (modern) player like Jarrod Bowen and see the kid giving 120 per cent every time he plays, like he was born and bred in the area. Love him to death.
“But this season we weren’t good enough. Too many mistakes. We’ve got the players and our man Nuno (Espirito Santo) who has come in, made mistakes, but he has done an amazing job. From where we were, to where we ended up, we were a much better side, but we were still relegated.
“To the fans, they know a lot more about it than I do. They’re upset, they’re not happy about how the club is run, and I can understand that and I get that and I agree with them. Something has got to change over there.
“We were promised when we moved from our beloved Upton Park to the big stadium and I’ve got to be honest, I supported that move. If we are going into the 21st century and we want to compete, like we had been promised, we needed a bigger stadium.
West Ham moved to London’s Olympic stadium in the summer of 2016 (Ryan Pierse/Getty Images)
“How I remember it — and I might be wrong here — we were told we were going to own the stadium, change the stadium so it came in around the pitch (remove the running track) and we were going to build on that and it hasn’t happened.
“Now I don’t know how you sell a club like that. It doesn’t own the property. So what is the worth of West Ham?
‘It’s the name because we don’t own f*** all else. It’s the name, West Ham United, it’s not the property, so where has it gone? We don’t have a home and that’s worrying. So what they need to do is to sell it, give it away, give it to someone who will buy a stadium. Someone who is going to own a stadium.
“And we’ve got to sell players, but let’s find some kids, maybe find a spine of East London players, local boys, East End blood in them. It might take us two or three years to build back up. I don’t think we will bounce straight back up (into the Premier League). Maybe this is where we need to be.”
Hopefully, there is more joy to come from watching England this summer.
“Watching England is a bit like watching West Ham. We’ve had a bit of pain, haven’t we?
“The Hand of God goal, the haunting World Cup penalty shootout defeats, it shows it takes a lot of luck to win a World Cup.
Terry Venables consoles Gareth Southgate after his miss in the penalty shootout defeat by Germany at Euro 96 (Richard Sellers/Sportsphoto/Allstar via Getty Images)
“My message is that we have to believe. England are as good as any team in this World Cup.
“You don’t have to be the best team to win the World Cup, you have to come right at the right time and have a lot of luck.
“We’ve got Harry Kane, He’s got a bit of Alan Shearer and a bit of Teddy Sheringham in him, but he’s got to stay fit. Without him, we’d be in a bit of trouble. He’s a class act.
“Don’t come good too early, but you’ve got to get it right and you’ve got to get through the group.”
And then there is the conundrum of who takes the No 10 role.
“Jude Bellingham is a class act, but with Morgan Rogers in there, we look more of a team. Bellingham tries to do everything, and he’s good at it, but it kind of throws us out of shape. When you see Rogers in there, he knows his job and he does his job so well. We are a much more balanced side.
“Balance is so important. When I think back to 1966, you can remember Bobby Charlton gliding with the ball, and we’ve already talked about Bobby Moore and Geoff Hurst, Roger Hunt up front too, but Alan Ball and the graft he put in was so important. You need a player who will do that (make sacrifices for his team-mates) if you are going to win a World Cup. I was a kid then, I didn’t know, but looking back Ball was magic.”
Argentina and Germany, Portugal and Spain are mentioned as contenders. More, surprisingly, Winstone — who clearly knows his football — tips Norway as dark horses to go deep into the competition.
“They’ve got some centre-forward, haven’t they (Erling Haaland), and play in an old-fashioned English way,” he concludes. “I’d have them as an outsider.”
Erling Haaland has been in ominous form at the start of the World Cup (Mark Smith/ISI Photos/ISI Photos via Getty Images)
Japan are my outsider and they won at Wembley. “Nah, England were messing about then, let’s take nothing out of that,” I am advised, forcefully. “I’m sure when it comes to it…”
And we are finished.
“That alright, son?” he asks at the end. “I only swore once. I enjoyed it. Turns out I had a lot to get off my chest.
“Good luck with it.”
