If Spain ’82 had been Andy Milne’s first and last World Cup, you would not really have blamed him. A 19-year-old chemistry student at the University of Manchester, it was his first time leaving the UK.
His rucksack was stolen within hours of arriving off the Plymouth to Santander ferry.
“All I had left was a t-shirt, a pair of shorts, some Doc Marten boots, a couple of tickets and my passport,” he told i.
An article Milne has saved from the time explains that he spent the next few nights sleeping on a park bench, in a telephone box and in public showers at the beach.
“Back in those days you could queue for tickets for the final,” he continued. “It was a three-day queue outside the stadium, which sounds horrendous, but it’s actually great because everybody else is doing the same thing.
“You put your bag down, leave your stuff – I only had a carrier bag – and then we just played football. It was a bit like a festival really. I caught the bug from there.”
That bug has taken him to eight World Cups over a 40-year period and to his fifteen minutes of fame in Qatar. Initially mocked on social media for his resemblance to ex-England boss Steve McClaren, eagle-eyed fans then spotted that this was not the now 59-year-old retired teacher’s first major tournament TV appearance.
Caught supporting France, Colombia and the Netherlands over the years, there were suggestions that Milne was a mercenary fan.
The truth is very different.
“People who haven’t been think of the World Cup as just coming to watch football, but you immerse yourself much more fully in a culture than you normally would,” Milne said. “You make friends from around the world.”
A member of the England Supporters Club, Milne buys “TST7” tickets for the tournaments, meaning you follow the path of one team through to the final, giving him a nation to follow once England are knocked out.
“Normally, I would end up travelling with a group of fans to the next game after England got knocked out. I’ve been saving for four years. This was the only full World Cup I could come to, because Qatar is so small, so it’s something I’ve planned for 12 years. I’m quite good on football tipping on Asian handicaps, so I’ve made quite a lot of money through that.
“If you walk into my dining room at home, there’s a pile of 20 or 25 phones, because you need a new phone for each new account. The number of accounts I’ve had is ridiculous. The most I’ve ever had an account closed at is £15,000, the lowest £1,200.”
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“We became lifelong friends, pen pals,” he explained. “He came over to the UK once and we met up. In 2003, I was in California with my family, driving over the Golden Gate Bridge, and realised that Berkeley was on the other side. You had your address book back in those days, so I tracked him down.
“He was in the last stages of cancer and actually died two days later. It was incredibly moving and touching having known him all this time to meet up again, hold hands and sort of complete that circle. There are lots and lots of good friendships that you strike up.”
Another of Milne’s World Cup friends is Shola, a British Nigerian he met in Kaliningrad in 2018.
“Croatia were playing Nigeria and a group of us went over for the weekend. It was gingham tablecloth Croatia everywhere and just three green shirts in the middle.
“One of them was Shola and it turned out he was moving close to where I live. Since then, him and his fiancée Geraldine became family friends of ours and we’ve been invited to their wedding. I met up with him again here and struck up a friendship with his friends, I’ve been with them since he left.”
Talking to me from a port in Doha, Milne was interrupted mid-interview by three people wanting a photo with his World Cup Trophy model, “Sophie”, named after his 24-year-old daughter.
“I had my first trophy in South Africa, the same sort of thing, but it was also the correct weight,” he told me. “I’ve still got it. In Brazil, they didn’t let it into some stadia. There was nowhere to leave it, so I’d have to find places to bury it and find it again after the match.”
Watched back the 2018 WC Final on the flight to Qatar. Is that… It is, isn’t it? pic.twitter.com/xxYzf4wKEZ
— 𝙆𝙚𝙩𝙘𝙝(@ketchell) December 13, 2022
Dubbed “That World Cup Guy”, the name Milne has also given his Instagram account, sudden celebrity has been a double-edged sword.
“Yesterday at dinner, all the waiters, 40 or 50 of them, queued up one at a time to take a selfie with me,” he said. “Loads of people from across the world have come and asked for a photo with me. But the other day these two Brits came up and said ‘excuse me’. Of course, I gathered them up for a selfie, and they were just asking for directions. It’s strange.
“Right at the very start there were a lot of nasty comments, so for a day or so I was overwhelmed and upset, to be honest. But it flipped on the second day and thereafter and there’s just been a wave of support.
“An awful lot of people have been really supportive and a lot of nice stuff from home has come through. It’s just unanimous friendship and positivity that I get over here now.”
It’s clear that he could tell World Cup stories for hours. He ranks South Africa as his favourite.
“By the time I arrived, England had already been knocked out, so I was with the Dutch,” he explained. “They are an awesome group to travel with, there’s a big orange bus and they’d have a procession into each new town as they visit it.
“I shared a car with three Germans for the Brazil World Cup. I hired it and drove, on the ‘Andy Tours’ as they called it. I remember we were driving through a favela in Rio, completely lost, we didn’t mean to go in there.
“In the back these three Germans are singing ‘Andy Tours, we’re going to die, Andy Tours, we’re going to die’.”
After suffering two strokes a couple of years ago, Milne is using his moment in the spotlight to raise money for the Stroke Association. He has set up a Just Giving page in an attempt to raise £2022 by the end of the World Cup.
I asked Milne what being a football fan means to him, but he couldn’t find the right words.
“I’m no good on philosophy,” he said. “When I go for job interviews and I have to answer this type of question, I just dry up.”
But it doesn’t really matter. Over the course of half an hour, his elaborate and heartfelt stories of meeting fans across the world and forming lifelong friendships answer the question for him.
Milne embodies the best of the World Cup after a tournament where its worst has been exposed for all to see.
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