NOT eight years have passed since Paul Gascoigne - as Niobe, all tears - broke down on a football park at World Cup Italia and, as they say, was swept to a nation's heart. Nor have seven years gone since an

English judge, on the bench, won national derision for inquiring, in

genuine puzzlement: ''Who - or what - is Gazza?''

But in these years the big tow-

headed Geordie lummox, beaming like an alligator, clowning like a brickie's mate, has stamped himself for aye on the football consciousness. There has been glory. There have been goals. There have been disembowelling tackles and horrific injuries. The BBC, six years ago, saw fit to devote an hour's television to the epic restoration of Gazza's knee. There was song. For Christmas 1990 Gazza cut a single, Fog on the Tyne's

All Mine, All Mine. (No-one dis-

puted this.)

And there has been boozing, women and Chris Evans; Juventus, Rangers, the European Cup; tales of wife-beating; tales of going out to get absolutely steamboats as the wee woman puffed and pulled to give birth to Child of Gascoigne. Flutes have been mimed and match officials two-fingered. From all round the football cosmos have come tales of puerile practical jokes. But, always, as a grail glimmering ahead, the dream of restoration: apotheosis, eight years on, in World Cup glory.

Well, the rug has been pulled; Glen Hoddle has spoken. Roma locuta est: causa finita est . . . And the golden boot, king of the lardbuckets, has flown home: out of the squad, out of the Cup and - being Gazza - awash

in tears.

I could care less. Well, my interest in football is strictly polite; I never cared for the mainland game, and the pub politicians ended my joy in the Harris one. What is striking in the fall of Gazza is the lack of consternation.

Two or three years back the defenestration of Paul Gascoigne would have signalled riots in the streets; the burning of Hoddle in effigy; a mad stampede for sackcloth and ashes.

Three years ago Gascoigne's signing for Rangers had weans from Barvas to Berwick scurrying, as their hero, to crop their hair short and

dye it platinum blond. (A few weeks later Gascoigne casually changed

the colour.)

But sweepstake surveys, of the teletext and talk-radio variety, show hysterical apathy. There is weary consensus that Hoddle made the right choice and that the boss done great. Few, it seems, are greatly concerned by the star's fate. There is general murmur that Gascoigne is very unfit; unreliable, and has lost both the

touch of the golden boot and steadiness or stability.

I suppose, if you do not care for football, there are few grounds for noting the fall of Gascoigne at all.

But one is what the man in his career has represented, and what he and his following have legitimised in the popular culture. Football itself is one. In 1990, football, in England, was something of a sick joke. It was of fascination to the lower orders. For everyone else - post-Hillsborough, post-Brussels, post-Bradford - it was an ailing, ugly, seedy sport associated with disaster, yobbery and

outrage. The Prince of Wales, determined to show the common touch, memorably attended the FA Cup final - and tried to present the trophy to the losing side.

Today, though, football is cool. Serious novels - one thinks of Nick Hornby - have celebrated it. Serious TV drama has been centred on it. This pundit and that intellectual have seized upon the following of football, even by the moribund and pot-bellied and unfit, as some metaphor for life. It has become - as I remarked recently - a veritable religion, even for the cultured and white-collared.

Paul Gascoigne was part of this change. It is curious because, in his career, he exemplified the sport at perhaps its worst. Gone were the values of Busby's Babes, Bobby Moore, even Gary Lineker, the days when national football stars all looked like your dad. Club loyalty? Gazza jumped from team to team at the flap of a chequebook. Sportsmanship? Gazza fought every match like the charity race in Ben Hur. Family values? Gazza swore like a toilet wall and Mrs Gascoigne appears, by

all accounts, to have suffered him over-long.

On the park and off, Paul Gascoigne gave sad legitimacy to the uncouth, the indisciplined, the age of New Lads, at a time when yobbery became cool. Without regard for class, background or education, it has become fashionable to eff and blind with every phrase; to sing crude songs at the top of your lungs; to bellow and carouse in public places; to let doors swing slam-shut in the faces of women - well, we have all seen it. Heard it. Endured it.

Ours in the age of Mark Radcliff; Chris Evans; Danny Baker. In that social set Paul Gascoigne spent much high-profile free time, appearing pop-eyed in the gossip-columns, bending his elbow, bulging his tuxedo. In his simple way the sad thing is that he was probably a far nicer, kinder man. But, as it is written, the companion of fools shall be destroyed.

Still, I am kicking a man when he is down, and there is plenty at that in the cheap papers. This is more than sports news, more than soap opera. It is the stuff of human tragedy. Gascoigne is a young man, younger than me. His career is practically over. His life may grow a great deal worse.

It is a tragedy born of money, which more than anything else has corrupted football: the vast cash of the top-league game, the sponsorship deals, the six and seven-figure signing fees, the fruit-machine salaries. First-rank club players today can earn more in a week than many of us will ever obtain for a mortgage. Football is not alone in this trend, of course. When Billie Jean King first won Wimbledon, in 1963, she walked off with the Championship tray and a #45 gift voucher from Harrods. Last year Martina Hingis won a cheque for #373,500.

And it is a tragedy born of early triumph; of heady success when the immature personality has not the strength of character to handle it. Years of hard work, slow progress, steady achievement, reversal, adversity - these are good for a man. They build patience, tenacity, discipline.

Modern sports, professional sports - with that serious money - attract serious effort. Today players are made by others. They are scouted for at 12, hot-housed from 14, honed and trained in near-monastic isolation from their families, their age-mates, the real planet. Meantime technology, pumped with investment, makes sports faster and faster yet.

And there is the giddy head of celebrity. The young Gascoigne, in 1991, bewailed to a journalist

the horrors of fame; of being beset wherever he went, recognised at every turn, pestered in the street. Then, quitting his hotel, he caught

a taxi, and rapping on the

glass, beamed, pointing to himself with two hands. ''Aye, man! It's really me - Gazza!''

Tennis, football - today these are games for the young. You are past it at 25; geriatric at 30. Stars flare and burn and fall even in their late teens. Their lives pass out, too often, in waste, addiction and emptiness. They have served their usefulness to hard men around them. They are discarded. And fast forgotten.

Gazza's tragedy is that of George Best, Tracey Austin, Bjorn Borg, Jimmy Baxter. I hope that, in reverse and failure, good people move in

as fair-weather friends flee. I hope

he rebuilds his life, conquers

his demons, and wins a stable, contented future.