The Football Lover's Companion 9780857656261

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THE FOOTBALL LOVER’S COMPANION Copyright © Summersdale Publishers Ltd, 2011 Written and compiled by Johnny Morgan Illustrations by Ian Baker. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any means, nor transmitted, nor translated into a machine language, without the written permission of the publishers. Condition of Sale This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent publisher. Summersdale Publishers Ltd 46 West Street Chichester West Sussex PO19 1RP UK www.summersdale.com

eISBN: 978-0-85765-626-1 Substantial discounts on bulk quantities of Summersdale books are available to corporations, professional associations and other organisations. For details contact Summersdale Publishers by telephone: +44 (0) 1243 771107, fax: +44 (0) 1243 786300 or email: [email protected].

THE

LOVER’S

COMPANION

Johnny Morgan Illustrations by Ian Baker

C ONTENTS Introduction............................................................7 The Beautiful Game...................................................10 Up for the Cup.........................................................20 World In Motion.......................................................30 You’re Not Singing Any More.......................................41 Got the Whole World at Your Feet.................................52 X Factor................................................................65 One Hit Wonders......................................................75 You Don’t Know What You’re Doing.............................87 Footballing Institutions...............................................98 Smells Like Team Spirit..............................................105 It’s a Mad, Mad World................................................115 Dirty Work............................................................125 Red-Hot Rivalry......................................................135 Heartbreakers........................................................144 The Name Game......................................................155 Top of the Class.......................................................166 The Final Whistle....................................................174 Resources..............................................................188

INTRODUCTION

Some people believe football is a matter of life and death. I am very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that. Bill Shankly

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THE FOOTBALL LOVER’S COMPANION

Football. The ridiculous wages, the unruly players, the grouchy managers, the egotistical chairmen, the inept commentary, the big tournament disappointments, the opaque ruling bodies. It’s easy to wonder why we love this game so much. But we do. No matter what the game throws at us, we cradle it, we keep it close to our hearts. Like an excited child, we’re ready to forgive it with endearing haste. We tick it off, look at it with weary eyes, but as soon as it does something special, its sins are forgiven and the slate wiped clean. And perhaps this is why football has been ingrained in our culture for so long. It’s the emotional bond, the sheer unexpectedness, the promise of wonderment, the escape. Famous footballers are invariably working-class boys ‘done good’ and their dream is one that can be easily shared by the young and wistfully looked back upon with ‘ifs’, ‘buts’ and ‘maybes’ by the old. There is no great mystery involved in booting a ball around a field. In a world where people are often divided by the language they speak, football is the great unifier. There is only one way to say ‘Pelé’, ‘Beckham’ or ‘Messi’. Wherever you are and whoever you are speaking to, the mention of a few names opens a huge book of fascinating stories, rum tales and quirky facts, in whose pages there will be shared experiences, common ground and similar passions. This miscellany collects some of these stories, along with timely quotes, hand-picked trivia and the occasional joke, just to remind us all that football is indeed a ‘funny old game’.

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INTRODUCTION

I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered. George Best

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THE B EAUTIFUL GAME

Some people tell me that we professional players are soccer slaves. Well, if this is slavery, give me a life sentence. Sir Bobby Charlton 10

THE BEAUTIFUL GAME

THE PRE-MATCH BUILD UP The beautiful game. Football. There are mentions of games called ‘Tsu Chu’ at the time of China’s Han Dynasty, ‘Kemari’ in Japan around AD 600 and ‘Shrovetide football’ in the England of the Middle Ages, but the modern game as we know it kicked off on 26 October 1863. The rules of ‘Association Football’ were drawn up in a room in London and a national obsession was born. The next decade witnessed the foundation of the FA Cup (1871) and the first international match (England v Scotland), but the inaugural league competition didn’t arrive until 1888. Contested by twelve teams, this first league title was won by Preston North End. Over 125 years later, the face of football has changed incredibly. From a dozen teams playing in starched collars on rudimentary pitches watched by only those in attendance, to a multi-billionpound industry whose competitions and sponsors are beamed out to millions of fervent supporters in the four corners of the earth. However, the game remains the same. Players may not travel to games on public transport, catching the tram or hopping on the back of a milk float – they may now turn up in Ferraris, Bentleys and Porsches (if they haven’t written them off on the way) – but the goal is unchanged: to vanquish the challenger, grab the glory and win the trophies. And, along the way, this beautiful game has given us a treasure trove of incredible stories and wonderful trivia. 11

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THE FOUNDING FATHERS The twelve clubs that founded the football league in 1888: • Accrington • Aston Villa • Blackburn Rovers • Bolton Wanderers • Burnley • Derby County • Everton • Notts County • Preston North End • Stoke City • West Bromwich Albion • Wolverhampton Wanderers

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THE BEAUTIFUL GAME

THE REAL INVINCIBLES Preston North End football club is a good barometer of how the league’s founders have fared over the last century and a quarter. Winners of the inaugural football league, the Lilywhites set the beautiful game alight. However, while their flame burned brightly, it burned quickly. In 1888–89, Preston North End matched their success in the league with victory in the FA Cup, becoming the first team to win the once much-coveted ‘Double’. Incredibly, on the way to picking up both trophies, the club didn’t lose a single game, and in the FA Cup didn’t concede a single goal. Here was a truly invincible team. If any further proof of their credentials were needed, they won the league title again the following year. So, at the end of the 1889–90 season, Preston North End were on top of the footballing world. They have never scaled such heights again. A solitary FA Cup final win in 1938 has punctuated more than a hundred seasons spent sliding up and down the divisions, most of them, in recent times at least, outside the top tier. But that’s not to say that the club hasn’t had it moments. Preston North End can lay claim to having World Cup winner Sir Bobby Charlton as its manager, although his tenure wasn’t a happy one. The team slid into the Third Division and Charlton’s managerial career never recovered. It wasn’t until 1998 that the Lilywhites hit the headlines again, this time under the guidance of ex-player David Moyes. The club 13

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came agonisingly close to making it back to the top table, but lost to Bolton in a play-off final. Inevitably, Moyes left for greater things, gaining Premier League kudos at Everton, and Preston North End, devoid of his driving force, have yet to regain the same momentum. The club will always feature in the record books, and can claim to have one of the longest continuously used football grounds in the world (Deepdale has been welcoming fans for 135 years in 2011), but, firmly in the shadow of regional heavyweights from Manchester and Liverpool, any repeat of its fledgling glory seems highly unlikely.

SELECTED CLUB RECORDS Record attendance: 42,684 (against Arsenal, 23 April 1938) Record cup victory: 26–0 (against Hyde, 15 October 1887) Record league victory: 10–0 (against Stoke, 14 September 1889) Record defeat: 0–7 (against Blackpool, 1 May 1948)

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THE BEAUTIFUL GAME

There are two great teams on Merseyside; Liverpool and Liverpool Reserves. Bill Shankly

Other nations have history. We have football. Former Uruguayan manager Ondino Viera

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WE’RE GOING TO WEM-B-LEY! Wembley hasn’t always been the venue for football’s big finals. The original stadium wasn’t built until 1923 and before that a number of grounds shared hosting duties. Kennington Oval, which staged the first FA Cup final, and Crystal Palace were used the most.

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FAMOUS FOOTBALLER: DUNCAN EDWARDS

Physically, he was enormous. He was strong and had a fantastic football brain. His ability was complete. Sir Bobby Charlton on Duncan Edwards What kind of player was Duncan Edwards? How do you sum up the talent of this Dudley-born footballer? Well, Manchester United and England colleague Bobby Charlton called him ‘a great’, ‘a bright light in the sky’, ‘a giant’. He said he was the only player ever to make him feel inferior. Edwards’ talent stood out from an early age and he had come to the attention of Manchester United before he had even reached his teenage years. His sublime skill and immense physicality set him apart and by the time he was just sixteen, he was a Red Devil and part of a squad that would become the legendary Busby Babes. It wasn’t long before Edwards was driving the Old Trafford team to league glory, to FA Cup finals and to an unprecedented European Cup semi-final. At the same time, he was climbing the England ranks, becoming the youngest post-war debutant 18

THE BEAUTIFUL GAME

in 1955, a record that would stand until Michael Owen first wore the three lions in 1998. He helped his country qualify for the 1958 World Cup finals in Sweden, featuring in every qualifying game. However, he never got to compete at the tournament. Edwards was one of the seven Manchester United players to die in the Munich air disaster in February 1958. He survived the crash, but his injuries were too severe and he died in hospital five days later. Many believe that had he lived, it would have been Edwards, not Bobby Moore, that lifted the Jules Rimet trophy in 1966. That’s how good he was. Get stuck in, lads. Duncan Edwards’ purported last words on a football pitch

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UP

FOR THE

CUP

The sight of opposing fans walking together down Wembley Way – you won’t get that anywhere other than Wembley. John Sillett, former Coventry manager

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UP FOR THE CUP

THE WINNER TAKES IT ALL Football can be a cruel mistress and the years have been kinder to some of the founding fathers of the football league than others. Some sit proudly as long-term fixtures in the country’s top tier, others only appear intermittently and a few fight perennially for survival in the lower leagues. One has gone bust and been reborn. None are among the game’s elite. But football has a remedy for such ills. When league competition offers no hope of triumph, the beautiful game has its own little fairy tale: the cup. Today, there are plenty of cups which offer the chance of glory, none more so than the FA Cup, in which David still gets the chance to take on Goliath. The Champions League and its countless millions may have dulled the shine of the FA Cup a little, but for those that can only but dream of dining at the European table, the country’s most famous cup competition continues to serve up a feast of hope, anguish, despair and ecstasy. Winning a cup-winner’s medal is still very much what young footballers dream about. It is what professional footballers dream about. That’s why the FA Cup and other cups retain such an allure. Some players spend their whole careers at the best clubs only to never taste cup victory, while for others, well, their cups floweth over.

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THE FOOTBALL LOVER’S COMPANION

THE MOST SUCCESSFUL FA CUP PLAYERS (BY NUMBER OF WINNERS’ MEDALS, TO 2010–11) 6 – Ashley Cole (Arsenal 2002, 2003, 2005; Chelsea 2007, 2009, 2010) 5 – Patrick Vieira (Arsenal 1998, 2002, 2003, 2005; Manchester City 2011) 5 – Charles Wollaston (Wanderers FC 1872, 1873, 1876, 1877, 1878) 5 – Arthur Kinnaird (Wanderers FC 1873, 1877, 1878; Old Etonians 1879, 1882) 5 – James Forrest (Blackburn Rovers 1884, 1885, 1886, 1890, 1891) 4 – Ryan Giggs (Manchester United 1994, 1996, 1999, 2004) 4 – Roy Keane (Manchester United 1994, 1996, 1999, 2004) 4 – David Seaman (Arsenal 1993, 1998, 2002, 2003) 4 – Ray Parlour (Arsenal 1993, 1998, 2002, 2003) 3 – Mark Hughes (Manchester United 1985, 1990, 1994) 3 – Dennis Wise (Wimbledon 1988; Chelsea 1997, 2000)

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UP FOR THE CUP

THE FA CUP The Football Association Challenge Cup, or FA Cup, is the grand old dame of the beautiful game. First contested in 1871, it is the oldest football competition in the world and for a long time the trophy was one of the most coveted. Only recently has it struggled to compete with younger, richer rivals. Much is made of the romance of the cup and some of this attraction lies in the fact that this famous knockout tournament is open to teams outside of the top four divisions. The involvement of non-league teams doesn’t usually last much beyond the early rounds, but when one does get into the third-round draw and has the chance of playing a side from the top tier, you know that the FA Cup can serve up games that dreams are made of. This giant-killing, and the prospect of it, provides a joy that maintains the FA Cup’s affection in our hearts. While football’s minnows can’t talk about the glory of Premier League trophies and European silverware, their supporters can point towards days which witnessed their David overcome Goliath, their Rocky knock out Apollo. Some of the unpredictability of the FA Cup may have gone with the arrival of Premier League and Champions League riches, but enough remains to keep us enthralled. The game is still in love with its old lady.

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THE FOOTBALL LOVER’S COMPANION

The first ninety minutes are the most important. Sir Bobby Robson

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UP FOR THE CUP

The last player to score a hat-trick in the FA Cup final was Stan Mortenson. He even had a final named after him, the Matthews final. Lawrie McMenemy

Super Caley Go Ballistic Celtic Are Atrocious Headline from The Sun after minnows Inverness Caledonian Thistle had beaten domestic giants Celtic in the Scottish Cup

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DAVID V GOLIATH: FIVE FA CUP GIANT-KILLINGS SUTTON UNITED V COVENTRY CITY, 1989 Football fans of every club will remember the Saturday in 1989 when Sutton Utd ousted First Division Coventry City. The Us were playing non-league football at the time and the Sky Blues had won the cup only twenty months previously. Result: 2–1.

LIVERPOOL V WIMBLEDON, 1988 FA Cup giant-killings don’t come bigger than in the final itself. Wimbledon’s defeat of all-conquering Liverpool in the 1988 final wasn’t predicted by anyone outside of a small patch of south London. Result: 0–1.

AFC BOURNEMOUTH V MANCHESTER UNITED, 1984 Ron Atkinson, full of bling and braggadocio, took his Manchester United team, who were holders of the cup, to lowly Third Division Bournemouth and came away with nothing but a red face. Result: 2–0.

SUNDERLAND V LEEDS, 1973 Second Division Sunderland were expected to be the proverbial lambs to the slaughter in the 1973 FA Cup final. The wolves were the dominant top-flight Leeds United, but they forgot their teeth. Result: 1–0. 26

UP FOR THE CUP

WREXHAM V ARSENAL, 1992 When Fourth Division Wrexham hosted First Division title hopefuls Arsenal, there was only one result on people’s minds. But this trip to north Wales proved an exceptionally bleak day out for the north Londoners. Result: 2–1.

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THE FOOTBALL LOVER’S COMPANION

DISAPPEARING ACTS While cup-final losses have seen off many managers and even some playing careers, it is equally true that many of the game’s combatants have outlived its trophies. Some cups lived and died on the whim of a sponsor’s chequebook, others were consigned to the dustbin as part of what governing bodies claimed to be progress, while there are those that merely became unwanted. Little did the Football League imagine that when they launched the League Cup in 1960 as a midweek floodlight cup competition that its baby would grow up to go through more name changes than a serial divorcee. Of course, this cup remains, but its current incarnation bears little resemblance to the original, or even to that contested before the arrival of the Premier League and the Champions League. Priorities are different now for the country’s elite clubs. Other cups came and went thanks to violence, on and off the pitch, notably the Anglo-Italian Cup, which ran intermittently from 1970 to 1996 and was a famously feisty affair that did little for European relations. The Full Members Cup was created in 1985 in the aftermath of the Heysel Stadium disaster, as English clubs were banned from European competition. It lasted until 1992, having morphed into the equally unglamorous Zenith Data Systems Cup by the end.

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UP FOR THE CUP

CUPS THAT HAVE DISAPPEARED European Cup Winners’ Cup (1960–99) UEFA Cup (1971–2009) Inter-Cities Fairs Cup (1955–71) Milk Cup (1982–86) Littlewoods Challenge Cup (1986–90) Rumbelows Cup (1990–92) Coca-Cola Cup (1992–98) Worthington Cup (1998–2003) Anglo-Scottish Cup (1975–81) Full Members Cup (1985–92)

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WORLD I N MOTION

What is it that Rangers, Celtic and a three-pin plug have in common? They’re all completely useless in Europe. Michael Munro

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WORLD IN MOTION

STARS IN THEIR EYES Ask someone under the age of thirty about the Champions League and they will tell you that this competition is the pinnacle of the domestic football season in Europe. It’s the trophy with a rich tradition of glory, guts and glamour. But, to fans that are a little older, it’s still an international arriviste, a young whelp who owes a lot to its forbearer. In fact, the Champions League is only about to leave its teenage years. UEFA gave birth to the tournament in 1992, at the same time retiring the old European Cup format, which had itself been ushered into existence in 1955, as the legend goes, at the suggestion of a French sports journalist inspired by the South American Championship of Champions tournaments. The European Cup left this world steeped in fame and fortune. The champions from every country on the continent did battle to claim the crown of Europe’s best club side. Has the Champions League carried on this tradition? Well, yes and no. The fight to win the famously oversized trophy is no less fraught and the competition remains the apex of the domestic football season. But, with the tournament open to non-champions – teams that finish second, third and even fourth in the league – its very title is something of a misnomer that leaves its reputation a little short of its predecessor. But we still love it. Especially the Spanish and the Italians, whose teams have enjoyed winning it the most since the mid 1950s. The English aren’t far behind and comfortably ahead of the Germans, which is something not said very often when it comes to football. 31

THE FOOTBALL LOVER’S COMPANION

MOST SUCCESSFUL COUNTRIES IN THE EUROPEAN CUP/CHAMPIONS LEAGUE (1956–2011) 13 – Spain (Real Madrid 9; Barcelona 4) 12 – Italy (AC Milan 7; Internazionale 3; Juventus 2) 11 – England (Liverpool 5; Manchester United 3; Nottingham Forest 2; Aston Villa 1) 6 – Germany (Bayern Munich 4; Hamburg 1; Borussia Dortmund 1) 6 – Holland (Ajax 4; Feyenoord 1; PSV Eindhoven 1) 4 – Portugal (Porto 2; Benfica 2) 1 – Scotland (Celtic) 1 – Romania (Steaua Bucharest) 1 – France (Marseille) 1 – Serbia (Red Star Belgrade)

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WORLD IN MOTION

The best way to deal with Ronaldo is to stop the ball getting to him in the first place… If that doesn’t work, we’ll have to tie his shoelaces together. John Collins on Scotland’s World Cup tie with Brazil in 1998

Argentina are the second best team in the world, and there’s no higher praise than that. Kevin Keegan

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ON TOP OF THE WORLD When Ronaldo slotted the ball past Ghanaian keeper Richard Kingston in Dortmund in June 2006, it was probably to the sound of a few sighs from German fans. Not because the goal had dealt their national team any kind of grievous blow, or had lined up a meeting between these two tournament favourites, but because the Brazilian had just moved above Gerd Müller to become the World Cup’s leading goalscorer. Other notable World Cup goalscoring giants include:

MIROSLAV KLOSE – came close to reaching the top spot but only managed to draw level with his compatriot Müller. So, the Polish-born German, who scored his last World Cup goal against Argentina in 2010, had to settle for joint second place.

JÜRGEN KLINSMANN – completes a triumvirate of Germans in the top six World Cup goalscorers, having scored eleven goals for (West) Germany in the 1990, 1994 and 1998 World Cups. He is one of only three players to have scored at least three goals at three World Cups.

GARY LINEKER – notched up his ten goals over just two tournaments while wearing the three lions, including a Golden Boot-winning scoring spree in Mexico in 1986 that was only brought to an end by an Argentinian’s hand. 34

WORLD IN MOTION

DAVID VILLA – looks capable of barging his way onto the list of leading finishers. His five goals in Spain’s victorious campaign in South Africa in 2010 brought his personal tally to eight and, given his country’s current domination of world football, he is likely to have the chance to add to this total.

LEADING WORLD CUP GOALSCORERS, 1930–2010 15 – Ronaldo, Brazil 14 – Gerd Müller, Germany 14 – Miroslav Klose, Germany 13 – Just Fontaine, France 12 – Pelé, Brazil 11 – Jürgen Klinsmann, Germany 11 – Sándor Kocsis, Hungary 10 – Gabriel Batistuta, Argentina 10 – Gary Lineker, England 10 – Helmut Rahn, Germany 10 – Teófilo Cubillas, Peru 10 – Grzegorz Lato, Poland

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THE ORIGINAL ‘RONALDO’ There once was a time when there was only one Ronaldo. There was no limber-limbed Portuguese magician to consider, just a Brazilian genius – Ronaldo Luís Nazário de Lima – for whom goalscoring seemingly came as easy as putting one foot in front of the other. When he retired in February 2011, Ronaldo brought to a close a career littered with trophies, awards, records and, of course, goals. Over nearly 350 senior club games for some of the world’s best teams he bagged almost 250 goals, while he enjoyed unprecedented success at international level, winning the World Cup twice and becoming the leading scorer at the competition. Inter Milan and Real Madrid arguably got the best from Ronaldo. While the teams cannot look back on a huge haul of trophies between 1997 and 2007, on the scale, say, of Manchester United, Ronaldo can reminisce about a decade in which he won virtually every accolade going, including three FIFA World Player of the Year awards and the coveted Ballon d’Or gong twice. During this time, he also won his second World Cup winner’s medal, scoring twice in the 2002 final against Germany. He was unfortunate not to win another. Ronaldo’s lacklustre performance in the 1998 final remains a matter of much debate, a case of ‘what could have been’. Regardless, when he bowed out of football after eighteen years, having completed his final game for Brazilian club Corinthians, he stepped off the stage as one of the greatest players the game has ever seen. 36

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FAMOUS FOOTBALLER: ERIC CANTONA

Football graffiti: 1966 was a great year for English football. Eric Cantona was born. Where to start with Eric Cantona? With the red-hot temper that got him booted out of the game on more than one occasion? With the sublime football that made him the lynchpin of Manchester United’s success in the 1990s? With the cryptic utterances that delighted and baffled in equal measure? With his early retirement from football and his movie career? Each topic could fill pages, but one thing is for sure, there is no other footballer quite like Cantona. Very much the enfant terrible of French football thanks to his combustible nature, he never failed to find a way to get into trouble during his early career in his native country, whether it be fighting with fans, teammates, opponents, managers, chairmen or owners – his career was reborn when he decided to play in England. Passing through the hands of Sheffield Wednesday and Leeds, he finally settled at Old Trafford, where he played a central role in Sir Alex Ferguson’s first period of sustained success as 38

WORLD IN MOTION

Manchester United manager. Cantona helped the club win its first league trophy for over twenty-five years and in doing so became the only player to have won back-to-back championships with different clubs. He went on to win four Premier League titles and two FA Cups with the Red Devils, earning a place among the club’s legends. Of course, his time in a red shirt was not without incident. Major incident as it happened. His decision to confront a fan, having been sent off in a game against Crystal Palace, by jumping into the crowd and dishing out a flurry of punches caused an inevitable storm and earned him an eight-month holiday from the game. The seagulls followed the trawler and the Frenchman watched Manchester United stumble. But he came back – only just if the rumours are to be believed – and the club started winning again. In true Cantona style, having won his fourth league title in 1997, he unexpectedly announced his retirement from football. He walked into the sunset with a bag full of silverware and awards, and the eternal adoration of Manchester United fans, although he wouldn’t be off our screens for very long. THE SHIT HITS THE FAN Newspaper headline after Eric Cantona’s famous attack on a Crystal Palace supporter in 1995

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I was watching Germany and I got up to make a cup of tea. I bumped into the telly and Klinsmann fell over. Frank Skinner

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YOU’RE NOT S INGING A NY MORE

All Nottingham has is Robin Hood. And he’s dead. Dutch player Bryan Roy after he left Nottingham Forest

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GOING, GOING… Cups are not the only things that disappear in football. Clubs do too, for a host of reasons, the most common of which is financial mismanagement. It is when once-proud clubs slide towards extinction, penniless and broken, that our hearts ache the most. Witnessing the end of decades of history, support and hard work is always a gutwrenching affair, made no less painful by the fact that it is often caused by the ineptitude or greed of those supposedly in control of the purse strings. Len Shackleton, one of the game’s most entertaining sons, included a chapter in his autobiography called ‘What directors know about football’ and left it entirely blank. The recent upturn in clubs wallowing in financial strife does little to warrant a re-evaluation of this analysis. Too many supporters have found their clubs plunging towards the abyss thanks to overambitious and overindulgent chairmen chasing the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Of course, the widening chasm between the top tier and the rest, and the collapse of sponsorship deals, have also played their part. A top-heavy football league is putting ever more pressure on those at the bottom. But not all clubs that check out do so permanently. In fact, few do. Most are resurrected, emerging like a phoenix from the flames, with a similar name and a new spirit.

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YOU’RE NOT SINGING ANY MORE

Southampton is a very well-run football team from Monday to Friday. It’s Saturdays we have a problem with. Lawrie McMenemy

We’ve got a long-term plan at this club and except for the results it’s going well. Chairman of Fulham FC

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FOOTBALL CLUBS THAT HAVE GONE BUST WIMBLEDON F.C. (1889–2004) ACCRINGTON STANLEY (1891-1962; 1968–) ALDERSHOT F.C. (1926–92) CHESTER CITY (1885–2010) BRISTOL CITY (1897–1982; 1982–) SCARBOROUGH (1879–2007) HALIFAX TOWN (1911–2008) AIRDRIEONIANS (1878–2002) CLYDEBANK (1965–2002) GRETNA GREEN (1946–2008)

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LOWEST ATTENDANCES Premier League: Wimbledon v Everton, January 1993 – 3,039 England game: San Marino v England, November 1993 – 2,378 Football League (post-war): Rochdale v Cambridge, February 1974 – 588 Football League (pre-war): Thames v Luton Town, December 1930 – 469

HIGHEST ATTENDANCES Premier League: Manchester United v Blackburn Rovers, March 2007 – 76,398 England home game: England v Scotland, May 1979 – 100,000 England away game: Brazil v England, May 1959 – 160,000 World Cup match: Brazil v Uruguay, 1950 – 199,854

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As a small boy I was torn between two ambitions: to be a footballer or to run away and join a circus. At Partick Thistle I got to do both. Alan Hansen

The two best clubs in London are Stringfellows and The Hippodrome. Terry McDermott

THE FOOTBALL LOVER’S COMPANION

Apparently, Stoke City football club is under investigation by the Inland Revenue for tax evasion. They’ve been claiming for silver polish for the past thirty years.

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YOU’RE NOT SINGING ANY MORE

OH SO QUIET Great comebacks and collapses never fail to silence at least one set of fans, but sometimes the reason behind the quietness is a lot more elemental. Sometimes the hush is directly related to swathes of empty seats. Sometimes there just aren’t many people watching. Once football matches in England attracted over 100,000 spectators. People would cram into stadiums or around pitches, gaining any vantage point they could. Study the grainy newsreel of old, pre-war games and you’ll see incredible swarms of people almost on top of play. But these monochrome days are long gone. Concerns over supporter safety, the televising of games, the introduction of allseater stadia and the cost of watching your team in the modern age are just some of the reasons why attendances are, on the whole, much, much lower today. And, like a shark scenting blood, football fans are quick to identify a paucity of opposition supporters. Once they do, they attack without mercy. This assault usually takes the form of an expletive-fuelled verse explaining why the lack of bums on seats on the other side of the ground makes your club, without doubt, a load of rubbish.

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ACCRINGTON STANLEY… WHO ARE THEY? No other team has had its woes so exposed as Accrington Stanley. Say the word ‘exactly’ in a Scouse accent and most football supporters over the age of twenty-five, and a few under, will know exactly what old advert and what football team you’re referring to. That the National Dairy Council chose to use Accrington Stanley, having been forced to drop Tottenham Hotspur, to epitomise obscurity is testament to the club’s fortunes, at least as they stood in the 1980s. Despite being formed in 1891, Accrington Stanley did not play league football until after World War One, when they gained entry to the bottom rung of the competition in 1921. Four decades of uninterrupted league football followed, which should have served as a foundation for longevity. Alas, that wasn’t to be the case. Far from it. The ‘Owd Reds’ never left the unglamorous confines of the league’s lowest levels and this success-starved performance surely contributed to the financial difficulties that would force the club under in the early 1960s. Declared bankrupt, an ignominious fate at the time, Accrington Stanley resigned from the football league in 1962. The club was revived a few years later, but it would be almost half a century before they regained their football league status, when in 2006 they were promoted as champions of the Conference to the modern-day League Two. After narrowly avoiding returning immediately from whence they came, they have clung to their hard-fought league membership in the same division ever since. 50

GOT THE WHOLE WORLD AT YOUR FEET

We are the best in the world. We have beaten England… Maggie Thatcher, can you hear me? Commentator Bjørge Lillelien after Norway beat England in a 1981 World Cup qualifier 52

GOT THE WHOLE WORLD AT YOUR FEET

PLAYING FOR PRIDE Pulling on your national colours at a World Cup is the pinnacle of most players’ careers. The words ‘it’s a dream come true’ have passed the lips of many footballers that have found themselves on the proverbial plane. From playing in the streets to gracing the ultimate stage: Boy’s Own stuff. Except, it doesn’t always work out well. The mountain has been climbed, the peak has been reached, a country’s eyes are focused upon you and what happens: you receive the mother of all thumpings on the field. The opposition hasn’t just secured a comfortable victory but handed out a thrashing that will go down in the record books. Suddenly the journey starts to look less worthwhile. The hard work expended to emerge victorious from the qualifying campaign, to avoid injury and to make the squad has led only to a cringeworthy capitulation that has earned team and country a mix of derision and pity. What’s more, the humiliation is being beamed to billions of viewers all over the world. There really is no escape. But it could be worse. For some players the final whistle really can come too soon. For some players, the disappointment and despondency of a nation is the least of their worries. When the likes of Iran, China or North Korea, or other countries whose concept of human rights is flaky at best, reach the World Cup, the rumours of extravagant rewards for goalscoring are usually intermingled with those of fearful punishments for defeat, especially big ones. Playing for pride: perhaps that doesn’t always cover it. 53

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HEAVIEST DEFEATS AT WORLD CUPS Hungary 10–1 El Salvador (Spain 1982) Yugoslavia 9–0 Zaire (West Germany 1974) Hungary 9–0 South Korea (Switzerland 1954) Germany 8–0 Saudi Arabia (Japan/South Korea 2002) Sweden 8–0 Cuba (France 1938) Uruguay 8–0 Bolivia (Brazil 1950) Portugal 7–0 North Korea (South Africa 2010) Uruguay 7–0 Scotland (Switzerland 1954) Poland 7–0 Haiti (Germany 1974)

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HIDE YOUR EYES FIFA has its ranking system and world football supposedly has its natural order. The game’s ruling nations are expected to qualify for every World Cup, at which they’re expected to sail gloriously through the early games at the very least. But, occasionally, things don’t go to plan. More often than not, these upsets serve to lance a boil of bigheadedness. There is perhaps no better example than the 1950 tournament. Up until this time, England had been happy to pay the World Cup scant regard and tour as the self-proclaimed Kings of Football. The competition in Brazil was the team’s first World Cup and their opening game would bring them down to earth with a reputation-shattering thud. Of course, teams don’t have to fly that high to be grounded so painfully. Between 1974 and 1990, Scotland was more of a regular at World Cups than any other home nation. However, the football rarely matched the braggadocio: where giants would struggle or fall, minnows would triumph. More recently, World Cup winners and European champions France crashed out of the 2002 competition without scoring a goal. The slide was started by an up-and-coming but lowly ranked African side on the opening day, echoing the events of the 1990 tournament, which had witnessed the humbling of holders Argentina.

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Of course you don’t have to actually lose a game to be embarrassed. The Italian World Cup team of 2010 evoked the spirit of 1966 to weave a trail of disaster. The reigning champions would ultimately crash out thanks to a defeat in the last group game, but draws against lowly Paraguay and, most notably, even more lowly New Zealand, had done the real damage.

What’s the difference between the England World Cup team and a tea bag? The tea bag stays in the cup longer.

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TEN FOOTBALLING EMBARRASSMENTS ON THE GLOBAL STAGE England 0–1 USA (Brazil 1950) Italy 0–1 North Korea (England 1966) Scotland 1–1 Iran (Argentina 1978) West Germany 1–2 Algeria (Spain 1982) Spain 0–1 Northern Ireland (Spain 1982) Argentina 0–1 Cameroon (Italy 1990) Scotland 0–1 Costa Rica (Italy 1990) France 0–1 Senegal (Japan/South Korea 2002) Italy 1–2 South Korea (Japan/South Korea 2002) Italy 1–1 New Zealand (South Africa 2010)

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I’ve just named the team I would like to represent Wales in the next World Cup: Brazil. Bobby Gould

Anyone who’s thinking of applying for the job of Scotland manager in the next eight or nine years should go and get themselves checked out by about fifteen psychiatrists. Martin O’Neill

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THE CURIOUS CASE OF ANDRÉS ESCOBAR Defeat at the World Cup is painful to bear, more so if you were the catalyst for the loss. But, usually, players are offered a path to redemption. A penalty shoot-out against Spain at Euro 1996 allowed Stuart Pearce to ease the pain of his miss in the 1990 World Cup, while David Beckham’s vanquishing of Argentina in 2002 sealed his comeback from the red card that helped put England out of the 1998 tournament. Not so Andrés Escobar. The Colombian defender paid the ultimate price for his team’s dreadful performance at USA 1994. His own goal against the hosts helped to consign Colombia to a 2–1 defeat and, a few days later, having returned home, the player was shot dead. His death was widely perceived as a punishment for his hand (or foot) in the defeat to the country’s bitter rivals, which ended Colombia’s involvement in the tournament. Why would someone go so far? Relations between the two countries were unusually strained, thanks to alleged links between the Colombian government and the Cali drug cartel, so the game was always going to be highly charged. Adding fuel to the flames were domestic expectations – Colombia had come into the tournament as many people’s dark horses thanks to an imperious qualification campaign – and the team’s defeat in their opening game. Furthermore, it is alleged that many key figures in Colombia’s sizeable underworld had bet big on their national team. Whoever was behind the shooting, the 2–0 victory against Switzerland in the final group game was truly meaningless. 59

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WORLD CUP FOOTIE FACTS • In Spain’s victorious World Cup campaign in 2010, every goal was scored by a Barcelona player. .

• The first live worldwide TV coverage of the World Cup was in 1958. • Every match in the first World Cup in Uruguay in 1930 was played in Montevideo. • The most ever goals scored in a World Cup (up to 2010) stands at 171, at France in 1998. • The swapping of shirts after the final whistle was banned at the 1986 World Cup because FIFA didn’t want players to expose their bare chests.

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Dave is at the World Cup final waiting for the match to begin when a guy asks him if the seat next to him is taken. ‘No,’ Dave says, ‘it’s empty.’ ‘Wow,’ replies the guy, ‘who on earth would get a ticket for the World Cup and not come?!’ ‘Actually,’ Dave replies, ‘I’ve got the ticket for that seat. It was meant for my wife, but she passed away recently.’ ‘I’m sorry,’ the guy replies. ‘Couldn’t you have brought a friend instead?’ ‘Possibly,’ Dave says, ‘but they’re all busy attending my wife’s funeral.’

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Vincere o morire! (Win or die!) Benito Mussolini’s order to the Italian national team before their game against Hungary in the 1938 World Cup

We didn’t underestimate them. They were just a lot better than we thought. Sir Bobby Robson on England’s narrow victory over Cameroon at Italia ‘90

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There’s no in between – you’re either good or bad. We were in between. Gary Lineker commenting on an England World Cup performance

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The Liverpool theme song is ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’. The Wimbledon one is ‘You’ll Never Walk Again’. Tommy Docherty

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AUDIO ASSAULT Is the football song dead? Maybe. After the shameful splurge of ugly tunes that England’s appearance at the 2006 World Cup gave birth to, including one by Neil and Christine Hamilton, its demise would surely be sparsely mourned. Somewhat unsurprisingly, England manager Fabio Capello banned his team from the recording studio in the run-up to the 2010 competition. But these records will always be with us. The song that we have to thank for this genre of music is ‘Back Home’ by England’s 1970 World Cup squad, which somehow was top of the pops for three weeks, having displaced ‘Spirit in the Sky’ by Norman Greenbaum. Pandora’s Box was well and truly opened. ‘Back Home’ paved the way not just for a host of international team songs, but club efforts too. Alongside ‘Ali’s Tartan Army’, Scotland’s musical footnote to its rough ride in the 1978 World Cup, and ‘This Time’, England’s misguided ditty to its hopes at the 1982 competition, the charts were attacked by the likes of ‘Ossie’s Dream’, a collaboration between cockney light rockers Chas & Dave and Tottenham Hotspur, and the ‘Anfield Rap’, a scouse rap courtesy of the Liverpool team. However, there are a few football songs that have failed to make the ears bleed. The best of this bunch is undoubtedly ‘World in Motion’, precisely because it was penned by New Order and featured only a few footballers (allegedly because the rest were

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down the pub). This England World Cup song even dared to make use of John Barnes’ rapping skills again (see the ‘Anfield Rap’). Outside of these two spheres of soccer symphony, there is another type of football song that mustn’t go unmentioned, if only for reasons of history. This is a record that is released as a semi-serious attempt at music credibility. Stand up Hoddle and Waddle with your ‘Diamond Lights’, and, inevitably, Gazza. Yes, for a while the ‘Fog on the Tyne’ was all yours, Paul.

THE BEST (AND WORST) OF THE REST… ‘Head Over Heels in Love’ by Kevin Keegan (1979) ‘Three Lions’ by the Lightning Seeds and Baddiel and Skinner (1996) ‘Vindaloo’ by Fat Les (1998) ‘England Are Jolly Dee’ by Neil and Christine Hamilton (2006) ‘Don’t Mention the World Cup’ by The First Eleven feat. John Cleese (2006)

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REEL HISTORY If films about baseball, basketball and American football are ten-a-penny, then movies about Association Football are a little thinner on the ground. Why the contrast? Well, a good starting point would be that many of the latter have been as much good as a South American player on a cold night in Newcastle in February. Step forward Mike Bassett: England Manager, Vinnie Jones’ take on Mean Machine, Sean Bean’s love letter to his hometown team, When Saturday Comes, and the slew of films that either glamorised or even just remembered the dark days of football hooliganism. If Brian Glover’s overbearing schoolteacher in Kes had presented football in a bad way, then these films all made a much worse job of it. However, amid the swathes of muck, there are a few that stand out as being worth the watch:

ESCAPE TO VICTORY (1981) – this big-screen production, in which a team of prisoners of war, led by Sylvester Stallone and Michael Caine, take on a dastardly Nazi eleven, owes its popularity as much to its star-studded line-up (Pelé, Bobby Moore, etc.) as its footballing scenes.

FEVER PITCH (1997) – this film tells the story of a man’s romantic life and how it is impacted by Arsenal’s 1988–89 championshipwinning season, which culminated in a heroic, last-minute defeat 68

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of Liverpool to claim the title. Popular in north London, not so much on Merseyside.

ONCE IN A LIFETIME: THE EXTRAORDINARY STORY OF THE NEW YORK COSMOS (2006) – relying on actual game footage rather than contrived Hollywood scripts, this film told the incredible story of US soccer’s most flamboyant side.

ZIDANE:

A

21ST CENTURY PORTRAIT (2006) – spends a whole

game focused solely on the contribution of the titular Frenchman. No head butts, just an inordinate amount of skill.

THE DAMNED UNITED (2009) – this is the story of Brian Clough’s ill-fated forty-four-day reign at Leeds United. With manager and players equally contemptuous of each other, the results were as explosive as the Whites’ football once was.

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They say football is a game of two halves. Not for me it isn’t. I regularly down eight or nine pints while watching a live game on Sky TV in my local. Adrian Bond

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GIRLS ALLOWED Well-behaved players, games you can afford to attend, plenty of goals and regular games at the business end of international tournaments – a distant dream? No, women’s football. Ever since Keira Knightley bent it like Beckham, and despite Sepp Blatter’s call for skimpier strips, the game’s profile has gone from strength to strength. 2011 witnessed the launch of the FA Women’s Super League, comprising eight teams of semi-professional players, and the England team is in the world’s top ten. However, while the gender is different, some things never change. How did England lose their 2011 World Cup quarter final? On penalties.

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POSH AND NOT VERY POSH If big money has brought celebrity to the world of professional football in a manner it has never seen before, one player typifies the arrival of this new era of sportsman: David Beckham. A richly talented footballer who married a pop star and became a global icon. He’s even had a film named after him. It’s unlikely he’ll be running a pub in Southend when he retires. It’s more likely he’ll be running for Prime Minister, or at the very least one of his numerous soccer schools that he has set up across the world. Alternatively, he could get involved in his wife’s fashion business. Beckham has never been shy of trying out a few trends (remember the sarong?) or indeed, hairstyles (remember the Mohican?) and his name appears next to a huge amount of products nowadays. Of course, this is the modern footballer’s life. Thanks to the riches now bestowed upon footballers, we’ve had to endure such torture as Rio Ferdinand’s ill-conceived Beadle’s About-style television show, Phil Neville’s truly hideous choice of interior decor and Wayne Rooney’s £200 packet of fags. We shouldn’t forget all the pranged supercars, rolled and written off either on the way back from training or from a local nightspot. Or the various musical interludes – no longer comedy records to celebrate cup finals but stabs at serious singing because, well, the players can afford to. And then there are the girls.

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Could I not have two bullets? Sir Alex Ferguson in October 2004 after being asked if he had a bullet in a gun, would he use it on Arsène Wenger or Victoria Beckham

We’ve been asked to do Playboy together, me and Victoria, as a pair. I don’t think I’ll ever go naked, but I’ll never say never. David Beckham

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San Marino play like men who expect to encounter visa problems if they approach the halfway line. Tom Humphries

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THE ONE AND ONLY The England football team are expected to qualify for every major tournament. Failure to do so is treated as the ultimate betrayal by fans and commentators alike. However, for some supporters, the prospect of their team reaching such a competition is more fanciful dream than automatic right. So, when one such side does qualify, it is a wonderful occasion that is celebrated so passionately thanks in part to the nagging realisation that they are unlikely to return anytime soon. Throughout the history of international football there is a trail of one hit wonders; national sides that have lit up the big stage on just the solitary occasion. For some their victory was just in being there, for others qualification was a false dawn, while there are teams for whom geography and history were the controllers of their fate. Wales is one of the ‘nearly men’. The team may have qualified fortuitously for the 1958 World Cup in Sweden, thanks largely to Middle East politics, but a golden age of Welsh players made the most of their luck and reached the quarter-finals, where they would lose to eventual winners Brazil and a goal by a young Pelé. The Dragons never made it back, only going as far as getting agonisingly close in 1982 and 1994. If the Welsh are ever in need of comfort, they could do worse than look at the history of the Indian national football team. Having actually qualified for the 1950 World Cup in Brazil, they had to hand back the invite as the barefoot-playing team refused to adhere to a new FIFA rule that insisted players wear football boots. 76

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My local football team are so bad, every time they get a corner they do a lap of honour. Bob Monkhouse

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The Brazilians aren’t as good as they used to be, or as they are now. Kenny Dalglish

If you have a fortnight’s holiday in Dublin you qualify to play for the national side. Mike England

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TEAMS AT THE WORLD CUP ONCE Dutch East Indies (France 1938) Cuba (France 1938) Wales (Sweden 1958) Israel (Mexico 1970) Haiti (West Germany 1974) Zaire (West Germany 1974) East Germany (West Germany 1974) Canada (Mexico 1986) Iraq (Mexico 1986) UAE (Italy 1990) Jamaica (France 1998) China (Japan/South Korea 2002) Angola (Germany 2006) Togo (Germany 2006) Trinidad & Tobago (Germany 2006) Ghana (South Africa 2010) Slovakia (South Africa 2010)

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OUT OF AFRICA The Leopards of Zaire hold the distinction of being the first team from sub-Saharan Africa to qualify for the World Cup. However, their performance in West Germany in 1974 is not one that the country or the continent looks back on fondly. 1974 was an incredible year for sport in Zaire. The football team won the Africa Cup of Nations and the country hosted one of the most iconic heavyweight boxing fights in history, Muhammad Ali’s Rumble in the Jungle. The Leopards’ qualification for the World Cup should have been part of a glorious sporting triumvirate. The Leopards entered the tournament on an extraordinary high. Fresh from beating Egypt to claim their second (and last to date) Africa Cup of Nations, the team was expected to show the world just how much African football had progressed. Sadly, the pride of Africa demonstrated the opposite. Zaire’s world began to fall apart after a 2–0 defeat by a decent Scotland team. In the next match, the Leopards were bludgeoned 9–0 by Yugoslavia, a loss that remains one of the heaviest inflicted at the World Cup. Things would only get worse in the last game. Although the hiding against Brazil that many feared never materialised, a moment in the game passed into World Cup legend and painted football in Zaire and Africa as naive at best and backward at worst.

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Having committed a foul on the edge of their area, Zaire positioned a wall to defend the Brazilian free kick. With everybody in place, the referee blew his whistle for the kick to be taken only for a Leopard to sprint from the wall and lash the ball upfield to astonishment on and off the field. The world winced with embarrassment. The Leopards, now playing as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, have never hunted at such a level again.

OXO are bringing out a new stock cube based on Birmingham City Football Club. It’s going to be called the ‘laughing stock’ and will crumble in the box.

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The Croatians don’t play well without the ball. Barry Venison

Scotland has the only football team in the world that does a lap of disgrace. Billy Connolly

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FAMOUS FOOTBALLER: GEORGE BEST

Football adage: Maradona good. Pelé better. George Best. Was George Best better than Maradona and Pelé? Well, that is one of the great debates. When it comes to comparisons, he isn’t helped by the fact he wasn’t able to showcase his blend of footballing genius on the international stage. His fondness for the high life also meant longevity wasn’t a feature of his career. But he was undoubtedly that good. And, when he was good, he was almightily good. The way he weaved past players, the way he ducked, feigned and shimmied, the way he scored his goals, the way he played the game, all in an era when opponents could get away with GBH; this made him truly exceptional. It was at Manchester United where he shone the brightest. Training ground sessions involving the Belfast live wire and the serious Sir Matt Busby must have been worth the price of a match day ticket in themselves, but, for a while, he made the club great. The 1967–68 season was arguably the pinnacle of his time in football, helping to guide the Red Devils to their first European 84

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Cup triumph, scoring in the final against Benfica. This feat and many others would later see him made European Footballer of the Year. After this momentous year, as Best’s stardom continued to rise, so the football began to decline. The so-called fifth Beatle stayed in Manchester until the mid 1970s, but neither the team nor he ever reached the same heights. He eventually moved on to Fulham, the USA and Hibernian among others, but the star was fading, on the pitch at least. In the end, like a lot of retirees, he headed to Bournemouth and it was at Dean Court that Best all but bowed out of competitive football in the early 1980s. Whatever one makes of his proclivity for Miss Worlds, his passion for booze or his attitudes to marriage, he was one of football’s most gifted exponents. He made the beautiful game look beautiful. There was no point in him coming to team talks. All I used to say was, ‘Whenever possible, pass the ball to George.’ Sir Matt Busby on George Best

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QATAR 2022 If it is relatively straightforward to look back through World Cup records and identify the teams that have graced the World Cup all but once; it is a lot harder to peer into the future and predict what sides will join this unfortunate list. Except, perhaps, in one case: Qatar. How a Persian Gulf nation, with little in the way of footballing culture, flesh-boiling July temperatures and a shaky grasp of human rights, came to be awarded the 2022 World Cup will continue to be debated long after the tournament is finished. However, one thing is certain: Qatar will compete at a World Cup. This is the Qatar football team that is ranked somewhere near the 90 mark in the FIFA rankings and has only on one occasion got anywhere near qualifying for the World Cup. It was only in 2011 that the side first progressed out of the first round of the Asian Cup and even then they had the advantage of being hosts. But FIFA chose Qatar and so to this emirate will the world’s best teams travel in the summer of 2022. The Qataris may by then have invented a way to stop players melting. They may have introduced a new tolerant culture in celebration of the country’s new status as World Cup host. The sport may have even become a national pastime. However, regardless of any such advances, their team is still unlikely to win a single point. And they are unlikely to ever be at the competition again.

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There are two types of manager: those who’ve just been sacked and those who are just about to be. Howard Wilkinson

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YELLOW FEVER For a referee to leave a lasting impression on the beautiful game, he must do his job either incredibly well or do something very wrong. Unfortunately, it is too often the latter. And so it goes with Graham Poll. Although the man from Tring is considered one of the best English referees of all time by the record books, his career will always be remembered for one game. Croatia v Australia at the 2006 World Cup would be the last game Poll took charge of in an international tournament and he would retire his whistle completely not long after. The Group F match was by no means an easy game to referee: physical from the outset, Poll would brandish his yellow card regularly and eventually send off three players. But, in failing to mark Croatian defender Josip Simunic’s second yellow card in the correct column and thus failing to send him off, he set himself up for the greatest of falls.

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Having mistakenly attributed the booking to an Australian player, Simunic stayed on the field; that is until he earned his third yellow card of the match and was finally dismissed in the dying seconds. Fortunately, despite drawing the game, Australia still progressed. Had they not, the uproar could have been a lot fiercer. Legend has it that a little while after a downcast Poll had returned from the World Cup, some of his refereeing colleagues, wanting to cheer him up, persuaded him to come out for a friendly game of golf. Told that a new top was waiting in his locker, Poll left his pals and headed for the changing rooms. All ready to go, his three golfing buddies met him on the way out. They were all wearing yellow shirts. Poll’s was red.

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After the match an official asked for two of my players to take a dope test. I offered them the referee. Tommy Docherty

I never comment on referees and I’m not going to break the habit of a lifetime for that prat. Ron Atkinson

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SAY HELLO, WAVE GOODBYE If the men in black have it hard, being a football manager can be just as stressful, especially in the modern game where the successes of previous seasons increasingly count for nothing and wealthy owners are desperate for silverware. The game that once gave Alex Ferguson the best part of four trophy-less years at Manchester United to establish his regime has long since changed into a much more impatient beast. Without the patience shown by the club’s board between November 1986 and May 1990, there would have been no Manchester United dynasty and probably no Sir Alex Ferguson.

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DON’T GET COMFORTABLE – FAMOUSLY SHORT MANAGERIAL REIGNS LEROY ROSENIOR – holds a record that seemingly will never be broken. He lasted a grand total of ten minutes as manager of Torquay United in 2007. Announced as the boss of the League Two side literally just as a takeover was completed, the new owners didn’t want Rosenior in charge.

PAUL GASCOIGNE – has always been a living, breathing soap opera and he brought his unique brand of management to Kettering Town in 2005 with a plan to bring the non-league club fame and fortune. Unfortunately, just thirty-nine days and too many drinks later, he was gone.

BRIAN CLOUGH – lasted a lifetime on the Rosenior scale but his forty-four days in charge of Leeds United in 1974 is the stuff of legend. Clough had come from bitter rivals Derby County, where he had bad-mouthed Leeds and its players. Out of a mutual hatred, a fruitful managerial spell was not born.

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SHORTEST MANAGERIAL CAREERS 10 minutes – Leroy Rosenior (Torquay United, 2007) 3 days – Bill Lambton (Scunthorpe United, 1959) 4 days – Dave Bassett (Crystal Palace, 1984) 7 days – Kevin Cullis (Swansea, 1996) 9 days – Martin Ling (Cambridge United, 2009) 28 days – Paul Hart (QPR, 2010) 28 days – Tommy Docherty (QPR, 1968) 33 days – Steve Coppell (Manchester City, 1996) 39 days – Paul Gascoigne (Kettering Town, 2005) 41 days – Les Reed (Charlton, 2006) 44 days – Brian Clough (Leeds, 1974)

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I used to play football in my youth but then my eyes went bad so I became a referee. Eric Morecambe

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HE’S FROM SWEDEN, REMEMBER Sven-bashing isn’t the popular sport it used to be. And it used to be very popular, reaching its peak during the last throes of his reign as England football manager. Looking back, how the country managed to work itself up into such a state about one of the national team’s best bosses is mystifying. Appointed after Kevin Keegan’s shambolic tenure, Eriksson set about securing a place for England at the 2002 World Cup, including the little matter of a crushing 5–1 win against Germany in Munich. England made the quarter-finals, where an injury-hit side lost to eventual winners Brazil. Two years later, he would take England to the quarter-finals of Euro 2004, where they would lose to Portugal on penalties, having lost talisman Wayne Rooney during the game. Portugal would beat England on penalties again at the 2006 World Cup, with Rooney having been sent off in normal time. This record outshines that of every other England manager with the exception of World Cup winner Alf Ramsey. Eriksson achieved greater consistency than even Sir Bobby Robson, whose 1986 quarter-final and 1990 semi-final came either side of a calamitous performance at Euro 1988. When Eriksson left, England were the fifth-placed team in the FIFA rankings. They were twenty-first when he took over. Arguably all Eriksson needed was a bit more luck. Losing key players to a mixture of injury and ill discipline derailed his 96

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progress in all three consecutive international tournaments he guided England to. The performance of his successors underlines his achievement. Steve McLaren couldn’t get England to Euro 2008, while Fabio Capello received a second-round drubbing from Germany at the World Cup in 2010. Eriksson never failed in qualification, Eriksson never got his ass handed to him at an international competition. Oh, for more a bit more luck. A few more clean sheets and Sven’s problems both on and off the field would disappear. Brian O’Keeffe

The greatest barrier to success is the fear of failure Sven-Göran Eriksson

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Football – bloody hell! Sir Alex Ferguson

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ESTÁDIO DO MARACANÃ There is no other stadium on earth that has enjoyed such a glorious history as Brazil’s Estádio do Maracanã. This theatre of dreams has played host to the world’s best tournaments and the world’s best players, not to mention the odd supporter or two. Named after the Maracanã neighbourhood in Rio de Janeiro, the Estádio do Maracanã was built for the 1950 World Cup. An imperious Brazilian team swept through to the final, where nearly 200,000 people waited to crown them champions of the world. However, in one of the biggest shocks in the tournament’s history, Uruguay bested them and the largest stadium in Latin America fell quiet. Over the next sixty or so years, the Maracanã would witness plenty more drama, including major domestic, regional and global club finals. It has been used by Brazilian league sides Botafogo, Flamengo, Fluminense and Vasco da Gama, and been graced by a pantheon of great players, such as Pelé, Socrates, Zico and Ronaldo. Of course, it has seen its fair share of stupendous goals, but one should stand out in particular, in English minds at least. On a sweaty night in February 1984, John Barnes scored one of the most memorable England goals of all time. His slaloming effort, gliding past countless Brazilian players, was worthy of the men in yellow themselves. And there is more defining history ahead for the Estádio do Maracanã. In 2014, a newly renovated stadium will play host to the World Cup again. The capacity will be a little smaller (82,238) but the atmosphere is likely to be just as hot. 99

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I wouldn’t say I was the best manager in the business, but I was in the top one. Brian Clough

If you dropped the FIFA crowd into the ocean, they wouldn’t be able to decide if it was wet or not. Jake Duncan

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GIFT OF THE GAB Never has a phrase so encapsulated a moment in English sporting history. When BBC commentator Kenneth Wolstenholme told the world ‘Some people are on the pitch… they think it’s all over… it is now!’ as Geoff Hurst sealed World Cup final victory for England, little did he know how popular his words would become. A senior football commentator at the BBC, Wolstenholme lent his velvet voice to a host of historic football games, always employing a sparse way with words and preferring to let the game do the talking. Wolstenholme commentated on twenty-three consecutive FA Cup finals, Celtic’s European Cup final victory in Lisbon in 1967 and Manchester United’s triumph in the same competition in 1968. On the international stage, his dulcet tones told of England’s reputationshattering losses to Hungary in the early 1950s and introduced the world to the brilliance of the Brazil side at the 1970 World Cup. He also hosted the debut of Match of the Day in 1964. He moved on from the BBC in the early 1970s to make room for an up-and-coming presenter called David Coleman, but he kept his hand in and kept solely to football. In his later years, he added gravitas to the Italian football programme on Channel 4. Despite countless suggestions, he didn’t ask for his famous phrase to be put on his headstone, but all the same, he will always be fondly remembered for it.

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GOLDEN BALLS The king is dead. Long live the king. The Ballon d’Or (literally ‘the golden ball’), the trophy handed out to European footballer of the year, ceased to exist in 2009. It’s now known as the FIFA Ballon d’Or and carries with it the title of World footballer of the year. Quite the accolade. That the Ballon d’Or was elevated from continental to global gong was of little surprise as, from 1995, the rules had been changed to allow non-European players to be eligible for the award if they turned out for a European club. Since European football has acted increasingly as a magnet for the world’s best players over the last fifteen years or so, the Ballon d’Or had become a de facto worldwide prize by 2009 in any event. But it wasn’t originally. Conceived by French journalist Gabriel Hanot, its purpose was to celebrate Europe’s best footballers. An Englishman, Stanley Matthews of Blackpool, received the honour of the first award in 1956, pipping Spain’s legendary Alfredo Di Stéfano to the title. The trophy has returned to these shores a few times since Matthews was able to put it on his mantelpiece. Denis Law won it in 1964, Bobby Charlton in 1966, George Best in 1968, Kevin Keegan in 1978 and 1979, and Michael Owen in 2001. The record for most wins (three) is shared by two Dutchmen (Johan Cruyff and Marco Van Basten) and a Frenchman (Michel Platini). Is anyone else likely to join this pantheon soon? Well, a couple of guys called Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi have already got one win each – they might have a chance. 102

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For those of you watching in black and white, Spurs are in the allyellow strip. John Motson

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Every fan you ask will say he wants to see lively, open football, but what the fan really wants to see is his team win. Denis Hill-Wood 105

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WHO ARE YA? What’s in a name? Well, when it comes to football club nicknames, quite a lot. Some simply refer to the team’s colours or something on its crest, some relate to their ground or the local area, while there are those with more intricate histories. All are roared from the terraces, all are cherished. Perhaps one of the most unusual nicknames is that which belongs to Hartlepool United: the Monkey Hangers. Not one that trips off the tongue with any great ease, or for that matter lends itself well to rudimentary football chants, but still, it has been around a long time. Where does it come from? Apparently, the good citizens of Hartlepool hanged a monkey during the Napoleonic wars for being a spy. The club has another nickname, the Pools, and you can understand why.

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Industry, of course, has a lot to do with nicknames. Northampton Town are called the Cobblers, thanks to the town’s shoemaking traditions, while Grimsby Town owe their fishing past for the Mariners sobriquet. Similarly, Luton Town are called the Hatters because of a history of local hat making, while the pottery trade gave Stoke City their nickname, the Potters. Some

nicknames

have

more

romantic

histories.

AFC

Bournemouth are the Cherries because their stadium was originally built on a cherry tree orchard, while Plymouth Argyle are the Pilgrims as this is the city from where the Pilgrim Fathers set sail for the New World. Other nicknames are less distinguished. Bolton Wanderers are known as the Trotters, a moniker that allegedly dates back to the nineteenth century when players had to often clamber, or trot, through pigpens adjacent to the pitch to reclaim the ball.

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ANIMAL ATTRACTION Ten animal-themed nicknames:

BRENTFORD – the Bees BRIGHTON & HOVE ALBION – the Seagulls CRYSTAL PALACE – the Eagles HULL CITY – the Tigers LEICESTER – the Foxes MANSFIELD TOWN – the Stags MILLWALL – the Lions NORWICH – the Canaries SHEFFIELD WEDNESDAY – the Owls SHREWSBURY TOWN – the Shrews

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THE BLACK CATS Changing a nickname is not unheard of. Sunderland chose a new identity when they left Roker Park for the Stadium of Light in 1997. Out went the Rokermen and in came the Black Cats. Why the Black Cats? The story goes that a stray black cat was found in the home dressing room before a league match in 1909. The team won that day and went on to claim the FA Cup soon after. So, a new mascot was adopted.

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UNBEATABLE What is the true measure of a team’s greatness? The football it plays, the trophies it wins or its ability to remain undefeated? The answer probably depends on which club you support. Arsenal are the only team in the modern era to have gone through an entire season unbeaten. Preston are the other invincibles, but while they also claimed the FA Cup in 1888–89, there were fewer games and less competition. The Gunners could not be bested during the 2003–04 season, which culminated in the side claiming their thirteenth league title. In the end, the Arsenal invincibles went forty-nine games unbeaten, a run stretching from May 2003 to October 2004, tearing up the record books as they went. However, on a European scale, they came up some way short of beating Steaua Bucharest’s record of 104 games without losing between 1986 and 1989, not to mention efforts by Celtic (62 games between 1915 and 1917), AC Milan (58 games, 1991–93), Benfica (56 games, 1976–78) and Ajax (52 games, 1994–96). Arsenal’s neighbours Chelsea also hold a formidable domestic record. The Blues went unbeaten at home for eighty-six games between March 2004 and October 2008, finally coming unstuck against Liverpool. The run started under the stewardship of José Mourinho, who, incredibly, went nine years and 150 games without losing a home game as a manager. The Special One’s astonishing record, spanning spells at Porto, Chelsea and Real Madrid, was finally ended by the latter side’s defeat to Sporting Gijón in April 2011. 111

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We don’t use a stopwatch to judge our Golden Goal competition now; we use a calendar. Tommy Docherty on the standard of play at Wolves in 1985

A robber recently broke into Sunderland’s ground and stole the entire contents of the trophy room. Police are looking for a man with a red and white carpet. Michael Harkness

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THE REDKNAPP ROLLERCOASTER To say that Harry Redknapp’s managerial career has been eventful would be an understatement. Redknapp’s rollercoaster ride in football management started in earnest at AFC Bournemouth in 1983. It didn’t take long for the former Cherries player to turn the club’s fortunes around, orchestrating a run that would include a famous FA Cup victory over Manchester United and elevation to the second tier of the football league for the first time. Next up was West Ham, another of Redknapp’s former clubs. Here he nurtured the talents of the likes of Rio Ferdinand, Joe Cole, Michael Carrick and his nephew Frank Lampard. However, despite a couple of Premier League top ten finishes, after a slide in form and a falling out with the chairman, he moved on. Soon, he was appointed manager of Portsmouth. He worked his magic again, keeping the south coast club in the Premier League, but another dispute with the hierarchy left him unemployed. But it was only for a matter of days, with his installation as boss of arch rivals Southampton announced when the dust had barely settled down the road. His tenure at Southampton was unsuccessful, with the club slipping out of the top league for the first time in nearly thirty years. This demise was greeted with rapture at Fratton Park. Portsmouth duly re-employed him and he rewarded them with an FA Cup final win and Premier League, if not financial, security. 113

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His next mission was at Tottenham Hotspur. Saving them from relegation, he took them into the quarter-finals of the Champions League, an unprecedented level for the Lilywhites. What’s next for Redknapp? Well, he’ll always have eyes for England. When David Webb was manager of Bournemouth he never thought training was any good unless there’d been a punch-up. Harry Redknapp

Even when we had Moore, Hurst and Peters, West Ham's average finish was about seventeenth. Which just shows how crap the other eight of us were. Harry Redknapp on playing for West Ham in the sixties

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At a football club, there’s a holy trinity – the players, the manager and the supporters. Directors don’t come into it. They are only there to sign the cheques. Bill Shankly 115

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SPEND IT LIKE YOU MEAN IT When Trevor Francis became the first £1 million football player in February 1979, it was news that made the back and front pages. The country was taken aback at the cost of the striker’s move from Birmingham to Nottingham Forest. Today, if a player moves clubs for a million it barely warrants a mention in the newspapers, never mind a headline. Some players earn that much in a month. Over thirty years later, we are fast approaching a time when we’ll see the first £100 million player. Cristiano Ronaldo swapped the red of Manchester for the white of Madrid for £80 million in 2009, so breaking the nine-figure mark can’t be far off. The move eclipsed Swedish striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s £56.5 million transfer from Internazionale to Barcelona, and Brazilian Kaka’s £50 million transfer between AC Milan and Real Madrid. More recently, when he moved between Liverpool and Chelsea in January 2011, Fernando Torres became the fourth player in history to attract a fee of £50 million or more in a single transfer. There is an argument that football already has nine-figure players. When you combine the various transfer fees collected for the signature of Ibrahimovic, including big money moves between Ajax and Juventus, Juventus and Inter Milan, Inter Milan and Barcelona, and Barcelona and AC Milan, his value ends up somewhere north of £100 million.

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BRITISH STERLING As for English players, Andy Carroll usurped Rio Ferdinand as the country’s most expensive player when he completed a move to Liverpool from Newcastle for £35 million in January 2011. Manchester United had paid Leeds £31.1 million for the Peckham-born defender in July 2002. Prior to that, Ferdinand had moved from West Ham to Leeds in 2000 for £18 million, which makes the player worth £49 million or forty-nine Trevor Francises.

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Footballing adage: How do you make a small fortune in football? Start with a big one.

A chap was once trying to get me to play for his club in America. ‘We’ll pay you $20,000 this year,’ he said, ‘and $30,000 next year.’ ‘OK,’ I replied, ‘I’ll sign next year.’ George Best

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LEAPS AND BOUNDS When a team concedes so many goals that it warrants the score behind spelt out in words rather than just in numbers, it is safe to say that they have had a day they would rather forget. Such results rarely happen at the highest level, so when they do everyone usually sits up and takes notice. Somewhat unsurprisingly, Manchester United hold the record for the largest tonking handed out in the Premier League, beating rivals Ipswich Town by nine goals in 1995. The result summed up how the year had progressed for the Tractor Boys: they had beaten the Red Devils early in the season but this would prove the high point of a miserable season that would culminate in a bottom-place finish and relegation. Four United players did the damage that afternoon, including five goals from Andy Cole, whose quintuple set a Premier League scoring record. It has since been equalled by Alan Shearer, Jermain Defoe and Dimitar Berbatov. On the receiving end was Ipswich goalkeeper Craig Forrest, who would have five years for this particular scar to heal before having to pick the ball out of the back of the net seven times against Manchester United (again). By then he was playing for West Ham, who lost 7–1 that day. Rarely is a team vanquished in such spectacular style able to quickly exorcise their demons. Wigan Athletic were able to ease the pain of the 9–1 thumping by Spurs with a single goal victory at White Hart Lane, but they had to wait to the following season. One 120

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team to enjoy swift revenge is Crystal Palace. Newly promoted to the top flight, the Eagles were hammered 9–0 by Liverpool in only their fifth game in the old First Division in 1989. Eight Liverpool players got on the score sheet, a football league record. However, the Londoners would get their revenge, beating the Merseysiders 4–3 in an FA Cup semi-final later in the season.

LARGEST PREMIER LEAGUE VICTORIES, 1992–2011 Manchester United 9–0 Ipswich Town (1995) Tottenham Hotspur 9–1 Wigan Athletic (2009) Newcastle United 8–0 Sheffield Wednesday (1999) Manchester United 8–1 Nottingham Forest (1999) Arsenal 7–0 Everton (2005) Blackburn Rovers 7–0 Nottingham Forest (1999) Manchester United 7–0 Barnsley (1997) Arsenal 7–0 Middlesbrough (2006) Manchester United 7–1 West Ham (2000)

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FAMOUS FOOTBALLER: PETER SHILTON

The perceived wisdom is that you have to be a little mad to be a goalkeeper. To be willing to go in with hands and head where others will only put their feet, to put yourself in a position where just one mistake could cost the team everything – who would volunteer for this kind of job? Well, maybe it’s just a matter of confidence and it’s safe to assume that Peter Shilton, England’s most capped goalie, wasn’t lacking in that. Legend has it that as a teenager at his first club, Leicester, Shilton gave his manager an ultimatum that it was him or the side’s existing stopper. The identity of his rival: none other than World-Cup-winning Gordon Banks. It was Banks that left for Stoke City. If confidence can help you achieve great things, it can also help you persevere when times are a little less golden. And this was the case for Shilton, in his international career at least. While Banks’ terrible car accident opened the door to the England team, he would come up against another exceptional stopper in the shape of Ray Clemence, and a succession of dithering managers. 122

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Only the arrival of Bobby Robson would cement Shilton’s place in the starting line-up, from which point he would go on to amass a record 125 international caps. He made his World Cup debut at 32 and made almost half of his caps after his 35th birthday. Along the way, he kept ten clean sheets at World Cups, a record he holds with France’s Fabien Barthez. If international recognition took a while to achieve for Shilton, club-level success was quicker to arrive, most notably winning the league title in 1978 and back-to-back European Cups in 1979 and 1980 with Brian Clough’s Nottingham Forest. Despite his displays, his club career was quite nomadic – he played over a hundred games for five different clubs over the thirty or more seasons spent playing the game. When he finally retired the gloves he had amassed an incredible 1,005 appearances, passing the four-figure mark while between the sticks for Leyton Orient at the age of forty-seven. He finished his career as one of the oldest players to have taken to the field in the football league and one of its greatest goalkeepers. Dutch goalkeepers are protected to a ridiculous extent. The only time they’re in danger of physical contact is when they go into a red-light district. Brian Clough

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Where did it all go wrong for us? It was quite simple really. At the back, in midfield and up front. George Graham after a 2–0 defeat for Leeds by Aston Villa in 1996

We were doing great before they scored five freak goals. Bert Head, former manager of Crystal Palace

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I don’t think some of the people who come to Old Trafford can spell football, never mind understand it. Roy Keane

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A GAME OF TWO CARDS In today’s game, red and yellow cards are thrown around like confetti, as much a result of player conduct as overzealous refereeing, but it wasn’t always like this. Once, little short of actually killing an opponent would earn a player a warning. Indeed, the system of red and yellow cards is a relatively new one to football. The system was invented by Englishman Ken Aston. Two highly controversial games of football played a major part in his creation: Chile versus Italy at the 1962 World Cup and England against Argentina at the 1966 tournament. Aston, an FA referee, was in charge of both. The first of these matches was infamously brutal and has long since been known as the Battle of Santiago. The former schoolteacher spent much of his time breaking up brawls on and off the pitch and by the final whistle he had expelled two Italians – a shocking tally in this era. He said after the game, ‘I wasn’t reffing a football match, I was acting as an umpire in military manoeuvres.’ If the Chile game planted the seed in Aston’s mind, then the England match spurred him into action. The quarter-final game was marked by the sending off of the Argentine captain Antonio Rattin, whose reluctance to leave the field caused uproar. Aston put the behaviour down to the language barrier and the player’s inability to comprehend his punishment. Also, in the aftermath of the contest, the England team queried a couple of bookings 126

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of their own. Hence, following the game he set about devising a system that could be universally and immediately understood. Aston’s idea was adopted and reds and yellows made their debut at the 1970 World Cup in Mexico and in the domestic football league in 1976, although it would be some time before they were officially written into the laws of the game. Nevertheless, Aston was a footballing pioneer whose legacy continues to be with us to this day.

WHIRLWIND WORLD CUP BOOKINGS Less than a minute into a group game at the 1986 tournament, Uruguay’s Sergio Batista was ordered to take an early bath for flattening Scotland’s Gordon Strachan. Argentina’s Claudio Caniggia didn’t even make it on to the field before he saw red in his country’s game against Sweden in the 2002 competition. Silly boy.

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SEEING RED The dubious honour of having received the first red card in a game of professional football belongs to a little-known Chilean by the name of Carlos Caszely, who received his marching orders for a foul on West Germany’s Berti Vogts. In the football league, the distinction is held by David Wagstaffe of Blackburn, although he was followed very shortly by none other than George Best, who was expelled for Southampton after giving the referee too much of a mouthful. Of greater note, however, are a couple of England disciplinary firsts. While other England players had been sent from the field before, Ray Wilkins was to be the first to receive a red card while wearing the three lions at a World Cup. Up against it facing unfancied Morocco in the heat of Mexico, the midfielder blew his top at the referee and launched the ball at him. His throw proved more accurate than most of his passes on that evening, and he scored a direct hit and a red card. It is perhaps surprising that an English player didn’t receive a red card on home soil until 1999. It is perhaps not surprising that the player was Paul Scholes. Easily one of the best midfielders of his generation and many others, he is also easily one of the worst tacklers. It was another ill-timed challenge that earned Manchester United’s Kevin Moran the first FA Cup final red card in 1985. His departure didn’t stop his teammates winning the game, however, and denying opponents Everton a historic treble. 128

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If they’d used video evidence in my day, I’d still be doing time. Graeme Souness

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RED CARD FIRSTS • First red card: Carlos Caszely, Chile v West Germany, 1974 • First football league red card: David Wagstaffe, lackburn Rovers v Leyton Orient, 1976 • First England red card at a World Cup: Ray Wilkins v Morocco, 1986 • First England red card at Wembley: Paul Scholes v Sweden, 1999 • First red card in an FA Cup final: Kevin Moran, Manchester Utd v Everton, 1985 • First red card in a World Cup final: Pedro Monzón, Argentina v West Germany, 1990 • First red card in the Premier League: Tony Cascarino, Chelsea v Leeds, 1993 • First goalkeeper red card at the World Cup: Gianluca Pagliuca, Italy v Norway, 1994

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THE MEAN MACHINE If the name Vincent Peter Jones doesn’t strike fear into you, the name Vinnie Jones should. The former Wimbledon and Wales midfielder is one of the game’s notorious hard men, a reputation that earned him countless red cards, bad headlines and a Hollywood career. While his footballing infamy is well deserved – highlights include famously squeezing Gazza’s privates, threatening to tear Kenny Dalglish’s ear off and spit in the hole, receiving one of the fastest ever bookings in a professional match (three seconds) and a grand total of twelve red cards – he was undoubtedly capable of playing good football. Jones helped Leeds United win promotion to the top flight and was key to Wimbledon’s greatest ever success, beating a dominant Liverpool side in the 1987 FA Cup final. He also captained Wales. However, his playing days will always be remembered for their thuggery and hooliganism, an image he helped to cultivate. After one of his numerous brushes with the blazers at FA headquarters, he joked that the Football Association had patted him on the back for taking violence off the terraces and onto the pitch. If aggressiveness clouded his football career, it helped launch his next one: international movie star. Jones’ move into films caught just about everyone cold. That he was successful came as even a greater shock. But on the basis of roles in Guy Ritchie’s Lock,

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thugs with an undeniable naturalness, he launched himself on to the A-list stage, starring in an X-Men film among others. Most of his films may now head straight to DVD, but the fact is that he has held down a career as an actor as long as he had a job as a footballer. A very well-behaved pub may be missing a celebrity landlord, but it’s doubtful too many people mind. I gave a little squeeze. Gently, of course. Gazza didn’t squeal. Well, not a lot. I think he tried to but no sound came out. Vinnie Jones on the (in)famous time he was photographed holding onto Paul Gascoigne’s ‘wotsits’ during a match

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Trevor Ford used to collect bookings like autographs. John Charles

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People seem to think that Jack Charlton and myself were influenced by one another. Untrue. I was an arrogant bastard long before I got involved with him. Mick McCarthy

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IN THE BLOOD The beautiful game has produced a host of famous footballing brothers and fathers and sons, but there is perhaps no greater example of sibling rivalry than Bobby and Jack Charlton, although much of it was conducted off the pitch. Although old age has mellowed both, the two brothers are famous for their unfriendliness towards each other, a divide that is more often than not blamed on Bobby’s difficult relationship with their parents, his mother in particular. Ironically, it is Cissie Charlton’s pedigree that arguably lies behind many of English (and Irish) football’s finest hours: she came from the North East’s great Milburn family, a rich source of footballing talent in the twentieth century. More harmonious, publically at least, is the relationship between Gary and Philip Neville, brothers who were integral parts of Sir Alex Ferguson’s revival of Manchester United. The two would also get to play against each other, both captaining their sides, the Red Devils and Everton respectively, which is a football league record. Today, another set of brothers is emerging at Old Trafford: twins Rafael and Fábio da Silva.

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On the other side of Manchester, Ivorian brothers Kolo and Yaya Touré are currently turning out for City, while a third sibling, Ibrahim, also plays professional football. A more unusual duo is Jérôme and Kevin-Prince Boateng. Half-brothers, Jérôme plays international football for Germany, the country of his birth, while Kevin turns out for Ghana, his father’s nation. The two met as Germany took on Ghana at the 2010 World Cup, the first time two brothers had played for opposing teams in an international match. But the history of family rivalry in football doesn’t belong just to brothers. Icelandic and former Barcelona and Chelsea striker Eidur Gudjohnsen entered the record books in April 1996 when he came on for his father in an international friendly against Estonia. Before they could actually play together, Eidur got injured and his dad retired.

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FAMOUS FOOTBALLING RELATIVES Bobby and Jack Charlton Gary and Philip Neville Frank Lampard Snr and Frank Lampard Jnr Jérôme and Kevin-Prince Boateng Brian and Michael Laudrup Pippo and Simone Inzaghi Kolo and Yaya Touré Ronald and Frank de Boer Rio and Anton Ferdinand Harry and Jamie Redknapp

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Referees at Celtic–Rangers matches always have a hard time. One particular unfortunate, officiating at his first such fixture, was checking in with the team managers before the kick-off. ‘Well, that seems to be everything,’ said the Rangers boss, ‘Now if you’d just like to give us the name and address of your next of kin, we can start the match.’ Edward Phillips

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HEROES AND VILLAINS Football is an unforgiving game. Fans are loyal to a club for a lifetime, and while they don’t expect players to be similarly singular, there can be no greater crime for some than to see onceadored players pulling on the colours of bitter rivals. Cross this line and often the prodigal son is cast forever out of the family. Carlos Tévez is a great example of how allegiances can change. Reverence turned to rancour at Old Trafford as the Argentine forward, who had been integral to the club’s Premier League and Champions League successes between 2007 and 2009, switched red for blue, signing for arch rivals Manchester City. If there is someone who has felt the same scorn as Tévez, it is Luís Figo. The Portuguese player swapped Barcelona for Real Madrid in a hugely controversial move in 2000, fanning the flames of a rivalry that is as much based on politics as it is on football. He was duly demonised by the Catalans that had previously worshipped him and on his return to the Nou Camp was pelted with an array of objects, including a pig’s head. Another player who could empathise with Tévez and Figo is Sol Campbell, who famously switched Tottenham for Arsenal and has been a hate figure for the Lilywhites fans ever since. However, moving between bitter enemies hasn’t always led to noxious outpourings. Ronaldo played for Barcelona and Real Madrid, and Internazionale and AC Milan, although he never moved directly between the old foes. Similarly, French defender 141

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William Gallas has played for Chelsea, Arsenal and Tottenham, a CV which has yet to arouse much in the way of hostility, while Michael Owen remains respected at Anfield despite signing for Manchester United.

TEN PLAYERS TO HAVE PLAYED FOR BITTER RIVALS CARLOS TÉVEZ – Manchester United and Manchester City LUÍS FIGO – Barcelona and Real Madrid RONALDO – Barcelona and Real Madrid, Internazionale and AC Milan

SOL CAMPBELL – Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur WILLIAM GALLAS – Arsenal, Tottenham Hotspur and Chelsea PAUL INCE – Manchester United and Liverpool RIO FERDINAND – Leeds United and Manchester United ALAN SMITH – Leeds United and Manchester United MICHAEL OWEN – Liverpool and Manchester United MO JOHNSTON – Celtic and Rangers

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DOMESTIC MEETINGS IN EUROPEAN CUP FINALS 2008 Manchester United 1–1 Chelsea (6–5 on penalties) (Champions League) 2007 Sevilla 2–2 Espanyol (3–1 on penalties) (UEFA Cup) 2003 AC Milan 0–0 Juventus (3–2 on penalties) (Champions League) 2000 Real Madrid 3–0 Valencia (Champions League) 1998 Internazionale 3–0 Lazio (UEFA Cup) 1995 Parma 2–1 Juventus (UEFA Cup) 1991 Internazionale 2–1 Roma (UEFA Cup) 1990 Juventus 3–1 Fiorentina (UEFA Cup) 1980 Eintracht Frankfurt 3–3 Borussia Mönchengladbach (Eintracht won on away goals) (UEFA Cup) 1972 Tottenham Hotspur 3–2 Wolverhampton Wanderers (UEFA Cup)

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Serious sport is war minus the shooting. George Orwell

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HE’S MISSED! Is there any part of the beautiful game as emotional as the penalty kick? With the award of a spot kick comes the likelihood of a goal, a step towards triumph. All the player has to do is slot the ball home from a few yards. The urge to scream in celebration is bubbling away, barely concealed beneath the surface – once the ball is in the back of net, the eruption follows. But it doesn’t always work out like that. A miss brings searing deflation and despondency. England supporters are particularly accustomed to being put through this wringer. Their team has become adept at missing penalties, whether in shoot-outs or normal time. Although there is a plethora of 12-yard failures over which to get wistful, those that remain most prominent in the memory are those that are most painful; namely, those involving semi-finals and Germany. While Chris Waddle’s was more spectacular in 1990, it is Stuart Pearce’s that was the more gut-wrenching. Gareth Southgate’s was similarly upsetting in 1996. England like to miss penalties against Portugal too, having gone out to the Iberian side in shoot-outs at Euro 2004 and the 2006 World Cup. The list of offenders is too long to bother with. David Beckham also has a nice line in missed kicks, contriving to go even higher than row Z with his efforts against Turkey in 2003 and France at Euro 2004. The latter miscue proved costly as the French won by a single goal. Continuing with the theme of 145

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almighty slips, John Terry’s in the 2008 Champions League final must still cause some sleepless nights. Roberto Baggio is one of only a few players that can outdo the Chelsea skipper. By blazing his penalty over the bar in 1994, he cost Italy the World Cup, while Paul Bodin deserves an honourable mention for dashing Wales’ hopes of returning to an international competition for the first time in nearly half a century. For Gary Lineker, his most famous miss was wholly a personal disaster. Needing to convert it to equal Bobby Charlton’s England scoring record, he could only gently chip it to the keeper. Retiring the following year, he never got that goal.

The natural state of the football fan is bitter disappointment, no matter what the score. Nick Hornby

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TEN FAMOUS PENALTY MISSES • John

Terry

(Chelsea)

v

Manchester

United,

Champions League final, 2008 • Asamoah Gyan (Ghana) v Uruguay, World Cup quarter-final, 2010 • Gareth Southgate (England) v Germany, European Championships semi-final, 1996 • Stuart Pearce (England) v Germany, World Cup semi-final, 1990 • David Beckham (England) v France, European Championships group match, 2004 • Dennis Bergkamp (Arsenal) v Manchester United, FA Cup semi-final, 1999 • Roberto Baggio (Italy) v Brazil, World Cup final, 1994 • Gary Lineker (England) v Brazil, international friendly, 1992 • John Aldridge (Liverpool) v Wimbledon, FA Cup final, 1988 • Paul Bodin (Wales) v Romania, World Cup qualifiers, 1993

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THE HAND OF GOD The missed penalties, Sol Campbell’s disallowed winner, Frank Lampard’s goal that wasn’t – the England football team has suffered its fair share of injustice, but by far the most despicable fate to have befallen the team is the Hand of God. Having overcome the loss of their Captain Marvel, Bryan Robson, and finding their form at just the right time, England had blasted their way to the quarter-final of the 1986 World Cup, only for their progress to be halted by the hand of Diego Maradona. Yes, his footballing genius is undoubted, yes, he scored one of the best World Cup goals of all time in the same match, but he still cheated. There aren’t many England supporters who have forgiven him and he doesn’t fly into Heathrow for many holidays. How the referee and his linesman missed the diminutive Argentine punching the ball into the net remains a mystery, as does how the pint-sized player managed to outjump England’s six-foot-something goalkeeper. Despite the howls of protest from Peter Shilton and his cohorts, the goal stood and England never recovered. Argentina went away from the game feeling like a modicum of revenge had been achieved for the Falklands War four years earlier and for the country’s controversial quarter-final defeat in 1966. England trudged off to bear a grudge that wouldn’t be exorcised for another twelve years, when a Beckham penalty separated the two teams at the 2002 World Cup. When it comes to giving your team an unfair advantage, Luis Suárez and Thierry Henry deserve a mention, but you have to hand it to Maradona, his was the best. 148

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So Victoria Beckham got pregnant during the last World Cup. Well, it’s nice to see David had something on target. Angela Miller

Maradona was the highest paid handballer in history. Con Houlihan

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If there’s an effective way to kill off the threat of Maradona by marking him, it probably involves putting a white cross over his heart and tethering him to a stake in front of a firing squad. Hugh McIlvanney

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OUT IN THE COLD If going out of a tournament, or being denied entry to one, thanks to a shameless handball is a special kind of hell, then missing out on a major final thanks to suspension is an equally fiery torment. To have an invite to the greatest stage ripped from your grasp at the last moment is truly heartbreaking. The player that has the right to feel the most unjustly treated is France’s Laurent Blanc. Having steered his country to a World Cup semi-final on home soil in 1998, he was denied the chance to play in the final thanks to some histrionics from Croatia’s Slaven Bilic. The totally undeserved red card meant that Blanc had to sit out his team’s historic defeat of Brazil. Manchester United have got good form in the ‘missing the final’ department. Roy Keane’s combativeness against Juventus cost him a place in the club’s 1999 Champions League final, while Paul Scholes’ infamous tackling abilities also meant that he had to watch the game from the stands. The Red Devil curse struck again ten years later, when Darren Fletcher was sorely missed in a Champions League final defeat to Barcelona. Another World Cup final absentee is Germany’s Michael Ballack, who missed out on the last game of the 2002 tournament thanks to a semi-final booking against South Korea. Without his midfield finesse, his teammates succumbed to Ronaldo and Brazil. While the world sympathised with Ballack, the reaction to André Bikey’s red card in the semi-final of the 2008 Africa Cup of Nations against Ghana was more incredulous. How did he earn it? By pushing over a stretcher-bearer in the closing seconds. 152

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PLAYERS BANNED FROM FINALS LAURENT BLANC (France) – World Cup final, 1998 MICHAEL BALLACK (Germany) – World Cup final, 2002 ROY KEANE (Manchester United) – Champions League final, 1999

PAUL SCHOLES (Manchester United) – Champions League final, 1999

DARREN FLETCHER (Manchester United) – Champions League final, 2009

FRANCK RIBERY (Bayern Munich) – Champions League final, 2010

STEVE FOSTER (Brighton) – FA Cup final, 1983 GLENN ROEDER (West Ham) – FA Cup final replay, 1982 ANDRÉ BIKEY (Cameroon) – Africa Cup of Nations final, 2008

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When God gave Paul Gascoigne his enormous footballing talent, he took his brain out at the same time to even things up. Tony Banks

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When it comes to the David Beckhams of the world, this guy’s up there with Roberto Carlos. Duncan McKenzie

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A FOOTBALLER BY ANY OTHER NAME As a rule of thumb, footballers are adorned with nicknames into which their peers have invested little in the way of creativity. An easy abbreviation here, a ‘Big’ there, the geyser of inspiration does not often gush. However, from time to time, sobriquets are rolled out that stick in the popular conscience and come to define a player, fairly or not. Such a study can only start with Goldenballs, a nickname that David Beckham can thank his wife for bestowing on him, presumably for his on field heroics, although many would point to the glow of superstardom that surrounds him. However, performance on the pitch is a popular reason behind nicknames and hence, unsurprisingly, it is goalscorers that enjoy some of the best ciphers. Argentina’s prolific striker Gabriel Batistuta enjoyed the tag Batigol for much of his career, while German World Cup hero Gerd Müller went by the alias of Der Bomber. Liverpool’s hit man Robbie Fowler was known simply as God, in the red parts of Merseyside at least, and Manchester United’s Ole Gunnar Solskjær was affectionately labelled the Baby-Faced Assassin for his ability to score shed loads of goals while doing a decent impression of a twelve-year-old. Of course, not all nicknames highlight the positive. Spain and Athletic Bilbao player Andoni Goikoetxea will forever be remembered as the Butcher of Bilbao for his uncompromising style of defending, which included famously breaking the ankle of Maradona. Chelsea’s former midfield enforcer Ron Harris is never mentioned without Chopper as a middle name for much the same reason. 156

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Jason Roberts? This is a man who spelt his name wrong on his transfer request. Gary Megson

If you had to name one person to blame it would have to be the players. Theo Foley

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WHAT’S IN A HAT-TRICK? A hat-trick, three goals in a game and a chance to take the match ball home. All great stuff, but where does the hat come in and what kind of trick has to be conjured up? Well, it would seem that nobody is entirely sure where the term originated, although one thing appears certain: it wasn’t on the football field. Ice hockey fans points towards a tradition amongst supporters to throw their hats onto the ice when a player scored his third goal of the game, while cricket aficionados say that the phrase dates to a time when a bowler who had taken three consecutive wickets was rewarded with a new hat. Another theory has it that the bowler was allowed to pass his hat among the spectators and pocket whatever money was tossed in. As for the trick part, given the difficulty in racking up a threesome, whether in ice hockey, cricket or football, the use of the word would appear to reflect the skill involved in achieving such a feat. However, there are those that point to the popularity of a magician’s trick at the time when ice hockey rinks were littered with caps and exceptional bowlers had a handsome choice of headwear. This trick involved pulling three rabbits from a top hat. Hence, the connection between hat, trick and three. Wherever the truth lies, the term would go on to be appropriated by a myriad of sports, including football. Something specific to football is that the scorer of a hat-trick gets to take the match ball home as trophy. That today’s millionaire footballers still scramble to claim the ball goes to show the prestige in which the feat is still held. 158

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Meade had a hat-trick. He scored two goals. Richard Whitmore

It was one of those goals that’s invariably a goal. Denis Law

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HAT-TRICK FACTS • Perhaps the most famous hat-trick in English football was that scored by Geoff Hurst against West Germany in the 1966 World Cup final. No other player has matched the former West Ham striker’s feat. Three years later, he would repeat his trick against France in a friendly. • Since Hurst’s heyday, only another seventeen triples have been racked up in England games. Gary Lineker is responsible for five of these hat-tricks, going on to score four in a game on two occasions, against Spain in a friendly in 1987 and versus Malaysia in another friendly in 1991. Other England players to have scored four goals in a game since the World Cup victory are David Platt and Ian Wright, both against San Marino in 1993. Only once since 1966 have five goals been notched up by a single player while wearing the three lions: by Malcolm Macdonald against Cyprus in 1975.

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• Hat-tricks are more common in the Premier League. The first was recorded by no less than Manchester United’s favourite Frenchman, Eric Cantona, although he was playing for Leeds against Tottenham Hotspur at the time. In terms of quantity, Alan Shearer weighs in with the most threesomes, having walloped eleven in during his career. Robbie Fowler has nine and Michael Owen and Thierry Henry have eight. • Robbie Fowler holds the record for the fastest Premier League hat-trick. He took all of four minutes and a few seconds to smash in three against Arsenal in 1999. Incredibly, James Hayter of AFC Bournemouth took even less time to get himself the match ball, hitting the back of the Wrexham net three times in a little over two minutes. Even more incredibly, he did it as an eighty-fourth-minute substitute.

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TERRIFIC TERMINOLOGY THE CRUYFF TURN – this refers to the limber-limbed piece of trickery perfected by Holland’s footballing maestro Johan Cruyff. Feigning to pass or cross, he would drag the ball behind his grounded foot with the inside of his other foot, turn 90 degrees and scoot off leaving the opposing player utterly flummoxed and more often than not on his backside.

THE BICYCLE KICK – this move is one of football’s great pieces of athleticism. To pull this trick off involves getting off the ground, getting your foot above your head and then striking the ball. And, if you want people to remember it, getting the ball in the net. Famous exponents include Pelé, Mark Hughes and, most recently, Wayne Rooney.

THE STEP OVER – the step over is a trick that the English game has seen a lot of recently, thanks largely to Cristiano Ronaldo, who employed it with much success for Manchester United. The key is to keep your opponent guessing where you intend to move with the ball. The more times you step over the ball and the quicker you do it, the less the player will know what the hell is going on.

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FAMOUS FOOTBALLER: EDSON ARANTES DO NASCIMENTO AKA PELÉ

Ask people who the greatest footballer of all time is and most are likely to say Pelé. Why? Well, the Brazilian truly played the beautiful game, showing an understanding and artistry throughout a phenomenal career, at club and international levels, which had never been seen before and has not been seen since. It all started, professionally at least, at Santos, where Pelé made his debut aged just fifteen against Corinthians, scoring one goal in a 7–1 victory. And, unusually, that is where most of his fantastic story took place. There was no pinging between top clubs, no move to Europe, although Real Madrid, Juventus and Manchester United tried to tempt him. He had just that one club in Brazil and he stayed there for nearly twenty years. During this time at Santos, he won countless regional, national and continental trophies for his club and a bounty of personal awards, mostly for his goalscoring. In just over 600 appearances, he notched up an astonishing 730 goals, many of which were of a quality that earned him the adoration of a nation. 164

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However, Brazil was perhaps most grateful for Pelé’s performance on the global stage. The man from the state of Minas Gerais is the only player to have won three World Cups, scoring twelve goals along the way, making him one of the leading finishers of all time at the competition. He held aloft the Jules Rimet cup in 1958, 1962 and 1970, and it is the last of those victories which is perhaps the most famous. Brazil stunned the world with the football they played throughout the tournament, romping to victory in the final against Italy 4–1. Pelé was instrumental to his country’s triumph, grabbing four goals, including one in the final. By the time Pelé played for his second club side, he had already retired. He had hung up his boots for Santos but was persuaded to dust them off again to help boost the popularity of soccer in the US. He joined the New York Cosmos and enjoyed a famous swansong for what is often referred to as the most glamorous team in world football. When he did finally call it a day, he boasted nearly 1,300 goals in just over 1,300 games. Simply incredible. Comparing Gascoigne to Pelé is like comparing Rolf Harris to Rembrandt. Rodney Marsh

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Is scoring a goal better than sex? Well, it’s about five years since I did either, so I must decline to answer that question on grounds of amnesia. Ken Cunningham

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TON UP There is no doubting that football players like clubs. The aftermath of a night spent in one often finds its way on to the front pages, at least if a super-injunction isn’t slapped in place first. However, there is one club that managers are a lot happier about their charges belonging to: the Premier League 100 goals club. Since its inception in 1992, only twenty players have scored more than a hundred goals in the Premier League. The last man to be ushered into this exclusive club was Jermain Defoe, who has scored his goals for Portsmouth and Tottenham. Other (former) Tottenham strikers on the list include Robbie Keane, Les Ferdinand and Teddy Sheringham. Of the players on the list that are still tying their laces in the top flight, Michael Owen is the top scorer. Most of his goals were notched up for Liverpool, but his move to Manchester United has enabled him to keep pushing the tally up. Chelsea’s Frank Lampard and Nicolas Anelka are his nearest challengers, while Manchester United can boast a notable presence, including Wayne Rooney, Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes, Dwight Yorke and Andrew Cole. Worth a mention are players that have made the list while playing for just one club. Thierry Henry scored all of his 174 Premier League goals playing for Arsenal, and Ian Wright netted 113 goals wearing the same colours. Matthew Le Tissier hit the back of net a hundred times for Southampton. 167

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However, one man stands out more than any other. He is the only striker to have scored over 200 goals in the Premier League. He scored seventy-three more than Andrew Cole in second place. He scored 260 times, for Blackburn Rovers and Newcastle United. He is Alan Shearer. There’s your target, Wayne.

PREMIER LEAGUE 100 GOALS CLUB: LEADING LIGHTS Alan Shearer – 260 (Blackburn Rovers, Newcastle) Andrew Cole – 187 (Newcastle, Manchester United, Blackburn Rovers) Thierry Henry – 174 (Arsenal) Robbie Fowler – 163 (Liverpool, Leeds, Manchester City) Les Ferdinand – 149 (QPR, Newcastle, Tottenham, West Ham, Leicester City, Bolton Wanderers)

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It was the sort of goal that made your hair stand on your shoulders. Niall Quinn

When I was playing for Manchester United I used to go missing a lot: Miss America, Miss Uruguay, Miss Peru... George Best

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WONDER GOALS Goals from the halfway line or from a player’s own half are usually the preserve of the amateur game. Occasionally the kick and rush, route one football witnessed on thousands of pitches on Saturday afternoons and Sunday mornings results in a fortuitous 50-yard screamer. They’re not really expected in professional football. However, once in a while, they do happen. A player will try the audacious and it will come off. Perhaps the most famous exponent of this art is David Beckham. His goal scored from his own half for Manchester United against Wimbledon in 1996 symbolised the coming of a new Old Trafford dynasty and a global football icon. Another famous wonder-strike was the one that won the 1995 European Cup Winners’ Cup final for Real Zaragoza. In the dying minutes of extra time, a 50-yarder from Nayim put Arsenal to the sword. That Nayim had once plied his trade at bitter rivals Tottenham Hotspur made the defeat even more sadistic for the Gunners. At least David Seaman showed it wasn’t a one-off, being dubiously lobbed seven years later in a World Cup quarterfinal against Brazil. Spain’s Xabi Alonso also has form when it comes to this type of spectacular striking. Not content with scoring from his own half in a FA Cup game against Luton in early 2006, he repeated the trick later in the year in the Premier League against Newcastle.

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EURO STARS One of the greatest idiosyncrasies in football is that Djimi Traoré played in and won a Champions League final and Roy Keane didn’t. Everything aligned perfectly for the Liverpool squad player, while the opposite was true for the Manchester United talisman. However, since the competition was conceived in 1992, there are those that have become very adept at winning it. The most prolific winner in the Champions League era is Clarence Seedorf. The Dutchman has been victorious in four finals with Ajax, Real Madrid and AC Milan, and is the only player to have picked up the trophy with three different clubs. The group of players that can boast three triumphs includes Cameroon’s Samuel Eto’o, whose medals have included back-toback wins with Barcelona and Internazionale in 2009 and 2010 respectively, and Carles Puyol, the Catalonian Captain Caveman who won all his medals with Barça. Raúl, Roberto Carlos and Fernando Morientes were amongst the players who enjoyed triple success with Real Madrid. As for home-grown talent, Steve McManaman was the first British player to win two Champions League titles, both for Real Madrid in 2000 and 2002. The former Liverpool winger was also the first Englishman to win the trophy with a foreign club. Manchester United’s Ryan Giggs has since joined him as a twotime British winner. But, lest we forget, Djimi will always have one more win than Roy. 172

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CHAMPIONS LEAGUE GOLD – THE MOST SUCCESSFUL PLAYERS CLARENCE SEEDORF – 4 (Ajax, Real Madrid, AC Milan) SAMUEL ETO’O – 3 (Barcelona, Internazionale) RAÚL – 3 (Real Madrid) ROBERTO CARLOS – 3 (Real Madrid) FERNANDO MORIENTES – 3 (Real Madrid) GUTI – 3 (Real Madrid) FERNANDO HIERRO – 3 (Real Madrid) SÀVIO BORTOLINI – 3 (Real Madrid) AITOR KARANKA – 3 (Real Madrid) FERNANDO REDONDO – 3 (Real Madrid, AC Milan) PAOLO MALDINI – 3 (AC Milan) ALESSANDRO COSTACURTA – 3 (AC Milan) CARLES PUYOL – 3 (Barcelona)

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In 1978, in between Manchester City winning two games in succession, there had been three popes. Frank Skinner

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Can anyone tell me why they give referees a watch? It certainly isn’t to keep the time. Sir Alex Ferguson

I’ve had fourteen bookings this season – eight of which were my fault, but seven of which were disputable. Paul Gascoigne

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If you gave me the choice of beating four men and smashing in a goal from thirty yards against Liverpool or going to bed with Miss World, it would be difficult to decide. Luckily I had both. George Best

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I’d rather play in front of a full house than an empty crowd. Johnny Giles

Poland nil, England nil, though England are now looking the better value for their nil. Barry Davies

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John Bond has blackened my name with his insinuations about the private lives of football managers. Both my wives are upset. Malcolm Allison

We always discuss everything in detail before deciding that I’m right. Brian Clough

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The Sheffield United Board have been honest with me. When I came here they said there would be no money and they’ve kept their promise. Dave Bassett

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I have told my players never to believe what I say about them in the papers. Graham Taylor

You’ve got to believe you’re going to win and I believe that we’ll win the World Cup until the final whistle blows and we’re knocked out. Peter Shilton

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The secret of football is to equalise before the opposition scores. Danny Blanchflower

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I loved football. I played in the morning and in the afternoon. Even when I went to bed with my wife I was training. Diego Maradona

I’ve told the players we need to win so that I can have the cash to buy some new ones. Chris Turner, Peterborough manager

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Jimmy Hill: Don’t sit on the fence Terry, what chance do you think Germany has got of getting through? Terry Venables: I think it’s fifty-fifty.

In Manchester you are either Blue or Red... there’s no two ways about it. Andy Gray

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I don’t know much about football. I know what a goal is, which is surely the main thing about football. Victoria Beckham

I can see the carrot at the end of the tunnel. Stuart Pearce

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Football is a permanent orgasm. Ford Le Roy

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RESOURCES

WEBSITES http://soccerlens.com – a sleek, easy-to-use site that covers everything from new gear to what your favourite WAGS are up to. http://soccerphile.blogspot.com – blog featuring in-depth articles on all the big news happening in the world of football. www.football365.com – for all your up-to-date football news.

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RESOURCES

www.midfielddynamo.com – fact-based site that dubs itself ‘the home of cult football’. www.myfootballfacts.com – an ideal website for those who want to brush up on their football trivia. www.rsssf.com – The Rec.Sport.Soccer. Statistics Foundation.

MAGAZINES/PUBLICATIONS Match! – the UK’s biggest-selling weekly football magazine. Shoot Monthly – football news from the Premier League to the Conference. Four Four Two – football news, insight and analysis. When Saturday Comes – serious and humorous football discussion.

BOOKS Goldblatt, David The Ball is Round: A Global History of Football (2007, Penguin) Hornby, Nick Fever Pitch (2005, Penguin) Kelly, Stephen F. Mr Shankly’s Photograph (2002, Robson Books Ltd) Peace, David The Damned United (2007, Faber and Faber) 189

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ORGANISATIONS UEFA www.uefa.com FIFA www.fifa.com The Football Association (the FA) www.thefa.com The Premier League www.premierleague.com The Football League www.football-league.co.uk The Irish Football FA www.irishfa.com The Scottish FA www.scottishfa.co.uk Football Association of Wales www.faw.org.uk www.footballnetwork.org 190

www.summersdale.com