Football writing thread

June 30, 2017

There is a lot of quality football magazines, blogs, etc, out there at the moment. I thought it may be worth starting a thread where we can share articles? Those that make good lunchtime or bedtime reading.

I'll kick off with this one from The Guardian, which appeared first in When Saturday Comes. Please post the source address and the article itself if possible.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/when-saturday-comes-blog/2017/jun/28/football-team-family-kids-club

Tell your kids not to be gloryhunting fans. They'll thank you in the end

A colleague at work, drawn and tired, complained to me recently that he doesn?t want his son to grow up supporting his team. Their performances have been so shameful and the management of the club has been so dire that he would be ashamed to pass on such a legacy. I looked at him for a second, then laughed in his face. He supports Arsenal.

But it?s a dilemma we all face. When our children reach the age where bullies, those active agents of Darwinism, start to single out from the herd those with sticking-out ears, or not-quite-brand-new trainers, or parents who thought Astro-Hercules was an excel lent name for a small boy, it is only natural to want to give the spiteful *******s as little ammunition as possible. And so, as parents, we decide if we really wish to inflict our own woes on our poor, innocent children.

My friend Alan lives in south London and is a lifelong supporter of Plymouth Argyle. A few years ago we were sitting in his kitchen, drinking tea, listening to Sports Report and complaining bitterly about one thing and another when I raised the question of when he?d be taking his little lad to a Plymouth game. I was shocked to hear that, far from allowing the boy to follow in his footsteps, he would be actively encouraging him to follow Chelsea, Manchester City, Liverpool or some other team easy to watch on the television.

I wondered whether he might instead take him to see Palace, to which his scornful reply was: ?But then I?d have to watch Palace, wouldn?t I?? This was unanswerably true. And at that moment, with perfect timing, the Plymouth score was read. They?d been gubbed again and were bottom of the league ? as I said, this was a few years ago. Alan fixed me with a look of silent eloquence. Fair enough.

My dad started taking me to Villa Park when football was deeply unfashionable. The ticket prices reflected both that and the state of the ground. It wasn?t an expensive day out but to a six-year-old boy it was as intoxicating as a deep draw on a filterless fag. In the same way, it could easily have put me off for life. The moment I first saw the cavernous black toilets under the Holte End, where generations of my family had pissed, and largely on the floor by the look of it, will be a memory I carry to my dying day.

I don?t remember much about the football. I have no memory of the games themselves. But there was something else about going to Villa Park. It was a voyage into my family?s past. Every trip would be the cue for some improbable anecdote. My uncle had stood on this spot after defeat by Port Vale in the Cup and vowed solemnly never to come back. The crowd for a Cup game was once so huge that my dad was picked up here by the crush and set down right over there. My great-uncle had gone blind-drunk into this pub looking for Albion supporters to fight and unfortunately managed to find quite a lot of them.

But the anecdotes weren?t just stories about the Villa. In the late 1970s the Birmingham of old was vanishing at an accelerated rate, the back-to-backs and Victorian pubs dropping ever faster before the bulldozers. Often the meandering journey in our unreliable French car would take in my dad?s first school, or the gasworks where Uncle Ben served as fire warden in the war, or the factory where my grandfather worked for 30 years and left with a gold watch and a double hernia.

There was the day when he showed me the house where he was born, empty and due for demolition. I remember thinking, even as an eight-year-old, that it seemed a very small place for a family of six to live. And I remember wondering what exactly he was searching for with his eyes as he stood quietly in the street for ages, looking up at that blue-slated roof.

I know now that my dad?s life has seen about the usual number of tragedies, humiliations, failures and disasters. At the time I knew nothing about them, or about him. The only time I saw him with his head in his hands, boiling with fury or speechless with boundless injustice was at the football. The only time I saw him cheer, celebrate or unbutton himself in pointless celebration was at the football.

You can do more for your children than buy them new trainers or give them a sensible name. You can give them a window on your life. At the time, they won?t know what they?re looking at. But in years to come, they will remember the view.

June 30, 2017

Here is one on Dave Mackay, published just after his passing.

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/comment/dion-fanning-nobody-you-have-watched-can-ever-match-your-fathers-heroes-31049367.html

Nobody you have watched can ever match your father's heroes

There comes a time when you surrender your father's heroes more reluctantly than you surrender your own. I used to try and search for evidence that Dave Mackay was not as great as my father said he was or, more precisely, that I had seen players who could match him.

I talked about Roy Keane with Terry Venables once. Venables was a fan of Keane and he had played with Dave Mackay. He was also interested in the Ireland job, so when I mentioned that my dad thought Mackay was a better player, that, in fact, there was nobody like him, he wouldn't be drawn.

Perhaps he thought it was politic not to point out any weaknesses in Keane but his initial answer allowed me to think I had witnessed a player as good as the great Mackay. I reported this back to my father, who didn't budge and readjusted his view of Venables instead.

A week later, I talked to Venables on the phone. Something had been bothering him. He might have been interested in the Ireland job but this wasn't worth compromising on. Just before the conversation ended, he got to it. "I've been thinking about what your dad said. He's right. There was nobody like Dave Mackay."

Mackay's death last week was rightly recognised as the passing of a great and extraordinary footballer. When the world in which he played is so unrecognisable from the world of modern football, it is easy to settle into the comfortable armchair of nostalgia and pine for the lost days.

Everything was simpler then when these great men were paid no more than an ordinary white collar worker before they were discarded in their early thirties. It was a simpler time for everyone except those living in that time who experienced the everyday complication of trying to survive it.

If we don't give in to nostalgia, we take another route. What would Mackay be worth today? What would they pay him? Even as football is said to be distorted by the money available, we often have no other way of straddling different eras than to define a former player by the thing which is said to be ruining football.

Mackay was great in his era and nothing else really matters. He was also among those who made Tottenham Hotspur great, something which becomes more remarkable with every passing year, with every failure of the club to escape the "Lads, it's Tottenham" stereotype.

"Lads, it's Tottenham," was the extent of Alex Ferguson's team talk before Manchester United played them once, according to Keane. When Mackay played, 'Lads, it's Tottenham' had another meaning.

As a young man living in London, my father worked in the Queen's Elm pub on the Fulham Road and went to watch Tottenham Hotspur whenever he could. He used to tell a story of travelling up to White Hart Lane one afternoon to buy a ticket for their European Cup Winners' Cup tie against Rangers in 1962 and joining a queue that stretched for miles down the Tottenham High Road towards Seven Sisters.

Tottenham Hotspur were the most bewitching team in England in those days and Mackay had been the central figure in their Double-winning side of 1961.

Mackay was 24 when he signed from Hearts in 1959 and many, including John Giles, wondered why he hadn't arrived in England earlier.

In his book The Great & the Good, Giles recalled asking Mackay at Billy Bremner's funeral why he hadn't joined an English club before 1959 and Mackay told him that Matt Busby hesitated after Mackay twice broke a bone in his foot.

Giles made his league debut for Manchester United against the Spurs team that contained Mackay, Cliff Jones and Danny Blanchflower. Tottenham should have won the league in 1960 but fell away at Easter. If that was Spurs as we might understand them today, the next year was Tottenham Hotspur as they would always be to a generation, including my father. They won the Double in 1961 but the side my father watched had one addition, one player who he would mention in the same breath as Mackay: Jimmy Greaves.

Greaves was very different but he also possessed the indefinable, the killer instinct, even if Greaves was coming from a very different place than Mackay. Last week some wondered why Greaves wasn't at the League Cup final, watching two of his old teams play, and it was suggested that he hadn't forgiven Tottenham for the manner in which he was sold to West Ham more than 40 years ago.

Greaves describes himself as a non-drinking alcoholic. Like many men who have made the transformation from the drinking to the non-drinking kind, he can appear weary with bullshit, having put up with so much of his own for many years.

During his worst times, Greaves slept with a bottle of vodka by his bed and I can dimly recall a story of him standing in a torrential downpour trying to catch enough raindrops to make the essence of vodka, which was all that remained in the bottle, drinkable.

A man who has been through this has suffered enough without watching a trapeze artist balance the League Cup on her nose as part of the pre-match preliminaries, especially when he could be at home watching a full day's sport on television.

Like Mackay, Greaves could be glimpsed in others that followed him. I remember Giles commentating on a Liverpool game at Leeds one time when Robbie Fowler went through and scored. Giles' analysis was easily understood, at least for men like my father. "Jimmy Greaves" was all he said.

Sometimes you're lucky enough to meet your own heroes; sometimes you're unlucky enough to meet them. You change, you doubt yourself and sometimes you become sceptical about them.

And then there are your father's heroes. "There was nobody like Dave Mackay," he would have said last week. I don't need to have seen Mackay play to agree with my father now. Especially when it becomes something more, it becomes a way of having one more conversation with him when conversations with him are no longer something you can have.

June 30, 2017

Classic review of Tim Lovejoy's book from When Saturday Comes. Published back in 2008 but it's a cracker.

http://www.wsc.co.uk/the-archive/42-Media/145-no-love-no-joy

No love, no joy

Helen Chamberlain?s former sidekick has celebrated leaving Soccer AM for 6.06 with a book. Taylor Parkes wants to know why anyone ? anyone ? thought it was a good idea to expose the presenter?s ego and prejudices across 288 smugly written pages

Soccer AM is a bad memory: hungover mornings in other people?s flats, disturbed by a crew of whooping simpletons, the slurping of pro and ex-pro rectums, cobbled-together comedy that made me long for the glory days of Skinner and Baddiel?s old shit. Yet Tim Lovejoy himself, with his fashionably receding hair and voice oddly reminiscent of Rod Hull?s, I remember only as an averagely blokey TV presenter ? in fact, one of the few averagely blokey TV presenters to make me clack my tongue in irritation, rather than buff my Gurkha knife. Other than as a namesake of The Simpsons? self-serving man of the cloth, he barely registered; just a bland, blond ringmaster in a cocky circus of crap. Almost a surprise, then, to find that his new book is not just ?tedious in the extreme, it is utterly vile.

Chopped into ?chapters? that barely fill a page, in a font size usually associated with books for the partially sighted, Lovejoy on Football is part autobiography, part witless musing, and one more triumph for the crass stupidity rapidly replacing culture in this country. Hopelessly banal and nauseatingly self-assured, smirkingly unfunny, it?s a ?300 T-shirt, a piss-you-off ringtone, a YouTube clip of someone drinking their mate?s vomit. Its smugness is a corollary of its vacuity. I hope it makes you sick.

First, it?s clear that being Tim Lovejoy requires a very special blend of arrogance and ignorance. When he?s not listing his media achievements with a breathtaking lack of guile, he?s sneering at those ?sad? enough to take an interest in football history, revealing his utter cluelessness about life outside the Premier League (in a section called ?Know Your Silverware?, he refers to ?League Three?) and making sundry gaffes, major and minor. He names Johan Cruyff as his all-time favourite player, then admits he?s only seen that five-second World Cup clip of the Cruyff turn. Grumbling about footballers? musical tastes, he complains that ?all you?ll hear blasting out of the team dressing room is R&B, rather than what the rest of the country is listening to? ? by which he means indie bands. Everywhere there are jaw-dropping illustrations of insularity, self-?satisfaction and a startlingly small mind.

There?s something sinister here, too: beamingly positive, thrilled by wealth, too pleased with himself to ask awkward questions, Tim Lovejoy is the football fan Sepp Blatter has been waiting for. Roman ?Abramovich?s darling young one. Not least for his complacency: his lack of understanding of how football works (and doesn?t work) is best illustrated in a section called ?Give Your Chairman A Break?, in which he defends ?that Thai bloke at Man City?, and implores us to ?look at the Glazers... you would have thought they were nothing but a bunch of Americans intent on buying the club and selling off Old Trafford to Tesco judging by the howl of protests from the fans. Within two seasons though, they had won the title and built a squad the envy of Europe.? Bang your head off the wall at such unreviewable stupidity ? Tim?s infantile ideas of shunning ?negativity? prod him into precisely the kind of thinking that has had such hugely negative influence on the game. ?Look across our national team? ? he means England, by the way ? ?and there isn?t one player who wouldn?t walk into any side in Europe... why is it, before every tournament, we start believing we?re overrated??

And, surprise: Lovejoy is as wretched a star****er as could be inferred from his television shows. Everyone in football is Tim?s mate (and here we have pictures to prove it, stars looking confused in his grinning, over-familiar presence, frozen by an arm around the shoulders). He?ll ?even watch the occasional game of rugby now, because I?m friends with a lot of the players like Will Greenwood, Matt Dawson, Lawrence ?Dallaglio and Austin Healy?.

It?s perhaps telling that among the many anecdotes offered here, the most heartwarming (and least surprising) involves Tim getting clattered hard by Neil Ruddock in a charity game; even in this version of the story, there?s nothing to suggest Razor meant it affectionately. Still, our man is blinded by quite astonishing hubris, reprinting a photo of a banner at Anfield reading ?LOVEJOY SUCKS BIG FAT C0CKS? with a glee that is nothing like self-deprecation. ?The hardest thing about leaving ?Soccer AM,? he says regretfully, ?is the thought that I might no longer be influencing the game.? True, it?ll be tough. But who knows? Perhaps the game will struggle on.

It?s not that there was ever a time when football on telly wasn?t in the hands of dimwits, poseurs and blowhards. It?s not that Lovejoy is significantly more objectionable than TV shits of ages past. The point is, in his own mind and that of the powers that be, he?s one of us. He is us. Savour that. God help us.

June 30, 2017

Good thread this.

Sent from my SM-G930F using Tapatalk

June 30, 2017

Always liked Chris Brookmyre's Playground Football.

Duration

Matches shall be played over three unequal periods: two playtimes and a lunchtime.

Each of these periods shall begin shortly after the ringing of a bell, and although a bell is also rung towards the end of these periods, play may continue for up to ten minutes afterwards, depending on the nihilism or "bottle" of the participants with regard to corporal punishment met out to latecomers back to the classroom.

In practice there is a sliding scale of nihilism, from those who hasten to stand in line as soon as the bell rings, known as "poofs", through those who will hang on until the time they estimate it takes the teachers to down the last of their gins and journey from the staffroom, known as "chancers", and finally to those who will hang on until a teacher actually has to physically retrieve them, known as "bampots". This sliding scale is intended to radically alter the logistics of a match in progress, often having dramatic effects on the scoreline as the number of remaining participants drops.

It is important, therefore, in picking the sides, to achieve a fair balance of poofs, chancers and bampots in order that the scoreline achieved over a sustained period of play - a lunchtime, for instance - is not totally nullified by a five-minute post-bell onslaught of five bampots against one.

The scoreline to be carried over from the previous period of the match is in the trust of the last bampots to leave the field of play, and may be the matter of some debate. This must be resolved in one of the approved manners (see Adjudication).

Parameters

The object is to force the ball between two large, unkempt piles of jackets, in lieu of goalposts. These piles may grow or shrink throughout the match, depending on the number of participants and the prevailing weather. As the number of players increases, so shall the piles. Each jacket added to the pile by a new addition to a side should be placed on the inside, nearest the goalkeeper, thus reducing the target area. It is also important that the sleeve of one of the jackets should jut out across the goalmouth, as it will often be claimed that the ball went "over the post" and it can henceforth be asserted that the outstretched sleeve denotes the innermost part of the pile and thus the inside of the post. The on-going reduction of the size of the goal is the responsibility of any respectable defence and should be undertaken conscientiously with resourcefulness and imagination.

In the absence of a crossbar, the upper limit of the target area is observed as being slightly above head height, although when the height at which a ball passed between the jackets is in dispute, judgement shall lie with an arbitrary adjudicator from one of the sides. He is known as the "best fighter"; his decision is final and may be enforced with physical violence if anyone wants to stretch a point.

There are no pitch markings. Instead, physical objects denote the boundaries, ranging from the most common - walls and buildings - to roads or burns. Corners and throw-ins are redundant where bylines or touchlines are denoted by a two-storey building or a six-foot granite wall. Instead, a scrum should be instigated to decide possession. This should begin with the ball trapped between the brickwork and two opposing players, and should escalate to include as many team members as can get there before the now egg-shaped ball finally emerges, drunkenly and often with a dismembered foot and shin attached. At this point, goalkeepers should look out for the player who takes possession of the escaped ball and begins bearing down on goal, as most of those involved in the scrum will be unaware that the ball is no longer amidst their feet. The goalkeeper should also try not to be distracted by the inevitable fighting that has by this point broken out.

In games on large open spaces, the length of the pitch is obviously denoted by the jacket piles, but the width is a variable. In the absence of roads, water hazards or "a big dug", the width is determined by how far out the attacking winger has to meander before the pursuing defender gets fed up and lets him head back towards where the rest of the players are waiting, often as far as quarter of a mile away. It is often observed that the playing area is "no' a full-size pitch". This can be invoked verbally to justify placing a wall of players eighteen inches from the ball at direct free kicks. It is the formal response to "yards", which the kick-taker will incant meaninglessly as he places the ball.

The Ball

There is a variety of types of ball approved for Primary School Football. I shall describe three notable examples.

The plastic balloon. An extremely lightweight model, used primarily in the early part of the season and seldom after that due to having burst. Identifiable by blue pentagonal panelling and the names of that year's Premier League sides printed all over it. Advantages: low sting factor, low burst-nose probability, cheap, discourages a long-ball game. Disadvantages: over-susceptible to influence of the wind, difficult to control, almost magnetically drawn to flat school roofs whence never to return.
The rough-finish Mitre. Half football, half Portuguese Man o' War. On the verge of a ban in the European Court of Human Rights, this model is not for sale to children. Used exclusively by teachers during gym classes as a kind of aversion therapy. Made from highly durable fibre-glass, stuffed with neutron star and coated with dead jellyfish. Advantages: looks quite grown up, makes for high-scoring matches (keepers won't even attempt to catch it). Disadvantages: scars or maims anything it touches.
The "Tube". Genuine leather ball, identifiable by brown all-over colouring. Was once black and white, before ravages of games on concrete, but owners can never remember when. Adored by everybody, especially keepers. Advantages: feels good, easily controlled, makes a satisfying "whump" noise when you kick it. Disadvantages: turns into medicine ball when wet, smells like a dead dog.

Offside

There is no offside, for two reasons: one, "it's no' a full-size pitch", and two, none of the players actually know what offside is. The lack of an offside rule gives rise to a unique sub-division of strikers. These players hang around the opposing goalmouth while play carries on at the other end, awaiting a long pass forward out of defence which they can help past the keeper before running the entire length of the pitch with their arms in the air to greet utterly imaginary adulation. These are known variously as "moochers", "gloryhunters" and "fly wee bastarts". These players display a remarkable degree of self-security, seemingly happy in their own appraisals of their achievements, and caring little for their team-mates' failure to appreciate the contribution they have made. They know that it can be for nothing other than their enviable goal tallies that they are so bitterly despised.

Adjudication

The absence of a referee means that disputes must be resolved between the opposing teams rather than decided by an arbiter. There are two accepted ways of doing this.

Compromise. An arrangement is devised that is found acceptable by both sides. Sway is usually given to an action that is in accordance with the spirit of competition, ensuring that the game does not turn into "a pure skoosh". For example, in the event of a dispute as to whether the ball in fact crossed the line, or whether the ball has gone inside or "over" the post, the attacking side may offer the ultimatum: "Penalty or goal." It is not recorded whether any side has ever opted for the latter. It is on occasions that such arrangements or ultimata do not prove acceptable to both sides that the second adjudicatory method comes into play.
Fighting. Those up on their ancient Hellenic politics will understand that the concept we know as "justice" rests in these circumstances with the hand of the strong. What the winner says, goes, and what the winner says is just, for who shall dispute him? It is by such noble philosophical principles that the supreme adjudicator, or Best Fighter, is effectively elected.

Team Selection

To ensure a fair and balanced contest, teams are selected democratically in a turns-about picking process, with either side beginning as a one-man selection committee and growing from there. The initial selectors are usually the recognised two Best Players of the assembled group. Their first selections will be the two recognised Best Fighters, to ensure a fair balance in the adjudication process, and to ensure that they don't have their own performances impaired throughout the match by profusely bleeding noses. They will then proceed to pick team-mates in a roughly meritocratic order, selecting on grounds of skill and tactical awareness, but not forgetting that while there is a sliding scale of players' ability, there is also a sliding scale of players' brutality and propensities towards motiveless violence. A selecting captain might baffle a talented striker by picking the less nimble Big Jazza ahead of him, and may explain, perhaps in the words of Linden B Johnson upon his retention of J Edgar Hoover as the head of the FBI, that he'd "rather have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in".

Special consideration is also given during the selection process to the owner of the ball. It is tacitly acknowledged to be "his gemme", and he must be shown a degree of politeness for fear that he takes the huff at being picked late and withdraws his favours.

Another aspect of team selection that may confuse those only familiar with the game at senior level will be the choice of goalkeepers, who will inevitably be the last players to be picked. Unlike in the senior game, where the goalkeeper is often the tallest member of his team, in the playground, the goalkeeper is usually the smallest. Senior aficionados must appreciate that playground selectors have a different agenda and are looking for altogether different properties in a goalkeeper. These can be listed briefly as: compliance, poor fighting ability, meekness, fear and anything else that makes it easier for their team-mates to banish the wee bugger between the sticks while they go off in search of personal glory up the other end.

Tactics

Playground football tactics are best explained in terms of team formation. Whereas senior sides tend to choose - according to circumstance - from among a number of standard options (eg 4-4-2, 4-3-3, 5-3-2), the playground side is usually more rigid in sticking to the all-purpose 1-1-17 formation. This formation is a sturdy basis for the unique style of play, ball-flow and territorial give-and-take that makes the playground game such a renowned and strategically engrossing spectacle. Just as the 5-3-2 formation is sometimes referred to in practice as "Cattenaccio", the 1-1-17 formation gives rise to a style of play that is best described as "Nomadic". All but perhaps four of the participants (see also Offside) migrate en masse from one area of the pitch to another, following the ball, and it is tactically vital that every last one of them remains within a ten-yard radius of it at all times.

Stoppages

Much stoppage time in the senior game is down to injured players requiring treatment on the field of play. The playground game flows freer having adopted the refereeing philosophy of "no Post-Mortem, no free-kick", and play will continue around and even on top of a participant who has fallen in the course of his endeavours. However, the playground game is nonetheless subject to other interruptions, and some examples are listed below.

Ball on school roof or over school wall. The retrieval time itself is negligible in these cases. The stoppage is most prolonged by the argument to decide which player must risk life, limb or four of the belt to scale the drainpipe or negotiate the barbed wire in order to return the ball to play. Disputes usually arise between the player who actually struck the ball and any others he claims it may have struck before disappearing into forbidden territory. In the case of the Best Fighter having been adjudged responsible for such an incident, a volunteer is often required to go in his stead or the game may be abandoned, as the Best Fighter is entitled to observe that A: "Ye canny make me"; or B: "It's no' ma baw anyway".
Stray dog on pitch. An interruption of unpredictable duration. The dog does not have to make off with the ball, it merely has to run around barking loudly, snarling and occasionally drooling or foaming at the mouth. This will ensure a dramatic reduction in the number of playing staff as 27 of them simultaneously volunteer to go indoors and inform the teacher of the threat. The length of the interruption can sometimes be gauged by the breed of dog. A deranged Irish Setter could take ten minutes to tire itself of running in circles, for instance, while a Jack Russell may take up to fifteen minutes to corner and force out through the gates. An Alsatian means instant abandonment.
Bigger boys steal ball. A highly irritating interruption, the length of which is determined by the players' experience in dealing with this sort of thing. The intruders will seldom actually steal the ball, but will improvise their own kickabout amongst themselves, occasionally inviting the younger players to attempt to tackle them. Standing around looking bored and unimpressed usually results in a quick restart. Shows of frustration and engaging in attempts to win back the ball can prolong the stoppage indefinitely. Informing the intruders that one of the players' older brother is "Mad Chic Murphy" or some other noted local pugilist can also ensure minimum delay.
Menopausal old bag confiscates ball. More of a threat in the street or local green kickabout than within the school walls. Sad, blue-rinsed, ill-tempered, Tory-voting cat-owner transfers her anger about the array of failures that has been her life to nine-year-olds who have committed the heinous crime of letting their ball cross her privet Line of Death. Interruption (loss of ball) is predicted to last "until you learn how to play with it properly", but instruction on how to achieve this without actually having the bloody thing is not usually forwarded. Tact is required in these circumstances, even when the return of the ball seems highly unlikely, as further irritation of woman may result in the more serious stoppage: Menopausal old bag calls police.

Celebration

Goal-scorers are entitled to a maximum run of thirty yards with their hands in the air, making crowd noises and saluting imaginary packed terraces.

Congratulation by team-mates is in the measure appropriate to the importance of the goal in view of the current scoreline (for instance, making it 34-12 does not entitle the player to drop to his knees and make the sign of the cross), and the extent of the scorer's contribution. A fabulous solo dismantling of the defence or 25-yard* rocket shot will elicit applause and back-pats from the entire team and the more magnanimous of the opponents. However, a tap-in in the midst of a chaotic scramble will be heralded with the epithet "moochin' wee bastart" from the opposing defence amidst mild acknowledgment from team-mates. Applying an unnecessary final touch when a ball is already rolling into the goal will elicit a burst nose from the original striker. Kneeling down to head the ball over the line when defence and keeper are already beaten will elicit a thoroughly deserved kicking. As a footnote, however, it should be stressed that any goal scored by the Best Fighter will be met with universal acclaim, even if it falls into any of the latter three categories.

*Actually eight yards, but calculated as relative distance because "it's no' a full-size pitch".

Penalties

At senior level, each side often has one appointed penalty-taker, who will defer to a team-mate in special circumstances, such as his requiring one more for a hat-trick. The playground side has two appointed penalty-takers: the Best Player and the Best Fighter. The arrangement is simple: the Best Player takes the penalties when his side is a retrievable margin behind, and the Best Fighter at all other times. If the side is comfortably in front, the ball-owner may be invited to take a penalty.

Goalkeepers are often the subject of temporary substitutions at penalties, forced to give up their position to the Best Player or Best Fighter, who recognise the kudos attached to the heroic act of saving one of these kicks, and are buggered if Wee Titch is going to steal any of it.

Close Season

This is known also as the Summer Holidays, which the players usually spend dabbling briefly in other sports: tennis for a fortnight while Wimbledon is on the telly; pitch-and-putt for four days during the Open; and cricket for about an hour and a half until they discover that it really is as boring to play as it is to watch.

June 30, 2017

Classic review of Tim Lovejoy's book from When Saturday Comes. Published back in 2008 but it's a cracker.

http://www.wsc.co.uk/the-archive/42-Media/145-no-love-no-joy

No love, no joy

Helen Chamberlain?s former sidekick has celebrated leaving Soccer AM for 6.06 with a book. Taylor Parkes wants to know why anyone ? anyone ? thought it was a good idea to expose the presenter?s ego and prejudices across 288 smugly written pages

Soccer AM is a bad memory: hungover mornings in other people?s flats, disturbed by a crew of whooping simpletons, the slurping of pro and ex-pro rectums, cobbled-together comedy that made me long for the glory days of Skinner and Baddiel?s old shit. Yet Tim Lovejoy himself, with his fashionably receding hair and voice oddly reminiscent of Rod Hull?s, I remember only as an averagely blokey TV presenter ? in fact, one of the few averagely blokey TV presenters to make me clack my tongue in irritation, rather than buff my Gurkha knife. Other than as a namesake of The Simpsons? self-serving man of the cloth, he barely registered; just a bland, blond ringmaster in a cocky circus of crap. Almost a surprise, then, to find that his new book is not just ?tedious in the extreme, it is utterly vile.

Chopped into ?chapters? that barely fill a page, in a font size usually associated with books for the partially sighted, Lovejoy on Football is part autobiography, part witless musing, and one more triumph for the crass stupidity rapidly replacing culture in this country. Hopelessly banal and nauseatingly self-assured, smirkingly unfunny, it?s a ?300 T-shirt, a piss-you-off ringtone, a YouTube clip of someone drinking their mate?s vomit. Its smugness is a corollary of its vacuity. I hope it makes you sick.

First, it?s clear that being Tim Lovejoy requires a very special blend of arrogance and ignorance. When he?s not listing his media achievements with a breathtaking lack of guile, he?s sneering at those ?sad? enough to take an interest in football history, revealing his utter cluelessness about life outside the Premier League (in a section called ?Know Your Silverware?, he refers to ?League Three?) and making sundry gaffes, major and minor. He names Johan Cruyff as his all-time favourite player, then admits he?s only seen that five-second World Cup clip of the Cruyff turn. Grumbling about footballers? musical tastes, he complains that ?all you?ll hear blasting out of the team dressing room is R&B, rather than what the rest of the country is listening to? ? by which he means indie bands. Everywhere there are jaw-dropping illustrations of insularity, self-?satisfaction and a startlingly small mind.

There?s something sinister here, too: beamingly positive, thrilled by wealth, too pleased with himself to ask awkward questions, Tim Lovejoy is the football fan Sepp Blatter has been waiting for. Roman ?Abramovich?s darling young one. Not least for his complacency: his lack of understanding of how football works (and doesn?t work) is best illustrated in a section called ?Give Your Chairman A Break?, in which he defends ?that Thai bloke at Man City?, and implores us to ?look at the Glazers... you would have thought they were nothing but a bunch of Americans intent on buying the club and selling off Old Trafford to Tesco judging by the howl of protests from the fans. Within two seasons though, they had won the title and built a squad the envy of Europe.? Bang your head off the wall at such unreviewable stupidity ? Tim?s infantile ideas of shunning ?negativity? prod him into precisely the kind of thinking that has had such hugely negative influence on the game. ?Look across our national team? ? he means England, by the way ? ?and there isn?t one player who wouldn?t walk into any side in Europe... why is it, before every tournament, we start believing we?re overrated??

And, surprise: Lovejoy is as wretched a star****er as could be inferred from his television shows. Everyone in football is Tim?s mate (and here we have pictures to prove it, stars looking confused in his grinning, over-familiar presence, frozen by an arm around the shoulders). He?ll ?even watch the occasional game of rugby now, because I?m friends with a lot of the players like Will Greenwood, Matt Dawson, Lawrence ?Dallaglio and Austin Healy?.

It?s perhaps telling that among the many anecdotes offered here, the most heartwarming (and least surprising) involves Tim getting clattered hard by Neil Ruddock in a charity game; even in this version of the story, there?s nothing to suggest Razor meant it affectionately. Still, our man is blinded by quite astonishing hubris, reprinting a photo of a banner at Anfield reading ?LOVEJOY SUCKS BIG FAT C0CKS? with a glee that is nothing like self-deprecation. ?The hardest thing about leaving ?Soccer AM,? he says regretfully, ?is the thought that I might no longer be influencing the game.? True, it?ll be tough. But who knows? Perhaps the game will struggle on.

It?s not that there was ever a time when football on telly wasn?t in the hands of dimwits, poseurs and blowhards. It?s not that Lovejoy is significantly more objectionable than TV shits of ages past. The point is, in his own mind and that of the powers that be, he?s one of us. He is us. Savour that. God help us.

I was never a fan of 'fitbaw morning' precisely because it was for sun readers, hosted by sun readers and the guests were people (for the most part) with AUGDS (Acquired Uptake Grasping Deficiency Syndrome.) I think that piece there qualifies my avoidance

June 30, 2017

Always liked Chris Brookmyre's Playground Football.

Duration

Matches shall be played over three unequal periods: two playtimes and a lunchtime.

Each of these periods shall begin shortly after the ringing of a bell, and although a bell is also rung towards the end of these periods, play may continue for up to ten minutes afterwards, depending on the nihilism or "bottle" of the participants with regard to corporal punishment met out to latecomers back to the classroom.

In practice there is a sliding scale of nihilism, from those who hasten to stand in line as soon as the bell rings, known as "poofs", through those who will hang on until the time they estimate it takes the teachers to down the last of their gins and journey from the staffroom, known as "chancers", and finally to those who will hang on until a teacher actually has to physically retrieve them, known as "bampots". This sliding scale is intended to radically alter the logistics of a match in progress, often having dramatic effects on the scoreline as the number of remaining participants drops.

It is important, therefore, in picking the sides, to achieve a fair balance of poofs, chancers and bampots in order that the scoreline achieved over a sustained period of play - a lunchtime, for instance - is not totally nullified by a five-minute post-bell onslaught of five bampots against one.

The scoreline to be carried over from the previous period of the match is in the trust of the last bampots to leave the field of play, and may be the matter of some debate. This must be resolved in one of the approved manners (see Adjudication).
Parameters
The object is to force the ball between two large, unkempt piles of jackets, in lieu of goalposts. These piles may grow or shrink throughout the match, depending on the number of participants and the prevailing weather. As the number of players increases, so shall the piles. Each jacket added to the pile by a new addition to a side should be placed on the inside, nearest the goalkeeper, thus reducing the target area. It is also important that the sleeve of one of the jackets should jut out across the goalmouth, as it will often be claimed that the ball went "over the post" and it can henceforth be asserted that the outstretched sleeve denotes the innermost part of the pile and thus the inside of the post. The on-going reduction of the size of the goal is the responsibility of any respectable defence and should be undertaken conscientiously with resourcefulness and imagination.

In the absence of a crossbar, the upper limit of the target area is observed as being slightly above head height, although when the height at which a ball passed between the jackets is in dispute, judgement shall lie with an arbitrary adjudicator from one of the sides. He is known as the "best fighter"; his decision is final and may be enforced with physical violence if anyone wants to stretch a point.

There are no pitch markings. Instead, physical objects denote the boundaries, ranging from the most common - walls and buildings - to roads or burns. Corners and throw-ins are redundant where bylines or touchlines are denoted by a two-storey building or a six-foot granite wall. Instead, a scrum should be instigated to decide possession. This should begin with the ball trapped between the brickwork and two opposing players, and should escalate to include as many team members as can get there before the now egg-shaped ball finally emerges, drunkenly and often with a dismembered foot and shin attached. At this point, goalkeepers should look out for the player who takes possession of the escaped ball and begins bearing down on goal, as most of those involved in the scrum will be unaware that the ball is no longer amidst their feet. The goalkeeper should also try not to be distracted by the inevitable fighting that has by this point broken out.

In games on large open spaces, the length of the pitch is obviously denoted by the jacket piles, but the width is a variable. In the absence of roads, water hazards or "a big dug", the width is determined by how far out the attacking winger has to meander before the pursuing defender gets fed up and lets him head back towards where the rest of the players are waiting, often as far as quarter of a mile away. It is often observed that the playing area is "no' a full-size pitch". This can be invoked verbally to justify placing a wall of players eighteen inches from the ball at direct free kicks. It is the formal response to "yards", which the kick-taker will incant meaninglessly as he places the ball.
The Ball
There is a variety of types of ball approved for Primary School Football. I shall describe three notable examples.

The plastic balloon. An extremely lightweight model, used primarily in the early part of the season and seldom after that due to having burst. Identifiable by blue pentagonal panelling and the names of that year's Premier League sides printed all over it. Advantages: low sting factor, low burst-nose probability, cheap, discourages a long-ball game. Disadvantages: over-susceptible to influence of the wind, difficult to control, almost magnetically drawn to flat school roofs whence never to return.

The rough-finish Mitre. Half football, half Portuguese Man o' War. On the verge of a ban in the European Court of Human Rights, this model is not for sale to children. Used exclusively by teachers during gym classes as a kind of aversion therapy. Made from highly durable fibre-glass, stuffed with neutron star and coated with dead jellyfish. Advantages: looks quite grown up, makes for high-scoring matches (keepers won't even attempt to catch it). Disadvantages: scars or maims anything it touches.

The "Tube". Genuine leather ball, identifiable by brown all-over colouring. Was once black and white, before ravages of games on concrete, but owners can never remember when. Adored by everybody, especially keepers. Advantages: feels good, easily controlled, makes a satisfying "whump" noise when you kick it. Disadvantages: turns into medicine ball when wet, smells like a dead dog.

Offside
There is no offside, for two reasons: one, "it's no' a full-size pitch", and two, none of the players actually know what offside is. The lack of an offside rule gives rise to a unique sub-division of strikers. These players hang around the opposing goalmouth while play carries on at the other end, awaiting a long pass forward out of defence which they can help past the keeper before running the entire length of the pitch with their arms in the air to greet utterly imaginary adulation. These are known variously as "moochers", "gloryhunters" and "fly wee bastarts". These players display a remarkable degree of self-security, seemingly happy in their own appraisals of their achievements, and caring little for their team-mates' failure to appreciate the contribution they have made. They know that it can be for nothing other than their enviable goal tallies that they are so bitterly despised.
Adjudication
The absence of a referee means that disputes must be resolved between the opposing teams rather than decided by an arbiter. There are two accepted ways of doing this.

Compromise. An arrangement is devised that is found acceptable by both sides. Sway is usually given to an action that is in accordance with the spirit of competition, ensuring that the game does not turn into "a pure skoosh". For example, in the event of a dispute as to whether the ball in fact crossed the line, or whether the ball has gone inside or "over" the post, the attacking side may offer the ultimatum: "Penalty or goal." It is not recorded whether any side has ever opted for the latter. It is on occasions that such arrangements or ultimata do not prove acceptable to both sides that the second adjudicatory method comes into play.

Fighting. Those up on their ancient Hellenic politics will understand that the concept we know as "justice" rests in these circumstances with the hand of the strong. What the winner says, goes, and what the winner says is just, for who shall dispute him? It is by such noble philosophical principles that the supreme adjudicator, or Best Fighter, is effectively elected.

Team Selection
To ensure a fair and balanced contest, teams are selected democratically in a turns-about picking process, with either side beginning as a one-man selection committee and growing from there. The initial selectors are usually the recognised two Best Players of the assembled group. Their first selections will be the two recognised Best Fighters, to ensure a fair balance in the adjudication process, and to ensure that they don't have their own performances impaired throughout the match by profusely bleeding noses. They will then proceed to pick team-mates in a roughly meritocratic order, selecting on grounds of skill and tactical awareness, but not forgetting that while there is a sliding scale of players' ability, there is also a sliding scale of players' brutality and propensities towards motiveless violence. A selecting captain might baffle a talented striker by picking the less nimble Big Jazza ahead of him, and may explain, perhaps in the words of Linden B Johnson upon his retention of J Edgar Hoover as the head of the FBI, that he'd "rather have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in".

Special consideration is also given during the selection process to the owner of the ball. It is tacitly acknowledged to be "his gemme", and he must be shown a degree of politeness for fear that he takes the huff at being picked late and withdraws his favours.

Another aspect of team selection that may confuse those only familiar with the game at senior level will be the choice of goalkeepers, who will inevitably be the last players to be picked. Unlike in the senior game, where the goalkeeper is often the tallest member of his team, in the playground, the goalkeeper is usually the smallest. Senior aficionados must appreciate that playground selectors have a different agenda and are looking for altogether different properties in a goalkeeper. These can be listed briefly as: compliance, poor fighting ability, meekness, fear and anything else that makes it easier for their team-mates to banish the wee bugger between the sticks while they go off in search of personal glory up the other end.
Tactics
Playground football tactics are best explained in terms of team formation. Whereas senior sides tend to choose - according to circumstance - from among a number of standard options (eg 4-4-2, 4-3-3, 5-3-2), the playground side is usually more rigid in sticking to the all-purpose 1-1-17 formation. This formation is a sturdy basis for the unique style of play, ball-flow and territorial give-and-take that makes the playground game such a renowned and strategically engrossing spectacle. Just as the 5-3-2 formation is sometimes referred to in practice as "Cattenaccio", the 1-1-17 formation gives rise to a style of play that is best described as "Nomadic". All but perhaps four of the participants (see also Offside) migrate en masse from one area of the pitch to another, following the ball, and it is tactically vital that every last one of them remains within a ten-yard radius of it at all times.
Stoppages
Much stoppage time in the senior game is down to injured players requiring treatment on the field of play. The playground game flows freer having adopted the refereeing philosophy of "no Post-Mortem, no free-kick", and play will continue around and even on top of a participant who has fallen in the course of his endeavours. However, the playground game is nonetheless subject to other interruptions, and some examples are listed below.

Ball on school roof or over school wall. The retrieval time itself is negligible in these cases. The stoppage is most prolonged by the argument to decide which player must risk life, limb or four of the belt to scale the drainpipe or negotiate the barbed wire in order to return the ball to play. Disputes usually arise between the player who actually struck the ball and any others he claims it may have struck before disappearing into forbidden territory. In the case of the Best Fighter having been adjudged responsible for such an incident, a volunteer is often required to go in his stead or the game may be abandoned, as the Best Fighter is entitled to observe that A: "Ye canny make me"; or B: "It's no' ma baw anyway".

Stray dog on pitch. An interruption of unpredictable duration. The dog does not have to make off with the ball, it merely has to run around barking loudly, snarling and occasionally drooling or foaming at the mouth. This will ensure a dramatic reduction in the number of playing staff as 27 of them simultaneously volunteer to go indoors and inform the teacher of the threat. The length of the interruption can sometimes be gauged by the breed of dog. A deranged Irish Setter could take ten minutes to tire itself of running in circles, for instance, while a Jack Russell may take up to fifteen minutes to corner and force out through the gates. An Alsatian means instant abandonment.

Bigger boys steal ball. A highly irritating interruption, the length of which is determined by the players' experience in dealing with this sort of thing. The intruders will seldom actually steal the ball, but will improvise their own kickabout amongst themselves, occasionally inviting the younger players to attempt to tackle them. Standing around looking bored and unimpressed usually results in a quick restart. Shows of frustration and engaging in attempts to win back the ball can prolong the stoppage indefinitely. Informing the intruders that one of the players' older brother is "Mad Chic Murphy" or some other noted local pugilist can also ensure minimum delay.

Menopausal old bag confiscates ball. More of a threat in the street or local green kickabout than within the school walls. Sad, blue-rinsed, ill-tempered, Tory-voting cat-owner transfers her anger about the array of failures that has been her life to nine-year-olds who have committed the heinous crime of letting their ball cross her privet Line of Death. Interruption (loss of ball) is predicted to last "until you learn how to play with it properly", but instruction on how to achieve this without actually having the bloody thing is not usually forwarded. Tact is required in these circumstances, even when the return of the ball seems highly unlikely, as further irritation of woman may result in the more serious stoppage: Menopausal old bag calls police.

Celebration
Goal-scorers are entitled to a maximum run of thirty yards with their hands in the air, making crowd noises and saluting imaginary packed terraces.

Congratulation by team-mates is in the measure appropriate to the importance of the goal in view of the current scoreline (for instance, making it 34-12 does not entitle the player to drop to his knees and make the sign of the cross), and the extent of the scorer's contribution. A fabulous solo dismantling of the defence or 25-yard* rocket shot will elicit applause and back-pats from the entire team and the more magnanimous of the opponents. However, a tap-in in the midst of a chaotic scramble will be heralded with the epithet "moochin' wee bastart" from the opposing defence amidst mild acknowledgment from team-mates. Applying an unnecessary final touch when a ball is already rolling into the goal will elicit a burst nose from the original striker. Kneeling down to head the ball over the line when defence and keeper are already beaten will elicit a thoroughly deserved kicking. As a footnote, however, it should be stressed that any goal scored by the Best Fighter will be met with universal acclaim, even if it falls into any of the latter three categories.

*Actually eight yards, but calculated as relative distance because "it's no' a full-size pitch".
Penalties
At senior level, each side often has one appointed penalty-taker, who will defer to a team-mate in special circumstances, such as his requiring one more for a hat-trick. The playground side has two appointed penalty-takers: the Best Player and the Best Fighter. The arrangement is simple: the Best Player takes the penalties when his side is a retrievable margin behind, and the Best Fighter at all other times. If the side is comfortably in front, the ball-owner may be invited to take a penalty.

Goalkeepers are often the subject of temporary substitutions at penalties, forced to give up their position to the Best Player or Best Fighter, who recognise the kudos attached to the heroic act of saving one of these kicks, and are buggered if Wee Titch is going to steal any of it.
Close Season
This is known also as the Summer Holidays, which the players usually spend dabbling briefly in other sports: tennis for a fortnight while Wimbledon is on the telly; pitch-and-putt for four days during the Open; and cricket for about an hour and a half until they discover that it really is as boring to play as it is to watch.

THat took me back to the back of niddrie marischal grove! Brilliant

June 30, 2017

Always liked Chris Brookmyre's Playground Football.

Duration

Matches shall be played over three unequal periods: two playtimes and a lunchtime.

Each of these periods shall begin shortly after the ringing of a bell, and although a bell is also rung towards the end of these periods, play may continue for up to ten minutes afterwards, depending on the nihilism or "bottle" of the participants with regard to corporal punishment met out to latecomers back to the classroom.

In practice there is a sliding scale of nihilism, from those who hasten to stand in line as soon as the bell rings, known as "poofs", through those who will hang on until the time they estimate it takes the teachers to down the last of their gins and journey from the staffroom, known as "chancers", and finally to those who will hang on until a teacher actually has to physically retrieve them, known as "bampots". This sliding scale is intended to radically alter the logistics of a match in progress, often having dramatic effects on the scoreline as the number of remaining participants drops.

[...]

:lol:

Thanks. Brought back some good memories that.

June 30, 2017

Enjoyed all of these articles :-)

July 13, 2017

Very much enjoyed this article on supporting your team. I know there are a few people on here who like Leyton Orient too.

https://www.theblizzard.co.uk/article/setting-sun

Setting Sun

Leyton Orient have been relegated from the Football League for the first time in 112 years, but worse than that, they could be about to go out of business. The second oldest football club in London is on the verge of extinction, but does anybody really care? Does it really matter if a club, with an average crowd of less than 5,000, in a city of almost 9 million disappears? There are plenty of others to support, clubs offering better football, better facilities, a better ?leisure experience?.

Travel a few miles in any direction from Brisbane Road and you will find a Premier League team. Arsenal, Tottenham and West Ham are all a short distance away. There are lots of smaller teams to choose from too.

If Orient fold, crushed under the designer boot of the vindictive, spiteful Francesco Becchetti, people will probably forget all about them in a few years.

Without a team to play in it, the former chairman Barry Hearn can get on with selling the ground he still owns and Brisbane Road can be turned into luxury apartments to fuel the gentrification of E10. Leyton Orient will be wiped off the football map. They will not be the first football club to go out of business and will not be the last.

There will be a few tears shed, a sharp jolt of pain, a brief flurry of publicity, a smidgeon of regret that more could not be done, a short pause to reflect on their loss, but life will move on quickly. The memory of little Leyton Orient?s demise will soon fade. There will be a new season around the corner, more hype, more hyperbole. There will be more pieces to write about the tribulations of the national team, more complaints to be made about the number of foreign players depriving home grown talent of first team opportunities. Who cares about the plight of a team that has spent one solitary year in the top division when there are features to write about the latest club to catch the eye of the self-styled football hipsters?

Who is bothered if a small English one that has spent the last three decades in League One or Two could be wiped out by a shady Italian businessman, who looks and talks like an extra from The Sopranos?

Football is booming, it does not need Leyton Orient. They are irrelevant, a relic. A small community club in a capital city that stopped paying attention to the wishes of small communities a long time ago. Call it gentrification, call it globalisation, call it what you want, Orient are not part of it. Orient are the equivalent of the family-run bakers, put out of business by a 24-hour supermarket. They just don?t know it yet. This is capitalism, this is economic Darwinism. Orient are victims, but there are always victims of progress. There is always collateral damage. Get on with it. Tottenham are building a new stadium, Arsenal already have one and West Ham are just down the road, so why would you need to go to watch a team that plays poor football in a poor stadium in a poor part of London?

That is why West Ham were able to sell Upton Park, for their own financial gain and move into the Olympic Stadium. You can see the Queen Elizabeth Stadium from Leyton. The Borough of Waltham Forest was one of the host boroughs in 2012, but who cares about legacy when you?re worried about an athletics stadium becoming a White Elephant on the edge of a huge shopping centre?

West Ham were gifted a new home, even though both the Premier League and Football League supposedly have rules preventing a club moving ground it if it is to the detriment of another. Orient?s survival did not matter then and does not matter now.

Orient?s protests were ignored, dismissed because it was more important for an Olympic legacy to have a tenant in a stadium designed for athletics than it was to protect a little club with a few thousand social media followers.

Orient are not going out of business because West Ham are on their doorstep, flooding the market with discounted tickets, trying to attract more families to their larger new home. That would probably have been a slow, lingering death?

Instead, Orient are being killed swiftly by Becchetti, a man who wanted to be loved, but has only caused pain and ended up despised. A man who can clear an unpaid tax bill of ?250,000 overnight, but cannot pay the club?s photographer the ?6000 he is owed. Since the court case in February revealed HMRC had belatedly been paid, the players and staff have not received their wages.

Becchetti has destroyed Leyton Orient because he is a clueless, spiteful megalomaniac who filled his fiefdom with his friends and countrymen regardless of intellect, competence or apparent interest in football.

He arrived with money, but no knowledge of the English game, no understanding of the club he had bought, just a despot?s desire to build a little kingdom for himself in London. He meddled in team selection, fired or forced out managers with ludicrous regularity ? ten in two and a half years ? and when the supporters dared to question things, he lost interest. When they protested, he vowed revenge.

It seems, if you know what?s good for you, you don?t oppose men like Becchetti. He will hurt you and those you love. Yet, the 51 year old, who was almost deported to Albania last year on corruption charges, was deemed a fit and proper person to own a football club by the Football League, who have been shamed by their silence since.

In November, Becchetti, who bought a ?22m mansion in Mayfair shortly before he bought a football club for ?4m, apparently left Orient to die on the back of the debts he had racked up in a crazy, irresponsible reign.

A club that was a penalty kick away from the Championship in 2014 is now bottom of League Two. The club is supposedly up for sale, but potential buyers claim they cannot get hold of the owner. Despite the fact the tax bill was paid in March, there is still a winding up order hanging over its head because of the failure to pay other basic bills.

Others have documented this process elsewhere and can do so better than me. What I am asking is whether I really care if the club I?ve supported all my life ceases to exist. Do I still have an emotional bond to a team that I no longer watch every other weekend?

I?ve supported Leyton Orient all my life (in fact like most supporters, I still call them Orient because that is their proper name) but I moved away a long time ago. I write about football for a living, I turned my hobby into a job and have enough misery to chronicle following the game for the Daily Telegraph in the North East. Orient are my team, my club, but also my past. I?ve moved on, life moves on.

This is a process I have been through. I tried to remain emotionally detached, a vain attempt to spare myself suffering, but I could not do it. Of course, I care.

Leyton Orient Football Club is not my life, but it has been the only constant in it. I realise that every major event, every stage, every shifting moment, is connected in some way to this daft, infuriating football team.

It defined my childhood, inspired my education, gave me my sense of humour, united my family. It has brought some joy, but mostly pain. Yet it has always been a wonderful, happy distraction from life?s trials and tribulations. I did not have to support Orient, I could have chosen any team in London, but where my dad trod, my brother and I held his hand and followed.

I have more vivid memories of supporting Orient than anything else. From the early childhood ones, of being trapped in a laundry basket while my parents listened to the full-time scores on the radio, of being a mascot. Kevin Godfrey was my favourite player: a hugely talented (at least I thought so) if a little flaky winger with a huge Afro.

Early days going to games; five people crammed into a car, the steam that came off the piss-filled concrete troughs that passed for toilet facilities on an uncovered terrace. Sitting on the wall at the front, my legs dangling through the metal cage that penned us in. A policeman telling my dad I had to get down because a stray shot could break my leg ? being put back in the same spot the following week ? the collective gasps as news of the Hillsborough tragedy spread across the terrace via updates from transistor radios?

The relationship with my parents? their values? my mum screwing up a racist leaflet from the National Front, tossing it in the face of the man who had given it to her and telling him to ?**** off?? My 5 foot 6 inch mum running after a thickset, shaven headed gentleman from Birmingham, who had tossed a newspaper on the floor, ordering him to pick it up... I called an opposition player a ?big poof? once, mum immediately scolded me, pointing out that one of her friends, whom I was particularly fond of, was gay and would be mortified if he heard me.

My dad coughing and jumping up and down in excitement whenever there was a free-kick in a dangerous position? being brutally dismissed when I tried to comfort him during my first relegation experience: ?It?s over, it?s no use, we?re bloody useless?? My uncle coming over for lunch before games or tea and crumpets afterwards.

I was a ball boy for three years, saw punch-ups in the tunnel, stole sandwiches from the sponsor?s lounge, chatted to players who weren?t in the squad? I used to stand in front of the away end, the opposite stand to where my family watched. It was about coming of age, a symbol of my growing independence. I liked the harsh humour of away supporters, the hostility, the conversations. I was spat at on more than one occasion and almost sparked a riot when, after being mocked by Stoke City supporters, I waved and pointed out Orient were winning 1-0.

I ran to kick a ball back on to the pitch once, slipped and fell over, much to the delight of the Tranmere Rovers supporters behind me.

It was around that time that I asked my parents why there were lights at the back of the main stand. I was told it was the press box where the journalists sit. I was bewitched, people were paid to watch football? a seed was sown.

When we moved out of London, my train journeys down from Ipswich to home games brought me and my dad ever closer. I talked a lot, I still do. He read the paper and responded occasionally. Moving home, into an alien town, an alien way of life, Orient were a source of comfort. They were my roots.

Another move, a few years later, to Sheffield, and more trips across the north of England, Mansfield, Scunthorpe, Oldham, Stockport, Barnsley, Doncaster, Huddersfield? One always sticks out, a trip to Hull the night after I?d been to a party and had not slept. Orient lost 2-0. I slept all the way home on the train. Dad was worried about me. Mum accused me of taking drugs.

By the time I went to Newcastle University, I knew who I was ? a Londoner living in the North. I was happy to be different, confident, able to get on with anyone, from anywhere.

I took a group of my friends to an away game at Darlington. A 0-0 draw. We were warned not to go into the pubs near the station, but did so anyway. The locals bought us drinks rather than punched us, impressed we?d come so far on a Tuesday night. My friends said it was the worst game of football they had seen, but we still talk about it when we meet up, two decades later.

It was during that time that my dad became seriously ill. Heart disease. He had a triple bypass operation. Mum received a call, there were complications, internal bleeding the doctors could not stop. When we arrived at the hospital, dad appeared on a bed with tubes attached, nurses and doctors running alongside him on the way to the operating theatre. He looked grey. He looked dead.

Mum stayed with him. I returned in the morning. Dad had not said a word. He still looked grey, dying. I told him Orient had lost the night before and we were going to be relegated from the Football League. He groaned, opened his eyes and murmured something before slipping out of consciousness again. It is the only thing he remembers from those 48 hours. Orient survived. So did he.

Fast forward, through my 20s, Orient were crap. I rarely went to games. I had begun working as a football journalist, my weekends were filled with other clubs and their disappointments. Family reunions, though, were always at Brisbane Road. The Edwards men, uncle, brother, cousin. Mum had lost interest and returned to her first love Leicester City ? which worked out well in the end.

I met a girl, she became my wife. I took her to a game, she moaned and complained, but I loved her for it. She liked talking to the people we met, the weird and wonderful array of characters who decided Orient were the team for them.

I took her initially sceptical brother and father to a game too. They were converted. Orient fans looked confused when two Geordies started leading chants at Carlisle. We bonded, we became family too.

When Orient drew 1-1 with Arsenal in the FA Cup, the entire Geordie side of the family watched it in the pub with me. We celebrated like we had won the final. Someone scoffed, ?You didn?t even win??

?You?ll never understand? I replied.

A few years later, my wife became pregnant. We were thrilled, until we lost the baby in the most tragic of circumstances, just a few weeks after we had told everyone the good news and shared scan pictures.

It was a terrible time, horrendous, particularly for my wife who feared she was too old to have another baby. My daughter never breathed for herself. I battled depression, but won. My wife fared less well. Months of anguish and anxiety.

The following season, Orient were superb. The best team for more than 30 years competed for promotion to the Championship. Miraculously, my wife became pregnant again. A little boy. She was scared the same thing would happen. So was I but I never told her that. I was the strong one.

Orient brought me so much joy that season. They were the best possible distraction. For my dad?s 70th birthday, I pulled some strings and got him a signed shirt with the number 70 on its back. He got it framed and put it on a wall, I framed the picture of him holding it, a huge smile on his face, standing next to his brother.

A few months later, Orient beat Peterborough in the play-off semi-finals and I cried for the first time since collapsing into the arms of my father-in-law when my daughter died. My wife laughed, a sound I had always cherished, but which had become all too rare.

We had already booked a holiday to Portugal. It clashed with the final at Wembley. Deep down I knew what would probably happen. Orient always hurt you? I decided I?d rather miss the final and Orient win, than miss the holiday and Orient lose. In truth, I didn?t want to leave my wife when she was pregnant in case anything happened to her or the baby.

We arrived at our apartment just in time to watch extra-time. We lost on penalties. I stormed out, throwing something (I don?t know what) at a wall. I sat, alone on a bench, for a long time. I cried again. I asked God if he was listening. I don?t normally pray, but I did then. I asked to protect my son, to let him live. I didn?t mind about Orient, it was just football and Orient wouldn?t die. My son might.

I just wanted him to be safe. For my wife to be happy again. A few months and 28 hours in hospital later, Felix arrived. He is amazing.

Felix was born a Geordie. He will never be a Cockney living in the North, like his dad. He may well support Newcastle United, but he will also be an Orient fan, because as my eldest nephew wrote on a family portrait, ?We are Edwards and Orient is our team.?

A few days after being asked to write this about the plight of my football team, I received the news that I have skin cancer. Melanoma, the same disease that killed one of my friends a few years ago. As Orient face a fight for survival, it turned out, so do I. They can cut the cancer out of my body and will. I just wish someone could remove Becchetti too.

So yes, I care whether Orient survive. Orient have been with me all my life. They have generally been a huge disappointment, but they have always been there, the good and the bad, the tough time, the upheaval and trauma. They will help me now.

Whatever happens, Orient will return in some shape of form because I?m not the only one who cares. We are small, but we are not weak and we do matter. Up the O?s.

July 13, 2017

That's a really good read, PC. My better half was born in Leytonstone and her brother was in the Orient academy until a couple of years ago so we went along once when we were down in London with his comps. Orient were laughably bad but it clearly was a really important part of the community for the fans who were there.

It will be sad if they do go out of business but as the article highlights, the rich have all the power in London, especially against a small club like the O's.

July 13, 2017

A fantastic thread.....Well done OP :2thumbsup:

July 13, 2017

That's a really good read, PC. My better half was born in Leytonstone and her brother was in the Orient academy until a couple of years ago so we went along once when we were down in London with his comps. Orient were laughably bad but it clearly was a really important part of the community for the fans who were there.

It will be sad if they do go out of business but as the article highlights, the rich have all the power in London, especially against a small club like the O's.

Since the article was published there has been a takeover completed

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/40366597

Edited July 13, 2017 by Placid Casual

July 13, 2017

Could be the longest thread in JBK history, if posters Keep quoting previous posts.

July 23, 2017

http://thesefootballtimes.co/2017/04/20/understanding-pragmatism-in-football-a-game-played-by-primates-not-robots/

The guy who did this piece (which takes a bit of wading through!) also did a video that must've lasted 12 mins plus when Cathro was appointed - quite an impassioned criticism of those who criticised the appointment. His Twitter handle is at the bottom of the article if anyone is interested know scrolling back through tweets to find it.

July 23, 2017

Could be the longest thread in JBK history, if posters Keep quoting previous posts.

Great thread but totally this :lol: Murder on a phone!

July 23, 2017

What was that book, where the Hibs guy followed hearts for a season..?

Maybe some interesting quotes from that if anyone has a copy or can remember it?

July 23, 2017

What was that book, where the Hibs guy followed hearts for a season..?

Maybe some interesting quotes from that if anyone has a copy or can remember it?

Heartfelt by Aiden Smith? Not a bad read, even though the boy is a Hobo walloper

July 23, 2017

Since the article was published there has been a takeover completed

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/40366597

Although I don't claim to keep any sort of interest on Orient day to day, I'm surprised I missed that news! Hopefully the start of their resurgence.

July 24, 2017

This is a piece I wrote for a NY football paper a few years ago.

They Might Be Giants.

Clydesdale Bank Premier League.

Since Scottish league football began in the 1890's, the game north of the border has been dominated by the two Glasgow giants, Rangers, with 52 titles, and Celtic, with 42. This dominance is partly due to the size of Glasgow itself, and the Greater Glasgow area, which boasts approximately 2.3 Million people, around forty percent of Scotland's population. Also the size of their respective fanbases rightly puts them among the biggest and most well supported clubs in Europe, indeed the world.

But since the collapse of the broadcaster Setanta, who held the rights to live screenings, are we about to see the other ten clubs in this division creep closer to the big boys? Many have said that the lack of competition in Scottish football, and the relatively meagre television deals, have hampered Glasgow's big two in their search for European glory. Both have had minor successes in recent years, Rangers going all the way to the European cup semi final in 1993, and UEFA cup final in 2008, Celtic losing out in the final of the same tournament in 2003. Will the financial difficulties, brought on by the economic climate and failing broadcasters, now have the same effect domestically? Will we see a shift in power? Or at least a more competitive league?

The key to any shift would seem to lie in the east of the country. The two Edinburgh clubs, Heart Of Midlothian and Hibernian, both have first class youth academies, pouring out some of the country's finest young talent, no longer heading to Glasgow under freedom of contract, or for minimal fees, as was the norm recently. Good young players moving to bigger clubs would seem to make sense for their development, but all too often, they weren't getting regular football, rather sitting on the bench or playing reserve team matches, being swayed by fast buck agents, looking after their own interests and pockets, rather than the young stars careers. The lessons seem to have been learned, stay at your club, play regular first team football, develop, then move on when the time is right to a club who appreciate your talent. The importance of this is obvious. The team is allowed to gel and grow together, learning the game with other young players who rose through the ranks alongside each other, being comfortable around the club, fans, and friends, expressing their talent. Furthermore, if a club has this kind of stability, it shows potential transfer targets you have ambition, you are well run, and know how to keep players happy. Attracting these more experienced, better players, can only be good for any teams development.

Staying on the east coast, moving north, you find Dundee. When you find a football stadium here, its easy to be confused. Tannadice, and Dens Park, are a well hit 3-iron apart. Tannadice being home to Dundee United FC, Dens Park to Dundee FC. As with the Edinburgh clubs, these teams are fierce rivals, although playing in different leagues at this time after Dundee's relegation in 2005. United are a well run club, nurturing their own young stars, fair crowds, and playing attractive football. Also trivia fans, United were the first Scottish team to reach the UEFA cup final, in 1987, after beating Barcelona in the semi final, they lost to IFK Gothenburg in the final. Up until recently, the, ''Arabs'', were managed by Craig Levein, before he left for the Scotland national job.

Although these teams we have mentioned here are relatively successful, they lack the one ingredient for lasting success, consistency. Between the three clubs, Hearts, Hibernian, and Dundee United, they have won a total of nine top league titles, the last of which being United's success in 1983. Hearts have been the closest to breaking the stranglehold, finishing in second place in 1986, 1988, 1992, and 2006, and winning the Scottish cup in 1998, and 2006.

Even splitting the Old Firm is a major achievement.

Now for levelling the playing field.

As money is now tighter all around the game, barring the behemoths in London, Barcelona, Madrid, Manchester and Milan, more clubs are having to blood youngsters, especially the smaller clubs. Scottish clubs are doing a remarkable job in this sense, perhaps through necessity, but hopefully for future development of players, clubs, and the national team. The Glasgow clubs are no longer shelling out six, eight, or eleven million pounds on players, or paying inflated wages for foreign journeymen. Indeed, Rangers have the highest debt in Scottish football, and are now offloading high earners in favour of playing youngsters. Their last game was against Hearts at Ibrox, finishing in a one-one draw. The scorers....... Andrew Little, a twenty year old Northern irishman for Rangers, and Scott Robinson, a seventeen year old Scot for Hearts. Both products of their youth systems. Celtic are not in as much trouble as their near neighbours, but it wasn't so long ago they were saved from extinction at the eleventh hour by Fergus Mccann, a Scottish born Canadian. Hibernian are in good shape, selling on players who came through their ranks for fees matching their value. Scott Brown, Steven Fletcher, Kevin Thomson, and Steven Whittaker being sold for a combined eleven million pounds! Despite losing these players, it has not affected the free scoring style of football they like to play, and some fans might be so bold to say as they are getting better, with Hibs sitting pretty in fourth place, just five points behind second place Celtic after just over half the season played. Dundee United are sitting third, four points behind Celtic, and Hearts, after a woeful start, are picking up the pace and gaining ground. The common factor? Youth. No one is going to berate a youngster for making a mistake, or no one should. The training ground is his school, the football field his higher education. Encourage, prompt, support, believe, and your club will reap the rewards on and off the field.

The best chance the lesser clubs have of league glory, or at least bridging the gap, is to secure their future. Invest in youth, academies, scouting, good contracts for young players, and first team football for them. Managerial consistency is key as well. let a manager build a team, a relationship with players and fans alike. The Arsenal and Manchester United success is no fluke. Both Wenger and Ferguson have been allowed time and space to develop things their way, albeit with vast amounts of SKY television money, and now, are virtually bulletproof at their respective clubs. Yes, there were sticky times, yes there were trophy barren years. Now those two men run those clubs, football men, not chairmen, directors and shareholders. Honest, knowledgeable, football men.

Players dont listen to office men, they respond to the man on the training ground, the coaches, the very lifeblood of their future lies in these hands, and the future of clubs are in those same hands.

The Old Firm might be giants, but for how long?

August 23, 2017

Long one this. Best not quote it!

https://www.theblizzard.co.uk/article/namesakes

Namesakes

May 1967 and the denouement of a disappointing season. Player by player Everton?s manager Harry Catterick was dismantling his so-called ?Mersey Millionnaires?, who had brought the 1963 League Championship and 1966 FA Cup to Goodison. The likes of Roy Vernon, Alex Scott and Billy Bingham were being replaced by a new generation of homegrown players, such as Colin Harvey and Joe Royle, supplemented by young big-name signings like Alan Ball and Howard Kendall.

Going into the final game of the season, a Tuesday night home match against Sunderland, sixth place was already secured. There had been disappointing exits in the European Cup Winners? Cup and the FA Cup quarter-final, but terrace disgruntlement was muted by a general acknowledgement that this Everton team was a work in progress. And for the last match, there was joy that the Gwladys Street?s idol, Alex Young, was back.

It had been six weeks since he had last been seen playing for Everton, and four months since he had played in his favoured number nine shirt, but it was like he had never been away. Young ? Everton?s Golden Vision ? demolished Sunderland with a display of virtuosity, grace and skill. ?Young spread destruction through their ranks with his wonderful ball distribution, artistry and sheer cheek,? wrote Michael Charters in the Liverpool Echo. Young didn?t score but had a hand in each of Everton?s four goals and only over-elaboration and a fine display by Jim Montgomery kept the score down to 4-1.

According to his captain Brian Labone, it was the best individual performance he had ever seen from Young and Alan Ball wanted him ? and not Johnny Morrissey, who had scored a hat-trick ? to keep the match ball at the end. ?Young beat Sunderland almost on his own that night,? claimed Labone. ?He played on the wing and I never felt so sorry for a man as I did for the Sunderland left-back [John Parke]. For him, it was a nightmare. For Young, it was a great personal triumph.?

Cast your eye through any club history and legends tend to fall into distinct categories: goalscorers, playmakers, artists, mavericks, leaders, genius managers. In the pantheon of Everton greats, however, Alex Young is a special case because he transcends such ready categorisation. A sublimely gifted centre-forward, he assumed many of these characteristics. Lacking the physicality of the blood and thunder player who typified his position, Young was a slim, delicate, fragile player possessing more the physique of a winger or inside-forward. He was a great goalscorer, one of Goodison?s finest, but also a creator of goals. For Evertonians, he typified a footballing era where the club?s status as ?The School of Science? was beyond question.

If Dave Hickson is Everton?s most loved player and Dixie Dean their most iconic, it?s no exaggeration to say that Young is their most adored. He is to Everton what Kenny Dalglish is to Liverpool or ?ric Cantona to Manchester United. Like Cantona, he inspired an eponymous Ken Loach film, but not even Cantona?s adulation prompted an attack by fans on his manager after being dropped, as happened when Harry Catterick left out Young in January 1966. One of the most enduring images of the era is an Evertonian being led off the Goodison pitch by a bobby, still defiantly holding up a placard with the legend, ?Sack Catterick, Keep Young.?

This adulation bred suspicion in his manager, who dropped him, played him out of position and tried on several occasions to sell him. ?It turned out that the more the fans loved me, the more the manager disliked me,? Young recorded in his memoirs. ?I was engaged in a constant battle with Harry and learned not to trust him.? Where Bob Paisley and Alex Ferguson talked up Dalglish and Cantona, Catterick downplayed the role of his talisman. Perhaps this is why Alex Young lacks the effect on the wider football consciousness today.

Because footage of this era is limited by its graininess, the single-camera angle, the clich?-ridden Path? newsreel, it remains difficult to get a full idea of Young?s repertoire. The nuance is lost and YouTube, frozen frame by frame, leaves us with mere glimpses. Here?s Alex, gliding over a mudbath. There?s a swivel of the hips, but the floating leap, the dart of the eyes sending a defender the wrong way, the feint and dummy are left mostly in an ageing generation?s memories.

Young was born in Loanhead, a coal mining village in Midlothian, in 1937. It was a time when an astonishing array of talent was bred in Scotland?s central belt: in Young?s junior school team alone were Ian King, later of Leicester City, and Malcolm Howieson, who would play for Grimsby Town; John White, who played with Young at Hearts and for Tottenham, went to a neighbouring school.

As with many from his background, Young seemed destined for life down the coal mine and was taken on as a colliery apprentice aged 15. His escape from such drudgery came via football. Spotted by Hearts playing junior football, he initially combined playing with work at the coalface. Aged 18, at the start of the 1955-56 season he made his Hearts debut in a League Cup tie; by the season?s end he was an established Tynecastle favourite and had played a part in Hearts? first Scottish FA Cup win in half a century.

This would emerge as the greatest team in Hearts? history. As well as Young and White it boasted players such as Dave Mackay, Ian Crawford and Willie Bauld. Twice they lifted the Scottish League title, in 1958 ? when they scored an astonishing 132 league goals and finished 13 points clear of Rangers ? and 1960, and would also claim the League Cup in 1959 and 1960. Young cultivated a reputation as a forward of grace and ?lan. In 1960 he won his first Scotland cap, against Austria; just seven more would follow ? the majority of them while still playing for Hearts.

The move to Everton came later in 1960 as Hearts? greatest team began to break up and the wealth of pools magnate John Moores started to make an impression at Goodison. As an 11 year old, Joe Royle ? who would later replace him as Everton number 9 ? watched Young?s debut against Tottenham in December 1960 and recalled, ?We all had our mouths open that night. We were all goldfish watching a wonderful talent.?

Injuries meant he had a slow start to his Everton career, but his pedigree was never in question. ?Young is a thoroughbred, a great mover with the ball, fast, active, razor sharp in his reactions,? reported the Liverpool Echo of an early performance. ?For his size, he is a good header of the ball. He is clever, artistic and can score goals.? Everton finished the 1960-61 campaign fifth ? their best since the war ? but it was not enough to save their manager, Johnny Carey, who was sacked.

Although his relationship with Carey?s successor, Catterick, was never easy, his form was astonishing. He and the Wales captain Roy Vernon would score 116 league goals between them over the following three years. Vernon, clinical and whippet-like ? the ultimate penalty area predator ? was the perfect foil for the Scot and they built up a subliminal understanding. Everton lifted the league title in 1963 ? Young?s brilliant header in a late-season clash with their nearest rivals Tottenham effectively sealing that crown. His club were unlucky not to retain it a year later, after ailing late in the campaign when they were undermined by a match-fixing scandal involving their captain, Tony Kay.

Catterick by then had signed Fred Pickering for a British domestic transfer record and consigned Young to the reserves. Fan anger was initially quietened by Pickering?s prolific form. Young asked for a transfer but later withdrew the request. Roy Vernon was sold to Stoke City and Young reverted to an inside forward or wing role, while ?Boomer? Pickering banged in the goals. Looking back in Young?s 2008 biography there was a wearied tone in describing Catterick?s management. ?I thought of him as a canny businessman who bought and sold livestock, usually at a profit, and enjoyed the thrill of deal-making more than football,? he recalled. ?I don?t think it was a case of him disliking me ? more a case of him hating me.?

Still he hung in there. The 1966 FA Cup win saw a revival in fortunes. Pickering, through injuries and loss of form, became a marginalised figure and Young was restored to the number 9 shirt. Yet football was evolving. Don Revie?s Leeds had introduced a new style of play to the First Division characterised by cynicism and other clubs, to a greater or lesser extent, began to adopt what would euphemistically be termed ?professionalism?. As Brian Labone wrote in his 1968 autobiography, ?An examination of Young today, is at the same time, both a joy and a sadness. A joy because he is just about the most perfect ball playing footballer around? But sad because for all that skill and sheer natural talent, Alex is becoming a misfit in modern soccer. He belongs to a breed that is almost extinct? that can no longer survive and flourish in the hard-driving, hustling and ruthless business we are in now.?

The facts demonstrated that Labone?s lament wasn?t simply ghostwritten sentimentality. In 1960-61, Young?s first season, Everton scored 87, conceded 69, finishing with 50 points; in 1967-68, Young?s last campaign at the club, they gained 52 points, having scored 67 and conceded just 40 goals. Young?s last game in an Everton shirt came on 11 May 1968, a month after the screening of The Golden Vision, Loach?s film about Young.

His career wound down very quickly. A potentially lucrative move to the short-lived New York Generals franchise fell through after Catterick obstructed it. Instead he was briefly player-manager at Glentoran. The move was ill-fated, however, and Young was uneasy at Northern Ireland?s rising sectarian violence. He returned to England with Stockport County, but the Third Division was no fitting stage. After making just a single appearance in the 1969-70 season he called time on his illustrious career.

Young returned to Scotland, where he lived a quiet post-football existence, first running a pub, then working for his family?s soft furnishings business, making occasional pilgrimages south to Goodison. His son, Jason, was a forward for Scotland?s youth teams alongside Duncan Ferguson, but after breaking his leg was consigned to a career in the Scottish lower leagues with Livingston and Stranraer.

The Golden Vision is ? and was ? at once accepting, ambivalent and surprised about his fame. His friend and biographer, the historian and philanthropist David France, describes walking with him through Liverpool city centre one night in 2007 when it was ?late, dark and raining?: Young had the effect of the Pied Piper on fans who kept appearing by the dozen ?from every nook and cranny? to have autographs signed. ?In spite of these experiences he remains genuinely surprised that the younger fans know who he is, never mind that they know so much about him,? France said.

Young was always aware of his greatness, no matter how disarmingly modest he remained. In his 1968 autobiography Goals at Goodison he claimed ? or at least his ghostwriter did ? to keep in his wallet a photograph sent to him by a fan, of a wall bearing the legend ?Alex Young The Great?. Nearly 40 years later I casually mentioned this to him as we were about to go in to a dinner and he blushed with a look of incredulity.

?Och, no,? he replied. ?That?s a load of mumbo-jumbo. Where on earth did you hear that??

The Golden Vision was not the only significant Alex Young in Everton?s history. Separated by 57 years, a player of the same name, same position, same mining heritage, from the same part of Scotland preceded him: Alex ?Sandy? Young, a fellow Scot whose achievements arguably outstripped even the Golden Vision?s.

Yet off the field the parallel lives of Alex Young diverge. While the 1960s player was the subject of Loach?s social realism, so dramatic were the life and times of Sandy ? free scoring centre-forward, FA Cup Final hero, murderer, felon ? that, if they were made into a film, they would be better suited to a Ron Howard-directed Hollywood epic.

His was an extraordinary life which traversed the peaks and troughs of human existence. Although no relation to the 1960s idol, he was born just 30 miles away, in 1880 in the Stirlingshire coal mining village of Slamannan. Like the Golden Vision he started working life down a pit, the 1901 census recording his occupation as a miner.

That was the year that he signed for Everton. Having made a name for himself with Slamannan Juniors, Young had spent the 1899-1900 season in Scottish League Division One with St Mirren, where he scored six times in 19 appearances. St Mirren had struggled in the league, however, winning just three of their 18 league matches, and avoided demotion only after beating St Bernard?s in a play-off. Young left at the season?s end to join Falkirk, then still competing in amateur leagues. Combining football at Brockville Park, just 6 miles from Slamannan, with work down the mines was presumably easier for Sandy, who scored 16 goals in 36 games. In May 1901 Everton paid Falkirk ?100 to sign Young and St Mirren ?20 for his league registration.

At Goodison he was paid ?2.10s per week ? comfortably more than the 30s he would have earned at the coalface, but hardly a life-changing salary. He was never prolific in his first few campaigns for Everton, but it is clear that his selfless play allowed others ? notably Jimmy Settle and Jack Sharp ? to thrive. Everton were perennial nearly-men in this time and they ended Young?s debut season ? in which he played in 30 of the club?s 34 league matches ? runners up to Sunderland. Twice more, in 1904-05, and 1908-09, they would finish second as well as third in 1903-04 and 1906-07, the year they also finished FA Cup runners-up.

Young led the Everton forward line through these years. He was a regular goalscorer, but only in 1906-07 ? when he topped the First Division scoring charts with 28 goals ? could he be described as outstandingly prolific. A Liverpool Echo pen portrait of the period was revealing of how he divided some opinions: ?Sandy Young, the centre-forward, is a variable sort of man who plays one good game in three on average. He takes the bumps a centre-forward must inevitably expect smilingly and determination makes up for lack of skill at times.? Others were more enthusiastic: ?I have been a regular attender at the Everton matches since the days of [Alec] Dick and [George] Dobson [in the 1880s], and I unhesitatingly affirm that Sandy Young is the greatest forward that has ever played under the club?s colours. Young has been and still is the club?s greatest asset,? wrote one fan to the same newspaper.

?He was idolised by the public of Liverpool, and his career is something of a romance,? recalled Ernest ?Bee? Edwards, who was the Liverpool Echo?s sports editor through much of the first half of the last century. Young, he wrote, ?at once made his name by brilliant foot-work and curious little artistries of dribbling that make a footballer a hero in the eyes of the public.? Sandy?s ?twisting and turning and feinting were a delight to the football enthusiast?s eye.?

And yet for all the adulation, he remained an aloof individual, a man whose personality was at odds with his growing fame. An unnamed former teammate of Young?s declared that he ?was very highly strung, had peculiar habits and was a very sombre man.? Young, according to this account, ?would live alone, as far as possible and many a time when out training he slinked off to some long walk and no one could get a word out of him. If one was not satisfied with his game one never offered any remarks on the point as Sandy would straightway have curled up, and played any sort of tosh.?

The defining moment of Sandy?s career came in 1906 when Everton met Newcastle United in the FA Cup Final at Crystal Palace. It was the club?s third final and following two finals defeats in the 1890s as well as losing out on the league title by a point to their opponents the previous year, Everton were desperate to overcome their also-ran status.

With the exception of a second round strike against Chesterfield, goals had proved elusive to Young throughout Everton?s Cup run, but on this April day he was on fine form. On 53 minutes he found the net, but the goal was ruled out for offside. (?He was standing almost under the bar,? reported the Mirror.) 25 minutes later Jack Sharp was sent free down the wing, evading the pursuit of the Newcastle left-back Carr. Sharp beat Carr and another defender, and sent in a beautifully weighted cross which Young slotted home for the game?s only goal.

?I doubt,? the Football League?s founding father, William McGregor, said ?if we have ever had a final in which there has been more loose play? [it was] one of the poorest finals.? The Daily Mirror?s reporter accused Young of marring his ?dashing display? with ?a good many petty tricks, which Mr Kirkham [the referee] generally noticed and always promptly penalised.? But as the invariably partisan Liverpool Daily Post put it, ?Thrice has the battle been waged, and twice the victory denied, but the third time pays for all: Bravo the Blues!?

Although Young?s scoring spree a year later almost elevated Everton to a league and cup double and he still managed a goal every other game through the 1907-08 season, by then Everton had dropped to eleventh and there was a need for change. In an effort to revive fortunes, Bertie Freeman was signed late in the campaign from Woolwich Arsenal and took Young?s berth. Thereafter the Scot would find himself overshadowed by Freeman?s prolific exploits and left to play as an inside-forward. He managed just two league goals during the 1909-10 season and although he showed signs that he may wrest back the centre-forward berth the following season, Everton?s selectors deemed Young ? by then aged 30 ? to be past his best.

In the summer of 1911 Young was sold to Tottenham Hotspur for ?500. At the time he was Everton?s highest ever goalscorer with a total of 125, a tally surpassed just three times in the following century. His spell in London was brief, the highlight being his return to Goodison where he was still idolised. When he scored the equaliser in a 2-2 draw, Edwards reported, ?of all the receptions I have ever heard that day?s volume led the lot.?

He returned north within a year, signing for Manchester City. There followed spells with South Liverpool and Burslem Port Vale, but the earlier heights were never hit. By the outbreak of the First World War Young had dropped out of professional football and emigrated to Australia.

Football, until the 1990s, remained a sport short on literature, save for match reports and the ubiquitous match day programme. Books, beyond usually anodyne autobiographies and club-produced annuals, remained few and far between. Everton, in the club?s first century, possessed just two club histories, published on the occasions of its half centenary and, in 1978, centenary. By contrast, the last decade alone has seen nearly twenty such publications.

Instead, oral tradition kept the legends of the game alive and because it was a relatively young sport, those stories retained a first- or second-hand aspect for many fans. A child of the 1980s, I first went to the match with men who had witnessed every player since Dixie Dean, and for anything before that era those supporters could offer their fathers? or grandfathers? memories. However, with a history kept alive by alehouse yarns it was unsurprising that some myths perpetuated, and so it was with Sandy Young.

What happened after Young retired from playing and moved to Australia was until a couple of years ago occluded by a combination of mystery and urban legend. One newspaper report claimed that Young was hanged for sheep rustling, a story which always seemed scarcely credible. Nevertheless, it was mentioned in several publications and thus gained some credence, becoming one of those self-perpetuating fables; a yarn that was complicated and further misconstrued by the fact that a rival and equally dramatic account emerged that Young was jailed for the murder of his brother John. Further uncorroborated details suggested that Young spent years in a lunatic asylum after this apparent crime. The story sometimes became confused or exaggerated ? the footballer who ended up in the loony bin after stealing sheep ? and Everton?s early hero was tarred by unsubstantiated infamy.

Indeed when I wrote a history of Everton in 2003 still no evidence had surfaced to contradict or confirm these versions of Sandy?s latter years. It was only later, thanks to the detective work of an Everton fanatic, that the truth emerged.

If you step into the darkened corner of Liverpool Central Library where the microfiche machines are located, on any given day there is a good chance you will encounter Billy Smith, a 48-year-old security guard and amateur historian who has made it his life?s work to record every detail of Everton?s 136-year long history. The self-styled ?Blue Correspondent?, Smith is a modern equivalent of what Hugh McIllvanney once described as ?the sort of magnificent obsessionists who suspect that when Jesus performed the miracle of walking on the waters he was bouncing a ball on his instep at the time.? According to the Blue Correspondent?s account, Jesus would probably have been wearing a royal blue shirt at the time.

Smith?s research started in 2000 and was initially focussed on Everton?s 1980s halcyon era. He became the first person to document accurately all the club?s penalty takers and buoyed by the success of this early project then ?decided to go the Full Monty on Everton.? The ?Full Monty? according to Billy is every single report on the Blues, most painstakingly transcribed from old microfiche and then published on the internet. By Smith?s own admission he is not a writer, his aim, instead, ?is to get information out to historians and researchers so that they can get accurate information.? His research now encompasses millions of words and currently documents everything from the club?s formation in 1878 to February 1954. He reckons he has another ?six or seven years left? before he has every game recorded, adding ?and then I?ll start on the statistics.?

?I devote far too much time, if the truth is told,? he admits. When asked how much, he replies: ?Around six hours a day on average; however, sometimes, before I know it 12 hours can go flying past.? He jokes about needing to ?get a life,? but his work has been invaluable to anyone with a serious interest in Everton history. And it was Smith, in 2012, whose research separated the truth from the myths about what happened to Sandy and John Young in Australia.

?My true passion is Everton from 1879 to 1888,? says Smith. ?However, the truth about Alex gives me a lot of satisfaction.?

In Australia, Sandy Young joined his brother, John, who was a dairy farmer in Victoria. While still playing, Sandy had advanced him more than ?300 to emigrate there in 1912 and establish a farm. He set up near Tongala, 150 miles north of Melbourne, and Sandy joined him when he left Port Vale. However their partnership was swiftly undermined by squabbles over money. Court accounts later revealed how Sandy did not get on with his brother, who threatened him on several occasions. John had hit him on the head with a bucket on two occasions and on the body with a stick. On another occasion he chased him with a fork and threatened to shoot him.

On 1 December 1915, their relationship spiralled tragically out of control. The previous night the brothers had fought again. John had hit him without provocation and warned, ?You or me will have to enter heaven tonight.? That warning proved prophetic.

The following morning, with tensions high, Sandy heard a noise in the house, and thought it was his brother. He got up and loaded a double-barrelled shotgun gun. He found John milking a cow in their barn, Sandy approached him and warned that he was going to shoot.

According to a police statement, John replied, ??Put the gun away. You are only trying to frighten me.? Alexander, however, took no notice, and fired at me.? Sandy then returned to their house, turned the gun on himself and shot himself in the head. That was his last memory.

A week later he regained consciousness, physically scarred but very much alive, in Echuca Hospital, some 20 miles deeper into the outback. John was dead, having bled to death after suffering an internal haemorrhage. He left behind a widow, Agnes, and five children. Sandy was placed under arrest, facing a murder charge.

According to a police statement he made before he passed out (and which he couldn?t subsequently recall making), Sandy confessed, ?I was driven to this; I am sorry. I shot him on the spur of the moment. Can the doctors not do anything for him?? Told that John had just hours to live Sandy buried his face in his hands and cried out, ?Poor Agnes and the bairns. What will become of them??

When news of the killing reached Britain some two months later, it was met with shock even at a time when newspapers were filled with the catastrophic losses being suffered daily on the Western Front. As much as the tragedy itself, focus was on Young?s character and personality. Edwards wrote of Young?s ?curious temperament? adding that ?there were periods when he stroked the single lock of hair that adorned his forehead which suggested that he suffered severe pains in the head.?

In Stirlingshire, the Youngs? elderly mother read of John?s death in the press. Two of his sisters were sent to Liverpool to meet the Everton secretary, Will Cuff, to see if the club could assist in Sandy?s defence. To a local reporter they spoke of Young?s ?melancholy temperament?, a theme developed over subsequent months.

Cuff, who combined his duties at Goodison with a prominent local law practice, immediately telegraphed Tongola?s mayor and may also have instructed a solicitor on Young?s behalf. In England he contacted counterparts at Young?s former clubs and secured affidavits from Manchester City?s secretary-manager Ernest Mangnall and representatives from South Liverpool on the subject of Young?s mental condition. He got testimony from an unnamed Everton captain of the era stating that Young was ?a morose fellow, quiet, sombre, and touchy?. He added that ?it was never possible to chide him in the dressing-room after he had played a ?45?, or he would curl up and sulk palpably if one did happen to suggest that be should put more life into his game.? All this was apparently evidence of Young?s mental unsoundness and was submitted to the Australian judge ahead of the trial.

When the case went to court in June 1916, the question was not Young?s guilt, but his sanity. At one stage the judge asked, ?Why did you try to blow your brains out when you considered you had only shot your brother in self defence??

?I cannot say,? replied Young.

The jury, after an hour?s deliberation, returned a verdict of manslaughter. It seems likely that Cuff?s intervention saved Young?s life. Instead of the hangman?s noose, he was sentenced to three years in prison, divided between Pentridge Penitentiary ? a notorious island jail ? and Ararat Lunatic Asylum.

In Liverpool, Cuff invited donations to help pay Young?s ?200 legal bills. On his release Young was sent ?20 by the Everton board, but beyond that the trail went cold. In October 1945, the Everton board received a letter regarding his ?circumstances?, but after considering it, decided to refer the matter to the public assistance officer in Stirlingshire, where Young was seemingly based.

The next years remained a blank, until news of Young?s death in September 1959 in an Edinburgh nursing home. His passing went entirely unnoticed at the time and for the best part of the next 50 years. It seemed as though no one mourned him and no one ever asked: whatever happened to Sandy Young?

When Smith uncovered details of Young?s fate in Australia, the Liverpool Echo picked up on his research. Things then started to move apace. Paul Wharton, chairman of the EFC Heritage Society ? another of McIllvanney?s school of ?magnificent obsessionists? ? tracked down Young?s burial site in Edinburgh. What he found shocked him. Young was buried in an unmarked grave with two Italian immigrants. ?Where these people fit in with Alex I don?t know yet,? Wharton wrote to me at the time. He also visited Young?s last known address in Portobello. The owner invited him to see what was now a family home and Wharton learned it had previously been a mental health care home. ?This sadly ties in with Alex?s state of mind,? he added.

Wharton resolved that something should be done as it was ?not befitting that someone who had made such a contribution to Everton history be buried in a poor house grave.? He petitioned Everton to help fund the cost of a headstone and when the club agreed to go halves with the EFC Heritage Society, the remainder was raised prior to an Everton match in December 2013.

At this stage, members of Young?s extended family began making contact with Wharton and, for the first time in many cases, with each other.

?I think because of the mental health issues he had and what happened in Australia he became the black sheep of the family, if you like. We knew very little about what happened when he came back to Scotland,? says Bryan Cleeton, the footballer?s great-great-nephew.

?The tragic events in Australia put a dampener on Sandy and buried his football career,? he adds. ?It was only when a picture of Sandy appeared in a Panini sticker album in 1987 that we really realised that he was held in such high regard at Everton and his actual accomplishments, such as scoring the winning goal when they won the FA Cup.?

The new focus on Sandy Young, assisted by social media, suddenly united parts of his family that had never known each other. It also ultimately unravelled the remaining mysteries of his later, lonely wilderness years.

September 2014 and the last of the summer sun shines gently through the oak trees at Edinburgh?s Seafield Cemetery. It is a lovely spot, with birdsong chattering over the distant hum of traffic. In the tranquillity of the graveyard the wave of political debate washing over the country ahead of its independence referendum the following week seems very distant.

With Paul Wharton and Billy Smith, the two unsung heroes who had lifted the shroud of mystery from Sandy?s demise, I walked along a tree-shaded path and there, watched over by a solitary piper, it is: a permanent memorial to the footballer; a black headstone, as dark and shiny as onyx, bearing Young?s details, a small portrait at its top and the impression of his 1906 FA Cup winner?s medal underneath it.

Around 100 of us ? descendants of Young, a handful of football officials, enthusiasts and members of the press ? await the start of the dedication ceremony and admire the work of the stonemason. It is almost 55 years to the day since Young died and at last his final resting place is properly marked.

As we wait, I fall into conversation with an old man. I ask him what had brought him to Seafield Cemetrery.

?I remember him only too well,? he told me. ?Sandy was my uncle.?

The old man was Cyril Cleeton, whose mother was Sandy?s sister. Then in his mid-80s, he recalled his uncle?s hermit-like existence on his return from Scotland in 1920. ?Sandy had reached the depths. If he had reached the pinnacle of his profession, he had reached the depths of his own depravation,? said Cyril. ?He lived alone in abject poverty. No one to care for him. He was a recluse, there?s no question about that.

?He used to do odd jobs about the place. We had a bungalow with quite a big garden that took a bit of tending, so Sandy would do that. But his career as a footballer was not brought up.?

Cleeton said that he had an ?inkling? of his uncle?s fame, but admits that he ?didn?t know he was the esteemed footballer we talk about now.?

?It was only later when my niece came down to Everton and researched his past that I had any idea. It came as a surprise.?

I asked him about the shooting in Australia. Cyril said that as a boy he would help shave his uncle with a single edge razor and was aware of the gouge on the right side of his face where Sandy had shot himself. If he asked about it, ?The reply I got, more often than not, was, ?Oh, we don?t talk about that.??

The sound of ?Flower of Scotland? from the bagpipes indicated the dedication ceremony was underway. Tributes were made to Sandy and wreathes laid, including one by John?s great-granddaughter, Catherine Yarham, who had travelled from Australia to attend the ceremony.

Everton?s chaplain, Henry Corbett, dealt sensitively with the complexities of Sandy?s ?tough story? ? the brother who died at his hand, the years of suffering from mental illness ? but spoke of the need for forgiveness and moving on.

?The Christian faith says that forgiveness is possible and that we believe in a God who understands and in a God who offers hope,? he said. ?Alex ?Sandy? Young?s family and friends and the football family of Everton Football Club rededicate his grave.?

On the edge of the gathering was a familiar figure. The tight blond curls ? grey when I?d last set eyes upon him a few years earlier ? had now turned to white, but there he was, unmistakable, elegant, iconic ? the Golden Vision.

He was 77 by then and rumours about his declining health had periodically filtered down to Merseyside, where he was seldom seen. But on this day at least, Alex Young ? a little deafer, a little older ? was on fine form. We passed a couple of minutes chatting about Everton, his family, a mutual friend in America; inanities really, but then Alex the Great was never one to hold court grandiloquently. The Golden Vision?s status as a footballing deity, while accepted in his modest way, was one that never sat easily with him. If I?d learned anything from him over the years it was that his greatness as a footballer did not define him, rather his humility as a man.

It seemed so extraordinary, that the lives of these two footballers had shared so many parallels and yet their fates had so little in common. Both had become mythical creatures for very different reasons and here they were, united at last.

The piper gave a second burst of ?Flower of Scotland? and the Golden Vision made to leave. He shook everybody by the hand and bade farewell to his congregation of adorers. Then he was gone, shuffling through the graveyard, his wife Nancy at his side, into the sun-bathed afternoon and on his way.

Edited August 23, 2017 by Placid Casual

August 23, 2017

As MacDonald Jardine said a couple of months ago, a really good thread.

August 23, 2017

Reviews of Steve Bruce's three novels:

http://shocko.info/words/2015/7/16/striker-by-steve-bruce-the-full-review

http://thesetpieces.com/features/defender-steve-bruce-review/

https://thesetpieces.com/features/sweeper-steve-bruce-review/

August 24, 2017

Excellent thread. I was a devotee of Sportspages in London for a number of years, and would often waste unconscionable amounts on fanzines from less fashionable clubs.

A particular favourite for some bizarre reason was the East Fife one, Away From The Numbers....http://www.aftn.co.uk/aboutus.html

As an aside, an acquaintance of mine was responsible for Always The Bridesmaid, a genius of a title if ever there was one.

March 22, 2018

https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2018/mar/20/world-cup-2018-russia-contenders-dark-horses-international-game-crisis

The Russia World Cup has to save international football from crisis

As the friendly international spring break descends upon the season like a dose of Sunday afternoon blues, it has become a reflex response among those watching to sigh a little, to count the days, to see this severance from the teat of club football excitement as a draught of cold water, another unwelcome interruption from the dying hand of international football.

In many ways this sense of deflation is a credit to the way the Premier League is sold and packaged. If not quite a reflection of its enduring tensions. It is worth being clear on this point. When the current round of 82 mixed and varied international friendlies has been played, Manchester City will still be miles clear of the field, the Premier League season still reduced to a wrangle to avoid 19th and 18th place. Serie A will still be the only major European league with anything resembling a title race.

In the meantime international football, so often dismissed – with some justification – as a drowned world of by-rote mediocrity, is entering one of its periods of sharpened interest. Many of these games may look enjoyably obscure – Gibraltar v Latvia anyone? – or a selection of carefully staged geopolitical oddities (I bring you: Madagascar v Kosovo at the Stade Jean Rolland). But there is also something more tangible in train, the first real spark of the World Cup fuse, a kind of base camp for Russia 2018.

This will be the last round of friendlies before the club seasons end, a place where squads are trimmed and sharpened, tactical plans junked or fleshed out. And where we might get a sense of the look and feel of Russia 2018, European football’s last sensible international tournament before the inanities of the multi-nation Euros and Qatar’s winter-sun break.

History suggests there are three key on-field components to a genuinely memorable World Cup. The first is a high-functioning top tier of teams: a pedigree winner and at least one other side touched with a little greatness to chase them across the line.

This often turns on circumstance. The most vivid teams define themselves in fine tournament details. The good news for Russia 2018’s prospects is the likely winners look both impressively stocked and genuinely hard to separate.

Hence, in the current round of fixtures, some obvious moments of A-list gold. Argentina play Italy then Spain. Germany face Spain then Brazil. Chuck in France, who play Colombia, and history, and indeed most predictions of the future, suggest the winner will come from this bunch.

Germany are deserved favourites, with a method that seems beautifully grooved and some genuine depth in the player pool. Toni Kroos has matured into the real heart of this late-Löw team, all grizzled serial winners and fearless young talent. Germany do not exactly look irresistible. But they seem like a standard to beat, a default winner, supremely well-equipped to retain the title unless someone, somewhere can come up with a reason why not.

Brazil are better under Tite, with less in the way of Neymar-dependence and plenty of elite club football faces. Not to mention a hard core who have played club football in Russia or Ukraine.

Spain’s blend of ageing lions and sparky young guns is the usual seductive mix. Watching a midfield containing Isco, Thiago Alcântara and Andrés Iniesta might be an absorbing game within a game in its own right. France could probably pick a last-16 team from players who will not make their squad. Argentina have the greatest club footballer of all time and a rag-bag of talent and scufflers in support. There is enough here for the gears to click, the sense of destiny to take over, for at least one of the obvious A-listers to find its best rhythms.

The second necessity for a functioning tournament is interest elsewhere, a generational moment from one or two of the nearly-theres: think Poland ’82, Holland through the 90s, Romania at USA 94, Colombia last time out. Again the next week’s fixtures could offer some hope. Portugal are behind England in the UK betting, laughably, but they have a very decent chance of winning the World Cup. The game against Egypt looks fascinating, a chance for the form horse Mohamed Salah to pit himself against the annihilating boot of Portugal’s enduring golden god.

And throughout the week there are games that look like convincingly drool-worthy World Cup last-16 knockout ties. Poland, currently joint sixth in the Fifa rankings, play Nigeria. Nigeria play Serbia. Belgium’s blend of muscular defence, attacking brilliance and Roberto Martínez has a one-off against Saudi Arabia.

In the middle of which there is a genuine seam of talent, candidates for breakout success, a run to the semis, haunting penalty shootout agony.

Similarly the final ingredient – the breakout-team, the Cameroon 1990 – also looks intriguingly poised. There will surely be hints this week. South Korea face Poland, Iceland play Peru, Denmark take on Panama. Even England, defiantly touting around their assortment of bafflement and inflated expectation, could surprise everyone by failing to collapse under Gareth Southgate’s cautiously dogged hand.

So far, so familiar. But there is an added urgency too. Whatever your views on international football – and many younger fans, drawn more to individual players, do seem nonplussed by the spectacle of energetic mediocrity wrapped in a flag – it is undoubtedly entering a point of dramatic crisis.

Fifa is desperate for a successful World Cup. The club game continues to soar away into the stratosphere, sucking up coaching talent, setting an unmatchable bar of intensity.

Meanwhile, the World Cup continues to struggle under its self-imposed yoke of corruption and tailing interest, the political difficulties of Russia, even the disaster-in-waiting of badly applied VAR. There is a genuine sense of jeopardy. International football desperately needs this to work out. And it all starts here.

April 3, 2018

The article on Roald Jensen that first featured in Nutmeg magazine. Another long one this so best not quote it.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/nov/14/roald-kniksen-jensen-football-genius-norway-hearts-scotland

Roald Jensen: ‘The Garrincha of the Nordics’ you may never have heard of

He was the most mesmerising player his compatriots had ever seen. He made his international debut aged 17 and ran rings around World Cup finalists. He led his hometown club to consecutive league titles and earned 25 full caps before he was old enough to vote. His ability was acknowledged by the most successful British manager of all time. He had a horse race named after him. And he died, aged 44, still wearing his football boots and old national team shirt. His nickname was “The Garrincha of the Nordics”, but few football fans outside of his home country and the Scottish club he graced are likely to have heard of him. This is the story of Roald “Kniksen” Jensen.

Brash and fiercely independent, Bergen ticks all the traditional second-city boxes. Once a member of the Hanseatic League, the northern European trading block formed in the 13th century by the region’s most important merchant towns, the “city between the seven mountains” was for centuries Norway’s main gateway to the world, taking no small amount of pride in its cosmopolitan, quasi-separatist outlook, enshrined in the popular song and slogan “I’m not from from Norway, I’m from Bergen!”

This peculiar local identity, of course, is also frequently reflected in the mirror of football. Bergen’s undisputed powerhouse is Brann, which translates as “Fire”, and rarely can a football club have been more appropriately named. Famous for the passion of its fans and the perpetual volatility of its boardroom, the club has more often than not struggled to live up to its undoubted potential, which – paradoxically, perhaps – accounts for a great deal of its popularity. Inspiring blind faith and blind fury in equal measure, this is an institution both defined by and defining of the city it calls home.

Born in Bergen in 1943, Jensen grew up in an austere post-war Marshall-planned, sugar-rationed society, with limited scope for individual self-expression. Nonetheless, he developed into the ultimate Kjuagutt – local slang for the archetypal street-smart, irreverent, flamboyant kid, essentially a Scandinavian, social-democratic version of the Argentinian cult of the Pibe (if such a concept is imaginable).

At the age of four, he was given his first football by his father and there was no turning back. Honing his skills by spending untold hours doing keepy-uppies and smashing the ball against the wall of his childhood home, he soon made a name for himself. His first club – formed with friends with whom he’d play in Bergen’s narrow alleyways – was called Dynamo in honour of the Muscovite idols who had bewildered British crowds during the Russian club’s famous tour of 1945. The Bergen version routinely won games by twenty-plus goal margins, with the tiny, frail dribbling wizard either scoring or making most of them. He quickly became known as “Kniksen”, after the verb knikse, to do tricks with the ball.

Eventually, he joined Brann’s youth set-up alongside several of his Dynamo pals. He was 10. Younger than most and smaller than all of his team-mates, he nonetheless continued to dominate games, despite opponents often deploying brutal tactics to stifle him. In 1959 he was the star of the junior side that reached its second consecutive Norwegian Youth Cup final. The game was played at Brann Stadion and a 10,000-plus crowd turned up to watch the boy wonder who, according to contemporary press reports, won the semi-final “on his own”. (He later said he could never accept such praise as it was also “an implicit criticism” of his team-mates.) Brann retained the trophy and a few weeks later 14,000 Bergeners showed up to worship their new idol when he turned out at home for Norway’s juniors. To put those figures into context, the entire population of Bergen at the time was approximately 115,000. This was Kniksen mania.

It was evident, then, that young Jensen had to be accommodated in the first-team without delay. Appropriately, it was a coach known as Saint Peter who opened the pearly gates. Upon arrival his in Bergen in 1960, the Hungarian coach Tivadar Szentpetery opted to introduce a Magical Magyaresque formation, with the centre-forward and wingers withdrawn and the nominal inside-forwards – Kniksen on the right and his great friend Rolf Birger Pedersen on the left – playing alongside each other up front. Although Szentpetery failed – mainly because he had no common language with the players – his thinking was innovative by Norwegian standards and helped lay the foundations for future success.

Meanwhile, Kniksen impressed enough to be called up for senior national duty after only a few months in the first team. His call-up was controversial, both because of his youth and because one of the three men on the selection committee was also a Brann director. The national coach, an Austrian disciplinarian called Willy Kment, said that “Jensen is merely a child”. Still, he had no qualms about putting the child in his side.

Kniksen made his debut against Austria, scored his maiden international goal against Finland and then, in September 1960, won the collective heart of the nation with a masterful performance against eternal arch-enemies Sweden. Some 36,000 spectators in Oslo saw the youngster humiliate a side that had been World Cup finalists only two years earlier. “Kniksen drew more applause than the National Theatre gets through an entire season,” claimed one excited scribe; meanwhile, Dagens Nyheter, Sweden’s largest newspaper, anointed him “Norway’s new King!”

In the spring of 1961, an extraordinary story appeared in the now-defunct Bergen broadsheet Morgenposten. The paper revealed that Jensen had signed a contract with Real Madrid. There was one catch, however: the “news” was reported on April Fool’s Day and the “Real Madrid manager” pictured and quoted in the paper was in fact László Papp, the Hungarian triple Olympic boxing champion. Still, the fact that the story was deemed plausible enough to publish as a joke spoke volumes about the esteem in which the teenager was held. And more was yet to come.

Because of a change in the league format, the 1961-62 season was a 16-team, 18-month marathon affair, and during this period Jensen, Pedersen and Roald Paulsen developed into one of the most potent attacking forces the nation had ever seen. Combined, the trio scored a stunning 75 goals, powering Brann towards their first title, which was eventually secured with an away win over Rosenborg that also saw the Trondheim club relegated. The triumph was marred by an incident in which a frustrated home supporter attacked Kniksen with an umbrella, knocking him out cold. Still, it was a remarkable achievement and the party, predictably, went on for days.

For Jensen, though, the most important event of the season had arguably occurred a few months previously, when Heart of Midlothian arrived in Bergen to play an exhibition match. The Scottish professionals defeated their amateur Norwegian counterparts 4-0 but Kniksen’s performance left a lasting impression. “From that moment,” he later claimed, “I knew I could go to Edinburgh anytime I wanted to.” (Later, Norway’s sensational 4-3 defeat of a Scotland side featuring Kniksen’s great hero Denis Law merely confirmed the instincts of the Hearts directors.)

Having already rejected an offer from an unnamed Italian club, Kniksen decided to stay put for the time being and Brann won the now-restructured league again in 1963. The following season, however, the double champions suffered a barely comprehensible relegation and the team’s undisputed superstar began to realise his future lay abroad. Even so, the decision to move was not one to be made lightly, for, trapped by its self-defeating amateur ethos, the Norwegian FA still forbade professionals from representing the national team. As it happened, in 1965 Norway enjoyed one of their best seasons since the war, only missing out on qualification for the upcoming World Cup in England after a narrow home defeat to France. If their best player had been available, who knows what might have happened?

Kniksen arrived at Tynecastle in January 1965, midway through what would eventually prove to be the most dramatic season in his new club’s history. He was the first foreigner to wear the maroon shirt and managerial legend Tommy Walker was not exactly stingy with his praise: “Jensen is the greatest talent [to join Hearts] in ages”.

The 22-year-old made his debut against Dunfermline and earned rave reviews. “Jensen’s five-star show!” roared the headline in the Edinburgh Evening News. Norwegian footballers had excelled abroad before – Asbjorn Halvorsen captained Hamburg to German titles in the 1920s and Per Bredesen won the Scudetto with Milan in 1957 – but Kniksen was the first to play professionally in Great Britain, which was a source of enormous pride to the most Anglophile of all nations (the distinction between England and Scotland counted for little).

The celebrity magazine Aktuell, predictably, published a photo of the smiling young star in full Highlander regalia, and his every move was reported by the adoring Norwegian press. Meanwhile, his performances continued ŧo impress Scottish scribes. “Jensen keeps Hearts in title race,” reported Ian Rennie after a 3-1 defeat of Third Lanark.

On 17 January, Hearts ascended to the summit of the table by beating Celtic 2-1: “Jensen saves the day,” said the Sunday Evening Post, and went on: “The new boy who stole the show was Roald Jensen, Hearts’ new import from Norway. He was the man who took the steam out of Celtic. Who tamed the ball. Who never made a move that didn’t have intelligence behind it.” For Kniksen, who despite his immense popularity had never felt accepted as a team player by the sports press in his homeland, this was vindication.

Alas the season was to end in heartbreak for Hearts. Famously, on the final day of the campaign Hearts lost 2-0 to Kilmarnock at Tynecastle, conceding the title to the visitors on goal average. Their luckless Norwegian inside-right, so decisive in earlier games, contrived to hit the post not once but twice. Still, despite this cruel setback, Kniksen was now recognised as a star in his new home.

Among the many impressed by his skill was a battling Dunfermline centre-forward of the day. “Our tactics [when facing Hearts] were basically ‘stop Super-Jensen’,” said Alex Ferguson many years later. However, although he continued to dazzle in flashes, Kniksen’s subsequent seasons at Tynecastle were marred by injuries and managerial conflict. After 15 years in charge, Walker was relieved of his duties in 1966 and his replacement, John Harvey, was less than impressed by his flamboyant, yet fragile winger. “I guess he just didn’t like me,” Jensen said later, while maintaining that he had “been treated very unfairly.”

Strangely, for such a firm fans’ favourite, he made almost as many reserve and B-team performances combined as he did for the first team during his six-and-a-half years in Scotland. (As testimony to his popularity, more than 30,000 fans would sometimes turn up to watch reserve games when he was playing.) Being routinely kicked pillar-to-post did not help and – being a Bergener and thus not lacking temper – he would on occasion retaliate, which led to disciplinary problems.

When fit and on song, he could still create moments of magic. Many older Hearts fans regard his goal against Partick Thistle as the finest in club history. Receiving the ball on the left wing, he bamboozled five defenders and the goalkeeper before striking home. He was in fine fettle that year, scoring nine goals in 22 games, leading the team on a glorious cup run and scoring the decisive penalty in the semi-final against Morton. In trademark fashion, however, Hearts surprisingly lost the final to the team against whom Kniksen had made his Scottish league debut three years previously: Dunfermline. Around this time, Feyenoord allegedly wanted to sign him but he politely declined their offer as he felt he still had something to prove in Scotland. Two years later, the Dutch club won the European Cup.

Ankles swollen, tendons aching, Super-Jensen – like many another gifted maverick of his era – went into relatively early decline. In 1969, as the ban on professionals was belatedly abolished, he returned to Norwegian national team but, despite a wonderfully composed performance in his comeback against Mexico, ultimately he could not dazzle as he did in his early-1960s heyday.

Eventually, he left Hearts and rejoined his beloved Brann – as he had always said he would – inspiring them to win the cup in 1972. But he retired from the game the following year, settling for a quiet life in Bergen – fishing, tending to his cabin, spending time with his wife and children. He remained a staunch critic of the way the game was run in his homeland, once saying: “We will not have professional football in Norway until they get it on the moon!”

Professional football did eventually come, though not, sadly, in Kniksen’s lifetime. On 6 October 1987, while playing in a veteran’s game at Brann Stadion, he collapsed and died from an undetected heart defect, aged only 44. Tragically, yet somehow appropriately, he departed this world wearing his old Norway shirt, the one he should have worn so many more times had it not been for the Norwegian FA’s short-sightedness.

Thousands turned out for his funeral. In memoriam, Brann commissioned a statue by Per Ung, Norway’s finest sculptor, which stands outside Brann Stadion. Norway’s annual Player Of The Year award was named after him but, bizarrely and dismayingly, this honour was revoked in 2013. Thieves broke into his wife Eva’s home and stole most of the medals and mementos from his career – including his Golden Watch, the traditional gift presented to all Norwegian players who reach the milestone of 25 caps, and which he remains the youngest man to have received.

His son Sondre, who briefly turned out for Brann in the early 1990s, said he was “the perfect father,” adding: “He just wanted to be kind and help people. Often those who were not like everyone else. He just wanted to be an ordinary guy. And he was.” Perhaps that’s as fitting an epitaph as any: an ordinary guy who wasn’t ordinary at all. Roald Jensen may not have enjoyed the success and wealth his talent merited but, as he no doubt would have agreed, talent, somehow, is its own reward. Nearly three decades have passed since his untimely death. However, they still remember and adore him in two great cities either side of the North Sea.

June 22, 2018

Sócrates was some boy :lol:

https://www.theblizzard.co.uk/article/drugs-test

The Drugs Test

What really happened when Sócrates was called to give a sample in the 1982 World Cup?

At the start of 1982 Sócrates decided to give up the booze and fags and get in shape for the World Cup. It was a difficult decision for the hard-drinking, chain-smoking Brazil captain and he struggled to get ready for the most important competition of his career. Even before arriving in Spain he jokingly told his teammates that he dreamt of being selected for the anti-doping tests so he could finally have a drink. A few minutes after Brazil hammered Scotland 4-1, his wish came true. What really went on in the doctor’s room that hot June night has spawned many a tall tale.

This piece is all about yarns and memory and so we’ll start with the best one.

The Scotland squad at that tournament was studded with household names, but even with players like Kenny Dalglish, Graeme Souness and Steve Archibald in their ranks, no one gave them a hope against Brazil, a side that had lost just twice in their previous 34 games. So it was a shock to almost everyone inside Seville’s Benito Villamarín stadium when David Narey put the Scots ahead after 18 minutes. Narey toe-bashed the ball into the top corner, threw his hands in the air and then pirouetted in celebration, looking exactly like someone who couldn’t believe he’d just given Scotland the lead against Brazil. His teammates ran to congratulate him but, as the legend goes, one of them didn’t come to pat him on the back. “What did ye go and dae that fir?” said the unidentified voice. “Now they’re gonnae be pissed off!”

Apocryphal? Surely. But wrong? Not by much. The goal roused Brazil, as did a half-time barney in their dressing-room when Zico, who had equalised after 33 minutes with a sublime free-kick, threatened to walk off unless Sócrates, Falcão and Cerezo worked a bit harder in midfield and helped him deal with John Robertson and Asa Hartford on Brazil’s right flank.

They talked it over, sorted it out and flew out of the tunnel for the second half. Oscar gave them the lead from a corner kick after 48 minutes and then Éder scored one of the goals of the tournament with the deftest of chips that floated serenely over Alan Rough and into the top corner. Falcão put the icing on the cake a few moments from the end with a perfectly placed daisy cutter from 25 yards out.

The game had kicked off in an 80-degree heat that had dissipated only slightly by the time the referee blew his whistle shortly before 11 o’clock that Friday night. The players were exhausted and dehydrated. But for Narey and three others the ordeal was just beginning. Scotland’s goalscorer was one of those selected to give a urine sample for the anti-doping test, so a few minutes after the final whistle went the players dragged themselves into a little room under the stand and concentrated desperately on taking a leak.

Scottish players have always been known for their love of the bevvy but Sócrates put them all to shame. He began drinking in his early teens, mainly because it was the done thing in Ribeirão Preto, the blisteringly hot town where he grew up and where everyone drank weak lager to cool down and hydrate.

It didn’t take him long, however, to realise that beer helped him overcome his terrible shyness. By the end of his teens he was famous for the huge amounts of lager he could put away and even a promising career as a footballer did not stop him from chugging back large quantities of beer almost every day of the week.

It had little effect in 1982. All but two of Brazil’s outfield players were aged between 25 and 29, meaning they were at their physical peak. Sócrates and Falcão were 28, Junior and Cerezo were 27, and Zico was 29. They all knew that this was their best shot of winning the World Cup and none more than Sócrates, who earlier in the year decided he was going to curb his vices and take the tournament seriously.

He began a special training regime at his club Corinthians and forced himself through a pre-World Cup training camp that was so punishing he frequently threw up at the side of the pitch. He stuck at it, replacing excess fat with muscle, but it wasn’t fun and he missed the trusty companionship of a few cold ones after training. By the time he got to Spain he was in the best shape of his life, but he was thirsty and he didn’t care who knew it.

Sócrates’s drinking was well-known to his teammates and it eventually became famous to fans the world over. “I smoke, I drink and I think,” was one of his most famous quotes and he played up to his image.

Even today, when Scotland players recall the Brazil game they are as likely to mention Sócrates’s exploits in anti-doping as they are Narey’s famous toe-poke or the Brazilian goals, three of which were absolute peaches.

Alex McLeish was in the dressing-room when the players were called to give their samples and he has his own version of events. The big central defender was a second-half substitute that night and when the name Sócrates comes up the gregarious Glaswegian shifts into full raconteur mode.

“Sócrates was unbelievable, an Adonis of a guy, 6’4” or something but a majestic footballer,” McLeish told an audience who gathered in April to hear him talk to Graham Hunter for his Big Interview podcast. “Even the way he walked down the street was brilliant.

“After we played them and we got a doing in Seville, the 4-1 game (with the) Davey Narey goal, and after the game Gordon Strachan and John Robertson were in the drugs testing.

“I don’t know what it is about Scots but we cannae seem to do a piss… So Gordon and John Robertson are there and he says they cannae dae a piss and they’re ages in there and they’re drinking water and we’re trying to discuss how the Brazilians are better than us.”

McLeish’s accent grows stronger as he warms to the clichés of pasty-faced Scots and lithe, languid Brazilians.

“Gordon says, ‘I am sitting there with my wee white skin and I am hiding my nipples’ and Robbo is saying, ‘Maybe it’s because we like a bevvy and I like a smoke now and again.’ And Gordon says, ‘Aye but it’s just the way these guys are made, it’s their bodies, it’s the rhythm, it’s that, but I guess you’re right Robbo, there’s a bit of that as well.’ And as they said that Sócrates walks in with his wee speedos on, big long legs, beautiful athlete, curly hair – and he had a fag in his hand. He had a fag in his hand and two bottles of beer in two fingers. He gives it that. Guzzles a beer. Pssssssssssssssssss. Finished. No problem. And Gordon and Robbo are like that, ****ing hell! And Sócrates says to the two of them. ‘You play a good game. Goodbye.’ Unbelievable.”

You can almost hear the smile spreading across McLeish’s face.

Marcel Proust said that memory is imagination. As time goes by and our lives change we recall not what happened but what we thought happened. Memory of a particular moment is merely regret, Proust said, or perhaps what Brazilians call saudades, an emotional mix of regret and longing.

Football, of course, is all about memory, both real and imagined. For without the recollections of games or goals or shared experiences, why keep watching?

When you think back, the passes are crisper, the tackles are cleaner and the goals are greater. The craic beforehand and the camaraderie on the terraces has a greater meaning. The grass is greener and the sun is warmer.

It’s not that you forget the cold or the rain, much less the anger or the disappointment. They’re simply not as powerful in hindsight. The aperture of our mind closes, just enough to leave the central image but crop the blurry details that surround it. Time amplifies happiness and diminishes despair.

It’s harder to forget today’s football because it is recorded – almost literally – from every angle. But things were simpler in 1982.

Fifa produce a written report of every game played in the World Cup but the document is only part of the official record. After each game, match observers answer questions about what they saw, what they thought of the referee’s performance and how the players conducted themselves. Some of those old match reports remain in Fifa’s vaults in Zurich but some of the details have been lost to time and the archive is today incomplete.

The unpublished two-page report for the Brazil-Scotland game is one of those that still survives and it is wonderfully idiosyncratic. The observer was a Spanish-speaker and seemed to be either unfamiliar with the players or adopted a hard-line practice of calling them by the names on their birth certificates.

So Brazil’s first goal was credited not to Zico but to Arthur, with José, Eder and Roberto getting the others. Scotland’s two substitutions were given as Kenny x Gordon, and Alex x Asa. One of the questions posed was, “Does the referee look and act the part?” “Sí,” the monitor responded. Another asked, “Was it easy to referee this game?” “No,” was the one-word reply.

The team sheets are missing so the only other relevant information is the names of the four players who were chosen for the anti-doping tests. At the end of the first page, written in block capitals with blue ballpoint pen, are the names 6 Miller and 14 Narey.

Willie Miller can remember being taken to a small room under the stands. It looked a bit like a doctor’s surgery, with a desk or two and some chairs lining the walls. There was a medic and a team rep. When the Aberdeen captain walked in, Sócrates was already sitting there.

“We were taken into the sample room but we had just played at 3pm, 125 degrees, something like that, so it took me about an hour,” Miller told the Off the Ball podcast on BBC Scotland. “So anyways they says, ‘Do you want a drink?’ And of course, I’m the Scotsman, he’s the Brazilian. So they brought in a packet of 20 fags and a crate of beer and a crate of coke. Who was the beer and fags for? It’s got to be the Scotsman. No, it was for the Brazilian. It was for Sócrates. He sat there and he wolfed down about a dozen little bottles of San Miguel and 20 fags.”

Memory comes and goes but mostly it goes. Remembering what happened 35 years ago is never easy, even if the occasion was unforgettable. When Miller is pressed to remember more he comes up with some choice recollections. “I remember we’d been humped 4-1 so I wasn’t as if I was doing the highland fling with joy and I didn’t want to spend too much time with the enemy in the yellow shirt,” he told me.

“Sócrates was there. We didn’t talk a great deal but we did have a conversation. I am sure he talked about being in Glasgow. And I am sure I got his top. He’ll probably have my Scotland top on his wall somewhere.”

Sócrates had never been to Glasgow and Graeme Souness got his shirt. The details, though, are irrelevant when compared to Miller’s conclusion. He won 65 caps and led one of the greatest Scottish club sides of all time but what he most remembers about Seville was a feeling as well as a fact – just what it’s like to rub shoulders with greatness.

"The 1982 Brazil team were one of the best teams never to win the World Cup,” said Miller. “We knew we weren’t their equals. They were footballing gods.”

The Brazilian who sat alongside Sócrates that night was Luizinho. The 23-year old Atletico Mineiro defender was in awe of his captain, a man who commanded respect from all who played under him. Like Bobby Moore or Billy McNeil, Sócrates didn’t shout or shake his fist or charge about the field. He led calmly, by example. No one questioned his authority.

Off the field, though, Sócrates was the first man at the bar – George Best without the messiness – and when they walked into the anti-doping room Luizinho knew what to expect. “There was a lot of beer and he wanted to drink a lot more,” he said from his home city of Belo Horizonte. "He was definitely taking his time because he wanted to enjoy his beer. It took me 15 or 20 minutes. I waited for him but I could see that he was enjoying himself and wanted to stretch it out. So I was done and eventually I decided to leave him.”

Luizinho got the coach back to the Hotel Parador de Carmona, the 14th-century former Arab fortress where Brazil were based for the first round of the tournament. The rest of the team knew that Sócrates was going to make his own special reunion last as long as he could and manager Telé Santana asked his journalist friend Juca Kfouri if he wouldn’t mind driving him back when he was finished. So when Sócrates had done his business he poured himself into the front seat of Kfouri’s rental car and snored all the way home.

Before that, though, he still had to fill a little container with urine. He managed, needless to say. But the final words to this story must lie with the man himself. Brazil’s captain loved a good session more than just about anything and this one, coming after months of self-imposed drought, was so memorable that he felt compelled to register it, both immediately after it happened and then again decades later.

Sócrates spent part of his time in Spain writing a daily diary for the Brazilian sports magazine Placar. Each day he would jot down his thoughts on hotel stationery or rip a page from a reporter’s notebook and scribble some words for Kfouri, the magazine editor and his close friend.

His record of what happened after the Scotland game is revealing because it was so fresh. “I was there for two hours trying to do a pee for the anti-doping,” he wrote on June 18. “I drank about ten beers and champagne.” Sócrates admitted he was tipsy by the time he had finished downing what he gleefully termed “celebratory diuretics”.

But drinkers are like fishermen and the tales always get taller in the retelling. Sócrates never hid his fondness for alcohol and he took a perverse delight in scandalising those who criticised him for it. In his unpublished memoir, written in the early 2000s, those few hours with David Narey and Willie Miller got special attention.

"I changed quickly and ran over to the assigned room,” he wrote. “I knew that I would take a long time because I had lost a lot of liquid and the heat was killing. There were four of us. They asked me what I liked to drink. A good old beer, of course.

“When the guy opened the fridge I tried to hide my smile,” he said with a characteristically mischievous flourish. “It was filled with all kinds of drinks. It was beautiful! I was drinking my second can of beer when I realised that the others had already completed their mission. And I didn’t feel at all ready. To be honest, I didn’t want it to end. I drank all the beer they had and then I moved on to champagne. And still nothing. Wine, nothing. Soft drinks, nothing. It was only almost three hours later that they got their sample. When I left the stadium the rest of the team had already gone but I was the happiest of men.”

“It was,” he concluded, “one of the best days of my life.”

June 22, 2018

https://www.theplayerstribune.com/en-us/articles/romelu-lukaku-ive-got-some-things-to-say?utm_source=social&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=worldcup18&utm_term=Lukaku

Thought this was a great read.

June 23, 2018

On 22/06/2018 at 11:18, BerraBelieveit said:

https://www.theplayerstribune.com/en-us/articles/romelu-lukaku-ive-got-some-things-to-say?utm_source=social&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=worldcup18&utm_term=Lukaku

Thought this was a great read.

Thanks for that, it was a great read. A refreshing change to hear players speak from the heart like that. Credit to Romelu Lukaku.

Football writing thread

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