Club | Expenditure | Income | Net spend |
---|---|---|---|
Man United | £214.22m | £10.35m | -£203.87m |
Chelsea | £242.18m | £39.96m | -£202.22m |
West Ham | £163.80m | £16.02m | -£147.78m |
Notts Forest | £143.69m | £6.30m | -£135.05m |
Newcastle | £122.40m | — | -£122.40m |
Tottenham | £152.91m | £34.88m | -£118.04m |
Arsenal | £118.86m | £21.42m | -£97.44m |
Wolves | £122.94m | £37.89m | -£85.05m |
Southampton | £50.76m | — | -£50.76m |
Brentford | £45.45m | £3.24m | -£42.21m |
Fulham | £50.76m | £18.81m | -£31.95m |
Crystal Palace | £31.14m | £4.91m | -£26.23m |
Bournemouth | £24.21m | — | -£24.21m |
Aston Villa | £49.50m | £37.80m | -£11.70m |
Everton | £63.72m | £52.20m | -£11.52m |
Liverpool | £77.22m | £72.63m | -£4.59m |
Leeds United | £95.08m | £97.38m | +£2.30m |
Man City | £125.55m | £145.53m | +£19.98m |
Leicester City | £15.30m | £75.15m | +£59.85m |
Brighton | £33.66m | £102.51m | +£68.85m |
TOTAL | £1.943bn | £776.98m | -£1.164b |
Much of their success and survival that season was down to one man who would go on to score a total of 422 career goals over the course of 19 years – John Aldridge. Signed from Newport County for £78,000 midway through the 1983/84 season, the 5’11 striker finished the season with four goals in eight games for Oxford, and 23 in 36 in total. Newport finished comfortably midtable in 12th with 62 points, but Aldridge was on the up, after his new club stormed to the Third Division title, losing just seven games all season, finishing on 95 points.
It was to be Aldridge’s first taste of the Second Division, yet nobody would’ve known as the 27-year old striker netted 30 league goals in 42 appearances to win the Golden Boot, firing his club to their second consecutive title. Losing just one more than they had the season before at eight, they narrowly pipped Birmingham City to the title by two points, finishing on 84. Another 84 was the amount of goals Oxford scored in the league that season, outscoring the next highest, Grimsby Town in 10th, by 12. Aldridge’s 30 made him responsible for 37.5% of the goals scored.
Tasting top flight football for the first time since joining the Football League 23 years before, Oxford flirted with relegation right up until the final day of the season, where a 3-0 win at home to Arsenal kept them up by a point, having won just two of their final nine games of the season. Aldridge scored 23 goals that year, finishing as the third highest scorer in the division. Cup football, however, provided the club with much more enjoyment, gifting them their first – and to date, only – major silverware.
Key to their League Cup run that season was Aldridge. The man who Liverpool would a year later sign to replace an outgoing Ian Rush – even bearing an uncanny resemblance to the Welsh striker – had a career long love affair with the competition, scoring 22 times in 25 outings. From those numbers, 14 came in 17 games for Oxford, with six of them aiding his side to reach the final in 1986. The team as a whole scored 19 on their way to lifting the Milk Cup, meaning that again Aldridge’s contribution hovered around the third mark.
In the final, however, Aldridge was not able to top off the run with another. Instead, the #8, in front of a 90,396 crowd, was only able to assist his teammates, by setting up the third and final goal in a 3-0 win, when QPR goalkeeper Paul Barron could only parry his shot. Jeremy Charles put it in the net on the rebound, joining Man of the Match Trevor Hebberd and Ray Houghton on the scoresheet.
The 3-0 victory was compelling and the path to the final was well navigated. Oxford never looked like anything other than worthy finalists, overcoming Northampton Town 4-1 over two legs, winning both, beating Newcastle, Norwich, and Portsmouth 3-1, and then dispatching Aston Villa 4-3 on aggregate to book their ultimately triumphant place at Wembley.
The Cup win should have qualified Oxford for European football, with the League Cup winners reserved a spot in the UEFA Cup, however due to the Heysel disaster of the previous year, all English clubs were banned from European football after a UEFA vote on the matter. It was Liverpool’s part in the tragedy that prevented Oxford’s participation in the competition, and it was as close as Aldridge got too, with all English clubs banned from European competition for five years, and Liverpool for ten commuted to six. By the time English clubs were back on the continental stage, Aldridge had only just returned to England, and then only to the Second Division, after a two year spell in Spain with Real Sociedad.
Midway through the 1986/87 season, Liverpool paid £750,000 for the record-breaking goalscorer – ten times the amount Oxford had paid for him three years prior. Already on fifteen goals for the season, Aldirdge arrived at Anfield as a man in form, yet he scored just twice in the ten games he played in the remaining part of the season. It was normal service resumed come the following campaign. Aldridge finished top scorer at the club, after he scored 29 in 45 and helped Liverpool to another title, before winning the FA Cup and Charity Shield with them in 1989.
Thanks to 90 goals in 132 games for The Us, Aldridge is the club’s fourth highest goalscorer of all time. Only Tony Jones (100), James Constable (106), and Graham Atkinson (107) have scored more. None, however, have a better goal to game ratio than his of 0.64 goals per game. He holds the club record for most goals in a Football League season – 34 – and the most goals league goals in a season – 30 – both in the 1984/85 season.
By Jordan Florit - @TheFalseLibero
]]>The Oxford United collection, on sale at www.theterracstore.com will feature mugs, phone cases, cushions, blankets and more from some of the most iconic U’s kits, both past and present.
If one thing has remained ever-present since, well, Owen Hargreaves, it is the lack of a true ball-playing anchorman in the England midfield. This international break did nothing to suggest that is about to change. Having watched a lot of Leeds United last season - my interest drawn by the arrival of Marcelo Bielsa - I was hoping they would get promoted and that we'd soon see Kalvin Phillips in an England shirt. It wasn't to be, and with the glare of England managers rarely leaving the top half of the Premier League, let alone looking yo the second tier, it's unlikely he'll earn a call-up soon. He would've plugged that midfield and plugged it well, so with that in mind, here's our pick for an England XI exclusively of Championship players, picked by us and defended by you, the fans in The Terrace.
"Ben Davies is someone who has been on our books for a while," 18-year old Preston fan Jack explained to me. "He came through our academy and for the past 3 seasons he’s really turned himself into an established Championship defender.
"Last season, our whole squad was a little off the pace as was Ben Davies, but I believe that’s down to the inexperience of Jordan Storey being paired with him at the back. This season, Patrick Bauer was brought in to partner with him and Davies has been a revelation, they compliment each other well. He’s a really good ball-playing centre half who doesn’t mind to get a foot in and will do the dirty work if it’s needed.
"I can see him becoming an England international in the future if he continues his trajectory, so I can potentially see him going to an established Premier League club like Watford, Leicester, Southampton or Newcastle, where I think he will be sensation.
"I hope he stays and gets promoted with us, but you can’t fault him leaving for a bigger Premier League club. He’d suit any Premier League team who plays from the back and I think, under the right club, he would comfortably be one of the most underrated ball-playing centre halves in that league."
Jack goes to most home games and you can follow him on Twitter here.
"Alfie Mawson is a commander at CB, and would be my choice for captain without Tom Cairney in the team."
Jack Kew is at Craven Cottage for every home game and believes Mawson "could have 100% helped Fulham's chances of survival last season had he not been injured for most of [it]."
"This season he has had a couple of blips in defence, but given consistent game time, I'm sure he will have a shout of being in the Premier League again."
Follow Jack on Twitter here. He follows Fulham around the country; it's the least he deserves.
Dael Fry - Middlesbrough - Centre-Back
"He needs to sort out his discipline," PNE fan Anthony told me, "but he's easily Premier League standard.
"I'm possibly slightly biased, but for me he's one of the best CDMs in the Championship, if not the best. I think quite a few opposition teams and fans would agree, although most hate him, which for me proves how effective he is.
"If we don't get promoted to the Premier League this season, then think he'll be gone next summer as he'll be into last year of his contract. I wouldn't say he'd be a regular in a top six team, but certainly mid-table in the Premier League, easily.
"He breaks up opposition play so effectively and then sets the pace and tempo at which we play. He's the one player I think most North end fans would hate to see leave, closely followed by Davies."
Jamie Shackleton - Leeds - Utility Player
According to Leeds fan Ryan, who's been a season ticket holder for six years now, Shackleton is "expected to be the next in of a long line of successful LUFC graduates," and "may be the first to play in white, blue and yellow in the Premier League for a long time.
"Under Bielsa’s tutorship I have little doubt we’ll see him in an England shirt at some point, whether that be at fullback, defensive or attacking midfield. Little Jamie has a big future."
Eden, a lifelong 23-year old Leeds fan, went to his first game in 2003: "[it] was against Swindon in the Carling Cup, when Paul Robinson scored in the last minute and we won on penalties! I’ve got a season ticket in the South Stand at Elland Road and try to get to as many away games as possible."
I"’ve not seen many players blessed with the natural fitness and engine of Shackleton, but his game is so much more than just that. He came through around the same time as Jack Clarke, and often didn’t get the plaudits he deserved because Clarke was the flashy winger with end product, but Shackleton is a much more rounded player."
"Versatility is a fantastic trait to have under Bielsa, and Shackleton has it in abundance as we saw last season with him playing right back most of the season then slotting in to centre midfield in the play-offs and being arguably the best player over two legs, despite the end result. At such a young age, it’s difficult to say how high he’ll reach but he certainly has the potential and work ethic to get there.
Kalvin Phillips - Leeds - Defensive Midfield
"Under Bielsa, players are generally cogs in a very well oiled machine, but Kalvin is probably the shiniest cog you’ll find," Eden told me, again singing the plaudits of his club's midfield.
"Prior to Bielsa coming in, he was a squad player in a very average side, but always had the fans support with him being a physical and uncompromising Leeds lad. The way he’s kicked on from the start of last season is superb.
"The fact we turned down £20-million from the a Premier League club (Aston Villa) speaks for itself. He’s definitely a future England international and it probably won’t be too long until he gets there, hopefully still as a Leeds player."
Leeds fan Ryan, 26, had the same story: "at the start of last season if you had said to any Leeds fan that Kalvin would be worth £25 million they would have said you're deluded; a fair few didn’t even want him in the starting 11."
"Yet under Marcelo Bielsa he has transformed into ‘the Yorkshire Pirlo’ with a range of passing you will not see beaten in the Championship, a massive improvement in his tackling ability, and a much-improved physique, which means he bullies people off the ball.
"If Leeds get promoted he will fulfill a lifetime dream of playing for Leeds in the Premier League. If not, a move to another club that is there is a guarantee for him, and for me there is no doubt he will go on to be capped by England numerous times."
Sam, whose first game was 20 years ago, agrees with his two fellow fans: "Phillips is probably the best example of the dramatic improvement at Leeds under Bielsa."
"Last summer, some Leeds fans were apathetic about Kalvin’s future. His performances were mixed, and he was prone to a rash tackle. What a transformation since then."
"Since moving to the holding role last season, the 'Yorkshire Pirlo' has been outstanding. He has picked up where he left off this campaign: strong in the tackle, an excellent range of passing, and an assured figure in front of the defence. Expect to see Phillips in an England shirt sooner than later."
Daniel Batty - Hull - Central Midfield
"I’m hopeful of him having a good season this year," Benedict, a match-going fan of 12 years told me. "Maybe he will get a great chance of playing the majority of the games due to some uncertainty over Henriksen’s future, and so far he’s impressed alongside Kevin Stewart and has good link-up play.
"He makes good runs into the box, which is evident from his goal against Swansea. He has a great passing range also, which enables us to get the ball to Bowen and Grosicki a lot quicker.
Benedict continued with praise for Hull City players, this time a rumoured summer target for Southampton, Jarrod Bowen.
"I honestly believe he should be a Premier League player this season, but we’ve still somehow managed to keep hold of him. The way he has developed over the last two seasons has been absolutely fantastic, especially the way he has matured from a young unknown into our key man in such a short space of time.
"He is able to stick it in using either foot and his movement throughout games is vital to the way we play, and it’s vital he stays fit the whole season because we rely on him so much. I believe he will be a Premier League player next season, no matter what."
You can - and should - follow Benedict on Twitter.
Watkins, who has four goals in six outings so far this season, was nominated for the Championship Player of the Month award for August, but was narrowly pipped to it by Derby's Daniel Johnson, who scored four and assisted three in one game fewer.
He scored 12 goals last season, leading to Crystal Palace bidding £12-million for him this summer, but the bid was rejected and last month he signed a new four-year deal with The Bees.
"Grant is our best player. Considering he joined half way through last season when we were in the Premier League, he has adapted brilliantly. He works hard and finishes every chance he gets. When he was in the Premier League, he showed his ability to compete with the top level; he has the potential to be a top Premier League striker for a top six club."
- Matty Hislop, 16, attends every home and half of the away days.
Ben, who has been going to games since 2009, agrees: "I believe Karlan Grant has the potential to be in the England team one day.
"He oozes quality and I believe that although there are a lot of good strikers in the England setup I believe Karlan can go all the way, 4 goals in 6 matches in a struggling team with little service he shows his quality, really."
By Jordan Florit - @TheFalseLibero
For a bit of fun and light relief from the boredom of the international break, we’ve come up with an alternative XI picked exclusively from the Premier League – but don’t worry, we’ve got plans for the EFL, too!
Goalkeepers:
Jordan Pickford is undoubtedly the #1 and Nick Pope is deservedly in the squad, but perhaps Tom Heaton’s spot could’ve gone elsewhere. We propose Sheffield United's Dean Henderson.
The 22-year old #1, on loan from Manchester United, played all 46 of The Blades’ games last season, conceding the fewest in the league at 41, and has helped his team to five points in their opening four games in the Premier League, including a clean sheet against Crystal Palace.
An honourable mention goes to Southampton's Angus Gunn. The 23-year old ‘keeper has played for England at U16, 17, 19, 20, and 21 level, and received his first call-up in November 2017 for a friendly against Brazil. The son of Bryan Gunn, who made over 400 appearances for Norwich and was capped six times by Scotland, was offered the chance to represent his father’s country, but turned it down to stay on the peripheral of the England set-up. The closest he’s come since 2017 was a spot in the World Cup 2018 training camp.
Defenders:
With Danny Rose and Ben Chilwell in the selection and Tyrone Mings able to play there too, the only international quality left-backs left in the Premier League are Luke Shaw and Ryan Bertrand, and both are injured. With that in mind, we propose a back three of Conor Coady, who should definitely have had a call-up by now, his Wolves teammate Ryan Bennett, and Bournemouth’s Steve Cook.
Wolves’ defence was one of the Premier League’s surprises last season, providing a strong base for Matt Doherty and Jonny to attack with freedom from the wingback position. This season, with European football as well, it will be hard to keep the back three fatigue free. Cook would be able to replicate Willy Boly’s role within the triumvirate.
Midfielders:
Southgate’s loyalty to Kieran Tripper saw him recalled to the squad after an absence that the Atletico Madrid right-back admitted was deserved. Aaron Wan-Bissaka and Trent Alexander-Arnold both got the nod ahead of Walker, so he could have been an easy pick for our right wing-back slot. However, Ainsley Maitland-Niles has had a solid start and looks to be establishing himself as first choice on the right side of an Arsenal defence that may well fluctuate been a 4 and a 5 over the course of the season
On the left, Norwich’s Todd Cantwell is a deserved pick with two assists and a goal in his first four Premier League appearances. Any Canaries fans who feel he should’ve been chosen have my full sympathies, but the consolation is that he was picked for England’s U21s.
The defensive counterweight in midfield is where Southgate’s squad lacks and it’s the same problem for the alternate line-up of ours. Instead, we’ve chosen a midfield duo that should be able to keep the ball: Jonjo Shelvey and James Ward-Prowse, with Harvey Barnes playing ahead of them.
Strikers:
After a couple of seasons in which Callum Wilson could have rightly become disgruntled with a string of England snubs, he now seems firmly in Southgate’s plans. Troy Deeney is another striker who also had a right to bemoan his situation, but at the age of 31 and currently injured, it looks likely that he’ll never earn an England cap.
With four goals in the opening four games of the season, Tammy Abraham is the easiest pick of this XI. His non-selection has been the biggest talking point of Southgate’s squad and headlines have ranged from focusing on his holiday destination this week – Barcelona – to whether he’ll switch national allegiances if he is snubbed again. At 21 years old and on his first Premier League hot streak, the hyperbole would become a rashness if it materialised.
He might be 29 years old and he may not fit the mould of international striker, but Ashley Barnes has been sticking the ball in the net at a prolific rate over the course of 2019. It may not be a long-term option, but the Euros are next summer and a striker in form belies age. For that reason, he partners Abraham up top in our alternate XI.
Notable others:
Dwight McNeil – Burnley
Jack Grealish – Aston Villa
Phil Foden – Manchester City
By Jordan Florit - @TheFalseLibero
]]>One thing I miss about the Football League is the lack of international breaks, but even the Championship is subject to them now. A necessary evil if we want to enjoy the sadomasochistic summer months of even-numbered years, where we all cheer on England with the expectation of a quarter-final exit and the deluded hope of a trophy, international breaks are a scourge of the domestic football calendar.
Just when your team are in the swing of things – or the complete opposite and need to sit on the disappointment of straight losses for an entire two weeks – the September set of internationals catches you unaware despite its yearly predictability. As a fan of a Premier League team outside of the top six, the one salvation is one of your own might get a call-up.
Gareth Southgate’s appointment gave me reason to believe this might actually materialise. As a Southampton fan, his tenure as the U-21 manager, which saw good game time given to James Ward-Prowse and Nathan Redmond, encouraged me.
When St. Mary’s Stadium was chosen to host the European qualifier against Kosovo, my belief doubled. Surely a spot or two for a player who covers that turf 19 times a season can be saved. But no, Redmond’s slight chance was obliterated when he picked up an injury at Craven Cottage last week, and James Ward-Prowse hasn’t continued his excellent form from the second half of last season in the first four games of this one. Regardless, it is safe to say Southgate’s comments on becoming manager that he would pick on performance and not reputation has subsided as quickly as our hopes will next summer.
As a fan of a team in the Championship, it is even worse. The international break is forced upon you too, thanks to the increasingly global nature of the league. The second tier of English football has a total market value of £1.14 billion and 309 of the 639 players are foreign. This includes the league’s highest-valued player, the Serbian Fulham striker Aleksandar Mitrovic (£22.5 million), Scotland and Fulham’s Tom Cairney, and Florent Hadergjonaj of Huddersfield, who will most likely feature against England next week, when they face Kosovo.
In comparison, France’s second tier (Ligue 2) is valued at a quarter of the Championship at £266 million, Spain’s La Liga 2 at £407 million, Germany’s 2. Bundesliga at £389 million, and Italy’s Serie B at £291.38 million. Not only is the Championship valued at over £500 million more than any of the top European’s second tiers, but the percentage of players native to the country is the lowest at 52%. In comparison, 2. Bundesliga’s is the highest at 74%.
If there were too many numbers for you in that last paragraph, you’ll be pleased to know we’d never subject you to xGs, xAs, or other advanced metrics, which make a game of put a ball in the net seem more like an algebraic exercise.
With the summer Bank Holiday barely a week or two old, an international break overeggs the novelty: we don’t get the Monday off, but it still seems to drag. Given the fact the summer Bank Holiday wasn’t always on the last Monday in August (it used to be on the first Monday but changed after a 15-year trial period from 1965-1970, which begs the question what on earth the criteria was for ‘A. Trialist), it wouldn’t be unthinkable to move it a further few weeks away from its initial starting point, would it?
Below the billion-pound Championship, however, football continues almost as usual*, and that’s where you’ll find several of The Terrace’s official licensed partners, who you could lend your support to for the weekend.
Carlisle vs EXETER
The Grecians have a long old trip north on Saturday, as they take on Carlisle in a nice traditional Saturday 3pm kick-off. Our boys are unbeaten so far this season, top of the Football League Two after four wins and two draws. Their opposition are 16th.
PLYMOUTH vs Oldham
Another League Two encounter sees our new partners Plymouth also face northern opposition, but from the comfort of their own Home Park. A similar distance separates the two in the table, as well. Plymouth occupy the final playoff place, whilst Oldham are in the bottom three at 22nd.
BRISTOL ROVERS vs Accrington Stanley
The Pirates are unbeaten at home in the league so far this season, having won two and drawn one. After a goalless draw against Wycombe in their first game at the Memorial Stadium, they’ve since beaten Tranmere 2-0 and Oxford 3-1. This week, club legend Rickie Lambert scored this wonderful goal in a memorial match, reminding us all of what he was capable of over his slow rise from League Two to England international.
SCARBOROUGH ATHLETIC vs Marske United
There’s even cup action to be found this weekend, as one of our newest licensed partners Scarborough Athletic host Marske United, what is the Seadogs vs the Seasiders! Scarborough’s best FA Cup run saw them get to the fourth qualifying round and have only got past the first qualifying round on three occasions. The last time the two faced each other in the FA Cup, Scarborough won 2-1 in extra time. You can follow their progress here.
Across the sea, two more of our licensed clubs have fixtures: League of Ireland sides Shamrock Rovers and Cork City .
Galway United vs SHAMROCK ROVERS
More cup action is to be found in Ireland with Galway United host Shamrock Rovers. Our boys are overwhelming favourites with the hosts third from bottom in the First Division, compared to Rovers’ position of second in the Premier Division. The winners will be through to the semi-final of the FAI Cup.
Dundalk vs CORK CITY
It’ll be a tough encounter for Cork, travelling to top of the table Dundalk, who have won their last five games, losing just two out of the 29 games played this season. There are 41 points separating the two sides. If you’re anywhere near Dundalk, head down for some Friday night football under the floodlights. Kids get in for one euro and everyone gets a voucher for a free burger!
Enjoy the international break best you can, we’ve got more on the way to ease the tedium……………
* The odd game is still called off due to international call-ups, reviewed on a case-by-case basis, such as this week’s match between Portsmouth and Southend. Only League Two was safe in the 92.
By Jordan Florit - @TheFalseLibero
]]>Following the Carabao Cup draw pitching Southampton against Portsmouth at Fratton Park, The Terrace thought it would be a good idea to take a whistle-stop tour of some of the biggest derbies in British football, taking you from the south coast of England to the Scottish capital, and out into Wales. Biggest can be defined in a multitude of ways and we’re bound to miss out one important to some of you, but the list isn’t comprehensive! Rivalries have come and gone, been cultivated by TV, and some have laid dormant, held dear by both sets of fans but kept at bay through differences in leagues. So, without further ado…….
Southampton vs Portsmouth (Saints wins – 34, Pompey wins – 21, Draws – 15)
With the first recorded competitive meeting ending in a Southern League 2-0 win for the team in blue, and the most recent ending in a 2-2 Championship draw in 2012, the one and only proper South Coast Derby is back after a seven-year hiatus next month, after they were drawn together in the Third Round of the Carabao Cup.
Fluctuating homes across the Football League means they’ve faced each other just ten times in the past 20 years, with Saints winning half the encounters, but currently on a winless streak of four. Now in the top flight with their neighbours in League One, they’ll be hoping that comes to an end in September.
Liverpool vs Manchester United (Liverpool wins – 76, United wins – 88, Draws - 66)
The North-West Derby divides opinion, with both clubs having their own intercity rivalries. There’s less than a mile between Anfield and Everton’s Goodison Park, and United’s ‘noisy neighbours’ have become a fitting nemesis in the past decade, winning the Premier League four times in the past eight years, compared to The Reds’ one in the same time frame. Under Sir Alex Ferguson, however, they won 13 Premier League titles – a record – and have twice won it three times on the trot.
Since the Premier League’s inauguration, Liverpool haven’t won the top flight of English football, but have previously won it 18 times. United’s 20 means they’re the only team to have won it on more occasions, and the two of them are also England’s most successful clubs in Europe. Dating back to 1894, when the building of Manchester’s ship canal led to the direct loss of jobs in Liverpool, it is one of the oldest derbies in world football, and often considered the biggest in England.
Cardiff vs Swansea (Bluebirds wins – 22, Swans wins – 27, Draws - 17)
When Cardiff and Swansea met in the Premier League for the first time, on November 3, 2013, all Swansea fans had to travel by coach to get a ticket for the match. Arriving on free buses provided by the club, only then were they handed their tickets. Extensive security measures were taken by the British Transport Police and both plain-clothed and uniformed officers travelled on the south Wales main rail line. By 5pm, there hadn’t been a single football-related arrest.
Cardiff won the encounter 1-0 thanks to a Steven Caulker header and the return tie at the Liberty Stadium also saw the home team victorious, with Wayne Routledge, Nathan Dyer, and Wilfried Bony handing Swansea a 3-0 win. It was the last time the two teams faced each other and the only top flight meetings between them, but the 102-year Welsh derby remains one of the most historical and fierce in Britain, and this season they'll face each other again. In 1993, chairs were ripped out by Swansea fans and chucked onto the pitch in their 1993 encounter at Cardiff’s Ninian Park, resulting in a pitch invasion by the home fans, and in 1988 Swansea fans again terrorised their South Wales neighbours, chasing a group of Cardiff fans into the sea.
Rangers vs Celtic (Gers wins – 161, Bhoys wins – 157, Draws – 99)
The Old Firm derby is multi-faceted, based on and leading to political, social, religious, and sectarianist divisions. First meeting on 28 May 1888 in a friendly, Celtic were 5-2 winners. Most recently, Rangers were victorious, beating their Glasgow neighbours 2-0 back in May of this year. It didn’t stop Celtic winning the SPL, however, taking their total to 50, closing in on Rangers’ 54. With a combined total of 104, the two teams are responsible for 85% of Scottish titles won.
Ally McCoist holds the record for most goals in the derby, notching up 27 across his 55 appearances for Rangers in the tie. It’s not the most impressive goals to game ratio, though; that falls to Willie Reid’s 14 in 21, also for the blue half of the city.
Millwall vs West Ham (Lions wins – 22, Hammers wins – 19, Draws – 19)
Considered one of the most violent derbies in British football, the rivalry and the club’s firms has even been the basis of films, with Green Street achieving huge commercial success, raking in $4.33 million at the box office. Two sequels have been made – both going straight to video – but it is the original 2005 film that made the biggest impact on perceptions of the darkest sides of derbies. Taking its name from the road on which Upton Park was on, in Newham, London, the film’s fictional football firm was based on West Ham’s infamous Inter City Firm.
The clubs last met in 2012, facing off in the 2011/12 Championship season, with West Ham coming out 2-1 victors at Upton Park, after a 0-0 draw earlier in the season. The victory was characteristic of the clashes. Kevin Nolan was sent off after just nine minutes, having lunged at Jack Smith with a two-footed challenge, and Sam Allardyce hailed it as the ‘best win of my career,’ in the aftermath.
Wolves vs West Brom (Wolves wins – 64, Baggies wins – 53, Draws – 42)
The Black Country derby vies for its position as the biggest in the area along with those played out between Birmingham and Aston Villa, and the other combinations of the four teams, as well as with fellow Black Country side Walsall.
It is another rivalry that hasn’t seen the light of day on the pitch for a while, last meeting seven years ago, when a 5-1 WBA win at the Molineux resulted in Mick McCarthy’s sacking the next day, in a season that ultimately ended in Premier League relegation for Wolves. A Peter Odemwingie hattrick wrote him into Baggies’ folklore, and he remains the last player to score in the derby. In the 2017/18 season, WBA swapped places with Wolves as they fell out of the top flight as Wolves returned.
Luton vs Watford (Hatters wins – 36, Hornets wins – 28, Draws – 23)
For young fans and casual observers, it is hard to imagine that Luton hold the upper hand in this derby, Luton haven’t seen the light of day in the Premier League, relegated from the top division of English football in the last season before its rebranding, and have only just returned to the Championship after five years in the Conference between 2009 and 2014. Back-to-back promotions from League Two to the Championship in these past two seasons have put them back within touching distance of their neighbours, but it still remains thirteen years since they last met each other – a 1-1 draw at Vicarage Road in the 2005/06 Championship season.
The Bedfordshire-Hertfordshire Derby (alternatively the M1 Derby), has suffered from regular bouts of violence, most recently – and perhaps most notably in 2002. On 10 September 2002, a 2-1 Luton away win was overshadowed by 25 arrests of visiting fans, resulting in a number of lifetime bans, after multiple pitch invasions, fighting in Watford town centre, and even the abandonment of a planned minute silence, one year on from the 11 September Attacks.
Stoke vs Port Vale (Potters wins – 19, Vale wins 17, Draws – 17)
The Potteries Derby is closely contested on and off the pitch. As well as the narrow overall record of Stoke, the city is the least populous to have two Football League clubs. The proximity has lent itself to hooliganism and matchday violence, most recently after the Check-a-trade Trophy game last year. It saw the lower-ranked side come out on top, winning 4-0, and was the first clash between the two after 16 years.
Eleven arrests were made in the immediate aftermath of the game and flares were thrown onto the pitch, continuing trouble that had begun with fighting ahead of kick-off. The travelling support caused thousands of pounds of damaged to Port Vale’s Vale Park and more arrests came in the days that followed.
We’ll leave the last one up to you, you are, after all, the fans on The Terrace!
If you haven’t already, vote on our Twitter Poll, and if you can’t see your choice, leave it in the comments below!
By Jordan Florit - @TheFalseLibero
Jordan is currently writing Red Wine and Arepas: How Football is Becoming Venezuela's Religion. To pre-order it, visit his Kickstarter here. The Terrace subscribers have already been emailed an exclusive discount. Message Jordan if you no longer have it.
Written with the cooperation of the executive president of the Venezuelan Football League, Rubén Villavicencio, Red Wine and Arepas will feature exclusive interviews with players past and present.
He has already secured numerous interviews and meetings with Venezuelan players, managers, officials, journalists and fans, domestic and international, men and women, and will continue to work hard to arrange more. This includes members of the 2019 Copa América squad and teams from previous Copas, domestic league legends, young players at the beginning of their careers, and stars of the women’s game. The whole project comes with the blessing and support of the executive president of the Venezuelan Football League Rubén Villavicencio, who will be coordinating much of his time in Caracas.
]]>When at home, you've got your routine and rituals, but on a South West or Great Western, you hear the buzz of other fans on a myriad of other routes, crossing your journey momentarily with their own war cries and choruses. It is more than an event. Those 90 minutes when millionaires exercise in front of a crowd has the potential to be just an eighth of the day.
It is, rather, a series of events, weeks in the planning, and building up to a crescendo the day before, as final plans are laid. The preparation is part of the spectacle: where, when, and what to drink; who to meet and where to meet; what to wear and why. It is a parade. In a civilisation that has advanced beyond literal acts of daily tribal warfare, even the mundanity of dress becomes an affront or an implicit (or explicit) demonstration of allegiance.
When Joseph the Carpenter loaded up his donkey to make haste for Bethlehem and the Census of Quirinius, his deference to Rome and obedience to the tax was prefacing that of travelling fans some two thousand years later. With equal religiosity, the blind following of club up and down country, at a fee extortionate but unavoidable for the loyal and devout, mirrors the Biblical storyline. It is made to fulfil a prophesy, justified to ourselves by the sheer will to believe it is true. Perhaps by carrying out this journey the celestial will provide a just reward a small victory to savour and recount for years to come. 'Do you remember making the trip to Palestine,’ old men in hushed circles will ask. ‘Yes, I believe I do. In 6 AD? I think we lost 2-0.’
That won't be the discussion, though. The starting point, yes: an anchor for the apocryphal. Its ambiguity, the uncertainty of the recollection, is what gives it an appeal. As a child listening to the pilgrimages made before their place in the mass was established, legends are created; ideals to carry out themselves once they are no longer merely an audience for the old men's tales and are instead the protagonists for the next generation, weaving narratives of old with tales of new.
Before departing, farewells are bade. Women stand at the threshold of the familial home, arms crossed anxiously already. "When will you be back?" she will painfully rasp, trying to mask her worry with loving concern. The bravest tell the truth as they head out to do battle. "I don't know, my love." It is an honest assessment.
Trundling out of your city, like thousands of other recruits, you fall into line, all knowing your destiny. Familiar faces are picked out at the station and coming together marks the start of a new entry in the annals of folklore. Taking a seat in the carriage ferrying you to a far-flung town, the table in front of you absorbs the heavy placement of cans. The satisfying release as they're opened should sound a warning but instead it is welcomed. Come the time the show behind the show begins, the primed canvas is often too wet for the paint to stick and thus a record of the show to be made. Drinking and drinking and drinking. An optional theme of the day that defines it by its presence.
Perhaps to inspire but potentially to soften the blow, stories of previous days like this are shared and shared again. Is it even told the same way ten minutes into the expedition as it is when it is retold just hours later? It is an established fact that vocalising a memory fundamentally changes how it is stored in the mind, the word recoding imagery into prose, saving over the original file, and each time it's opened, becoming embellished or corrupted with time before being saved over once more. It is also an observed phenomenon that the more a tale is told the weightier it becomes; the two concepts resulting in a cognitive dissonance that allows myth to pervade the realms of truth. If we are all enjoying the spectacle though, does it even matter?
Swaying in the stands, tiptoeing on the terraces to get a look of the action you're vicariously living through, you chant along to the ancestral hymns of your side, hoping your prayers are answered by the deities on the pitch. It was the Roman Empire that ordered the censuses and the Roman Empire that created the Colosseum, even straight roads we owe to the city-state; another holy triumvirate and one we're replicating today; gathering to be counted, baying for the blood in the arena, and filtering away down conveniently routed streets.
The best of times are found on away days. The cloistered section of the stadium produces one voice in unison, and you know from visiting fans at your own ground that the emanating noise can be forcefully impressive. Amongst it, it verges on deafening at its best and a strange isolation at its worst. You can be surrounded by people with the same aims and hopes for the day, but all in a hush when the opposition mercilessly sweeps them aside.
The one moment of magic makes it all worth it though. Even the manifested denominations among your own faithful support come together in ecstasy at the sight of an away goal. The elderly who travelled in on club-provided coaches, the replica kit crew, and the ever-present casuals are all momentarily unhinged in delirium. The result is, for the moment, immaterial. The true cost of defeat or victory is measured in the aftermath. For now, you'll live in the revelry. Away days are the best.
By Jordan Florit - @TheFalseLibero
Jordan is currently writing Red Wine and Arepas: How Football is Becoming Venezuela's Religion. To pre-order it, visit his Kickstarter here. The Terrace subscribers have already been emailed an exclusive discount. Message Jordan if you no longer have it.
Written with the cooperation of the executive president of the Venezuelan Football League, Rubén Villavicencio, Red Wine and Arepas will feature exclusive interviews with players past and present.
He has already secured numerous interviews and meetings with Venezuelan players, managers, officials, journalists and fans, domestic and international, men and women, and will continue to work hard to arrange more. This includes members of the 2019 Copa América squad and teams from previous Copas, domestic league legends, young players at the beginning of their careers, and stars of the women’s game. The whole project comes with the blessing and support of the executive president of the Venezuelan Football League Rubén Villavicencio, who will be coordinating much of his time in Caracas.
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In 2002, with the club struggling financially, a six-foot centre-back who had already enjoyed a seven-year career in Singapore’s S.League by the age of 24, splintered by completing a degree in Sports Science at the illustrious Loughborough University, signed for Wrexham AFC.
Born in Great Yarmouth but raised in the city-state of Singapore from the age of two, Daniel Bennett has one of the most interesting stories of an English football player making their career abroad, because, for other than two seasons with Wales’ Wrexham, that is exactly what he has done.
Joining Tiong Bahru’s youth ranks at the age of 15, it was only two years before he was part of the club’s inaugural season in the fledgling S.League, which was founded in 1996. What he got up to in those early years is hard to tell, with even the ever reliable transfermarkt unable to provide his playing history prior to the 2003/04 season, but by the turn of the century, he seemed to be outgrowing the nine-team league and won the S.League Player of the Year in 2001. He was the first and only Englishman to do so.
His potential had long been known to the Singaporean football authorities, who selected him for the FAS Milo Scheme, which focussed on developing young footballing talent, at the age of 12. Twelve years later, it was another scheme, the Foreign Sports Talent Scheme, through which Bennett was able to take up Singaporean citizenship and debut for the national team, 12 years after first moving to the country.
The Foreign Sports Talent Scheme has facilitated the migration of non-Singaporeans who are deemed sporting assets to the country since 1993, with the aim of improving performance on a national stage through importing talent but also improving local standards through the acquisition of sporting expertise. It has courted some controversy, though to-date only nine foreign-born players have acquired Singaporean citizenship and all of them have played in the S. League, too. In 2007, it became a requirement for players to have done so for a minimum of two seasons before they could be considered for citizenship, anyway.
The Scheme’s biggest success is undoubtedly Bennett. Since making his debut on December 11 2002, the now-41-year-old has 145 caps for The Lions, making him the appearance record holder, also chipping in with seven goals along the way. It seems his last international game was in 2017, meaning he was still active at the age of 39, and with five outings in this year’s AFC Cup, Asia’s Europa League equivalent, he is certainly still active domestically, only signing a new two-year deal in February of last year.
Despite his unusual backstory, however, perhaps none of it is as random as when he signed for Wrexham - at least his Singaporean citizenship was 12 years in the making, whereas his signature at the then-Football League Second Division club (now known as League One) was secured with beer money.
Set up by the Wrexham Independent Supporters group, who were financially assisting the club at the time, the ‘Beer a Week’ initiative encouraged fans to donate at least £2 – then the cost of a pint – to the fund that ultimately enabled The Dragons to sign Bennett.
"This is just the start, but it demonstrates what can be achieved through the commitment and generosity of supporters," WINS Chairman Rob Owens said at the time. "This is a direct result of the success of the 'Beer a Week' fund which has been well-publicised over recent weeks and continues to grow.”
As recently as 12 years ago, a third-tier side – now home to the likes of Bolton Wanderers and Sunderland – genuinely paid a player’s wages through crowdfunding at the expense of a weekly beer. It is therefore no real surprise that nine years later, the they became a supporter-owned club. The money raised covered Bennett’s salary and expenses, and the defender looked back on his spell at the Racecourse Ground, the oldest international stadium still hosting international games, with fondness.
“My time in England was very memorable,” he told the Straits Times in a 2018 interview. “With Wrexham, I won the Cup, got promoted (from League Two) and relegated (From League One) all in two years.”
The relegation came first and before he embarked on his second season at the third oldest professional football club in the world, Bennett flew back to Singapore and played 11 times for Singapore Armed Forces FC helping them to the title. It was the first of five S. League titles he would win with the club, grabbing three consecutive ones from 2007-2009, and then winning his final one in 2014 at the age of 36. Three Singapore Cups came his way whilst at SAFFC too, winning consecutive doubles in 2007 and 2008, and the third one in 2012.
When Bennett finally does retire, he will be remembered for trademark long-range goals, longevity, and he himself will probably forever remember the time he came up against Argentina and the likes of Angel Di Maria, Paulo Dybala, and Ever Bangea, in 2017. However, the aforementioned interview he gave to The Straits Times last year, when he had just signed that two-year contract extension, showed he had no plans of retiring.
"It is something that I don't really think about. I just enjoy playing and every year, I push myself to keep going. As long as I can keep up with the younger players, as long as I feel strong enough, I am good enough.
Still starting week-in-week-out at Tampines Rovers, nothing’s changed in the past 18 months either.
By Jordan Florit - @TheFalseLibero
Jordan is currently writing Red Wine and Arepas: How Football is Becoming Venezuela's Religion. To pre-order it, visit his Kickstarter here. The Terrace subscribers have already been emailed an exclusive discount. Message Jordan if you no longer have it.
Written with the cooperation of the executive president of the Venezuelan Football League, Rubén Villavicencio, Red Wine and Arepas will feature exclusive interviews with players past and present.
He has already secured numerous interviews and meetings with Venezuelan players, managers, officials, journalists and fans, domestic and international, men and women, and will continue to work hard to arrange more. This includes members of the 2019 Copa América squad and teams from previous Copas, domestic league legends, young players at the beginning of their careers, and stars of the women’s game. The whole project comes with the blessing and support of the executive president of the Venezuelan Football League Rubén Villavicencio, who will be coordinating much of his time in Caracas.
]]>Founded in January 2018 and kicking their first competitive football this January coming, Inter Miami CF will become the latest MLS franchise. Fronted by England legend David Beckham and co-owned alongside a Bolivian-American businessman, the Chairman of the Cuban American National Foundation, and a Japanese billionaire, the club’s leadership already reflects the community it will serve. That was continued in their first three signings: Argentine 19-year old duo Julián Carranza and Matías Pellegrini, and U20 Venezuela captain Christian Makoun. Inter Miami is destined to have a Latino feel.
This isn’t Beckham’s first foray into club ownership either. The former Manchester United midfielder owns a 10% stake in the rapidly ascending Salford City, a club taken over by his former teammates Ryan Giggs, Gary and Phil Neville, Paul Scholes, and Nicky Butt in 2014. Between the six of them, they have 60% ownership, with the remainder belonging to Singaporean former stockbroker Peter Lim. Even that is outdated, though. Beckham has had his eye on an MLS franchise since signing for LA Galaxy in 2007. At the time, he negotiated a clause into his contract allowing him to buy one at a discounted rate.
“To join the MLS you have to pay a franchise fee to the league, which costs $150 million,” Todd Lewis of The Freekick Podcast explained to The Terrace. “The problem is, the league is growing too big and it really needs a promotion and relegation system; but how can that happen when you’ve charged all of those teams $150 million to join the MLS? Then if they get relegated, they’ve paid it for nothing. The league needs to figure out what to do in order to control the growth.”
The structure has been ridiculed for years, but this season it has come under further scrutiny thanks to the outspoken – and ultimately correct – Zlatan Ibrahimović. It isn’t something Beckham’s Inter Miami should be worrying about, according to freelance football writer and Minnesota United fan Dominic José Bisogno.
“Expansion seasons in MLS can go various ways depending on the amount of time and money the franchise has to prepare its debut roster. Teams like Minnesota United and FC Cincinnati both struggled in their first MLS seasons due to poor roster building, while Atlanta United and LAFC have both had really successful debut seasons, with Atlanta winning the league in their second season. I see Miami as potentially having a more successful season as they have a really ambitious ownership group and are based in Miami, which should help them bring in really good players.”
Located at the southern end of the east coast and just 90 miles from Cuba at its extreme point, Miami, as of the 2010 census, is 70% Hispanic. With 79 of the 192 ‘international roster slots’ in the MLS taken by Latin Americans, it is responsible for 40% of the league’s foreign imports, and that is before accounting for Latin American players who hold permanent residency in the US, such as the Venezuela and Atlanta United striker Josef Martínez, or qualify under the Homegrown International Rule. It is fair to say Miami, with its location, history, and demography, are well-positioned to attract the best talent from the continent below, and in turn attract spectators to the stands, who will see themselves in their club’s players.
“It makes sense,” Bisogno agreed. “it worked for LAFC [who] brought in a large number of Latino players (internationals and Americans of Latino descent) and it helped them develop one of the most Latino-focused atmospheres in the league. Their fan base is very diverse and the range of faces in the roster makes the fans more plugged in, I believe. It also means they’ll sell more tickets, which doesn’t hurt.”
For a team without history that final point is essential and the Field of Dreams line ‘build it and they will come,’ could not be more apt. In a country where a city’s support can be swayed from sport to sport, it is vital they get off to a good start, otherwise, Univision Sports journalist Juan Carlos Rutilo told us, they could suffer the same fate as some of Miami’s other sporting outfits.
“They are putting together an attractive team so that the fans come to see and support them,” he believes. “I had the opportunity to be at Orlando City’s debut game - another Florida team - and it was really spectacular. I think the main challenge will be to keep the fans hooked for the next few seasons and [hope] what happened to the Marlins in baseball does not happen to them; a team that has been doing poorly for years and now few fans support them.”
There are four-and-a-half months to go before the start of the new MLS season, so that is roughly 18 weeks for Inter Miami to put the rest of their squad together. The current rumour, should it materialise, would be a huge coup to the fledgling side and a hammer blow to a team already resigned to losing their other attacking star.
Since the beginning of the week, PSG striker Edinson Cavani has been linked with the club, and although his contract doesn’t expire until next summer, it certainly signals intent. The suggestion started with a series of tweets from Uruguayan journalist Alvaro Izquierdo.
“Cavani to MLS. The Uruguay forward could be a new face at Inter Miami at the end of his PSG contract next June. The top scorer in the history of PSG could bring goals to the new MLS franchise.”
The Sun got rather carried away with the story and published a predicted line-up that contained Joe Hart, Fabio Coentrao, Sergio Busquets, and Antonio Valencia.
Paul McDonough, Inter Miami’s sporting director poached from Atlanta United, a club they’ll be looking to emulate and already have many parallels with, has already emphasised the club’s focus on youth and potential. Having overseen there the purchase and development of Miguel Almirón, now at Newcastle, and Josef Martínez, now on everyone’s radar but seemingly intent on staying put, followers of the embryonic outfit have much to look forward to. With Beckham still proving a poster boy at the age of 44, they’ll undoubtedly be closely followed here, too.
By Jordan Florit - @TheFalseLibero
Jordan is currently writing Red Wine and Arepas: How Football is Becoming Venezuela's Religion. To pre-order it, visit his Kickstarter here. The Terrace subscribers have already been emailed an exclusive discount. Message Jordan if you no longer have it.
Written with the cooperation of the executive president of the Venezuelan Football League, Rubén Villavicencio, Red Wine and Arepas will feature exclusive interviews with players past and present.
He has already secured numerous interviews and meetings with Venezuelan players, managers, officials, journalists and fans, domestic and international, men and women, and will continue to work hard to arrange more. This includes members of the 2019 Copa América squad and teams from previous Copas, domestic league legends, young players at the beginning of their careers, and stars of the women’s game. The whole project comes with the blessing and support of the executive president of the Venezuelan Football League Rubén Villavicencio, who will be coordinating much of his time in Caracas.
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With that in mind, we do like the different experiences football can bring us and therefore, in what has already become a regular feature in this here blog, we will be talking to different voices in football. So far, we’ve had a copper who policed matchdays and a football fan who ballboyed for his heroes as a teen. We spoke to them about how their matchday played out, and we’ll keep seeking out different viewpoints and the varied ways in which the beautiful game is taken in by the myriad of ways in which it is lived.
For this episode, we spoke to The Middleclassuals, Southampton FC’s self-confessed d*ckheads who unapologetically ridicule grown men who wear replica shirts to games, detest Sky gentrifying the game and selling it back to the fans, and yearn for the terrace culture of yesteryear; a time when “proper Gooners,” for example, watched the game from the stands, instead of in “pubs on Cali Road,” priced out of the “sanitised corporate ground” that is The Emirates.
I chatted to two of their members, Kev and Nick, about who the Middleclassuals are, what they stand for, and where it began.
You have named yourselves the Middleclassuals; why?
Nick: My memory is that Kev starting using the name as a p*ss take - a niche in-joke about our fondness for terrace culture and how we are all now middleclass in terms jobs, mortgages.
Kev: To be honest it was just a joke. We all dress in what people think of as the casual style and these days we’re all middle aged and in middleclass jobs. I think it was originally a pun or p*sstake, but it took off.
Nick: It started out as a hashtag and just carried on. To be fair, it’s still a p*sstake on how serious some people take football these days.
Kev: In many ways it’s perfectly fitting though as it represents both an inability to take life seriously and a comment on class and football culture. Plus we’re d*cks, obviously.
If you had to give a mission statement, what would it be?
Nick: To show that not all football supporters are right-wing, racist numbskulls, and for the creation of a Revolutionary Mush Party - a vanguard with a mission to tear Saints supporters away from the spectacle and back into engaging with football terrace culture.
Kev: Exactly that: to revive the terrace culture we grew up with. In my opinion football is stale now, when we first started going as nippers the football was only part of it, you had the fanzines like ‘On The March’ and later ‘The Ugly’, you had different types of fans, and you could tell different cultures from areas of the city, or pubs they drunk in. Sky and the Premier league killed that, and the younger generation have grown up consumers; happy to watch but not to participate.
What would you say the common themes running through your members are?
Kev: A sense of humour, not taking life to seriously, a deep passion for terrace culture and the city we come from, and a good excuse to dress well and go on the p*ss. Plus, of course, sometimes a game of football breaks out in the middle of it.
Nick: Mushes who are passionate Southampton FC supporters that believe attending matches home and away is what you do. Plus, all have the Sotonian trait of being a bit of a d*ckhead.
How long have you been going to games, from the longest-attending fan, to your youngest member?
Kev: The majority of us started going in the early-to-mid-80s. My own first game was the 1984 season, and the youngest nipper (our under-five brigade) started in the League One era.
Nick: Mine was in 1985.
Your dress code seems to be an important part of your collective identity. Why do you think it matters how you dress as a group?
Nick: As adults we would never wear replica shirts or colours.
Kev: The way you dress at football has mattered as long as I’ve been going. It’s part of the broader thing – football, music, fashion; that’s the holy trinity. Plus, of course, there’s an element of one upmanship.
Nick: At the end of the day we represent our city and club so why would we dress as scruffs?
Kev: The terrace is the world’s best hidden catwalk. It’s also the place I learnt how to dress well and as a nipper going in the 80s, you’d look up to the older lads, most of them in trainers you couldn’t afford. There’s also an intended snobbery about it, not wearing colours marks you apart from the new generation of Sky fans, the modern football lot more interested in stats and computer games than a culture that’s fiercely ours.
It comes across that you are unapologetically against modern football. What would you say are the three things you most detest about it? And in contrast, what are three things you would resurrect from football in the bygone eras?
Kev: It’s probably easier to talk about what I like about it, to be honest. The quality of football we watch is better - well mostly, the Pelligrino era was f*cking dire - but I think we speak for many when we say the game has been sanitised; you can’t stand with your mates easily anymore, games are moved all the time so planning aways is a nightmare, the atmosphere in the top flight is generally sh*t, and the less you say about the Soccer AM “banter” the better.
Nick: Three things I hate: being viewed as a customer instead of a supporter, the commercialisation of every aspect of football, including sponsoring f*cking corners(!), and the massive wealth divide between the Premier League and the Football League. Three things I’d bring back: The Dell, Terraces, the FA Cup Final being the only televised game, and police dog display teams at half-time. [Nick cannot count].
Chants are another thing the Middleclassuals give weight to. What defines a good one for you and what don’t you like about most of the chants we hear on the terraces?
Nick: We all grew up in a time when football chants, were funny, original and spontaneous.
Kev: Football chants should have wit, they should be off the cuff, and to a tune someone else hasn’t used. Most of what you hear now is the same tune repeated with different words - and ‘different words’ can be only a single one changed. Also, there’s a habit to have to include the Skates [Portsmouth] in ours, which is f*cking boring and unoriginal. It doesn’t help either that they’re sung at 100miles an hour, have to involve clapping like demented seals, and seem to forget the history of the club and city.
You don’t have a Twitter account or the like. Is ‘The Middleclassuals’ exclusive or just organically growing?
Nick: The Middleclassuals are just a bunch of middle-aged tw*ts taking the p*ss. Saying that, if more Saints fans are inspired to create their own stickers, flags, original chants and the like, that would be sound. Also, whoever runs the @SInsandouts Twitter account seems to be on the same wavelength……...
Kev: I’m not sure it’s even a group; it’s just a group of mates having a laugh. Some people “get” the humour so join in, but we’re not trying to be the fancy-dress ultras of Palace or some of the modern football lot that have sprung up round the country. It’s more that we want to just go back to when football, and terrace culture, was ours and not gentrified and sold back to us by Sky.
Poking fun at the commercialisation and the consumeristic behaviour of fellow football fans is a staple part of the online presence you do have. Am I right in thinking it’s borne out of a cynicism of things like the Danny Ings inspired clothing range?
Kev: All of the commercialism of football sticks in the throat; from the cynical clothing ranges, to brands (not football clubs) “bantering” on social media. It’s worth saying that I actually respect the content our club, Southampton, put out. In comparison to most it’s decent, but seeing grown adults jumping on the bandwagon and parroting it back just because the club came up with shows the lack of originality that now exists.
Nick: The Danny Ings range is brilliant - just the word SAINTS printed on a grey hoodie. Decent gig that. Like all clubs Saints just bung the badge on any old tat and flog it
Kev: Mind you, that said, I did enjoy the brilliantly unthought out use of the hashtag #wemarchoneurope when we had our brief affair with the Europa League. God knows how that got past the editing team but I’m glad it did.
Your supporters of an established Premier League club but you yearn, almost, to be out of the top-flight. What do you think the Football League offers that the Premier League doesn’t?
Kev: It’s a weird one. I want Saints to be the best they can possibly be. I’d love to see us win a cup or have a proper shot at European football again, but at the same time it feels like every season we stay in the top flight the soul of the club is decayed a bit more.
Nick: The Football League offers a competitive league, 3pm kick offs, better away days, less tourists supporters, and maybe more Saints wins.
Kev: We now have Thomas Cook selling packages for St Mary’s, tourists in most sections of the ground, and even the traditional main home ends pick up more than their share of the noddy types. League One and the Championship were different. There’s a different type of fan that goes; more local and more lads, tickets are cheaper and away games more fun. Plus, the games aren’t moved as often for TV. Maybe it’s novelty, but it feels more like football used to from the perspective of a match going fan. I mean, give me Peterborough away on the terrace (now sadly gone) any day of the week over Arsenal and their sanitised corporate ground full of Tarquins, with the proper Gooners in pubs on the Cali road because they’ve been priced out.
Tell us your pre-match routine. Drinking is at the forefront of plans. Does what you drink define your eligibility for the Middleclassuals?
Kev: What you drink doesn’t define eligibility, but we do make an effort to avoid the bingo bus in the Wetherspoons singing songs at confused (and probably p*ssed off) minimum wage staff that just want to do their job.
Nick: Well I normally sing the Woolston Ferry in the shower, have some breakfast and a cup of tea, then get the Number 3 bus over the Itchen Bridge and head to the pub. Quite a few love their poncey beers and beards, but I think the only eligibility is to never watch Saints sober.
Kev: Frankly, when I see a group of people in a place like that in their ill-fitting replica kits, I just feel embarrassed to be associated with it and would much rather a decent pint in a pub away from there and to sing in the stands, not the concourse for your phone, or the Wetherspoons to staff.
By and large, your membership is left-wing, is it not? Would you say politics is important among your members or is coincidentally left-leaning?
Kev: Football and politics shouldn’t mix, but football and politics are inescapably linked. You can’t hate the modern game, the money and rampant commercialism, without really being honest and saying what you hate is the politics behind it.
Nick: I think politics is important to all members although for some it is very important - one is a fully paid member of the cult. May 68 and situationism plays a massive part in our thinking about football and its relationship to society. Most of the stickers we have created use either a play on or direct quotes from May 68 graffiti.
Kev: Also, it’s worth remembering Southampton is a traditionally old left, trade unionist city, it’s a team of dockers and car plant workers, there’s a history too it that means most will have grown up with left wing politics in their life.
If we agree you are left-leaning and also middle class, are you champagne socialists?
Kev: Mush, we’re not champagne socialists, that stuff’s cheaper than what we drink!
Nick: The worse kind mush, we make Noel Gallagher look like Arthur Scargill
I am of the opinion football is inherently political. Would you agree and what do you thinking the political and community obligations of fan groups are, even if you don’t describe the Middleclassuals as a fan group?
Nick: I think football is inherently class based, and if you’re are a Marxist or subscribe to his view of society, then yes politics will be involved. Saints support used to be made up of dockers now its estate agents and accountants and people like us.
Kev: Football reflects society, so it’s political because society is. I’m not sure what obligations we have, but there’s definitely a nod to groups like the situationists, and I like to think terrace culture is counterculture and subversive by the nature of it existing.
Nick: We are not a fan group just a few p*ssed up lads, but I think we like to show that not all football supporters fit the accepted cliché. Saints used to have decent fan groups in the days of Branfoot and SISA, but as the original Ted Bates statue proved our fanbase nowadays should never be involved in anything.
Moving away from the movement, what are your hopes for the upcoming season, on and off the pitch?
Kev: A good cup run and hopefully getting the Skates at Fratton (without a bubble). Other than that, some decent away games and ticking off the handful of new grounds that I haven’t done.
Nick: On the pitch - Ings stays injury free, Boufal does not lose his head, and we win a cup. Off the pitch - We sing more than one song, Hasenhüttl stops dressing like Klopp, and Højbjerg continues to outsmart the Stasi.
And lastly, we’ll end on a YES/NO vibe:
Kev: Simple straight forward no there.
Nick: No.
Kev: Never drunk it to be honest so couldn’t say either way.
Nick: No.
Kev: F*ck no.
Nick: No, but he is a smart politician
Kev: No. The greatest trick they ever pulled was dividing us for their profit.
Nick: Not clear cut on that one.
Kev: The anti-trade union pr*ck? He’s a big f*cking nope.
Nick: No
Kev: Make it a knock out competition again with just the league winners and call it the European Cup; then it’s a yes.
Nick: No. It should return to being the European Cup
Kev: F*ck it I’ll go with a yes. I hate flying so understand the joy of being back on solid land!
Nick: It depends if Mark Wahlberg has knocked out all the terrorists.
Under the new leadership of Martin O’Neill, who arrived on a three-year contract, The Bhoys were looking to overturn Rangers’ dominance on the league that had brought back-to-back titles and 11 of the last 12. The previous season saw the blue side of Glasgow romp to the title, leaving John Barnes and Kenny Dalglish’s men 21 points adrift. It was one hell of a gulf to close, yet O’Neill was a highly regarded manager, fresh off the back of a fruitful five-year spell at Leicester, and less than two off of being touted as the successor to Sir Alex Ferguson, who nearly left Manchester United in 2002.
Neil Lennon and Matt Elliott were linked with making the move up to Scotland to join their departed manager at Parkhead but summer moves did not materialise. Lennon would later join in the December for £5.75 million and went on to manage the club from 2010 to 2014, and again as of February 2019, replacing the outgoing Brendan Rodgers. The current season started on Saturday 3rd August and Lennon’s men smashed St. Johnstone by a 7-0 score line.
Also joining the club permanently that year were Chris Sutton, Joos Valgaeren, Alan Thompson, Didier Agathe and Rab Douglas. All would go on to be key players on the way to the domestic treble, with all but Douglas making over 30 appearances for the club. Having displaced Jonathan Gould as the #1, Douglas fell just short with 28 appearances. None of them, however, would have the impact of the man who joined for just £650,000 from Feyenoord in July 1997.
Already scorer of 69 goals in 107 appearances, Larsson went into the 2000/01 campaign on the back of a double leg break, picked up in a UEFA Cup defeat to Lyon in the October. It had kept him out for eight months and threatened to end his career. However, he returned on the final day of 1999/00 season, desperate to prove his worth ahead of Euro 2000. It ended in misery for Sweden as they finished bottom of Group B, winless and with just two goals; Larsson’s man-of-the-match performance against Italy – a 2-1 defeat in which he scored his country’s equaliser – unable to save them. What followed, however, was the most prolific season of Larsson’s career, laden with goals, trophies, individual accolades, and records broken.
It took just 37 minutes for Celtic’s 3rd all-time – and top foreign – goalscorer to recapture his shooting boots, with the BBC’s match report stating that he “stole the show.” His goal came in a 2-1 victory over Dundee United, away from home, and it started a 16-game unbeaten run that included just two draws. It wasn’t until they faced their city rivals Rangers that it came to an end, the Gers winning 5-1 at Ibrox, but not before they dished out a mauling of their own.
On August 27th, only five games into the season, with nine goals and four wins already registered, Celtic played host to Rangers. Larsson had three goals to his name by now and would add another two. His first has been dubbed the greatest goal in Old Firm history according to The Celtic Wiki and it really was majestic.
Chris Sutton took a long and high ball out of the air, chesting it down for the oncoming Larsson, who raced away from his marker giving chase, nutmegged Konterman on the edge of the box, and the superbly lifted it over the oncoming Klos. Wheeling away, his thick white headband kept his dreads off his face and a beaming smile met a rapturous Celtic Park. “Look at the sheer arrogance of that strike,” the commentator bellowed. Nicknamed the Demolition Derby, the game finished 6-2 to The Bhoys and another 11 games without defeat would follow.
In that time, Larsson would score a further 12 league goals, taking his tally to 17 in the opening 16 games, and although an 18th would come at Ibrox, Rangers exacted revenge, beating Celtic by the same margin of goals; the second Old Firm derby of the season finishing 5-1. They’d meet a further three times that season and each time the men in green came out on top, beating them 1-0 and 3-1 in the next two leagues games and another 3-1 win in the League Cup semi-final, thanks to a Sutton opener and a Larsson brace.
Between the two of them, 67 goals would be scored of Celtic’s total 136, yet the split between the strikers was far from equal: 53 of their return came from Larsson, accounting for 79% of theirs and 39% of the club’s total. Larsson’s individual haul hasn’t been beaten in Scottish football since and secured him the European Golden Boot, the first time a Scotland-based player had won the award since Ally McCoist won it consecutively in 1992 and 1993. It was all the more impressive considering that since the 1996/97 season, the Golden Boot has been awarded based on a points system that sees goals scored in tougher leagues, given more points. Since the introduction, only two players outside of Europe’s top five leagues have won the award: Mario Jardel and Henrik Larsson.
In total, Larsson would that season collect the SPL Golden Boot, the SFWA Footballer of the Year, the SPFA Players’ Player of the Year, and the European Golden Boot, alongside the Scottish domestic treble. It led to the manager and captain of their bitter rivals unable to do anything but heap praise on him.
Rangers manager Dick Advocaat labelled him a “top quality striker, not just in Europe but worldwide,” and their captain Barry Ferguson admitted that, “he [would] certainly be [his] player of the year.” The comments came just days after he had scored a hat-trick against Hearts in a 3-0 win at Tynecastle and ahead of their eventual 3-1 win over Rangers in the cup semi-final.
In 2004, Larsson called time on his Celtic career and moved to Barcelona, winning back-to-back La Ligas in 2005 and 2006, the Supercopa in 2005 and the Champions League in 2006, scoring 19 goals in 59 games. Undoubtedly, though, hos footballing legacy is coloured in the green and white and for one season at least, he was the best striker in Europe.
By Jordan Florit - @TheFalseLibero
Jordan is currently writing Red Wine and Arepas: How Football is Becoming Venezuela's Religion. To pre-order it, visit his Kickstarter here. The Terrace subscribers have already been emailed an exclusive discount. Message Jordan if you no longer have it.
Written with the cooperation of the executive president of the Venezuelan Football League, Rubén Villavicencio, Red Wine and Arepas will feature exclusive interviews with players past and present.
He has already secured numerous interviews and meetings with Venezuelan players, managers, officials, journalists and fans, domestic and international, men and women, and will continue to work hard to arrange more. This includes members of the 2019 Copa América squad and teams from previous Copas, domestic league legends, young players at the beginning of their careers, and stars of the women’s game. The whole project comes with the blessing and support of the executive president of the Venezuelan Football League Rubén Villavicencio, who will be coordinating much of his time in Caracas.
]]>The capital of Venezuela, Caracas, is home to nearly 2 million Caraqueños, who have the choice of five top division football teams in their sprawling city to support: Caracas FC, Deportivo La Guaira*, Estudiantes de Caracas, Metropolitanos, and Atlético Venezuela. With 20 teams in the 2019 Apertura, the capital sides made up 25% of the competition. As Deportivo Anzoátegui’s first team are not participating in the Clausura – the second stage of the season – the share has increased. Taking up three positions in the top ten of the Apertura were Caracas FC in 2nd, Atlético Venezuela in 8th, and Deportivo La Guaira in 10th.
With a passionate fanbase, Caracas FC immediately appealed to me and I hadn’t been following their organised fan clubs and supporter groups for long before Los Demonios Rojos caught my eye. The Red Devils logo has a topless native Indian thrusting himself out of the centre of the club’s Barcelona-esque shaped crest, holding a spear in his left hand and a flag depicting the colours of Caracas FC bleeding into those of the nation’s flag in his right. Underneath, the motto reads ‘Ana Karina Rote.’ It means ‘We Are Only People,’ and is from an ancestral war cry dating back to when the Latin American and Caribbean people were fighting for freedom from the Spanish Empire.
It certainly beats the repetitive drivel that echoes round many English Premier League grounds these days, though I am not sure it would carry much weight in the corporate soulless stands that are infiltrating the beautiful game here.
With 5528 followers on Twitter and 9725 likes on Facebook, it’s fair to say that they’re the club’s biggest barra, yet that alone is not enough to be a good one. The best examples of Ultras, for lack of a better word, are, in my opinion, politically engaged, involved in their community, and a force for good. They’re not, however, descriptions often bestowed upon football fans.
Some weeks after I first contacted LDR and as many before they had a part in their first league game of the Clausura being postponed and eventually written off as a 3-0 win to Deportivo Lara, it was their 30th anniversary. Their social media accounts were awash with positivity: events serving the community, such as free sports activities and family days, children having their face painted in the colours of their club, and, of course, preparations for the celebration of their third decade.
Still, actually contacting such an organisation 4656 miles away and one that I knew nothing about was daunting. It was important I made sure why I wanted to talk to them, to ideally meet with them, and, in a perfect world, attend some games with them, clear.
I’m currently writing a book on Venezuelan football and society, called Red Wine and Arepas: How Football is Becoming Venezuela’s Religion, and it is fair to say that it won’t be, nor would I want it to be, your usual football book. Venezuela is currently caught in an economic crisis; regardless of why that might be and who is to blame, it is an undeniable fact. It is also a politically charged country with a divided people. Football, however, has the power to unite and the ability to transcend most divisions.
At the moment, the conversation on Venezuela is purely political and there is no other lens through which to view a country of just over 30 million. I want to change that. I want to give people another way of learning about Venezuela and I believe football is a perfect anchor for an anthropological examination of contemporary Venezuelan society. We all know football is more than just a game and that ‘more’ is what this book will focus on.
I expressed these beliefs of mine as best I could to Los Demonios Rojos and one of their members – a guy called Víctor Velásquez. I believe that fan culture and supporter groups are an important part of the game and have a social and political responsibility to their communities. I told them this and that I wanted to talk with them about the role they play in Caracas - football and otherwise. I was as delighted as I was taken aback by the response.
They were happy to consider my proposal, but they wanted more information in order for my case to be put to the members at a meeting and discussed. It was progress but it was also a formality I did not expect. I fulfilled their request and 11 days later I got the response I was hoping for. Los Demonios Rojos were happy to meet, willing to talk, and keen to take me to a game and show me how they are organised.
“We’ll help you with whatever you need,” they ended their correspondence with, “provided it is within our powers and fits in with our guidelines as an organisation.” I cannot wait.
Full of excitement, in the weeks that followed, I told people of my plans to spend time with LDR and I was met with dismay, disgust, and at best a precautionary word of advice. It wasn’t massively unexpected, so I refused to be disheartened by it, and although I took the advice given seriously, the insults I took less so. Everything, apart from violence, has a place in football, whether you agree with it or not, and that will be a key feature throughout the process of writing this book.
With the conversations still fresh in my thoughts, July 28 came around and with it Caracas FC’s first game of the Clausura – a home tie with Deportivo Lara, who had finished 14th in the Apertura. Apart from it never happened. It was suspended.
Los Demonios Rojos had nonviolent protests planned for the game; “peaceful,” was the word they used - capitalised for stress. Instead, they say, unjust repression was used to avoid the fans’ criticisms and their protests being seen or heard.
“It is inconceivable that some banners showing a collective stance are the trigger for not starting a football game,” read a Tweet explaining the afternoon’s events from LDR’s perspective.
The banners carried messages calling for the president to resign, that the fans deserved more, and that signings were needed. “We come for the colours,” one read, “failure since 2010,” said another, but neither got their moment in the sun.
The police were called in to quash the protests before they had even begun, clashes occurred, and the game was postponed and later cancelled. For those suggesting my choice to spend time with them is ill-thought through, it was vindication. For me, it was reinforcement.
“We cannot rest content with the charge from Washington that this peaceful protest is unpatriotic,” New York City Mayor John Lindsay said on October 15, 1969 in relation to the student protests against the Vietnam War. “The fact is that dissent is the highest form of patriotism.”
Of course, I am not likening the running of Caracas FC with the US Government’s approach to the Vietnam War – in fact, I have no further insight into the issue at hand – but the point is that dissent, protest, has a place in every sphere of society, and I look forward to not only discussing this with LDR but also the wider aims of the organisation and how they see their role in the community of the club and the city.
In light of what had happened, I spoke to Víctor again and told him of the concern some people had expressed over my plans to meet with LDR.
“It wouldn’t be the first time someone tries to approach us and realises that others’ prejudices are just that – prejudices. We don’t expect good references from others in football and we don’t care – they don’t know us.”
What Víctor said was in line with my thinking and my approach to Red Wine and Arepas: if I start approaching topics and people with preconceptions then I would have already failed in producing a book that aims to allow everyone their say, to factcheck statements of fact, but not to censor opinion.
“I’m not surprised you’ve received those comments. However, if you had been carried away by them, I’m sure you wouldn’t have contacted us, and at this moment we wouldn’t be talking. My family are proud of what I do in LDR. They see it brings me joy and that is what life is about – doing what causes us happiness.”
*The club is from and represents La Guaira but is located in Caracas due to the restrictive geography of their home city
Photo Credits: Los Demonios Rojos
By Jordan Florit - @TheFalseLibero
Jordan is currently writing Red Wine and Arepas: How Football is Becoming Venezuela's Religion. To pre-order it, visit his Kickstarter here. The Terrace subscribers have already been emailed an exclusive discount. Message Jordan if you no longer have it.
Written with the cooperation of the executive president of the Venezuelan Football League, Rubén Villavicencio, Red Wine and Arepas will feature exclusive interviews with players past and present.
He has already secured numerous interviews and meetings with Venezuelan players, managers, officials, journalists and fans, domestic and international, men and women, and will continue to work hard to arrange more. This includes members of the 2019 Copa América squad and teams from previous Copas, domestic league legends, young players at the beginning of their careers, and stars of the women’s game. The whole project comes with the blessing and support of the executive president of the Venezuelan Football League Rubén Villavicencio, who will be coordinating much of his time in Caracas.
]]>Alan Shearer, Bobby Moore, Gordon Banks, Geoff Hurst, Alf Ramsey, David Beckham, Sir Alex Ferguson, Gareth Bale, and George Best. When you think of the best and most iconic British footballers of all-time, its names like those that are envisaged. Then there’s the six British Ballon d’Or winners: alongside Best, there’s Sir Stanley Matthews, Denis Law, Sir Bobby Charlton, Kevin Keegan, and Michael Owen. While two of those were knighted, they weren’t born with the proverbial silver spoon in their mouth; not like the inherited wealth that was bequeathed upon Arthur Fitzgerald Kinnaird, 11th Lord Kinnaird, recipient of the Most Ancient and Most Noble Order of the Thistle.
(Picture credits to: http://www.uomonelpallone.it)
Born in Kensington, London to a Scottish father, who was a banker and MP, and a mother from Northampton, who would go on to found the Young Women’s Cristian Association (YWCA) and work with Florence Nightingale (all before Arthur Jr. was born) he would grow up to become one of British football’s first icons and set numerous records that still exist to this day. Before James Milner was reinventing himself in numerous positions throughout his career, Kinnaird was doing it; before Ashley Cole was appearing in FA Cup final after final for Arsenal and then Chelsea, Kinnaird was outdoing it; and before Neil Ruddock and Paul Ince were kicking players around the park for fun, he was setting the precedent for it.
Educated at the prestigious establishments of Cheam School, Eton College, and Trinity College, Cambridge, Kinnaird was among the elite from an early age - if his destiny of an inherited Lordship had not already ensured his status. Over the course of his varied and impressive professional life, he would serve as a director of two banks, the latter of which became the Barclays Bank we know today, the president of the YWCA and YMCA in England, a Lord High Commissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland on three occasions, and an Honorary Colonel of a volunteer unit of the Royal Engineers.
If he wasn’t busy enough, he made time to fill his personal life with a myriad of sports, all of which he seemed to excel in. He twice won a blue at tennis while at Trinity College, he won an international canoe race in Paris in 1867, was a champions swimmer and fives player at Cambridge University, and won the 350 yards race (320 metres) at Eton College. Despite all this, his greatest achievements came in yet another field; the one we know and love at The Terrace: the green one that is 115 by 75 yards.
Debuting in association football early in 1866, Kinnaird was not yet 20, however he had already established himself as a leader on the field, first captaining his Cheam school side at the age of 12 in a match against Harrow and winning the House Cup at Eton two years later. It is thus no surprise that two years after first starting to play football in its most organised sense, he was already an FA committeeman at the young age of 21. Today described as a ‘key figure in the early development of football’ by the Scottish FA, it was his country of heritage rather than that of birth that he chose to represent.
In one of many firsts, Kinnaird made his international debut, his only appearance for Scotland, in the second ever international, played against England at The Oval, in 1873. Now known for its status as an international cricket ground that traditionally hosts the final Test match of the English season, the ground was once home to the biggest of British football’s sporting events, including the first two England internationals (both times against Scotland), and the FA Cup final between 1872 and 1892, with the exception of 1873. The venue would play host to many of Kinnaird’s record-setting football, a number of which still stand to this day.
Although his first FA Cup Final was in that one year it wasn’t at the Kennington ground, the Scottish Lord would go on to feature in eight finals there - a final appearance record to this day - winning five between 1873 and 1882. Only Ashley Cole has won more – seven – with Kinnaird collecting three winners’ medals at Wanderers Football Club and two at Old Etonians.
A remarkably versatile footballer, Kinnaird holds the truly unique and bizarre record of having played in every position on the field, including goalkeeper, in FA Cup finals. In an act that can only be pulled off by such a character, when he won his fifth FA Cup in 1882, a 1-0 win over Blackburn Rovers in which he was playing in midfield, he celebrated by standing on his head in front of the crowd. It has been described as the last final to be won by a “gentleman amateur” side and in May 2013, a programme from the game sold for £35,250 at auction – a world record.
He wasn’t just competent on the pitch. In 1877, he became a treasurer for The FA, and in 1890, at the age of 43, he became The FA President. He would hold the role until his death in 1923, missing out on the opening of Wembley Stadium by months. In his time as president, he continued his love affair with the world’s oldest football cup competition, handing out winners’ medals, but also continued to achieve much more.
During his presidency, England would successfully join FIFA, despite 1904 attempts by Germany and Austria to lobby the organising body to enforce England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland to compete as the United Kingdom and not as individual states. To this day, the United Kingdom remain as one of just nine countries that do not have FIFA-affiliation, along with the Federated States of Micronesia, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, Monaco, Nauru, Palau, Tuvalu, and the Vatican City.
His one other notable record – being the first to score an own goal in the FA Cup Final in 1877 – does not prevent his many stellar achievements and accolades from making this Scottish Lord part of England’s footballing royalty.
Written by our Head Wordsmith Jordan Florit - @TheFalseLibero
]]>A view from The Terrace: The Greatest English Striker of the Last 30 Years
Last Friday, we asked you, the faces on The Terrace, who the three best English strikers of the last thirty years are. Seven names stood out among the likes of David Nugent and Jermaine Beckford: Harry Kane, Robbie Fowler, Ian Wright, Michael Owen, Gary Lineker, Alan Shearer, and Wayne Rooney.
Some great strikers missed out: Steve Bull, who is the last player to be capped by England whilst playing in the third tier or below; Andy Cole, who has been described as one half of the best strike partnership the Premier League has ever seen; Teddy Sheringham, the complete forward before his time, who famously didn’t get along with the former; and Peter Crouch, whose international record alone ranks him among the best.
From those seven, only four could be carried forward to our Official Twitter Poll ©: Owen, the last English player to win the Ballon d’Or and scorer of 118 Premier League goals; Lineker, controversially included despite it not actually being that controversial at all, because he had three stellar seasons at Spurs from 1989 onwards, scoring 67 league goals in 105 games; Shearer, winner of Golden Boots, scorer of many hat-tricks, and listed in Pelé’s Top 100 in 2004; and Wayne Rooney, the only player still active to make the final four.
After 157 names were counted in the original question, with approximately 52 people participating, we put it back to the people, and, bless you all, we did not end up with Boris Johnson.
I think Owen’s electric first five years will be lost to time, cruelly erased by the lasting impact of his injuries; which begs the question, do scars ever fade? No, they don’t, and sadly they don’t remind you of what was, they just remind you of what is now.
Unfortunately Owen running up and down the stairs at the Britannia Stadium in an attempt to let everyone know he was fit didn’t win him any votes in our Official Twitter Poll ©. Just 32 people valued Owen for those wonderful moments that existed pre-2003.
Remember that goal against Brazil in Japan in 2002? I do. We were going to win the World Cup. That was until Ronaldinho mugged us right off and then Sven left Robbie Fowler on the bench and brought on Darius Bloomin’ Vassell for yours truly. I need to stop remembering that game now. Nicky Butt and Trevor Sinclair. Sven? Really, mate? Danny Mills. Why? My memory had erased all that.
Here is Michael Owen how we should all remember him, almost as if he’s no longer with us and not slowly bludgeoning us to death with inanities on BT Sport: electric pace, deceptive agility, devastating acceleration, and a sniper fitted with the most powerful of suppressors. Just look at some of those balls over the top, some of the footraces he should have no chance of winning.
Third Place – Wayne Rooney
With 60 votes, he wasn’t unloved, however he didn’t make it past the lowest step of the podium. Within minutes of the Official Twitter Poll © going live, we were informed, repeatedly, by one massive Wayne Rooney advocate that he is “the highest scorer of all time. Highest of all time. That means more goals than anyone over all of the time England have played football.”
For dictionary definitions, he was absolutely right, yet that is sadly not how democracy works. The people voted and the people voted more times for two of the other three candidates. Rooney’s 46 England goals plus 7 penalties was not enough to place him higher than the other Merseyside striker in our midst.
Only Peter Shilton outdoes Rooney for appearances in a Three Lions shirt, with five more caps, and is also the only player to outdo him for longevity, with his career tallying 19 years and 8 months, to Rooney’s 15 years and 8 months. His goals to game ratio, despite him being the leading scorer, has him below all three of his fellow finalists.
Second Place – Gary Lineker
Perhaps nostalgia did carry him over the line, maybe the Golden Boot in the 1986 World Cup has become jumbled up in the annals of time, finding its way into the past 30 years of some of our memories, or just, maybe, perchance, you know, he was still very, very good when he rocked up at White Hart Lane in June 1989. Almost mockingly, Spurs posted this two days after we initially opened the debate. For those who don’t open the link, it says “30 years ago today, Gary Lineker joined the club.”
What follows is an 80 second medley of delightful goals, of which just one is not a first-time strike. It had it all – all the different one touch finishes: the mighty toe-poke, stealing it off a teammate’s run, the headed flick, the back-post run, and the acrobatic volley. The anomaly is a move in which Lineker starts on the left around 20 yards out, makes for the inside with a jittery run, quickly accelerates to the right, and curls one into the far corner.
All in all, he scored 80 goals for Spurs, including 35 in his final season despite the club finishing 15th in the league. Post-1989, he won the English First Division Golden Boot for the third time, the FWA Footballer of the Year Award, The FA Cup, a fourth-place finish in the 1990 World Cup, and finished 3rd in the FIFA World Player of the Year Award. Not bad. It’s almost as if our great fanbase at The Terrace know their football.
First Place – Alan Shearer
Was it ever in doubt? With 66% of the poll, 304 votes, and a winning margin of 242, Alan Shearer is the undisputed winner of The Terrace’s Best English Striker of the Last Thirty Years Award. Catchy.
Once upon a time, there was a channel called Sky Sports 5, and on that you can hear Shearer talk about his first career hat-trick, which just so happened to come on his full debut and Southampton’s wonderful old ground The Dell. At just 17 years and 240 days old, he became the youngest scorer of a hat-trick in the top division of English football since Jimmy Greaves had done so in 1958. Fittingly, two were headers, and the third was celebrated with his one arm raised aloft. He’d have the opportunity to celebrate like that over another 250 times throughout his career.
He moved clubs twice in his career and both times were record-breaking. First he moved to Blackburn for an English transfer record fee of £3.6m and then four years later, he moved to Newcastle United for a world transfer record fee of £15m.
A Premier League title is probably second only to winning the World Cup on the childhood wishlist of any budding English footballer - I wonder if that is the case for young pros – yet it still seems sad that one of them is all Shearer won at club level in his career. No FA Cups, League Cups, or even the Community Shield. What does have his name all over it, however, is the Premier League record books:
He even scored an overhead kick for England.
By Jordan Florit (@TheFalseLibero)
]]>At 18:58, on July 19 2019, The Terrace created a monster. It dared to ask you, the fans who fill The Terrace, for your 'Top three English strikers of the last 30 years.' For some it was too much. "Thierry Henry," one who struggles with comprehension declared, "Didier Drogba," claimed another.
However, the vast majority were able to comprehend nine words and a question mark and a total of 157 comments came flooding in. Among the gush were names of players past - David Hirst, Steve Bull, and Ian Wright - and just one player still active in the Premier League - Harry Kane. This was, of course, after the stewards at The Terrace had escorted silly suggestions off the premises. We are a serious establishment, don't you know?
Most chucked names into the hat - Andy Cole, Ian Wright, and Teddy Sheringham - and continued with their scrolling, but the most passionate of fans stayed for the chat. One such legend was Toby Giles.
"Footballing talent?" he asked nobody in particular, before answering his own question, "Rooney, Shearer, Sheringham." Having established that, Giles went on to offer Shearer, Kane, and Fowler for their finishing ability, and Rooney, Shearer, and Owen for their "get-you-off-your-seatness." His favourite, however, is Troy Deeney. The big man at The Terrace, Carl Sewell, approved. "This reasoning is exactly what we were looking for," he bellowed from the executive box.
John Oliver was another face on The Terrace and he was up for some proper debate, too. Kevin Phillips was one of his suggestions and it came justified - he's the only English European Golden Boot winner.
In the 1999/00 season, decked out in the red and white stripes of Sunderland, Phillips knocked 30 past opposition 'keepers. It has only been outdone nine times in the 19 years since. That year, he won the Premier League Player of the Season award, having finished as the league's top scorer by a clear seven goals, and it was all the more sweeter for Black Cats fans as it was Newcastle's Alan Shearer who finished second. Out of the 309 votes counted, it was the Toon striker who came out on top, though.
With practically a third of all votes going to the Southampton, Blackburn, and Newcastle striker (101), he finished night and day ahead of Gary Lineker in second (38), and Michael Owen in third (34). With 32 and 31 votes each, Wayne Rooney and Robbie Fowler were also standout performers. The gulf between that top five and the rest of the pack was noticeable. Down in sixth was Ian Wright with 18 putting him in their top three, and Harry Kane completed the top seven with 13. Interestingly, Sewell publicly stated he had a 'top 7,' but he was not available for comment.
With the numbers crunched and the pie charts eaten, we had our top four and we are ready to put it back to the people. Think of it as a second referendum: we asked you a fairly vague question without any particulars to get behind, but now we have clearly stated options and people might actually have gained some clarity by seeing four sensible choices on the table and the ridiculous politely ruled out.
It was painfully close between Rooney and Fowler for a place in the top four, but as Twitter polls only account for that amount, Fowler misses out. So, here's the case for our four lions.
Scorer of goals from his own half, derby day overhead kicks, and the national team's all-time top scorer, Rooney made his Premier League debut at the age of 16 and then for England at 17. He has since scored 28 in 117 for Everton, 253 in 559 for Manchester United, and 25 in 44 for DC United.
He is Manchester United's highest all-time goalscorer, despite never receiving a Golden Boot of any sort during his professional career, but has won the PFA Players' Player, PFA Young Player of the Year, PFA Fans' Player of the Year, and a place in the PFA Team of the Year on three separate occasions over a six year period.
In a ten year international career, Owen scored 40 goals in 89 appearances. Had it not been for injury, he would today likely be England's all-time top goalscorer. He burst onto the international stage in 1998, scoring 4 goals in 12 games for England, a return he equalled or bettered in six of the remaining nine years in the Three Lions set-up. His best year came in 2001 with six goals in eight games, including that hat-trick against Germany, accompanied by the legendary tones of Peter Brackley.
At club level, Owen won the Premier League Golden Boot twice, aged 18 and 19, but wasn't able to fire his side to the Premier League title; that winners' medal didn't find its way over his head until 2011, at which point he was a Manchester United player. It was his season ten years earlier that he will be remembered for, however, receiving the Ballon d'Or and the World Soccer World Player of the Year award, as he won the FA Cup, League Cup, Community Shield, UEFA Cup, and the UEFA Super Cup with Liverpool.
Lineker's career started in the 1978/79 season, with one league goal for Leicester City in the old Second Division. As Toby Giles pointed out in the comments, it is perhaps a very much late entry to a category defined as since 1989. That year, Lineker returned to England after a three year spell at Barcelona, joining Tottenham Hotspur.
From the point of return to his 1994 retirement in Japan, the man who scored 48 goals in 80 games for England, notched up 88 goals in 162 games. At a rate of 0.54 goals per game, it is actually above his career average of 0.51, meaning his best years, marginally, could have arguably been within our parameters. You decide.
The Leicester, Everton, Barcelona, Spurs, and Nagoya Grampus Eight striker, won five Top Scorer awards, including the FIFA World Cup Golden Boot in 1986, with six goals - more than Diego Maradona, Emilio Butragueno, and Careca.
The clear favourite for The Terrace's Best English Striker Award, Shearer bagged 30 goals in 63 games for England and 206 in 405 for Newcastle United. Floating around the goal every other game mark for his career as a whole, his best years goalscoring years were at Blackburn in which he scored 112 league goals in 138 league appearances - an astonishing rate of 0.81 goals per game - in a four-year spell at the club. In comparison, Thierry Henry's best four-year run brought 106 goals in 138 games - six fewer in the same amount of appearances.
On an individual level, Shearer won three consecutive Premier League Golden Boots between 1994 and 1997, has the most goals in Premier League history, the most Premier League hat-tricks (11), the most Premier League goals in a single match (5), and the top goalscorer in Newcastle United history.
]]>We don’t pretend to see football differently here at The Terrace. In fact, if you ever see us publish an article that starts to resemble a thesis or has as many stats as it does statements, please delete the app, unsubscribe, and unfollow us.
With that in mind, we do like the different experiences football can bring us and therefore, in what will hopefully become a regular feature in this here blog, we will be talking to different voices in football. From the coppers that police matchdays, to the kids and teenagers that ballboy for their heroes, we’ll be talking to them about how a matchday plays out for them. We might even try and find a hotdog seller.
In this episode, we talk to Jordan, a former ballboy for Southampton F.C.
The Terrace: Is the official title ‘ballboy’ or is there something more formal?
Jordan: If I remember correctly, the title was ball attendant, ‘ballboy’ is what was used though.
The Terrace: How did you get the role?
Jordan: I was very fortunate, really. I bought my first season ticket in 2009. We’d just been relegated to League One and I was 15. It was the first time football was affordable to me and the club were offering half-season tickets too. That year, my cousin was a ballboy and he got the role because the organiser was the PE teacher at his school.
When we played Swindon in the first round of the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy in August 2010, the club were short a ballboy and as he knew I was at the game, my cousin rang me and asked if I fancied it. I obviously said yes, and I ended up doing it for four seasons, perfectly in sync with Guly’s time at the club! My first game was his home debut and his last game was his too.
The Terrace: Is it a paid position? Other than obviously getting to see the game close up, what are the perks?
Jordan: No, it wasn’t paid but that didn’t even cross my mind! I absolutely loved it. Those Saturdays were the some of the best of my life. I’d play for my Saturday morning side and then quickly nip home for lunch and a shower and then head off to St. Mary’s, and that was the case for three of us – me, my cousin, and my best mate – who all played for the same team and ballboyed at the club.
Just before I joined, the chairman at the time, Nicola Cortese, changed what we received as ‘lunch.’ It was a meal deal from the bar; so a cheeseburger or hot dog, a packet of crisps or chocolate, and a drink, but he changed it to a Lucozade and a Mars Bar. Probably wouldn’t have even been that if there wasn’t a requirement from the league to provide us with something! Like you say, though, the perk was being on the touchline.
The Terrace: Being there for four years, you saw quite a bit of change. Did that impact in any way on your role?
Jordan: Yeah, it did actually. In terms of what we did and how we did it, each year there was a vote among the clubs whether to use the multi-ball system or the one ball system. We’d genuinely get in-game instructions as to whether to be quick about getting the ball back to the players or to take our time. I can’t remember the exact game, but there was a time when one of the opposition players squared up to one of our ballboys who was about 6’3 and really cocky. He just stood there and stared blankly at the player. It was quite amusing because nothing intimidates him and this League One player was screaming in his face for taking his time.
There was another time, an evening game, where we were really trying hard to get ahead in the second half. We’d been slaughtering the other side but just couldn’t score. We were on the break and they managed to put it out of play. I’d anticipated it happening and was already hurdling the advertising board as it came out of play. I caught it mid-air and passed it to Dan Harding who took a quick throw-in and we caught their defence still trying to get into shape and scored. I know it sounds stupid but I genuinely felt involved in that goal, like I was part of the build up play, and Harding turned around and did a fist-pump towards me. It was a pleasant change because he was normally screaming at me. I don’t know why but our left-backs used to give us ballboys a lot of aggro. Both Harding and then Danny Fox used to shout abuse at me all the time. They’d always apologise after the game, though.
The Terrace: What were the biggest differences as you moved up the leagues?
Jordan: It sounds cliché, however, lower down the leagues the players and staff were on the whole much nicer. I remember on the final day of the 2010/11 campaign, we were playing at home against Walsall who were not yet safe and we were also not yet guaranteed automatic promotion. Fortunately both sides got what they wanted and when, with about 10-15 minutes left, it became clear that Walsall were staying up, one of their coaches started chatting to me. By this time, I’d ‘earned’ the position of ballboying the away team dugout, which had perks of its own. He was asking me how old I was, what my ambitions were for the future, and stuff like that. I didn’t have a clue who he was, then or now, but for a paid professional to stop and have a chat with me like that, made me feel ten foot tall.
It wasn’t always like that, though. When we played Oldham in the same season, we equalised right on the stroke of half-time. Their manager, Paul Dickov, turned around and kicked a water bottle. It went whistling past my ear, nearly hitting me, and one of our fans in the front row yelled at him. Dickov thought it was me and called me a ‘c*%t.’ During the half-time break a steward came over to tell me the situation was being ‘dealt with.’ I don’t know what happened but he didn’t apologise!
The Terrace: Can you give us some standout moments from the club’s time in the Football League?
Jordan: Okay, well the first two seasons require no thought. Both times we won promotion on the final day, so there were pitch invasions, celebrations, the lot, and as a ballboy you were in prime position for it. We were told not to invade until fans were already on the pitch, however. So while we weren’t the first on, we were a close second, and I certainly made the most of it. On promotion from League One, I managed to take home the match ball. On the walk into town after the game, multiple fans offered me three figures for it but I didn’t want to sell. Instead I used it for my Saturday morning side as our match ball and promptly lost it into an allotment. I was gutted. Stupid decision, really.
Given the promotions are obvious choices, I’ll pick out some individual moments. Back in League One, we had a really lovely coach called Dean Wilkins. In the pre-match warm-up for one game, he asked me if I could help him with a one-on-one routine with Adam Lallana. Obviously I said yes. It was a simple drill in which they exchanged a few passes and then Lallana would take on Wilkins and whip in a cross aiming for me. In the two seasons we did that for, I resisted the temptation to ever finish one of his crosses into an empty net. Missing in front of a full stand would’ve been mortifying. I’m so grateful to Wilkins for that though, because I’ll never forget it.
That year, we were drawn against Manchester United in the FA Cup. I spent all week really looking forward to that because I rarely went to a Premier League game when we were last in it. Our changing room was directly opposite the away team’s and when United arrived, theirs hadn’t been unlocked, which meant we swamped them for autographs. That day I got one from Rooney, Anderson, Giggs, Owen, and Sir Alex Ferguson. That day had some hilarious moments and really didn’t paint Fergie in a good light. Firstly, he kicked off about the changing room situation and us asking for signatures – how dare we?! Then, when my cousin said ‘can I have your autograph please, Alex?’ he replied saying, ‘did you go to school with me?’ My cousin said, ‘no,’ and so Fergie told him, ‘well it’s Sir Alex then, isn’t it?’ What a prized bell-ringer. We managed to take the lead that day and the game was televised. I was in my usual position of away dugout and my cousin was always positioned in the home dugout. When we scored, the camera panned to Fergie and you can see me leap from my chair and run straight across the dugout and into my cousin’s arms. It was an absolutely electric moment. At half-time we both got told off because Fergie had complained about us.
The Terrace: And what were your highlights from the two seasons you did in the Premier League?
Jordan: By the time we were in the Premier League I was actually 18. I finished college the same month that we got promoted from the Championship and I fully expected to stop then. I even wrote Nigel Adkins a thank you note. Given I had the opportunity to give it to him personally and he had genuinely provided me with the two best football seasons of my life, I wasn’t going to pass it up.
The organiser said I was welcome to keep coming and so I did, putting any concerns of ‘am I too old for this?’ completely out of mind. At the end of the day, not only was I pitch side for my club and in the Premier League, but it was saving me £400 a year on a season ticket.
Halfway through our first season in the Premier League, Adkins was sacked and Wilkins left too, so gone were the days of warming up with Adam Lallana, but the pre-match part of my day was still fun. Kelvin Davis used to joke around with us in the warm-up and Jack Cork used to stop and chat with me. One time, I was in a club on a Saturday night – 90 Degrees – and Davis recognised me and asked me if I was old enough to be in a club or too old to be ballboying! Another time, I was sat in Costa with a friend from school and Jack Cork came up to me and said hi. Jack Cork came up to me and said hi; not the other way around. I’ll never forget that. Typically my friend wasn’t into football so didn’t know who he was and wasn’t impressed!
When we played Arsenal one year, Per Mertesacker passed the ball in my direction and I just presumed it was a loose ball so I passed it back to him and then he passed it back to me and suddenly I was playing one and two touch with a future World Cup winner. That was pretty cool.
By this time, as I was 18/19 years old. I had a lot more confidence and didn’t shy away from opportunities. When we played Chelsea I met Jose Mourinho, who was and still is one of my favourite managers of all-time. I took along a biography of his and asked him to sign it. He was more than willing to, didn’t say anything stupid like ‘call me Mr. Mourinho,’ and had a little bit of a chat. I wished him good luck and he chuckled and asked if I thought Chelsea would need it. I said no and he said, ‘in which case, good luck to you!” Two minutes into the game Fernando Torres missed an absolute sitter. Mourinho turned around and smiled at me.
Do you have a different matchday experience from just sitting in the stands or standing in the terrace? If so, get in touch. We’d love to hear your story.
Words by @TheFalseLibero
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Twelve years on and over 7000 kilometres away from Cork City’s Turners Cross ground, former Rebel Army striker Kevin Doyle announced his retirement from football.
“Today I’m sad to announce that after listening to medical advice I will no further part in this season and will be retiring,” Doyle said in a statement on Twitter on September 28th, 2017.
“This year it has been clear to me that heading the ball was becoming problematic and causing me to have repeated headaches. Two concussions this season and numerous others over the years have made this more concerning.
“After consulting with experts in the field it has been decided that to avoid the possibility of these symptoms become more serious and permanent, I will be hanging up my boots for good.”
His announcement ended with a special mention to Patrick Dolan who he stated had “a lot more confidence” in his ability than Doyle did himself.
In March 2003, Dolan was hired as the Cork City manager and in one of his first actions, bought Doyle from St. Patrick’s Athletic, reuniting the two after the former had left St. Pats in February. They spent two seasons together, with Doyle outlasting his manager by six months or so, and in that time Dolan carefully managed Doyle’s progress, playing him out of position on the wing, easing some of the pressure to score from the then 19-year old striker.
It helped that Cork already had a goalscoring strike partnership in local lad George O’Callaghan, who just a year previously had returned from seven years in the ranks of Port Vale, and Cobh-born John O’Flynn, who had similarly joined in 2002 after a youth career in England. Between the three of them, Cork’s main goal threat had an average age of just 20 years and 7 months.
Dolan’s handling of Doyle paid dividends, and when he was moved back into his natural position of centre forward with O’Callaghan dropping into the midfield, he began finding the net at an impressive rate. From there, his ascendancy was fast, becoming an international three years later, while his fellow aforementioned strikers would go on to finish their careers without an international cap between them. Before he made the full international team however, he cut his teeth with the U21s and at the U20 FIFA World Cup in 2003.
In his two-and-a-half-years at Cork, Doyle scored 25 goals in 76 appearances – a rate of roughly one in three; a respectable return for a striker between the ages of 19 and 22, and who spent the first segment of those appearances out on the wing. That goalscoring rate would fall slightly over the course of his career to one in every four but the opposition would improve from the League of Ireland, to the English Football League, and then the Premier League itself.
With his move to English Championship side Reading already a done deal, Doyle played his last match for Cork City on June 6th, 2005. In a game under the floodlights, Cork City beat Finn Harps 2-0. Doyle was substituted to a standing ovation in the 68th minute, but not before he grabbed both goals in front of the 5000-strong Turner’s Cross crowd. His first impact came ten minutes in when he beat the last man – Shane Bradley – who then pulled Doyle to the ground.
“Doyle was always involved,” The Irish Independent match report stated. “His pace, close control and powerful running meant that the Harps' defence suffered a torrid time.
“Little wonder, then, that it was the Reading-bound hotshot who opened the scoring on 30 minutes after a lovely piece of inter-play with O'Callaghan.
“O'Callaghan was through on goal from Neal Horgan's incisive pass and then made sure of a successful end to the move by squaring the ball back for Doyle to knock it home.
“The second goal arrived on the stroke of half-time and again it was as a result of a combination between O'Callaghan and Doyle. This time, O'Callaghan's corner from the right fell to Doyle's feet near the penalty spot and he shot left-footed on the turn to beat goalkeeper Gavin Cullen.
Joining Reading the next day, along with teammate Shane Long, Doyle cost the Berkshire club £78,000 – a crazily low fee even then, for what returned the club 56 goals in 163 games across two Championship seasons and two in the Premier League. At this point, Doyle was still maintaining his rough return of one goal in three games, but his 2009 move from the Championship to Premier League Wolves saw his return drop and not again in English football, nor his career, would Doyle hit ten or more goals in a single season.
The accolades amassed from his Irish career, both domestically and internationally, tally one League of Ireland title, the FAI U21 Player of the Year, and the FAI Senior International Player of the Year in 2008 and 2010. In England, he won the Football League Championship with Reading in his first season, earning a spot in the Team of the Year, as well as winning the club’s Player of the Season award as well as the Fans’. In 2014, he won League One with Wolves, before moving to Colorado Rapids in 2015, where he saw out the final years of his career, before retiring at the age of 35.
From a 19-year old signed from St. Pats to an international career of 64 caps and 14 goals, Kevin Doyle was a short-lived Cork City legend.
By Jordan Florit
Follow on Twitter - @TheFalseLibero
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As the final ten minutes of extra time ticked down, Sevilla looked destined to win the all-Spanish UEFA Cup Final. After a goalless hour of football, Frédéric Kanouté restored Sevilla’s lead in the 105th minute. Espanyol, led by the competition’s leading goalscorer, Walter Pandiani, looked defeated. Then, with five minutes left on the clock, defensive midfielder Jônatas, on loan from Flamengo, scored one of only two goals he struck while at the club. It went to penalties. Pandiani scored his – the only Espanyol player to do so – and Jônatas missed. Three out of four was enough for Kanouté’s side and the trophy headed back to Seville.
It was a long journey from start to finish in the 2006/07 UEFA Cup. A total of 219 games were played and 131 teams took part, with 80 making it past the qualifying stages. Among the many to enter at the first hurdle was Derry City, the League of Ireland’s only Northern Ireland side. Qualifying through their league finish of runners-up, they joined Drogheda United as the league’s representatives, who qualified through cup competition. It could have been a different story, however.
The 2005 League of Ireland title went down to the wire and going into the final game of the season, Derry were top. They faced second-place Cork City and needed only a draw to win their first league title for nearly a decade. Instead, Cork scored twice and won the league and with it Champions League football.
Derry entered the 2006/07 UEFA Cup at the first qualifying round and were drawn against Swedish side IFK Goteborg, who too had qualified as runners-up in the league. Among their ranks was future CSKA anchor-man Pontus Wernbloom and the to be prolific Marcus Berg.
Away in the first leg, Derry’s goalkeeper David Forde, who would go on to have a successful career in the English Football League and win 24 international caps for the Republic of Ireland, displayed the kind of form that would earn him a 2007 move to Cardiff.
“A 79th-minute header from Sean Hargan earned Derry a shock victory against former winners Göteborg in Sweden,” the UEFA.com match report read. “The goal came after a spell of prolonged pressure from the determined visitors, which had also seen Killian Brennan crash an effort against the woodwork just before the hour mark.
“Göteborg went close through Stefan Selakovic and Marcus Berg in the first half, and besieged Derry's goalmouth in the closing stages but David Forde made two great late saves to seal a famous victory.
A shock it may have been but if that was the case, Derry proved it wasn’t a fluke two weeks later when on July 27th at Brandywell Stadium they repeated the feat. A first half penalty saw The Candystripes double their advantage when George Mourad handled in the box and Stephen O’Flynn converted the resultant spot-kick. With 15 minutes left Derry conceded a penalty themselves, just for the referee to overturn his decision. He may have been Icelandic, but he wasn’t allying with his Scandinavian counterparts. Forde again made a flurry of late saves and Derry were through to the second qualifying round and about to make history.
Having made it through the first qualifying round for the first time in 41 years, Derry were handed a tie against Scottish opposition. Away in the first leg, some 3000 fans made the journey from Northern Ireland to Motherwell for their match with Gretna. That day, history was made. Alongside the extremely vocal and fanatical travelling support, was a fitting performance.
The official attendance was 6,040, which must have left many of Derry’s 3000-strong backing in Motherwell town centre, yet they could probably hear the roars throughout the second half as the Northern Irish side scored four after the break, reversing the one goal deficit that they’d eradicated before half-time. The game finished 5-1 with braces from Kevin Deery and Ciaran Martyn, putting a halt to Gretna’s European ambitions and making their weekend steamrolling of Hamilton Accies (6-0) a distant memory. The second leg finished 2-2 and it was likely to be anything other than a formality. The victory at Fir Park remains the largest away winning margin for any team from Ireland in Europe and a lifelong tale to tell for those who were there.
Drawn away in both the first two qualifying legs, Derry then played hosts first in the third and final round. It would be their toughest opposition yet. Paris Saint-Germain were the visitors, and although it was five years before Qatar Sports Investments rocked up and splurged £1bn on the likes of Kylian Mbappé and Neymar, the Parisians were still two-time Ligue 1 champions and seven-time Coupe de France winners, and the current holders. They also boasted future club Hall of Famer Pauleta.
PSG underestimated Derry in the first leg, despite the warnings, and although they dominated much of the first half – the BBC match report believed manager Stephen Kenny must have been glad to hear the half-time whistle – the hosts managed to grind out the 0-0 draw. In the return leg in the French capital, PSG boss Guy Lacombe put out a virtually full-strength side, and it showed.
Colombian legend Mario Yepes still remained on the bench for the second leg, but Pauleta started and it was he who scored the French side’s second goal four minutes from half-time, after they’d opened the scoring six minutes in through Edouard Cisse.
"Tonight was a bridge too far but we must keep on trying to improve as a team," said City boss Kenny.
"PSG are a step-up - they are France's biggest club - and we did all right.
"But conceding that first goal from a set-piece was devastating. Then having to get two was ambitious because we did not really threaten the PSG goal."
Had Derry won, or secured a score draw, they would have becoming the first Irish side to reach the group stages of a major European competition. To this day, they are still to progress past the third qualifying round, matching that stage just once more, in 2009/10, by which time it had rebranded as the Europa League. The season after the exit to PSG, they were in the Champions League first qualifying round, however they fell at the first hurdle after a 0-0 and a 2-0 loss to Pyunik of Armenia. A year later, they had their revenge, knocking them out of the Europa League.
It may have ended in defeat, yet for those that travelled to Paris, and indeed to Sweden or Scotland, the summer of 2006 was a memorable – if brief – summer of European football.
What a game Championship Manager 0102 was - is, in fact - and always will be. For all the funk and jazz of the latest Football Manager releases, CM0102 is a timeless entity that astounds in its effective simplicity. I don’t know if anyone bothers with those Millennium boxes or time capsules for future generations to find anymore but I hope one exists with a Windows 98 and a copy of the red disc inside.
Some were pulled by a rampant Ruud Van Nistelrooy to Manchester United, others to the near invincible Roma side, but those in it for the long run would start in the old Third Division or lower. Hull, Luton, and Rushden and Diamonds were popular choices, as was Plymouth Argyle. At that level, bargains were ever important but some of the higher tier freebies and wonderkids were just out of reach - for now.
At The Terrace, we are fairly sure one of the scouts working at Argyle in 2005 and 2006 was a fan of the game and had perhaps even played as the club. In 2001, when the game came out, the Pilgrims were about to embark on their fourth season in the Third Division, which would end in promotion before two seasons in the Second Division and another promotion. It’s the kind of achievable ascendancy synonymous with skilled ChampMan players. Their most talented and efficient in-game counterparts were Nicky Banger, David Friio, Ian Stonebridge, and David Worrell, according to expert CM player Ian Edwards, who is also the graphic designer behind this article’s artwork.
Come the start of the 2005/06 campaign, you were already four seasons deep and ready for number five. Michael Dunwell was probably still tearing it up for you and you’d chained Mark Kerr to the clubhouse outside of match days for fear of one of the big boys coming in for him. It’s at this point that you’ve perhaps built up a budget big enough for the plentiful of talented players available at around the £1-2m mark. Here’s where reality and imagination seemingly collided almightily.
Plymouth were about to commence their second season in the Championship when Taribo West rocked up at preseason training.
Argyle manager Bobby Williamson was “delighted” with his new signing. “He turned up at 2am and that shows his commitment.” Supposedly having his head turned by the ambition at Home Park, West purportedly turned down interest from Benfica. Unfortunately - and perhaps not just because it was four years on from his free agent status in-game - West would not replicate his cult hero virtual persona. Five games later, and the number 4 had his contract terminated. Tony Pulis – and the obligatory presence of son Anthony – in, Nigerian legend out.
Although it was still early in the season, many felt the writing was on the wall if the club stuck with Williamson, so in came in Pulis – tracksuited and booted. It marked the end of West’s time at the club, not leaving before having a dig at the new manager, claiming he couldn’t manage big name players, but Pulis himself would not last long. Eight 0-0s was indicative that Pulis had stamped his trademark on the team in double-quick time, but even a return of a 14th place finish was unable to save him. The “boring Argyle” label was not something the club wanted to stick, and in came Ian Holloway, an extra 25 goals over the course of the season, only a solitary 0-0 result, and an improved finish of 11th.
It was a comparatively free-scoring team after the previous season and among many of the goals were Sylvan Ebanks-Blake and Barry Hayles. But neither were anything special on ChampMan, were they? Instead, it was the transfer deadline day antics that brought the second CM0102 legend to Home Park: Cherno Samba.
Having once scored 132 goals in 32 games, Samba joined Millwall and it was here that you could find him on the iconic game. Just to make it clear, those 132 goals came in a real-life season, albeit as a 13-year old for his school football team, and not on a CM save. So, it was understandable just how hyped up he was in the game and in real life, where he entertained talks with Manchester United and Liverpool, despite neither materialising into anything.
When I ran a ten year simulation on CM0102, Samba's accolades extended to a Premier League winners medal, a Players’ Player of the Year Award, three Premier League Team of the Season spots, and a Golden Boot. He was a fully-fledged England international, as well.
On 31st August 2006, Holloway signed Samba on a free transfer after his two-year sojourn in Spain had ended following his 2004 release by Millwall. He scored 11 goals in 18 games whilst on loan at Malaga’s B team from Cadiz, so there was still every hope he could fulfil his potential – only a year earlier, he had been capped by England U20s.
It was a perfect start for the Gambian born striker, scoring the winner on his debut in the 82nd minute, eight minutes after coming on as a substitute. Unfortunately, Argyle’s second attempt at harnessing the coded gold of Championship Manager legends had failed too. Four months later, Samba was sent out on loan to League Two Wrexham for one month and the option to extend it was not taken up. At the end of his two-year contract with the Pilgrims, he left as he joined – on a free transfer – with no further goals to his name and just 13 league appearances.
There has long been speculation that Taribo West had lied about his real age throughout his career and so when he arrived at Plymouth in 2005 aged 31, according to the former general secretary of Partizan Žarko Zečević he may well have been 43. “He joined us saying he was 28. We only later found out he was 40, but he was still playing well so I don’t regret having him on the team,” Zečević said years later.
It is a rumour that has followed West and some of his other international teammates of the same generation around for many years and could explain why his abilities so quickly dropped off at the end of 1999. At this point, his maths would have had him aged 25 and surely heading towards his peak as a centre-back, yet that isn’t at all what happened. He went from a double-winning colossus at Auxerre and a UEFA Cup winner with Inter, to a bit of a journeyman and caricature. It would make much more sense if he was instead 37 in 1999, as Zečević believes is the case.
Similar – yet very less intense and seriously taken – rumours briefly surfaced around Cherno Samba but were dispelled just as quickly. Instead, his was a case of the pressures of the game and the lack of attention to mental health there was in football just as recently as 15 years ago.
If Plymouth fancy their luck one more time – third time lucky and all that – Freddy Adu has only just turned 30 and believes he has it in him to give it one last shot at fulfilling at least some of his potential.
Remember to check out Ian's work: https://twitter.com/citizenedwards
]]>The line-up in full was: Furnell; Nisbet, Jack Chisholm, Graham Coughlan, Colin Sullivan; Kevin Hodges, Johnny Williams, Garry Nelson, Sammy Black; Tynan and Paul Mariner. Between them, they made 2950 league appearances for The Pilgrims, split across nine Englishmen, one Irishman, and a Scot.
Fifteen years on from the centenary team, The Terrace takes a look at who would make a post-2004 line-up. Our qualifying criteria was simple: must have played for Plymouth after the centenary XI was announced and must not have been in that selection.
Joining the club in 2000, the Frenchman was eligible for the team of the century and had already notched up 109 league appearances for the club. By the time he left Plymouth in 2012, he’d pulled the shirt on over 300 times.
His two trophies with the club came in 2002 and 2004, as Plymouth won the Football League Third and Second Division, but in the 2008/09 season, Larrieu was named as the club’s Player of the Year, as they narrowly avoided relegation by just five points. Despite finishing 21st, only two teams in the bottom half conceded fewer than their 57 – Doncaster in 14th (53) and Crystal Palace in 15th (55).
Bhasera’s route to The Pilgrims was not plain sailing but in March 2010, he finally made his debut 12 months after last kicking a ball competitively. In his first full season at the club, the Zimbabwean scored a wonderful solo effort, dribbling the ball 40 yards before slotting past the MK Dons ‘keeper.
He played a total of 114 games for Argyle, and at the end of the 2012/13 season, he was named as the Fans’ Player of the Year, being described on the official club site as a “constant menace to npower League 2 right-backs.” Oddly, he then seemingly disappeared. His contract was up at the club, but the 26-year old wasn’t even contactable for manager John Sheridan, who said, “the problem is getting hold of him and finding his whereabouts.” He reappeared in South Africa for Bidvest Wits, where he played until 2016, since playing for SuperSport United alongside former Doncaster and Oldham midfielder Dean Furman.
For three seasons, the Dutch defender was a mainstay at the back for Plymouth. He played 81% of Argyle’s league games between August 2006 and May 2009, but the odd disciplinary problem with manager Paul Sturrock led to him being transfer listed twice. The second time came in August 2009 and just a month later he was shipped out on loan to Blackpool and his old Plymouth manager Ian Holloway.
Seip’s inclusion may seem controversial in light of his falling out with Sturrock, compounded by the fact he then scored against Plymouth for Blackpool whilst out on loan, but he was ever-present in three of the club’s six seasons in the Championship in the 2000s and when he left the club on loan – and then permanently – Argyle suffered two straight relegations.
Another defender to leave Plymouth in 2009 was Kouo-Doumbé. After a youth career at PSG, the French defender spent three years at Hibernian, before joining Argyle and former Hibs manager Bobby Williamson.
He fell out of favour when Holloway left and Sturrock returned, but in May 2008 he became the club’s longest-serving outfield player. The 2005/06 season was his standout year, making 43 appearances as the club finished 14th, three places higher than the previous season. In his time at the club he scored four times.
When at Southampton, “Paul Wotton, Football Genius,” was a regular chant from the St. Mary’s crowd. Sung in jest at his simple and no-nonsense approach to the game, it may be surprising to their fans that at Plymouth, Wotton twice finished as Plymouth’s top scorer (their first two seasons in the Championship) and managed a total of 64 goals in 491 appearances. He twice won Plymouth Argyle Player of the Season, in 2003 and 2005, and was included in the PFA Third Division Team of the Year in 2002, the same year in which they won the Third Division. Two years later, they won the Second Division.
After scoring on his debut, Norris went on to spent over five years at the club, scoring 28 goals in 243 games and won the Player of the Year Award in 2006, having won the Second Division with Argyle in 2004. He cost them just £25,000.
His work rate and stamina earned him the nickname “Duracell Bunny,” as well as “Nosher” as Plymouth won the Second Division, and his partnership with Paul Wotton in the heart of midfield was a productive one, with the former regularly winning set pieces for the latter to dispatch.
Now the assistant manager at AC Le Havre, Nalis arrived at the Pilgrims 14 years into his 18-year career. Having already clocked up just shy of 300 league appearances across the top tiers of France, Italy, and England, with Leicester City.
In 2008, the Frenchman won the club’s Player of the Year award as voted for by the fans, after being signed by Tony Pulis in 2006 and remaining in favour when Ian Holloway then replaced the future Stoke manager, who had earned the club the reputation of ‘boring Argyle.’ He flourished under Holloway, scoring four goals in the 06/07 season as the club finished eleventh.
Having only just left the club for CSKA Sofia, the Irish attacking midfielder’s exploits are fresh in the memory of Argyle fans. Joining from Ross County in 2015, the former Celtic youth player won the PFA Fan’s Player of the Year for League Two in his first season at the club, and won promotion in his second, as the club went up as runners-up, also earning a spot in the PFA Team of the Year.
The twice Plymouth Player of the Year (2016 & ’18), was deployed as a #10 as well as on the wings in his time at the club and regularly delivered expertly executed set-pieces, as well as outrageous pieces of skill, like this. In the 16/17 and the 17/18 season, Carey was the team’s top goalscorer, scoring 15 as they won promotion from League Two and then 16 in his first season in League One.
The perfect foil for Graham Carey, the two of them played as inside forwards often behind Ryan Taylor in the 2017/18 season. It was a wonderful partnership and the two of them were directly involved in 26 of 35 goals in a 19-game stretch that season, also creating more than half of the team’s goalscoring chances in that same spell.
In the season just gone, he was voted Plymouth’s Player of the Season as they were relegated from League One. He scored 11 times and assisted nine, meaning he was directly involved in just over a third of all their goals.
“He’s one of our own, he’s one of our own, Reuben Reid, he’s one of our own,” Plymouth fans may or may not have sung about their youth product. Signing his first professional contract in February 2006, aged 17, Reid only made seven goalless league appearances in his first spell at the club, spending much of it out on loan. When he then returned to Plymouth as a loanee in 2013, he’d spent five years away from the club with just 32 goals in that time – half of which came in the first 12 months.
Spending half of the 2012/13 and the whole of the next season on loan back at Home Park, he rejoined the club permanently in 2014. He scored 50 goals in 153 games; a respectable return of roughly 1 in 3 games. His goalscoring form earned him a place in the PFA Team of the Year for League Two in the 2014/15 season, as he finished the club’s top goalscorer in successive seasons.
After starting out at Manchester United, Ebanks-Blake kickstarted his career at Plymouth under Ian Holloway, in a successful strike partnership with Barry Hale.
His 23 goals in 74 appearances at Argyle earned him a move to fellow Championship side Wolves, who he fired into the Premier League. He couldn’t replicate the form in the top tier and he never recaptured it, slipping down to the ninth tier in the English footballing pyramid. Aged 33, he is now a free agent, last playing for Barwell in the Southern League Premier Central. At Plymouth, though, he was a real talent with a promising future, finishing the Championship top scorer in the 2007/08 season.
Despite being sacked in April 2019, Adams has the highest win percent ratio of any Plymouth manager since the turn of the century, other than Paul Sturrock himself, in his first stint in charge between 31 October 2000 and 4 March 2004. Adams’ win return of 46.63% was just 1.1% lower than Sturrock’s and at a comparable level. This season’s relegation was obviously a sad ending for Adams, but last season, he had the side finish 7th in their first season back in League One since 2010/11. Had they finished a place higher they would’ve been in the play offs for a chance at back-to-back promotions.
So, that’s The Terrace’s Post 2004 Plymouth Ultimate XI, but what’s yours? Who have we missed? Who do you agree with and who do you not? Let us know in the comments or on Twitter.
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With that in mind, we do like the different experiences football can bring us and therefore, in what will hopefully become a regular feature in this here blog, we will be talking to different voices in football. From the coppers that police matchdays, to the kids and teenagers that ballboy for their heroes, we’ll be talking to them about how a matchday plays out for them. We might even try and find a hotdog seller.
In this edition, we spoke to The Bobby on the Terrace.
The Terrace: Thank you, officer, for coming in for questioning. Let's start with this: how long have you been a Bobby for?
The Bobby: Since 1995 - in my 25th year now.
The Terrace: And what kind of roles have you done in that time?
The Bobby: Shift officer, beat officer [a bobby], Human Trafficking team, Counter Terrorism, Domestic Violence team, and High Risk Offenders.
The Terrace: So how did you end up doing football matches?
The Bobby: You could volunteer for it as overtime, but it was considered part of your normal duty shift if you were on duty that weekend. It wasn't specialised when I was originally doing it. I'm not sure 100% if that's still how it is but I think it only goes out to specific teams nowadays.
The Terrace: What was the role called, officially?
The Bobby: Matchday Football Duty, because I was purely there for the football game, nothing else.
The Terrace: How long did you do Matchday Football Duty from?
The Bobby: My first game was in my first year as a PC, so 1995, and I did it until 2003/04
The Terrace: Do you remember the first game you did it for?
The Bobby: I wish I could, I did some memorable ones. I used to love it, I used to look forward to it so much, the chance to see my club. To see your team and get paid for it as well. I can’t remember, it was too long ago.
The Terrace: And your last?
The Bobby: No, no. But we were relegated soon after.
The Terrace: Did you get to see much of the game yourself?
The Bobby: Yeah! [he says, smiling]
The Terrace: Were you not supposed to be facing the crowd?!
The Bobby: Yeah……pretty much. One of my favourite memories, it was Christmas time, it was winter anyway. We played Arsenal at home, me and my sergeant at the time were in the away end and Tony Adams got sent off. My arm went up in celebration and my sergeant immediately pushed it down, saying “remember where we are!”
The Terrace: Presumably you did a mixture of home and away ends?
The Bobby: Usually in the away end. We’d be in a line between the home and away fans at the new stadium, but at the old stadium, we’d stand at the back of the stand behind all the fans so we could see everyone. If there was a goal, we’d have to run down the stairs to the front in case of pitch invaders.
The Terrace: Quickly run us through a Matchday Football Duty shift.
The Bobby: For a 3pm kick off, you’d be in at the station for midday. You’d then all make your way down to the ground for the briefing from whoever was the matchday commander. You’d get the brief, including any intel on travelling troublemakers expected, and then it would literally be patrolling outside around the ground and surrounding areas, until taking up your designated spot around the stadium just before kick-off. After the game, those who were unlucky were sent back to the station to deal with any in custody, or you’d be doing street patrols around the ground until it had all cleared up. That could be a good couple of hours after the game had finished, depending on who the visiting team were.
The Terrace: You did duty across two stadiums. Did it differ at the newer one?
The Bobby: It changed because of how the new stadium was; it had CCTV and everything. At the new stadium we were more there to be called to something if the spotters on CCTV saw something going on, whereas at the old stadium, although we had radios and a directing sergeant, it was very different inside the ground. Afterwards, or close to full time, you’d be called to go outside and congregate outside the away support’s pub. The violence of the 80s had gone but some of the clubs that came down still had the reputation for violence. There were minor scuffles, a few idiots, but I’ve always thought our fans have been extremely well-behaved.
The Terrace: Were there any particular clubs you dreaded being on duty for?
The Bobby: There were certain teams, Chelsea and Leeds by reputation, but no club stood out. I used to hate getting called out of the stadium, though. It would happen around ten to fifteen minutes before full-time. As a supporter, it was agonising waiting outside the stadium for the full-time whistle, or a cheer, or the muted cheer of the away fans.
The Terrace: Has any game lasted in the memory for trouble?
The Bobby: [Puffs cheeks] It’s funny, the games that stand out for trouble were ones I went to as a supporter. We didn’t have a hooligan problem. The most I can remember is two or three being nicked or ejected for obscenities or drunkenness. We were lucky in that respect, we weren’t one of the big clubs with big bad boy reputations. In the 80s we did, though most clubs did.
The Terrace: What were the holding cells like at the old stadium? I’ve seen them at the new stadium.
The Bobby: I don’t think we had any. I think they were ejected straight out of the ground into a waiting police van. You’d have a unit inside the ground, and one sat in reserve watching the game on a screen in the clubhouse. The old stadium was primitive in comparison to what we’ve got now.
The Terrace: Did you have to make many arrests yourself?
The Bobby: [Thinks for a while] I don’t know if I did. What you did have to do was if anyone had been arrested and sent back to the station, if you were unlucky, you’d be allocated to deal with them in custody. The other duty was driving around the pubs after the game as fans dispersed, just keeping an eye until we were stood down. The other thing that most of us looked forward to – though that might not be the right word – was the doggy bag. There’d be a few nice rolls in it and some chocolate.
The Terrace: So do you think football fans have an unfair reputation. It sounds as if it was relatively hassle free in your nine years on Matchday Football Duty?
The Bobby: I think it really was [hassle free], especially at our club. I can’t talk for other clubs around the country, but it was here.
The Terrace: Conversely, I know you got a tooth knocked out whilst on duty. That wasn’t on matchday duty, but was it on a matchday?
The Bobby: No, no. It was a nightshift and happened outside a nightclub. The bouncer had ejected a drunken clubber who then walked down the road kicking parked cars. I went to have a word and he threw a punch at me. I don’t think he even knew I was a PC. Back in those days you were never ever single-crewed so a few other officers saw it happen and he was arrested. Obviously I wasn’t involved in it going forward, but apparently he was incredibly apologetic the next day and couldn’t even remember doing it! It was nothing to do with football, though.
The Terrace: Did you end up in any fortunate positions in your time on duty?
The Bobby: No, I don’t recall any. I was never on the dugout – the same guy always did the dugout and he knew one of our best players. I can’t remember properly, but he was the best man at the player’s wedding, or vice versa.
The Terrace: Did you ever have to do away games?
The Bobby: No. We had a spotters team and they’d go on away games because they knew who the trouble makers were. On the whole, though, there really was not much trouble during my time.
The Terrace: So why do you think football fans are so maligned?
The Bobby: I think because historically we went through a really nasty time, there was Heysel and the like, but English fans travelling abroad really haven’t helped the image of football fans. There certainly was a very organised culture of football hooliganism though – in the 80s and very early 90s. You couldn’t escape reports in the news, almost every weekend there was something.
The Terrace: Did that play on your mind when you first started duty?
The Bobby: I think you were more aware because it was a tiny, compact ground. As a new recruit it was quite daunting because it was a big public event with the potential to go very wrong very quickly. Having been there many, many times as a fan, it did change something. Fans and fanbases were still suffering for a reputation earned in the 80s. I never enjoyed Manchester United, Leeds, or Chelsea coming to town, for example.
The Terrace: So, nine years, probably a couple hundred of games, what’s your standout memory?
The Bobby: [No hesitation] The last every game at the old stadium, but hand on heart, I cannot remember if I was there as a fan or on duty! I just know I was there. To be honest, I think it would have been on duty, because I don’t think I would’ve got a ticket for the game.
Next time you see a copper on matchday, remember they might be a fan too!
The name of 'The Bobby', the club in question, and other identifying features have been left out in the interest of fair anonymity.
]]>So here’s The Terrace’s top three brushes with Latino Footballing Royalty…………………….
If you have ever played FIFA or Football Manager long enough to be graced with regens, you’ll notice their coded inability to provide us South Americans with the much easier to remember nicknames we are familiar with, such as Pelé, or condensed names like Lionel Messi instead of Lionel Andrés Messi Cuccittini. We have Spanish naming customs to thank for the string of first and surnames but said customs may mean you missed out on Che Guevara’s Irish ancestry. That’s right, the Argentine revolutionary who is famed for his exploits in Cuba, Congo, and Bolivia, had veins in which “flowed the blood of the Irish rebels,” said his father, the great-great-great-grandson of Patrick Lynch.
Patrick Lynch was an Irish landowner in Rio de la Plata and he left some legacy and a whole host of notable descendants, the most famous of which was Che Guevara, who had a strong affinity with his Galway roots. In 1962, Jim Fitzpatrick, most famous for producing the iconic image of Che, met him in a bar in Kilkee. “I asked him about his Irish roots because he told me his granny was Irish,” Fitzpatrick said. “his great-granny, Isabel, was from Galway but he told me his ancestors were from Cork.”
Cuba was a particularly popular destination with football teams in Latin America during that era, and in 1963, Brazilian side Madureira SC toured Cuba, winning all five of their matches on the island. The club from Rio finished their tour with a 3-2 win in Havana, watched by the man himself. Fifty years later, Madureira released an anniversary shirt to celebrate their famous meeting.
In what is now known as Che's Motorcycle Diaries, he noted down that he had coached football throughout his travels around South America to fund his journey, and he himself was a goalkeeper, taking part in a game in a Peruvian leper colony he and his travelling companion, Alberto Granado, were volunteering at.
In 2003, Simon Clifford bought Garforth Town of the Northern Counties East Football League First Division and said he wanted them from the tenth tier of the English football pyramid to the Premier League. Sixteen years later, the club play in the Northern Counties East Football League Premier Division. It is safe to say the ambition was unfulfilled. Clifford himself stepped aside from the project after three years of managing them, though he did admirably achieve two promotions in his time in charge. Most impressively, however, was one signing he managed to make. One that stood out far and beyond any others.
As Andrew Downie recalls in his book Doctor Sócrates, “in November 2004, in one of the more memorably interludes, the 60-year old Sócrates came out of retirement to play for Garforth Town in the ninth tier of English football. Garforth’s owner Simon Clifford was a keen Brazil fan and devotee of futebol salão or futsal.
“Sócrates signed up to play a few games but the bitter cold got to him and his only appearance came during the last 13 minutes of Garforth’s 2-2 draw against Tadcaster Albion.
“The pair travelled around the British Isles giving football clinics every day and drinking every night, and together they plotted a revolution in world football.”
In September 2005, Sócrates and his then-wife Maria Adriana Cruz had a baby boy and named him Fidel after the Cuban president that he held in such high regard. Six years later and now married to Kátia Bagnarelli, Sócrates went to Cuba for his honeymoon and had planned to meet with Castro to discuss coaching the national team and interview Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, but neither materialised. Perhaps if it had, Sócrates could have regaled Castro with his tale of his time in Garforth and Castro his once sidekick and confidant’s Irish roots and brief forays into the sport. Imagine that, two Latin American giants discussing the lower echelons of British football.
Also frequenting Cuba around the time was another Fidel and Che devotee, Diego Armando Maradona, adorned with the former’s face tattooed on his leg and the latter on his arm. Twenty years earlier, however, and it wasn’t Havana and Latin American socialism appealing to Dieguito, but Yorkshire and The Blades. That’s right, the proponent of the Hand of God nearly turned out at Bramall Lane in red and white stripes.
In 1978, Harry Haslam, who managed the club from 1978-1980, was impressed by Maradona whilst on a scouting expedition to Argentina. The Argentine was just 17-years old and the £200,000 deal would have been excellent value for money – somewhere between Martin Peters’ British transfer fee record of the same amount in 1970, and West Brom’s £500,000 purchase of David Mills from Middlesbrough – but the additional fees were deemed too much by the club. Maradona went on to win a cup double at Barcelona, two Serie A titles, two domestic cups, and the UEFA Cup at Napoli, and the 1986 FIFA World Cup. David Mills, despite becoming the first half million-pound footballer, moved to Sheffield Wednesday for just £30,000 three years later and never pulled the shirt on for England.
Thirty years later, Maradona was again being linked with a move to an English club, this time as a Director of Football. It was reported by Arabianbusiness.com that Maradona’s lawyer Angel Oscar Moyano had exchanged emails stating his client had offered “his mediation for signing players of top level, who with the support of Diego Armando Maradona, will be ready to come to Portsmouth.” A couple of days later, El 10 rebuffed the claims, saying, “in no way would I abandon ship.”
So there we have it, the top three Latinos on The Terrace: Che Guevara and Cork, Sócrates and Garforth Town, and Diego Maradona’s dance with Sheffield United and Portsmouth.
Who did we miss? Who was your favourite Latino in the Football League?
Leave a comment on our Twitter.
]]>So obviously we were delighted when Ipswich’s Director of Retail Operations Lee Hyde told us he was delighted to get going with our Director Carl Sewell. Remember Radio Orwell, Tractor Boys? Yeah, so do we. What about a nice pint of Abbot Ale? Yes please, Greene King. Felt a tinge of sadness when Fison’s fertiliser factory burned down last month? You would have if your heart bleeds blue.
Two of those legendary ITFC sponsors are no longer with us, but they’re immortalised in the hearts and minds of fans of the Town and printed into plastic for your phone, woven into cotton for your towel, and pressed by hand into a proper mug for your morning brew. A morning brew you can have on us, if you fancy one, too!
Why them, though? Asked no true Blue………..Well, we’ll tell you anyway.
1983 – Pioneering Football Without Bobby Robson
Sir Bobby Robson may have left Town after 13 years in charge but sponsors Pioneer bridged the gap between the Bobbys. The next day, Bobby Ferguson was appointed manager and spent just shy of five years at the club. Having enjoyed a 12-year education under Robson, Ferguson made the step from reserve team coach, to first team coach, and then, ultimately, Robson’s successor.
It was the strip’s second and final season, before a red horizontal stripe was added, but will fondly be remembered as one of Ipswich’s first shirts to carry a sponsor, becoming so in 1981. It was a wonderful start for Ferguson’s men in his second season in charge, winning four of their first five, only being prevented from an 100% start by a 2-2 draw with Watford.
The early success didn’t carry through the entirety of the season, with the Tractor Boys finishing in 12th place, but it does stand out for being the last time the club won at Old Trafford, beating Ron Atkinson’s side 2-1 thanks to an 86th minute goal by Alan Sutherland.
1986 – Transmission Ceased
“Oh, you’ll be there between each line of pain and glory,” Gladys Knight belted out, “‘cause you’re the best thing that ever happened to me.”
When Radio Orwell first started broadcasting at 6am on 28 October 1975, Keith Rogers wasn’t to know quite how resonant the first record the station ever played would become when they embarked on their first major sponsorship deal – Ipswich Town Football Club, in 1985.
In their sole season as shirt sponsors, the impact of Robson’s departure finally took its toll, as the last remnants of his glory faded and the club were relegated from the First Division, missing out on safety by just a point, after 18 seasons in the top flight.
The club were reticent about dismissing their manager – they hadn’t sacked one in their then 108-year history – so gave him the ultimatum of having to secure their return at the first time of trying. Ipswich lost 2-1 to Charlton Athletic in the 1987 play-off semi-final, and with that Ferguson was gone.
1990 – Nuclear Fisons
In the white away kit from 1989-92, Ipswich’s Umbro number saw them clad in a smart blue collar with white and red trim, and in it they secured their return to the newly formed Premier League.
Hired in May 1990, John Lyall went on to take Ipswich back to the top-flight of English football in the 1991/92 season, thus becoming one of the founding teams of the new top division. Their preseason return of one win in six games did not bode well for the league campaign ahead, especially given two defeats in Finland, but after just two losses in the opening 16 games, optimistic fans had reason to believe in a possible return to the promised land.
Early exits in the three domestic cup competitions allowed Lyall’s men to focus on the league and Chris Kiwomya’s 19 goals helped fire them to the Second Division title, aided by a prolific second half to the season by Chris Whitton, who otherwise had an unremarkable return of 15 leagues goals in 88 appearances.
1993 – Lucky in Lace
Kiwomya continued his scoring form as he made the step up to the Premier League and Ipswich were seemingly making the leap effortlessly too. Come the new year, the club were sat in the top four and had the most doting-eyed fans dreaming of a place in the UEFA Cup.
Only losing two in the first half of the season, Town were unbeaten at home in their red lace-up, white-collared shirt. The design has become emblematic of 90s football, with Manchester United also sporting a lace-up collar during the decade. Emblazoned across it was still local pharmaceutical conglomerate Fisons.
Unfortunately, the second half saw a massive drop off in form, however Ipswich remained resolute at Portman Road, losing just four of their 21 games their that season. Such impressive home form ensures the shirt is fondly remembered, even before you take one of the decade-defining designs into consideration. Finishing 16th, survival was ensured.
1996 – Burley’s Boys
Back as manager, George Burley’s return came nine years after pulling on the shirt at Portman Road for the last time. The right-back made just short of 400 league appearances for the club, before playing his last competitive game in 1994; the same year in which he took the managerial reigns in Suffolk.
With Greene King on the shirt, Ipswich could have fittingly performed like a pub team, yet Burley’s first seven seasons of an eight-year tenure was one of continuous improvement. In the 1995/96 season, they fell two points short of promotion and over the next three seasons they lost three consecutive play-off semi-finals, but in the 1999/00 campaign, promotion was finally secured.
The UK’s largest pub retailer and brewer remained on the front of the strip throughout their steady rise, but the blue to white fade shirt and black and red collar, make the first to take their name the most well-remembered. Ian Marshall and Alex Mathie will at least think so, both enjoying their most prolific seasons in their respective careers, with 19 goals.
1981 – The Pride of Anglia
Champions of Europe, you’ll never be that. Well it was the UEFA Cup, but it still counts and even if a Canary thinks it doesn’t, there’s also the 1978 FA Cup and that First Division title in 1962.
The two-legged tie was Ipswich’s crowning moment on the continent. Having raced into a 3-0 lead at Portman Road in the first leg, Bobby Robson’s men added a fourth four minutes into the second, before Welzl and Metgod pulled the deficit back to two. Wark added to his first leg penalty with a 32nd minute goal to draw things level on the night, but Tol’s effort five minutes before half-time meant AZ Alkmaar had gone from being three goals down at kick-off to two at the break.
In the depths of the Olympic Stadium, Amsterdam Robson looked around his dressing room, from ‘keeper Paul Cooper, to his back four of Steve McCall, Mick Mills, Russell Osman, and Terry Butcher; to his three-man midfield of John Wark, who scored in both legs, to the Dutch duo of Arnold Muhren and Frans Thijssen, who had too scored in both ties; and , finally, his frontline of Paul Mariner, Alan Brazil, and Eric Gates.
Wark had already scored his 14th and final goal of the tournament – a record that still stands to this day – but the job was to go and ensure the lead was held. A 70th minute free-kick by AZ midfielder Jonker made the scored 5-4 on aggregate, which made the final 20 minutes incredibly nervy for the visitors, but The Tractor Boys ploughed through the final stages strongly and saw the lead over the line.
Champions of Europe, you’ll never be that.
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