Xabi Alonso – Liverpool’s Pass Master.
On 1 June 2018, the man who, less than a week later, would be appointed as manager of Segunda División B club Real Sociedad B, quietly settled into his seat at Atlético Madrid’s Wanda Metropolitano Stadium. He was there to watch former club, at which he collected a Champions League winner’s medal, and the words inevitably playing through his mind were of a different song, one that asserted no-one who was part of that footballing family – one he felt strongly that he belonged to – should ever feel alone. Xabi Alonso, was there to watch Liverpool win their sixth title as Champions of Europe. Continue reading →
The tragic tale of Roma legend Agostino Di Bartolomei.
Any footballer’s career can have many peaks and troughs, almost regardless of the level at which they play. Games won or lost. Goals scored or conceded. Moments of exaltation mixing freely with others spent in sad reflection of errors made or chances missed can be a toxic and highly volatile cocktail. It’s rarely the case however that the absolute zenith and nadir of a career can occur at almost one and the same time. For Agostino Di Bartolomei, captain of AS Roma at the time, some would argue that is precisely what happened on the penultimate day of May 1984, when his club faced Liverpool in the European Cup Final staged at Rome’s Stadio Olimpico. Continue reading →
The late blossoming of Dick Nanninga – Florist and Dutch international footballer.
As the bright Oranje flame of Dutch Totaal Voetbal burnt so brightly before consuming itself in the 1974 World Cup Final and falling to cruel defeat, back in Kerkrade, a Dutch town virtually lying up against the German border, an amateur footballer watched on television. Little did he know that, four years later, donned in the famous colours of his country, he would score the goal that gave the Netherlands renewed hope that they could lay to rest the ghost of the numbing defeat to his German neighbours. In the space of those four years, Dick Nanninga would go from a part-time footballer and full-time worker on construction sites to being the robust and muscular embodiment of an artisan iconoclast among a squad of Dutch artists, the man who gave hope of redemption to his country – and a florist. Continue reading →
Gary Thacker 