Billy Lamont – Part-time Manager. Full-time hero to the town of Falkirk.
East Stirlingshire Football Club is based in the town of Falkirk in Scotland’s Central Lowlands, and without doubt, their most famous ex-manager is Sir Alex Ferguson. It was the Scot’s first step into management, but the set up was far removed from the grandeur of Old Trafford. The job was part-time and paid only £40 a week. He stayed there for a single season, joining in June 1974 and leaving the following October to take over at St Mirren. If Ferguson was the most famous of East Stirlingshire’s managers due to his later successes however, his short time in office was insufficient for him to make any sizeable impact at the club any tangible results were a long way behind the man who took the club to its highest position in the league. Continue reading →
“Alf Ramsey was great – he even paid my fine!” – Alan Mullery the first England player to be sent off.
The 1968 European Championships looked very different to its modern-day equivalent. Back then, rather than the bloated jamboree involving more than 20 countries, it was very much a mini-tournament. After a protracted qualifying competition, running across a couple of years with groups and then pay-offs, a mere four teams were invited to contest two semi-finals and a final in the host country.
This particular version of the event involved Italy, who despite being hosts, still had needed to earn their place via the qualification process, England, the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. As reigning world champions, England were favoured to do well, but at the conclusion of the event, would merely end up taking the consolation prize of third place. In relation to England however, the tournament would be remembered for a different reason, containing as it did, the first game wherein a player representing the country was sent off. That particularly unwanted distinction fell to Spurs midfielder Alan Mullery. Continue reading →
“If you can meet with triumph and disaster. And treat those two impostors just the same.” Arsenal’s testing four days in May 1980.
Using that particular quote from Kipling is a well-trodden path and, to illustrate its relevance, I’ll lean a little on another master of words, Oscar Wilde, whilst at the same time apologising for mangling his famous couplet, ‘to lose one cup final may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.’ Across four testing days in May 1980 however, that’s precisely what happened to Arsenal. Continue reading →
The strange story of Sol Campbell and Notts County.
Sol Campbell was one of the Premier League’s most accomplished defenders in the early years of the 21st century. After a nine-year career at Spurs during which he lifted the League Cup in the 1998-99 season, he took the short – and highly controversial – journey across north London to join Arsenal. It was a move that saw him add two league titles and two FA Cups in five years at Highbury. He also scored in a Champions League Final, albeit when the Gunners lost out to Barcelona. In total, he played over 400 league games across his time with the two North London rivals, and won 73 England caps. In 2007-08 season, he won his third FA Cup, this time under Harry Redknapp at Portsmouth, but just over a year later, he would be involved in one of English football’s most bizarre transfers, moving to League Two club, Notts County. Even stranger than the move itself though, was the fact that his time at Meadow Lane, despite signing a five-year, £40,000 per week deal in August 2009, lasted a mere one game, and that one appearance proved to be embarrassingly bizarre in itself. Continue reading →
“Only those who attempt the absurd can achieve the impossible!” – Ilario Castagner and the Perugia of Miracles.
The neat phrase coined by Einstein was surely never intended to refer to football. With apologies to the eminent physicist however, let us borrow it for a trice, as it chimes tunefully with the achievements of the small – ‘relatively’ speaking, that is – Umbrian club and their manager during the 1978-79 Serie A season.
The Grifoni, displaying the prowess of that legendary beast produced a feat never before achieved in the highest echelon of Italian football, and completed the season undefeated. With the head of a lion – king of the beasts – and the body of an eagle – king of the birds – there’s a majesty about a Gryphon and in this particular season, Perugia surely lived up to the reputation of their nickname. That they failed to secure the Scudetto, despite their invulnerability should not detract from the achievement; rather it should define it even sharper relief, shouting of it not only being laudable, but also magnificent in the truest sense of the word. Continue reading →
The naïve exuberance and precious, vulnerable talent of England’s Paul Gascoigne.
Millions upon millions of words have been spoken and written about the career of Paul Gascoigne; the glory and the gormless, the poetry and the prose, the joys and the tears. If one aspect of the career of Duston’s finest ever sportsman epitomises his footballing life however, it is surely the time he spent wearing his country’s national shirt. It was that most rare of occasions, when a young English footballer burst onto the world stage offering up the promise of a talent so extraordinary that it created a dream of glory, but then crashed and burnt in flames that consumed hopes and talent without mercy. There’s a phrase that’s often referred to when talk of Gascoigne and his time with England arises, so I’m going to borrow it from Gary Lineker. Let’s “have a word” about Paul Gascoigne’s time playing for England. Continue reading →
The often wise “Words of Osim.”
Ivan Osim – often popularly known as ‘Ivica Osim’ – was born in Sarajevo in 1941. The son of a Slovene-German father and Polish-Czech mother, he grew up during times of ethnic strife. Germany had invaded the then Yugoslavia just a month before his birth. It was a traumatic time that would burn deep into the mindset any young child, and it would be hugely understandable if the experience endured by the young Ivica would influence his attitude to issues in his later life. Continue reading →
Alex Ferguson and Aberdeen’s uncharted journey to European glory.
Before launching on his oft-quoted mission about knocking a certain Merseyside club off their perch, Alex Ferguson – this was long before royalty bestowed a title on him – led Aberdeen to the forefront of Scottish football. Not only did he take the Pittodrie club to the top of the tree domestically, winning three league titles, four Scottish Cups and a Scottish League Cup in half-a-dozen years between 1980 and 1986, the later-to-be Overlord of Old Trafford also gave the Dons undreamt of European success in 1983, when they lifted the European Cup Winners Cup, defeating the might of Real Madrid in the final. Continue reading →
Ice cold water and the scent of coffee.
England were champions of the world in 1966, crowned on Wembley’s verdant surface. Geoff Hurst’s prile and a strike from Martin Peters were the keys to the door. Bobby Moore collected the Jules Rimet Trophy, and the world acknowledged that the Three Lions were top of the footballing tree. We all celebrated. It had taken a while to get there, but we’d shrugged off those defeats to Hungary – surely just a bad memory now. Hadn’t been afraid of Brazil. Tamed the Argentine animals, kept Eusebio in check and beat West Germany twice according to Sir Alf. No-one was going to knock us off our perch! Continue reading →
Danish Dynamite! – Denmark 6 Uruguay 1
The Danish Dynamite team of the early to mid-eighties were aptly named. A collection of players that exploded into the footballing world, flaring so brightly, shaking up the established order of things, and then disappearing again all-too-soon. Lest anyone forget the impact they had though, there was a game in the 1982 World Cup when, in 90 minutes, the team in the uber-cool halved shirts offered up their ‘signature’ performance. A team at the very zenith of their powers tore their opposition asunder with a brand of football that can only be described as, well, explosive! Continue reading →
