If you were to guess at the first team to go through an entire Serie A season unbeaten, a few obvious names leap out. The Milan clubs, Juventus, maybe Roma or Lazio. But in the 1978-9 season, in a long, difficult title fight against Milan, it was a small regional side from Umbria, Perugia, who achieved the feat. And yet, more remarkably still, they somehow still failed to win the Scudetto.
Continue reading “The Heartbreaking Story of the First Italian Invincibles”
There was heavy rain in Mexico City on 29th June 1969, as the national teams of El Salvador and Honduras lined up against each other in the final qualifying playoff for qualification to the 1970 World Cup. It was the third of three games, a match forced by Honduras’ victory in the first leg, and El Salvador’s in the second, and held in a neutral venue. The first half was a relatively calm affair, considering the violence that had taken place in the previous two games, and the sides played out a 2-2 draw, forcing extra time. With 101 minutes on the clock, Mauricio Rodriguez scored what would ultimately be the winner for El Salvador, and the players celebrated they qualification. By the time the teams had left the pitch, their countries were at war.
Continue reading “The Football War”
When we look at the history of football, one nation stands out above every other. Brazil have won the World Cup five times, a record, and have produced not just some of the best players of all time, but arguably the greatest of them all. But they are more than just a successful side; they have defined the sport in the imaginations of generations of children across the globe. O Jogo Bonito – the beautiful game – the phrase that most emphatically defines football, was popularised by Pelé himself. When people think of the way the game should be played, they think of Brazil. So it may be surprising to learn that this journey began, just over one hundred years ago, in Devon. And it wasn’t supposed to happen at all.
Continue reading “The Birth of Brazil”
At the beginning of the 1914-15 season, Celtic, fresh from winning their eleventh Scottish title, travelled to Edinburgh to take on Hearts. The home side had won two titles in the 1890s before being eclipsed by the Glasgow giants, and had been crowned World Champions in 1902 by beating Tottenham Hotspur, but hadn’t been able to win the league for nearly two decades. There was a sense of optimism, then, when scored in the 27th minute, Harry Wattie netting for the hosts. Hearts’ goalkeeper James Boyd ensured that the Celtic onslaught came to nothing, before deep into the second half Tom Gracie doubled the lead and put the game to bed. That same day, King George V declared war on Germany, and within four years all three – Wattie, Boyd and Gracie – were dead.
Continue reading “‘Champions in Maroon and Khaki’”
As football grew in popularity in the first half of the twentieth century, there was an appetite to not only prove the dominance of a team against their domestic rivals, but also to test themselves against the best of the European neighbours. For some, this meant leaving their home country to embark on tours; for the most successful teams, invited to tour in the Western hemisphere, it sometimes even meant withdrawing from a league campaign for a season to accommodate what were usually very lucrative playing schedules. But the friendlies played in these tours conferred only dubious bragging rights. There was a need for something bigger, something more official, where the best of the best would play against each other for more than bragging rights.
Continue reading “Football in Division: Unity through the Mitropa Cup”
There are some things that every football fan just knows. Sir Alf Ramsey, faced with a lack of effective wing-backs, converted his side into a new formation and invented, for the first time, the 442. Arsene Wenger, as a young manager at Monaco, revolutionised the fitness and recovery of football players in a way that has been adopted by pretty much every professional club in the world. And counter-pressing, “heavy metal football”, was invented in Germany by Ralf Rangnick, and passed through to Jurgen Klopp. Unquestioned truths of the game. But, as Mark Twain said, “it ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”
Continue reading “Dedushka: The Forgotten Football Pioneer”
Following their success at the 1966 World Cup, and the disappointment of a Quarter-Final exit in 1970, there was shock in 1973 when England, still under the command of Sir Alf Ramsey, was unable to qualify for the competition to take place in the following year. Jan Tomaszewski, branded a clown by Brian Clough, put in a man of the match performance for Poland, and Alf Ramsey left his post to be replaced by Don Revie. But that didn’t mean England had no representation at the tournament. Most famously, Jack Taylor refereed the final between West Germany and the Netherlands. But more intriguing is the story of Joseph Wilson, Lazio legend and Italy international.
Continue reading “The Darlington Maldini”
In 1939, Matthias Sindelar was found dead in his Vienna apartment. Sindelar had embarrassed the Nazi authorities less than a year previous, celebrating his goal for an Austrian team against the German side a little too vigorously. He had refused to be a part of the Germany 1938 World Cup squad, which was eliminated in the first round. And he had been on a Gestapo watchlist. Question marks remain, but a blocked chimney was probably the culprit. It was a tragic, if less conspiratorial end to perhaps the greatest player of the 1930s, and his Wunderteam.
Continue reading “Before Total Football, there was the Wunderteam”
When fans filed into the Stadio Artemio Franchi in October 1954, the excitement was building for a thrilling derby between Tuscan giants Fiorentina and local rivals, and minnows, Pistoiese. Ten thousand people packed the concrete arena for the game, and the first half passed without any noteworthy incident. But just as the second half kicked off, an unusual hush fell over the stadium. Fans were distracted from their conversations, players turned away from the pitch, and the ball rolled, neglected, to a stop. More than ten thousand people, and all of them had their eyes trained on the skies above.
Continue reading “When UFOs Stopped Play”
Manuel Francisco dos Santos is one of the greatest players to have ever put on the yellow shirt of Brazil, and yet he should never have been a footballer. He was born in 1933 with a deformed spine and one leg a full 6cm shorter than the other. He had crooked knees, with one bending inward and the other out. And, at a time when football was much more physical, he was small, leading his sister to give him the nickname that would stick for the rest of his life; Garrincha, or Little Bird. Despite his disadvantages, he showed immense talent at an early age, but worryingly for Brazilian football, little inclination to enter the sport professionally.
Continue reading “Brazil’s Little Bird”