England v Brazil: Our Top Five Moments

‘The English invented it, the Brazilians perfected it.’

As England and Brazil head east to lock horns in the Doha desert this weekend, we thought we’d run down the top five moments between the Seleção and Three Lions. All of these stories and a whole lot more can be found in our new book England On This Day, available here and in all good (and some bad) bookshops.

1970: The greatest save ever made

It may not have been immortalised in song form by Baddiel and Skinner like his skipper’s famous tackle that day, but Gordon Banks’ diving save from Pele’s first-half header in the pulsating 1970 World Cup clash is about as good as it gets. As the Santos striker nodded the ball down he began to turn away, shouting ‘Gooooal’, but Banks flung himself across his goal ‘like a salmon leaping up a waterfall’ as Pele himself later put it when the Stoke ‘keeper managed to tip the ball over the bar. ‘At that moment I hated Gordon Banks more than any man in soccer,’ explained Pele, before obviously remembering he never slags anyone off in case he risks losing a sponsorship deal. ‘But when I cooled down I had to applaud him with my heart for the greatest save I have ever seen.’

1984: Barnes Out-Brazils Brazil

Seasoned football spectators at the Maracanã are no doubt used to seeing players score after mazy 50-yard dribbles every other week, but not surely from young Watford midfielders. Having failed to qualify for Euro 84 England had nothing better to do than to turn up in Rio for an end of season friendly against the Seleção. Picking the ball up just inside the Brazil half Barnsey slalomed his way through the entire Brazilian defence before slotting past the ‘keeper to put England ahead. The Three Lions triumphed 2-0, handing Brazil their first defeat at the Maracanã for 27 years. Barnes said later: ‘I don’t remember much about my goal – I always liken it to an out-of-body experience. I look at it on TV now and I can’t remember doing any of it.’

1992: Lineker misses from the spot

England hosted Brazil at Wembley in a pre-Euro 92 friendly looking for a morale-boosting win before heading out to Sweden. Graham Taylor’s skipper Gary Lineker was eyeing up one last England swansong before his move to Japan’s Grampus 8 after the tournament, with the Spurs striker one short of equalling Bobby Charlton’s record of 49 England goals. When the Three Lions were awarded a penalty with the score at 0-0, up he stepped, but fluffed his chance to equal the record as his weak effort was saved by Carlos in the Brazilian goal. Things didn’t get any better for Lineker that summer, as he failed to find the net in England’s woeful Euro 92 campaign before being infamously subbed off against Sweden and being forever marooned on 48 international goals.

1962: Jimmy Greaves plays Dr Doolitle

England’s World Cup quarter-final against Brazil in 1962 wasn’t a particularly good day at the office, as a Garrincha-inspired Brazil team eased to a 3-1 win, but it did produce one of the more amusing on-pitch moments in England history. A stray dog ran on to the pitch and evaded everyone until Jimmy Greaves got down on all fours and beckoned the canine. He then grabbed the pooch who promptly urinated all over him. ‘I smelt so bad, but at least it meant the Brazilian defenders stayed clear of me,’ he said. Garrincha thought the whole thing was hilarious and kept the dog as a pet.

2002: Sven’s Half-time Team Talk

It was looking good for England. The nation had done the usual trick of being whipped up into a patriotic frenzy, convincing herself that 38 years of hurt was soon to be gone and England would romp to the 2002 World Cup title. As half-time approached England were 1-0 up against Brazil in their quarter-final clash in Shizuoka and keeping the Brazilians at bay. But in stoppage time Rivaldo popped up to equalise, and it was time for Sven-Göran Eriksson to start earning his money with a rip-roaring team talk. However, five minutes after the break England were 2-1 down thanks to a freak Ronaldinho goal, who lofted a 40-yard free kick over a flailing David Seaman after spotting the Arsenal stopper off his line. The lad had obviously done his homework. Even a 56th-minute red card for Ronaldinho didn’t stop the Brazilians, who held on to a 2-1 win on their way to winning a fifth World Cup. Gareth Southgate pointed the finger of blame solely at the Swede: ‘When we needed Winston Churchill, we got Iain Duncan Smith.’

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Manchester United: Big Game Bottlers?

Around Christmas time last year the plaudits started coming thick and fast for the current Manchester United side. ‘Best squad ever’, ‘better than the 1999 side’ we were all told.

But if United proved anything at the Stadio Olimpico on Wednesday night it was that they don’t have the bottle for the big occasion.

Can you remember seeing ever such a lacklustre performance for an Alex Ferguson side in a major game?

And it’s not the first time this season that United have gone missing when the pressure has been on.

A loss in the Uefa Super Cup final against Zenit St Petersburg back in August didn’t get the alarm bells ringing but two months later they had only picked one point in three games against their Big Four rivals.

A series of narrow wins – 16 of their 28 Premiership victories were by a single goal – ensured that the defending Champions had made their way to summit by the end of January, but warning signs over their big-game temperament were there.

Four draws in the group stage of the Champions League was followed up by a non-appearance against a Spurs side, still trying to find their feet after their calamitous start to the season, in the Carling Cup final, where only Ben Foster’s iPod prevented Harry Redknapp’s unbalanced side of underachievers from winning at Wembley.

With everyone begin to talk quintuple United continued to stutter on the big stage, stuttering past Porto in Europe before losing to an injury-hit Everton side in the FA Cup.

Back in the Premier League Liverpool inflicted United’s worst home loss since 1992, winning 4-1 as they did the double over their bitter rivals and then needed a late goal from Italian teenager Federico Macheda to squeeze past an out-of-form Villa side.

Judging on Fergie’s recent signings it’s obvious he has an eye on the future, but big-money players such as Anderson, Carrick and Nani have all failed to deliver when the going has got tough this season, with only a single win this term against the Premiership’s Champions League sides.

With the likelihood of Ronaldo and Tevez both leaving the club this summer increasing by the day and the old heads of Giggs, Scholes, Van der Saar and Neville getting ready to call time on their careers is it squeaky bum time for the fans?

Throw in the Glazer’s mountain of debt and interest payments that are sucking away United’s profits each season and even one bad season could prove to be disastrous for the club, with their free-spending city neighbours and the likes of Aston Villa and Everton ready to grab any Champions League spot that comes up for grabs in the future.

Luckily for them Fergie appears to be more driven than the Terminator in his quest to overhaul Liverpool’s title record both domestically and in Europe, so you can count on him hanging around for a while yet.

Still, here at OTFD we’re looking forward to seeing how the Scot goes about United’s next few big games after the summer break, as a rejuvenated Chelsea, a Liverpool side with a new-found confidence and a more experienced Arsenal team will all believe they can prevent the title going to Old Trafford for a fourth consecutive time.

Nights such as the one witnessed in Rome this week may become all the more common for English football’s most spoilt set of fans.

(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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OTFD’s Top 5 Football Books

WE’RE going all Nick Hornby on your ass now – no, not by slagging off Gus Caesar for 250 pages – but by coming up with the top five football books we’ve read recently here at OTFD towers.

Inverting the Pyramid by Jonathan Wilson

A book detailing the history of football tactics from Victorian Britain to the present day may sound like one of the stattos and anoraks out there, but Eastern European expert Wilson brings alive the developing forces that have shaped us with the game that we have today. Wilson takes the reader through the deep-thinkers of the 1920s Austrian coffee houses, Puskas’s Mighty Magyars, the suffocating Catenaccio, Valeriy Lobanovskyi’s scientific approach in the Soviet Union, Brazil’s samba-freestyling, Holland’s Total Football, English ‘pragmatic’ long-ball approach right through to what he sees as a centre forward-less future.

Read the thought-provoking study and hang your head in shame at how one-dimensional tactical football has been here in England ever since the rest of the world cottoned onto the beautiful game.

Football Against the Enemy by Simon Kuper

Remarkably, this William Hill Sports Book of the Year winner was Kuper’s first book, written in his early twenties. Looking at the game from an ‘anthropologic perspective’ he trekked across the world looking at football’s effect on politics, national and cultural identities, bringing us the skinny on the secret football mafia in the former Soviet Union, the shameful behaviour of the Argentine government when they hosted the 1978 World Cup, the internal bickering of the Cameroon team that came to prominence in Italia 90 and even has a stab at getting stuck into the Old Firm rivalry.

This book is the more incredible when you consider how much the game, and indeed the world, has changed since its publication in 1994. Any chance of a sequel Kuper? We’ve yet to find a better mix of football, politics and travel.

The Beautiful Game? By David Conn

If ever you need a slap in the face as to the direction that football has been heading for some time now, this is the book to read. Investigative reporter Conn delivers a stunningly in-depth look at how money, greed and failure from the game’s leaders is failing the average fan. Focusing on Hillsborough as football’s major turning point, Conn tells a tale of the rich clubs getting richer, while the wealth fails to trickle down and puts the very existence of the game’s lifeblood at risk. Among the doom and gloom stories from lower league-strugglers Conn restores your faith in the power of football to unite communities, particularly with his rousing story of York City being saved from property developers with designs on their ground. After reading this we firmly believe that Conn should be put in charge of football, rather than the collection of failed businessmen or politicians that are crowded around the buffet tables of the FA, Uefa and the sport’s other governing bodies.

The Ball is Round by David Goldblatt

An absolute beast of book, clocking in at nearly 1,000 pages and offering an epic story of how football has evolved from it’s Chinese origins over 2,000 years ago and into the world’s biggest form of entertainment. Tying in politics, economics, culture, Goldblatt has an acute eye for detail as he scours the planet leaving no stone uncovered, mixing in stories of the world’s greatest players, managers and those that have played their part shaped the game as it is today. Truly one to take away on that desert island with you.

Carra by Jamie Carragher

As the above selections can get a tad heavy at certain points, we thought it’d be rude not to include the old classic, the not-yet retired footballer’s autobiography. Normally we’d agree with Joey Barton’s critical musings (“‘We got beat in the quarter-finals. I played like shit. Here’s my book.’ Who wants to read that?”) on the genre, but Bootle’s finest son’s tome released in 2008 bucks the trend.

Carragher’s refreshingly honest look at his career brings up a good mix of amusing anecdotes such as nights on the lash with Didi Hamann or Sven’s dating advice and controversial confessions like him crunching Rigobert Song in training or calling off an attack on Lucas Neill in the Trafford Centre when his mates spotted the Blackburn defender soon after he broke Carra’s leg. Carragher isn’t afraid to offer his honest and blunt opinions about the game, singling out managers past and present for criticism.

Have you read any literary works of genius about the game we all love recently? Let us know your favourite reads below, and we can’t let this chance to plug our own OTFD book pass, so click yourself silly right here to get your copy.

(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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Podcast Review: The Game from The Times

Doing battle with Football Weekly at the top of the podcast charts is The Game from The Times. Fronted by the pair of respected journalists Gabrielle Marcotti and Guillem Balague, it ditches the free-flowing style of the Guardian for more grown-up journalistic fare. At worst this can mean it sounds scripted and forced, but usually the combative Marcotti succeeds in sparking up debate with whichever special guest they have got in. The calibre of it’s guests is what sets it apart from other pods, with Steve McClaren, David Moyes, Luca Vialli and Frank Lampard all appearing recently. Marcotti and Balague even managed to get Lampard talking a great deal of sense, which coming from a fully-paid up member of the anti-Lampard club is hard to admit. By covering more than just the obvious issues, The Game will certainly give you food for thought on your daily commute (or hanging from monkey bars if that’s where you prefer to listen – ah, the beauty of the technology).

If it was a member of the England 1990 World Cup Squad it would be: Terry Butcher – authoritative and always up for a fight.

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Podcast Review: World Football from the BBC

Although we were quick to diss the Beeb earlier, if you go looking hard enough you’ll find their excellentpair of World Football podcasts. Originally broadcast on 5Live and the World Service, the BBC’s team of reporters send in dispatches from all over the world on issues such as African television right disputes, international youth transfer regulations or even grass-roots football here in England. If you’ve only ever heard Alan Green getting over-excited on the commentary box or slagging off Fergie, then his reports come as a pleasant surprise.

Better still is the World Football Phone-In, a show for security guards and insomniacs that goes out in the wee hours of the morning. Presented by Dotun Adebayo and featuring, among others, the BBC’s authority on South American football, Tim Vickery, it covers football from every corner of the globe. Genuinely informative, it has a free-wheeling chatty style, offering the listener nuggets such as the fact that the game is slower in South America because they let the grass grow longer, and that the price of a goat in Somalia £15. Being a late-night phone-in you do get the occasional nutter who wants to let the world know that he can now do an impression of Carlton Palmer reading out Belgian football results, but it all adds to the fun. Being the BBC it’s professionally done and if you can listen to the 40-minute show without learning anything we’d be surprised.

If it was a member of the England 1990 World Cup Squad it would be: John Barnes – David Platt: classy, not afraid to try it’s luck abroad.

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In The Hands of The Gods

This true story of five young British freestyle footballers is a million miles away from the glory of the Bernabeu of the hype of the NASL. Sharing a common dream of meeting their hero Diego Maradona the group busk their way across the Atlantic and down into South America by showing off their impressive keepy-uppy skills as they hit the road with no funding or sponsorship.

Charting the quintets’ highs and lows, where they are often sleeping rough or going hungry, the under-stated style of the film succeeds in getting past their blokey-banter and false-bravado as the group are refreshingly honest with each other, leaving you as the viewer routing for them to make it down to Buenos Aries and shake that famous hand.

The group is extremely diverse, with a typical cheeky scouser, evangelical Christian and refugee from Somalia who has lead of life of crime since being rejected by his mother among their number. They’ve all got a story to tell and a different reason for being there. And there’s a couple of very daft contemporary haircuts in there too for added comic value.

The lads bond together through their shared ambition, but at it’s core this film is less about football and more a road movie about personal sacrifice and what it means to follow your dream. At times it gets a bit too reality TV for it’s own good, as tantrums, egos, tears and group hugs take centre stage, but it would take someone with a heart of steel not to be moved by the final scenes. As far as British football films go though, it certainly beats the likes of There’s Only One Jimmy Grimble and When Saturday Comes.

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Podcast Review: The Best of the Rest

There are of course hundreds of other podcasts out there and most of them are very average to say the least. Similar to blogging, any idiot with a mic can make a podcast, so on the whole it’s best to stick with the professional offerings from the likes of those above. Saying that, there’s a few diamonds in the rough; EPL Talk’s ‘Best Of…” pod brings in heavyweight guests for weighty, objective discussion, TheOffside.com’s weekly podcast brings the listener a bit of everything and we’d also like to give a shout out the now-defunct Beautiful Game, which was as good as anything we’ve heard outside of the major broadcasters.

If you disagree or can recommend any other podcasts then let us know. You never know, if we figure out how to plug a mic in to our computers here we might belatedly jump on the podcasting bandwagon ourselves, so keep an eye out for that.

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Podcast Reviews: Football Weekly from guardian.co.uk

Here’s a snippet of the BBC’s commentary from the FA Cup quarter-final between Middlesbrough and Cardiff:

Jonathan Pearce: “Can you place your finger on why there’s been so many FA Cup shocks this season, Mark?”
Lawrenson: “No.”
Pearce: “Thank you.”

Christ. How much does the TV license cost again? With the major TV networks appearing to have giving up on in-depth discussion and analysis of the beautiful game, it’s a good job we’re living in the digital age because fear not, there’s some good stuff out there. A couple of years ago the podcast became the latest buzz-word to be dreamt up by some IT boffins and thanks largely to Ricky Gervais’ successful foray into the medium, it’s only your Grandma and local ludite that hasn’t heard of them. Being the world’s most popular form of entertainment, football podcasts are in abundance so we thought we’d bring you a round up of our favourites in a piece we won’t title ‘Top of the Pods.’

Football Weekly from guardian.co.uk

Hosted by former Football Italia anchor James Richardson, the Guardian’s offering is, for our money, the best around. A quirky mixture of banter, opinionated chat and reports from across Europe, all up to the Guardian’s usual high-standard make the twice-weekly Football Weekly our first podcasting stop.

The revolving team of regular guests offer their two cents’ worth and also share stories like the time Peter Crouch went into a takeaway demanding free nachos before offering a running third-person commentary and on his meal (‘Crouchy’s having his nachos!”), and the fact that pod regular Barney Ronay once met Dennis Wise’s plumber who revealed that he has gold taps in all six of his bathrooms.

Ringing in from Madrid every week, Spanish correspondent Sid Lowe brings an always excellent summary of the goings-on in La Liga, with Serie A and the Bundesliga also superbly covered. Our only real criticism is the lack of lower-league coverage, but it seems as though if you nag them enough on their lively comment page then they do take notice.

Richardson’s laid-back style is at odds to the straight-men of other pods, and it’s a mystery why the man hasn’t been snapped up by one of the major broadcasters (with apologies to Setanta). He also hasn’t lost his ability to spin a pun, describing Brian McBride as “the best header from America since Monica Lewinsky” recently.

If it was a member of the England 1990 World Cup Squad it would be: Paul Gascoigne – always entertaining, but there’s a danger he’ll turn up pissed.

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Film Review: Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait

The Real Madrid side of the early 2000’s is probably as close as anyone’s come to recreating the iconic Cosmos, so it’s fitting that the Bernabeu is the next stop on our cinematic voyage. The concept behind Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait is a barnstormingly simple one – put 17 synchronised cameras on the planet’s greatest footballer for ninety minutes and see what happens. Shot by two video installation artists, Philippe Parreno and Douglas Gordon, we take in the 90 minutes of Real Madrid’s La Liga clash with Villarreal in April 2005, with camera’s solely focused on Zizou.

It’s not the first time this has been tried, as German director Hellmuth Costard tried a similar, albeit more lo-fi version, with his 1971 film Football Like Never Before, when he stalked George Best around the field for 90 minutes against Coventry.

To some, this may sound dull and for 99% of the players in the world it probably would be – luckily no-one’s pitching a around a sequel centring around Robbie Savage. Fortunately, Zidane is one of the most graceful footballers to ever play the game, so watching him jog around, pull up his socks, spit and occasionally get the ball is far more compulsive than it sounds. The titular ‘Portrait’ that the film-makers are trying to get across really shines through, as you see a master at work, with an intense, brooding concentration that’s fit for the big screen.

Interlinked with television footage of the game and with the Cantona-esque musings of Zindane on memory, childhood and the game of life appearing as subtitles on our screen, we see the balding genius showing off some of his legendary ball-control as he sets up a goal for fellow galactico Ronaldo. The film ends as we see the other side of his character when he gets involved in an on-field brawl and receives a red card, not for the first, or famously last time in his career. Like Zidane’s career as a whole, it’s an apt ending, showing the fine line between genius and madness that so many gifted footballers have walked.

After a while of watching this beautifully shot and technically brilliant film it’s easy to get drawn in, as it has a hypnotic quality. A stunning soundtrack from excellent Scottish post-rock band Mogwai fits the mood perfectly.

Although it may not be to everyone’s tastes (not a great date movie I’d imagine guys), Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait is a thing of beauty for football connoisseurs and movie-buffs alike.

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Film Review: Once in a Lifetime

Released in the summer of 2006, this excellent documentary explores the bombastic North American Soccer League in the late ’70s and early ’80s, when the America first flirted with the idea of taking football seriously. The New York Cosmos showed Real Madrid what a galactico project was as they brought the likes of Pele, Giorgio Chinaglia, Franz Beckenbauer and Carlos Alberto stateside. Mix all these egos with some American showbiz marketing men and a bit of ’70’s New York style and you’ve got a rollercoaster ride unlike anything the world of football has seen before or since.

The makers have done an excellent job bringing the league to life, despite not being able to call on the two main stars of the show, as league founder Steve Ross now resides in the big football stadium in the sky and Pele didn’t have enough money thrown his way. Almost every other key figure from the period is involved however, with former stars of the league, such as Franz Beckenbauer and Carlos Alberto recounting their days in the NASL with genuine affection.

Most entertaining of all is the gossipy former Lazio and Swansea striker Chinaglia, who doesn’t pull any punches when talking about his relationship with Pele, who he clearly didn’t get on with. Looking at times like an extra from The Sopranos, he has many amusing anecdotes, such is the one where he reduced the world’s greatest ever player to tears in the dressing room following one of their numerous rows.

Other tales of the razzamatazz of Studio 54, popstars, groupies and boozing all make you wish you were part of the scene, as the film rattles along at a fair pace, exploring the rise and fall of the NASL, summarising that over-zealous expansion and the dilution of quality players was largely to blame for it’s downfall.

A little more match footage wouldn’t have gone amiss though, as the real football fans in the audience would drool over the thought of Pele, Beckenbauer and the like on the same team.

With the help of a cracking soundtrack and Matt Dillon’s laconic narration, Once in a Lifetime is certainly a more entertaining way to spend 90 minutes than watching Wigan versus Fulham in the rain, so check it out.

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