Back in the relative Wild West conditions of turn-of-the-century football, there was little to stop the Football League from enforcing whatever they wanted among it’s players.

When the league decided to slap a maximum wage of £4 on its’ players after the dissolution of the PFA’s forerunner, the Association Footballers’ Union, Charlie Roberts and Billy Meredith decided that this just wasn’t cricket and set up their new gang in Manchester’s Imperial Hotel, originally calling it the Football Players’ and Trainers’ Union.

For the next 50 years the Union would battle gamely against not only the maximum wage, but also the retain and transfer system, a way of making sure that clubs held all the aces when it came to player power and is excellently documented in Gary Imlach’s superb book My Father and Other Working Class Heroes.

Good work from Portsmouth captain and former chairman Jimmy Guthrie in his 11-year tenure that ended in 1957 paved the way for Jimmy Hill to stick his chin in and finally make the league agree to abolish the maximum wage in 1961. If you want someone to blame for Darren Bent picking up over £100,000 a week, look no further (although we can see you sneaking out Mr Comolli).

Two years later the retain and transfer system was also axed in what remained the biggest ever shake-up of the transfer system until Jean Marc Bosman’s exploits in Luxembourg in 1995.

These days, with power resting well and truly with the player at the top clubs in the country, the PFA has shifted it’s aims to broader, more inclusive targets, such as anti-racism and community football, as well as looking after ex-pros that either missed out on the crazy wages that the Sky Sports era has ushered in, or were simply not good enough to get a share of Murdoch’s cash cow. Oh, and it also give Gary Neville a reason to feel important, as he currently combines his time on the Old Trafford sideline with being on the PFA management committee with the likes of Marcus Hahnemann, Darren Moore and Clarke Carlisle.

See footage of Neville Neville’s working class hero of a son keeping it real below and have a gander at what else was going on today here.

Tiresome in the extreme. But today, an important loan deal was announced completely out of the blue, which no doubt had SSN’s yellow rolling news bar whipped into a frenzy.

Manchester United announced on this day in 2006 that they would be taking Swedish hotshot Henrik Larsson on loan for three months in January. The move took everyone by surprise and proved Fergie still has the odd trick or two stuffed up the sleeve of his blazer.

After seven years at Celtic where he was able to score virtually in his sleep, he had gone to Barcelona for two seasons where, among other things, he won them the European Cup, coming on as a sub in the final against Arsenal and setting up both goals in a 2-1 win.

Most of the world thought this would be his last act in top level football as he then retired to Sweden and re-signed for his hometown club Helsingborg to live out his footballing dotage.

The Fergie made his move. The United boss had worries up front with Ole Gunnar Solskjaer injured and Alan Smith not match fit which left just Rooney and Louis Saha as his only strikers.

Ferguson said: “I have always admired Larsson. I made a move for him when he was at Celtic but then they managed to persuade him to stay. He is a great player. It is a terrific bit of business for us. We are bringing someone in who can change a game. We won’t be going for any other strikers. We have exhausted all avenues and this, without doubt, is the best option.”

Commentators were falling over themselves to praise the move and most thought Fergie had pulled a masterstroke and stolen a march on his rivals by luring the hitman into his team.

Larsson said: “United have been after me before, after the first or second season with Celtic. It feels good to come and play for such a big club. I may not start every match, but it feels like a fun thing.”

It must have felt like fun on his debut at Old Trafford when, true to script, Larsson scored in a 2-1 win over Aston Villa at Old Trafford. In all the Swede started ten matches for the Red Devils, getting on the score sheet three times but his influence on the club’s season was palpable as his class meant he immediately slotted into the team and gave them a much-needed mid season boost as they rode to the title.

As his three month loan deal wound down, Fergie tried to persuade Larsson to stay but to no avail. “I’m not saying that I’m not flattered or grateful to get the opportunity to extend my stay but there are other things I need to think about,” he said. “The Swedish season starts at the end of March. I need to get back for it.” And that’s exactly what he did, bringing to a close one of the most unexpected and brilliant cameos of recent times.

Also on this day, there was strike action in the air, but don’t panic, not from us so come back tomorrow for your daily OTFD fix, and have a gander below at Larsson’s United goals.

As leaders in the development of the modern game it also fell to England and Scotland to invent international football which they did on this day in 1872 when the two teams took each other on in the very first international football match. Ever. In the world.

The Scots had home advantage as the match was played at Hamilton Crescent cricket ground. Ged O’Brien, the former director of the Scottish Football Association’s football museum told the Guardian in 1999: “The interest in that first ever game was massive. Everyone desperately wanted to see what Scotland could do against England. Even though the crowd was fairly small -4,000 - the ramifications of that day are with us even now. It was the game that changed the world.”

Tactics were certainly a tad different in those days with Scotland playing a 2-2-6 formation and England lining up with an eight-man forward line. “The Scots played a revolutionary brand of football, a pass and run game which was called combination football,” says O’Brien.

“England’s tactics were much more rudimentary - whoever had the ball just dribbled as far as he could until he was tackled. The English were amazed and spread the word. From then on, every club in England had to have a Scottish ‘professor’ in the team to show his team-mates how to play combination football.”

Despite the Scots supposed tactical advantage they could not break down the English and the game ended in a 0-0 draw, although the home crowd were angry after they were denied a goal by a refereeing decision. A newspaper reported it thus: “The home side’s Leckie drove the ball towards the goal. The crowd cheered enthusiastically under the impression that a point had been gained for Scotland. But the umpire ruled no goal because the ball had gone over the tape instead of under.”

No doubt the Tartan Army were sick about the decision but little did they know it was merely the opening salvo in a form of football that, by its very nature means only one team can win anything and only once every two years, meaning most fans spend their life witnessing perpetual disappointment, not least those of Scotland and England.

Given that the first film camera was not invented for sixteen years after the match (yes, we’ve checked) there is no footage of that historic match, but have a look below for some great VT of England taking on Scotland at Wembley in 1944, which was our current Queen’s first ever international.

Have a look here at what else happened on this football day, and unlike Woolworth’s we’ll still be around tomorrow so don’t forget to check it one time.

In an age when Sky Sports try their hardest to deny the fact that football existed before the establishment of the Premier League in 1992 it is often easy to forget what kind of state the English game was in during the late 1970s.

Violence, hooliganism and racism was all too abundant across English football, so the selection of the classy Nottingham Forest centre-back was a momentous event.

Anderson went on make 30 appearances for his country, making the 1982 and 1986 World Cup squads supplementing the shedloads of medals he won under Brian Clough’s stewardship at Nottingham Forest, where he was a crucial part of the side that won back-to-back European Cups.

His England career stalled after the ‘82 World Cup in Spain, and it wasn’t until a £250,000 move to Arsenal in 1984 that he was back in the side. At Highbury he would win the 1987 League Cup and would become Alex Ferguson’s first signing as Manchester United boss later that year.

Anderson left Old Trafford before the trophies started rolling in for Sir Alex, moving to Sheffield Wednesday. After two seasons he was upping sticks again, this time taking up a roll as player-manager at Barnsley, but quit after a year to join his old mucka Bryan Robson at Middlesbrough, becoming his assistant manager.

He stayed with Robson at Boro until the pair left in 2001 following Terry Venables’ troubleshooting intervention that undermined Robson’s tenure and hasn’t been seen in the game since.

In the Millennium Honours List Anderson was awarded an MBE by Her Maj, an honour that he describes as the greatest of his life. His achievement of being England’s first black player also saw him introduced into the English Football Hall of Fame in 2004 and he now also acts as a goodwill ambassador for the FA.

He also runs a slightly bizarre website, that looks more like a CV (Sample quote - “…with almost ten years experience in management I am eager to move on to my next challenge”), but we won’t hold that against him.

There isn’t much footage of Anderson’s England bow on the internet for you, so we’ll throw a clip of the classic 1982 England World Cup song in which he featured. See which European big-wig was being founded today here and come back tomorrow for some more footballing history.

We get the feeling that Ronaldinho is feeling much the same. Before his party lifestyle down Las Rambla in Barcelona got the better of him the big-toothed Brazilian was combining the high-life with being the best player in the world, winning the Ballon d’Or today in 2005.

The overweight trickster that finished last season on the bench at Camp Nou has recently become a shadow of his former self as he tries to rebuild his career in Milan, but in his pomp three years ago his array of tricks, goals and signature ‘flip-flap’ move meant he was the only choice to pick up the 50th edition of world football’s biggest individual honour.

His biggest competition that year (not literally, all you West Ham fans) was Frank Lampard Junior, who was voted as the second best player plying his trade in Europe that year. Without wanting to have the usual argument about the merits of one of English football’s most divisive players, we’re really not convinced about that. Steven Gerrard rounded out the top three that year.

The Ballon d’Or award has grown in stature since Sir Stanley Matthews picked up the inaugural gong in 1956 over the likes of Alfredo Di Stefano and Raymond Kopa. Since then the roll of honour reads like a who’s who of all-time legends; Eusebio, Beckenbauer, Cruyff, Rivera, Keegan, Platini, van Basten and Baggio are just some of the big names on there.

Since Ronny picked up the prize he has seen a slow but steady decline, but his recent move to Milan appears to have revitalised him if last night’s late match changing cameo against Portsmouth is anything to go by. Indeed the Rossoneri can boast of having three of the last four Ballon d’Or winners in their ranks, with Ronaldinho’s compatriot Kaka joining Chelsea flop and 2004 winner Andriy Shevchenko at the San Siro.

See footage of Ronny strutting his stuff for Barca below and check out which other South American was making headlines today here.

We are not going to get into the Pele/Maradona debate so whether or not he was the best ever, there is no doubt Diego was no slouch.

On this day in 1988 he was playing for Napoli against their big rivals Milan in a Serie A match when he did something rather novel: he headed the ball, wait for it, with his head, rather than with his hand, which as we all know is how he usually heads it.

‘Yeah so what?’ I hear you cry. Well, not only did he head the ball into the net to score one of Napoli’s four goals in a 4-1 drubbing of the Milanesas, but he did it from well outside the box - a full eight to ten yards outside in fact. The Milan ‘keeper was nowhere to be seen so Maradona’s effort bounced into the back of the net and surely ranks as one of the longest ever headed goals in the history of the game, and one of the rare instances of scored headers from outside the box.

You can see an incredibly bad quality video of the feat by following this link and then selecting the clip second from bottom on the left hand side.

Among others to have achieved the feat of bulging the net from outside the box with headers are Steve Nichol who scored the winner for Liverpool at Highbury in 1987 with a long range bonce-effort, and the unlikely Carlton Palmer for Sheffield Wednesday against Everton at Goodison in 1993/94. Palmer headed the ball high up into the air from about 22 yards and the ball then dipped wickedly behind Neville Southall and nestled in the net.

Not to be outdone by Carlton Palmer (and who can blame him), Marco van Basten pulled off the feat in the 1989 European Cup semi-final first-leg against Real Madrid. He was outside the box, facing his own goal, and he lobbed a long clearance backwards over the keeper and into the top corner. Have a look at the goal here.

Before you go have a little look below and the clip reel which serves a nice homage to the humble header, and have a look at what else happened on this day here.

The portly Danish scouser secured his match ball in slightly fortuitous circumstances when the Reds took on Coventry in the fourth round of the Littlewoods Cup. Molby’s efforts from the spot ensured a 3-1 win for the home side who went on to reach the final that year where they lost 2-1 to Arsenal at Wembley.

Liverpool folk lore has it that a six-year-old Steven Gerrard was in the stands at Anfield for the first time that day watching Jan doing the penalty duties that would one day fall to Gerrard himself.

Molby scored yet another penalty against Coventry just three days later when the two sides met in a league match.

The Danish import had arrived at Anfield in 1984 and was soon a regular in the side playing either as a midfielder or as a third central defender or sweeper. In the 1985/86 season he hit top form and scored 21 goals from midfield. He carved himself into the Liverpool legends hall of fame that season when he pulled the strings in the FA Cup final win over cross town rivals Everton, who Liverpool had also beaten to the league title.

In the final the Reds were a goal down at half time after Gary Lineker had struck for the Toffees but in the second half Jan got stuck in and on 57 minutes he set up the equaliser for Ian Rush, before providing Craig Johnston with the pass to take the lead six minutes later. He also had a hand in the third goal as Liverpool won yet another pot.

His penalty record is superb and in his time as a Liverpool player he scored 42 of the 45 penalties he took (efforts against Sheffield Wednesday, QPR and Chelsea were saved), which is still a Liverpool record and as far as anyone can work out is the second best record in the top flight after Matthew Le Tissier (49 out of 50).

We don’t have any footage of the spot-kick fest against Coventry, but have a look at Liverpool taking on Leeds in 1993 when, you guessed it, Molby scored another penalty. We’ll be back tomorrow but to satisfy your football trivia thirst until then have a look at which mercurial Frenchman was switching clubs on this day in 1992.

Matches between these two north west sides are usually a lively affair, but the 1-1 draw at Stockport’s Edgeley Park ground was more incident packed than a night on the tiles with Liam Gallagher.

Town midfielder Simon Wiles was first to depart, suffering cruciate ligament damage after an awkward fall in the first half.

Wiles’ misfortune was completely overshadowed by later events, when Macc ‘keeper Jonathan Brain and defender Andrew Teague accidentally clashed and both ended up with broken legs.

Brain suffered a gruesome compound fracture, losing feeling in his broken leg, and Teague joined him in the fractures clinic.

Town’s assistant manager Ray Mathias said: “I feel gutted for all three players. I’ve never been involved in a football match and see three players stretchered off.

“They’re all bad injuries and the players are understandably down in the changing room because they’re worried about their team-mates.”

Stockport manager Jim Gannon was also quick to offer his sympathy: “I feel really sorry for the Macclesfield players. I’ve never seen three players injured like that in the same match, it’s very rare.”

No footage of the leg snapping incident is available, so the squeamish don’t have to worry about that. Instead see a brilliant clip of pure surrealism at Macc’s game at home to Walsall a couple of weeks earlier.

The similarities between the depressing end to McClaren’s reign and England’s last low-point are there for all to see. Like McClaren, Taylor inherited a team who had been knocked out of the World Cup on penalties and the fans never took him to their hearts. Taylor did manage to get England to the European Championships in 1992, but this tournament will always be remembered for Gary Lineker’s substitution against Sweden, leaving him a goal shy of breaking the England scoring record when England were chasing the game.

The tabloid media had a field day. “Swedes 2 Turnips 1″ was The Sun’s headline in 1992 and the vegetable theme was something that Taylor never managed to shake off. A loss to Spain saw him dubbed a “Spanish Onion” and the headlines soon escalated quicker than McClaren’s umbrella in a rainstorm, with “Norse Manure” and “Oslo Rans” as the obvious puns following a particularly bad loss to Norway that left qualification for USA ‘94 hanging by a thread.

That thread involved beating San Marino by a cricket score. In a textbook example of England messing with your emotions worse than any woman ever could, a computer salesman called David Gualtieri was pinching himself after ten seconds, wondering if he really had just scored the quickest goal in World Cup qualifying history.

England did manage to put seven past the minnows, but it wasn’t enough and meant that Holland pipped them to the place in the finals. Before you could say “do I not like that” Taylor had decided to do the honourable thing and jump before he was pushed.

We could go on about rubbish England managers all day, but Capello seems to be doing a suspiciously good job at the moment so we’ll leave it there. We’ll leave you with a bit of Channel 4’s often hilarious documentary that followed Taylor and his staff through the 1994 qualifying games and come back tomorrow for more football trivia.

At the time Leeds were an exciting young team with the world at their feet with O’Leary playing the part of rising star manager and Ridsdale looking the model chairman, leading the fans in rousing renditions of the club’s anthem Marching on Together. All was rosy.

On this day things looked even rosier for the Leeds faithful when the club signed West Ham defender Rio Ferdinand for a whopping £18m. It seemed like a massive amount of money for an undoubtedly good player, but at the time it was a British transfer fee record, and a world record for a defender. Many questioned whether he was worth the money, but no one bothered to ask where the money was coming from, and if Leeds could actually afford it.

Still, it all looked so good for a while. Rio looked at home in the White Leeds shirt and he continued to impress and become an England regular.

Things would start to fall apart in 2002 when O’Leary was sacked and it became obvious that the club had somewhat overreached itself with the purchase. Ferdinand was sold to rivals Manchester United, but that deal was one of the few good ones for the club during the fire sale from Leeds in 2002 and 2003. He went for £30m after two years, a £12m profit on his original price which is a bit of a bobby dazzler.

Now, we know we have shown this clip of Rio’s howler at Portsmouth before, but go on, have another look - you know you want to, if only for the Benny Hill soundtrack. We will be back tomorrow but first, have a look at this for the comedy antics of the only manager more hapless than O’Leary. Souness gets it very wrong on this day in 1996.

With so many taunts and rumours doing the rounds old Graeme became somewhat sensitive to any jibes of that nature with opposing players used to their advantage. On this day in 1995 Le Saux decided to show his teammate David Batty that he was a hard man by punching him after they had a coming together when going for the same ball in a Champions League match away at Spartak Moscow.

It has long been assumed that Batty must have been taunting Le Saux about his sexuality but in his autobiography Le Saux refutes this, and says it was more to do with arguments over passing the ball and the general ill-feeling that starts to creep in when a team loses it’s form.

Le Saux said: “It was a horrible atmosphere in Moscow. It was bitterly cold, the pitch was frozen and the dressing-rooms were miserable. I felt weighed down by a general air of anxiety even before kick-off. They scored early and things felt fraught, as though they were unravelling. Everything was going from bad to worse.

“It was still the first half when I set off after a loose ball. I was running up the touchline, the ball in front of me. I was going to intercept it. David was coming across the pitch to try to get there as well. We arrived at the same time and ran into each other.

“I hit the deck and, as I got up, he came at me very aggressively. He was being threatening and screaming things. His face was contorted with anger, as if he was going to rip my head off. Hitting him was more of a pre-emptive strike than anything. If I had not hit him, I felt he was going to hit me.

“It is a myth that he was hurling a stream of homophobic abuse. It wasn’t the words that got to me, but a combination of four or five things. I was upset at what he said and that he was accusing me of being selfish again; I was upset that we were not doing well as a team and I reacted because of the way he behaved.”

Despite being the puncher, Le Saux seemed to come off worse than Batty with the former having a broken hand to show for his troubles, and the latter seemingly unaffected. Le Saux said: “I swung at him, connected and knew immediately that I had broken my left hand. I am not a fighter. I hadn’t closed my fist properly. I was in a lot of pain, which just made me feel more ridiculous.”

Tim Sherwood had to come and separate them and manager Ray Harford tore the proverbial strip off them at half time while Le Saux was having his hand bandaged. The reigning champions of England lost 3-0.

Le Saux continued: “There has always been speculation about what David said to me. Most have assumed that a homophobic taunt made me snap. But I never considered this incident similar to the one with Robbie Fowler, nor even in the same league. What David said was between me and him. I am not condoning it, but I am not condoning what I did, either.

“The aftermath was appalling. We were miles away from home, we had been battered 3-0, I had a broken hand and I had just hit my own teammate. I sat by myself on the coach to the airport, cowering at the back.

“More than anything, that night is the one thing I wish I could erase from my career.”

The incident epitomised the ill-fated Champions League campaign for the team which would never hit the heights of the previous season again. Batty and Le Saux were both picked for Rovers’ next match, a 0-0 draw at Highbury, with Le Saux sporting a cast on his hand - a little souvenir from his trip to Moscow.

Such team fighting was not seen again in English football until Kieron Dyer and Lee Bowyer went at it while playing for Newcastle in 4004. In the absence of any footage of the Batty/Le Saux indicent, watch Dyer and Bowyer using their handbags below, and check this to see what full time sefl-publicist and part time football club chairman Simon Jordan was up to on this day in 2001.

It was today in 2007 that the Three Lions’ fate was sealed, when England lost to Croatia on a soggy night at Wembley Stadium.

When Schteve McClaren took over from Sven as England boss his first order of business was to negotiate a not too intimidating Euro 2008 qualifying group that shouldn’t have been too tricky for the World Cup quarter-finalists.

This was not the case, as McClaren’s men flattered to deceive, only putting one goal past FYR Macedonia over two games and losing to Croatia when Paul Robinson swiped at thin air after Gary Neville’s backpass.

A 2-1 loss to Russia in their penultimate game seemed to be the final nail in the coffin for England’s qualification hopes, but Russia’s 2-1 defeat in Israel gave the Three Lions one last chance, as a draw against the Croats would see them qualify.

For reasons that no-one else could fathom, McClaren opted to drop David James for Scott Carson, giving the former Leeds stopper his first taste of competitive action in England’s most important game and in horribly wet conditions.

Needless to say, the gamble backfired. Croatia took an early lead when Nico Kranjcar’s speculative shot slipped through Carson’s hands. Ivica Olic scored a second before half-time and England had yet another mountain to climb.

After half-time McClaren brought on David Beckham, another player that he had unceremoniously dropped and 20 minutes into the second half England were equal - and as things stood, going to Austria and Switzerland the next summer.

Unfortunately, this isn’t where the story ends. Instead of coasting their way to the final whistle Slaven Bilic’s men kept on battling to the end, showing the kind of spirit that McClaren could only dream of.

When Mladen Petric fired the winner in from 25 yards English hearts were broken and we were left with one of English football’s most iconic images of recent years, as McClaren looked on, hopelessly out of his depth under a huge umbrella.

The tabloid press had a field day, with ‘Wally with a Brolly’ headlines a-plenty and royalties for the Rhianna hit ‘Umbrella’ went through the roof once the montage makers got their hands on it. Proving that they did have a smidgen of common sense the FA didn’t waste time getting rid of McClaren, sacking him the morning after.

See the goals from that eventful night below and click here if you want to know what else was going down today.

SuperMac didn’t waste much time against the Gate, scoring five in the first half before completing his treble hat-trick after the break as Bournemouth romped to an 11-0 win. The nine goal haul remains the most goals scored by a single player in an FA Cup match.

The Scottish striker was something of a journeyman. Racking up ten clubs in a 24-year career, he was nothing if not prolific. After being released by Liverpool as a 20-year-old he made a name for himself at York City, scoring 40 goals in two seasons and earning a £10,000 move to the club that was then known as Bournemouth & Boscombe Athletic.

A three year spell at Dean Court was goal-packed, with many of them trademark diving headers. Proving he had a taste for the FA Cup, a year before his exploits against Margate, MacDougal put six past Oxford City in an 8-1 win.

After three seasons and 126 goals SuperMac left the now-rebranded AFC Bournemouth for the heady lights of Old Trafford in a £200,000 move. With United struggling to replace Sir Matt Busby the club looked to blood in a new generation of stars as legends like Denis Law and Bobby Charlton were past their best and George Best’s boozing was becoming more and more of a problem.

A forgettable season at United saw MacDougal move to West Ham, but after a dressing room punch up with Billy Bonds following a defeat to Leeds United, he was on his bike again. Spells at Norwich and Southampton followed, where he got back on the goal bandwagon, before he returned to Dean Court for two seasons.

After a year in America at NASL side Detroit Express SuperMac spent his final season by the seaside at Blackpool and hung up his boots with a record of 259 goals in 542 games.

See a Bournemouth highlight reel below and see what else was going down today here. We’ll be back tomorrow, but if you can’t wait that long, check out our new OTFD book, available here or at all good (and not so good) bookshops now.

Despite these proud beginnings the Scots have had rather more trouble in creating a dynasty of success to match their status as one of the world’s oldest teams. The team has never won the World Cup or the European Championship but they do have a good record of reaching the tournaments and turning out some of the world’s best players as well.

The team qualified for every World Cup from 1974 onwards apart from USA 94, but after the 1998 tournament in France the Tartan team went into something of a decline. No longer producing the kind of talent that had graced the top club sides for years the team began to struggle under Craig Brown and missed out on both Euro 2000 and the 2002 World Cup.

Brown stepped down and was replaced by the country’s first foreign manager, Berti Vogts in 2002. It proved to be a disastrous appointment and the German presided over the worst period in the history of the side as they lurched from one bad result to the next including defeats like 6–0 to Holland, 5–0 to France, 4–0 to Wales, 4–1 to South Korea and 3–0 to Hungary.

After two years of watching the team slide down the Fifa rankings the Tartan army could take it no more and Vogts fell on his sword.

On this day in 2004 the Scottish FA interviewed the man who would replace Vogts when former Rangers and Everton boss Walter Smith put on his best suit and tried to think of all his strengths and weaknesses (None…ah well, ah’m a bit of a perfectionist actually) as he faced the SFA interview panel.

Walter got on with the job in hand and quickly whipped his charges into shape as results picked up. The team began to pick up wins and under Smith they even beat France twice, once as part of their qualification campaign for the 2006 World Cup. Smith just failed to get them to the tournament, finishing third in the group behind Italy and Norway, but he had, as the cliche goes, restored a lot of pride.

Scotland began the qualification campaign for Euro 2008 with renewed optimism and Smith once again pulled off another win over France at Hampden Park before the lure of club management with his first love, Glasgow Rangers, proved too much and he handed over the reigns to another former Rangers manager Alex McLeish.

Something of rather more note happened on this day in 1969 when the world’s best ever player notched up a personal goal scoring landmark, which you can read about here. More tomorrow folks, but in the meantime, see Walter Smith giving the BBC’s Chick Young a hard time below.

However, since Keane’s conversion into a forthright and (save for the kjnkj) successful manager, he deserves a reappraisal and yours truly is having to have a re-think about Keano. Far from being the complete disaster of a gaffer that we and others predicted, he has thus far been doing pretty well and seems to be becoming the kind of thoughtful and insightful manager that Tony Adams seems to desperately be trying to come across as in his press conferences.

Keano started his playing career in England under Brian Clough at Nottingham Forest before moving to Manchester United in 1993. It seemed like a perfect fit as Keane became one of Europe’s top midfielders and thrived in the all-conquering 1990s team Sir Alex built. The relationship between manager and player seemed to be one of the tightest in football but that all came to a sudden end on this day in 2005 when Keane dramatically quit the club after 12-and-a-half years.

The news was as unexpected as it was sudden although there had been signs Keano was not entirely happy at the club. The catalyst for his departure seems to have been an interview he gave to MUTV which was never broadcast but contained harsh words for some of his teammates.

With the club going though something of a shaky patch, Keane was typically upfront with his views of his fellow professionals at the club, notably John O’Shea, Alan Smith, Kieran Richardson and Darren Fletcher. He also directed his ire at Rio Ferdinand and said: “Just because you are paid £120,000-a-week and play well for 20 minutes against Tottenham, you think you are a superstar.”

Keane had gone from being Fergie’s most trusted player to a loose cannon and the old man dealt with him in a typically ruthless manner. Keane was out, apparently by mutual consent. His last match was a 0-0 draw against arch-rivals Liverpool in September.

Both Keane and Fergie issued typically bland PR-ish statements. Keane said: “It has been a great honour and privilege for me to play for Manchester United for over 12 years. During my time at the club I have been fortunate to play alongside some of the best players in the game and in front of the best supporters in the world. At all times I have endeavoured to do my best for the management and the team.

“Whilst it is a sad day for me to leave such a great club and manager I believe that the time has now come for me to move on. After so many years, I will miss everyone at the club. I send my best wishes for the future to the management, players, staff and supporters of the club.”

Ferguson said: “Roy Keane has been a fantastic servant for Manchester United. The best midfield player in the world of his generation, he is already one of the great figures in our club’s illustrious history. Roy has been central to the success of the club in the last 12-and-a-half years and everyone at Old Trafford wishes him well in the rest of his career and beyond.”

Roy went on to sign for Celtic and spent six months with the club, winning the SPL and Scottish League Cup, before he retired from playing altogether.

As usual we will have more for you tomorrow, meantime read about another famous midfielder arriving at Old Trafford on this day here.

One would have been forgiven for thinking that the eleven men representing the Three Lions that night would have gone at the team of part-timers from the start, but after only eight seconds England were already playing catch up when Davide Gualtieri scored straight from the kick off.

The plucky San Marinions (Marinos? Marino-ites? Marinese?) held the lead for 20 minutes and dared to dream that one of the biggest upsets the game had ever seen was on after they had scored only their second goal in the 10 match qualifying campaign.

Situated the Apennine Mountains of northern Italy, the tiny nation of San Marino covers an area of 60.5 sq km and the population of the country can just about fit into Bolton’s Reebok Stadium. So what they were doing beating England in a do-or-die World Cup qualifier is anybody’s guess.

Eventually England got their act together and scored seven goals, with Arsenal striker Ian Wright bagging four as England played out a 7-1 win in front of 2,378 fans, the lowest attendance at an England international in the 20th century.

With England only winning by six goals and Holland beating Poland 3-1, it meant curtains for their USA 1994 hopes and also marked the end of Graham Taylor’s reign as national team coach as he fell on his sword six days later.

Taylor had been under the cosh since England’s exit from Euro ‘92 when his substitution of Gary Lineker, stranded one short of Sir Bobby Charlton’s record of 49 international goals saw the tabloid press start an obsession with photo-shopping Taylor’s face on vegetables.

Terry Venables jetted in to replace Taylor and luckily for him was not tasked with qualifying for the next international tournament, as England played host to the European Championships in 1996.

See some footage of some of the abuse that Taylor got below and check out what else was happening today here.

Willie Hall was one of the day’s leading lights on the football field. After starting his career at Notts County in 1930 he earned himself a move to Tottenham in 1932 for £2,500 where the inside forward would play out the rest of his career.

After less than a year in north London Hall broke into the England team, making his debut against France in December 1933. Complementing his skilful dribbling was an insightful football brain that saw him filling positions in both defence and attack.

Hall was becoming a England regular in the 1937/38 season and if not for a certain angry German’s antics on the continent he would have bagged more than 10 caps. Despite this, he managed to cement his place in the record books when England faced off against Northern Ireland today in 1938.

England would romp to a 7-0 victory and Hall bagged three goals at the end of the first half in a devastating three minute and thirty second spell as he helped himself to five goals that afternoon. This record would not be bettered until Japanese striker Masashi Nakayama scored his treble 27 seconds quicker against Brunei in 2000.

Hall only turned out three more times for the national side, but could boast of an impressive nine goals in his ten caps. Eat your heart out Andrew Cole. Hall carried on representing Spurs in friendly matches throughout the war whilst also being a member of the London Police Reserve.

His playing career was abruptly ended in 1945 when an illness meant he had to have the lower part of both of his legs amputated. Fellow England forward Tommy Lawton paid tribute to him saying: “What a tragedy it was that Willie should lose both his precious legs, the legs that had thrilled us all in football for many a year.”

A testimonial at White Hart Lane saw a crowd of 30,220 raise £3,000 and Hall would later become vice-president of the Spurs Supporters Club. He would supplement this by working as a publican before he died in Newark in 1967, aged 55.

Unfortunately the Sky Sports camera’s were found lacking that day, so no footage of Hall’s goals exist. Instead have a gander at a more recent quick-fire hat-trick below and check out what else was going down in the world of football today here. If you can’t wait until tomorrow for your daily football fix then why don’t you have a gander at the new OTFD book – available here and in all good (and bad) book shops now.

We have told you about Keggy’s first foray into management, his legendary bonkers rant on Sky Sports, the time his charges came up trumps by thrashing Manchester United, and of course his many and varied dramatic resignations.

Today in 1972 a young KK was making waves as a player when he made his England debut aged 21. Despite constantly being told he was too small to make it as a pro, and having been rejected by hometown club Doncaster Rovers and Coventry City, Mighty Mouse kept on trying and eventually became a professional at Scunthorpe. “Rejection drove me on,” says Keegan. “A few people close to me said: ‘Now you’ll have to concentrate on your school work.’ They didn’t think I was good enough, and I used it as a spur. I think most of the top players have been rejected somewhere along the line, and most top business people have problems before they get to the top. Edison had failures before he got the lightbulb going!”

His perseverance paid off and when he was just 20 Bill Shankly snapped him up for £35,000 for Liverpool. Shanks told his new young charge that he would go on to wear the Three Lions shirt and sure enough, within a year of arriving at Anfield Keegan was called up by Sir Alf.

He started for England in a World Cup qualifier against Wales at Ninian Park in Cardiff and impressed as England won 1-0 thanks to a Colin Bell goal.

The man himself said: “My second match for England was also against Wales, and the third was in 1974, again in Cardiff. We won and I scored my first goal. By that time, I was wondering if I was Welsh or English. I was living in North Wales and other players started calling me Taff Keegan!”

Sadly for one of England’s best players, and certainly one of the best of his generation, the height of Keegan’s powers coincided with a slump in England’s fortunes. The team didn’t make it to the World Cup in 1974 and 1978, or the European Championship in between. The 1982 World Cup in Spain was to be KK’s only appearance at the world’s best tournament and even then an injury curtailed his playing time to just a cameo role in the crucial match against the hosts Spain when he missed a point blank range header with the match at 0-0. The game ended goal-less and England were out without losing a game. “As I headed it, I thought ‘Goal!’ because I didn’t usually miss from there.”

“There aren’t any excuses,” Keegan said. “England weren’t good enough as a nation at the time. It doesn’t matter if I thought we were unlucky or whatever, we just didn’t have enough good players. And I obviously wasn’t good enough, either.

“Yes, we did get to the World Cup in Spain in 1982 – and people say myself and Trevor Brooking were the main reason we got to that tournament – but both of us got injured, and we only played about 20 minutes each.”

The draw against Spain was Keegan’s last in an England shirt as he began to wind down his playing career.

Have a look at a very young KK giving his thoughts to a BBC chappy below and come back tomorrow if you need a footy fix. Before you go click here to read about Europe’s greatest ever player making his debut.

The referee Hugh Dallas had to delay Celtic from taking a corner as the fox weaved this way and that like a four-legged Maradona, evading several players before dashing back into the crowd.

Celtic public relations manager Peter McLean said: “We were very impressed with the pace of the fox. It still hasn’t been caught. We don’t know how it got in and how it escaped. We have even been given the brush-off by its agent.” Basil would have been proud of that one. Boom boom!

Old foxy’s appearance in an SPL game is not the only time an animal has interrupted play. There was the incident we told you about last year when Jimmy Greaves had to use all his skill to nab a dog that had run onto the pitch during England’s 1962 World Cup clash with Brazil. Similarly in 2005 a cat made a brief appearance on Preston’s Deepdale pitch, while a squirrel decided to try his luck during a Stevenage versus Bath City cup tie in 1999. Lovely footwork mind.

Rather more seriously former Brent goalkeeper Chic Brodie came-a-cropper when a pooch ran on to the field during their match with Colchester. As Brodie went to receive a back-pass the dog launched himself at the ‘keeper, shattering his kneecap in the process. He was stretchered off and said afterwards: “The dog might have been a small one, but it just happened to be a solid one.”

Keen to prevent the mammals from having all the fun, there have been a number of bird strikes during games as well. In 1976 during the Bundesliga match between Bayern Munich and VfL Bochum a duck landed close to German goalkeeper Sepp Maier who made himself big and lunged for the bird, missing spectacularly. Foul! More recently in the Finnish first division when TPS took on KuPS a duck which had wandered into the middle of the match was struck particularly hard by a corner kick from Seth Ablade which knocked it unconscious. Some kindly nearby fireman apparently brought the duck round (how do you do that??) and it recovered to make a nuisance of itself elsewhere.

Last in our You’ve Been Framed-style round up of comedy animal capers is the tale of Carlos Secretario and the rabbit. At the Bernabéu during the 1996-97 league game between Real Madrid and Betis a rabbit found itself on the pitch and it fell to Real’s Secretario to use his lightening quick reactions to catch the blighter. Commentator Arsénio Iglesias remarked: “Secretario may or may be not a good player, but he is indeed a great hunter!”

We will leave you with a compilation of some of these animal cracker matches, and have a look here for the tale of an epic encounter between England and Italy at Highbury on this day in 1934.

The fans’ community website had been established with the aim of recruiting 50,000 fans to chip in £35 each for equal shares in a club that would see the members voting on matters on and off the field, from team selection and transfer to what sort of half-time grub should be up for grabs at the ground.

Once the 50,000 member barrier was broken they all got clicking on their mouses to decide which team to go for. Leeds United initially led the way, with Nottingham Forest and Cambridge United also being popular choices.

By August 2007 it had emerged that four clubs had approached MyFootballClub to moot the idea of a possible sale. The now defunct Halifax Town saw this as a way to escape the debt that would eventually engulf the club at the end of the 2007/08 season and they were joined, cap in hand, by Mansfield Town and Leigh RMI.

Eventually the keyboarded masses opted for Ebsfleet United, the club that had been known as Gravesend & Northfleet until May 2007, changing their name to match the Ebbsfleet International railway station, ran by their sponsors Eurostar and proving that the Fleet aren’t afraid of being branded as sell-outs.

Over 95% of the members had voted to take over the club and manager Liam Daish towed the line nicely: “As a football fan, I think the MyFootballClub idea is fantastic. As the coach, I look forward to the challenge of working with thousands of members to produce a winning team,” he opined. “My assistant Alan Kimble and myself are 100% committed to making this work.”

And to be fair to Daish, it hasn’t yet been a case of too many chefs. The Fleet made their first trip to Wembley and defeated Torquay United to win the FA Trophy for the first time in their history in May 2008 and in January Daish’s transfer plans were given the backing of the board, as more than 95% of them gave him the thumbs up.

See how Sky Sports’ most famous Torquay fan took defeat to Ebbsfleet at Wembley below and also see what else was going on today here.

Whereas most England friendlies are a labourious affiar, clashes between these two have always had an edge, ever since Sir Alf told the world what he really thought of Antonio Ratin in 1966. Oh and that little disagreement over the Falklands at the start of the 1980s and a certain handball didn’t help diplomatic relations either.

A month earlier both sides had qualified for the 2006 World Cup so took to Geneva for the clash, both sending out full-strength teams.

Argentina were first out of the blocks when Chelsea striker Hernan Crespo put the Albicelestes in front, but a Wayne Rooney equaliser meant the sides went in level at the break. Walter ‘The Wall’ Samuel put the Argies in front at the start of the second half and as the match went on it looked like another frustrating English defeat.

Cometh the hour, cometh the man though. Michael Owen, who knows a thing or two about scoring against Argentina, nodded in an 87th minute header from a Steven Gerrard cross and in injury time the striker bagged the winner, when he headed in Joe Cole’s floated pass.

England had won their second consecutive match against one of their bitterest enemies following their Word Cup 2002 win in Sapporo and the press and public alike then proceeded to get far too over-excited about the Three Lions’ chances in the next summer’s World Cup.

Needless to say, metatarsals and penalties conspired against England in Germany the following summer as it was a case of same old. See the pulsating climax of the game below and see what else was happening today