September 20 – Old Big ‘Ead Bows Out

FOOTBALL is nothing without its characters, the people that bring the game alive for the fans, and they did not come much bigger than Brian Clough.

It was on this day in 2004 that Cloughie lost his battle with cancer and died, at the age of 69.

Never one to sit on the fence or shirk an opportunity to give an opinion Clough could always point to results to back up his claim that: “I certainly wouldn’t say I’m the best manager in the business, but I’m in the top one.”

After a high-scoring playing career with his hometown club Middlesbrough and Sunderland, Clough made the move into management with Hartlepool United in 1965.

But it was at Derby where he began to really establish himself as a top boss, first getting the team promoted to the then First Division, and then winning it in 1972.

The following year Clough led his team to the semi-finals of the European Cup where they lost 3-1 to Juventus. Never one to take these things lying down, Clough diplomatically branded the Italians “cheating bastards” and questioned the conduct of their nation during ze war.

After a fall out with the Rams’ board Clough and his long-time assistant Peter Taylor upped sticks and had a brief spell with Brighton and Hove Albion before his ill-fated 44 days in charge of Leeds United.

After winning only one match at the Elland Road club and falling out with most of the senior players Clough was sacked prompting him to say: “This a terrible day . . . for Leeds United.

Cloughie’s next destination was to be his last, and his most successful. He worked his Derby magic again at Nottingham Forest, first getting them promoted to the First Division, and then winning it the year after that – a feat that is unimaginable now.

As well as domestic success, Clough also brought European glory to Forest by winning the European Cup twice, something that Sir Alex Ferguson has yet to achieve which Cloughie clearly enjoyed when he said: “For all his horses, knighthoods and championships, he hasn’t got two of what I’ve got. And I don’t mean balls.”

Many fans at the height of Clough’s powers called for him to be given the England job but his outspokenness and controversial nature seemed to scare off the FA.

Clough had his own theory on why the suits at Lancaster Gate would not give him the top job. He said: “They thought I was going to change it lock, stock and barrel. They were shrewd because that’s exactly what I would have done.”

Whether you found his comments refreshingly honest or simply arrogant, the football world is certainly less colourful without Brian Clough, and just as he would have insisted, we’ll leave the last word to the big man himself.

“I want no epitaphs of profound history or all that kind of thing. I contributed, I hope they would say that and I hope that somebody liked me.”

Come back tomorrow for more football nostalgia after this message from our sponsor….

September 19 – BBC Go Looking For Bungs

INVESTIGATIVE journalism was the order of the day in 2006, when the BBC transmitted their controversial Panorama programme that looked at the murky world of bungs in football.

Former Luton manager Mike Newell had bought the issue into the public eye when he claimed corruption was rife in the game in one of his many entertaining rants before he was sacked in March 2007.

In the days leading up to the programme much had been promised, as it was rumoured that the makers had managed to get unprecedented evidence that showed managers and club officials at the highest level making illegal payments to secure transfer deals.

Word had spread that Sam Allardyce and, to the surprise of exactly no-one, the old wheeler-dealer ‘Arry Redknapp were going to come out badly. They, along with clubs, agents, fans and lawyers all tuned in with bated breath.

So what did Panorama actually prove? Well, not a lot to be honest. Secret footage of a series of dull meetings in dodgy hotels showed a few opportune agents trying to pimp out their clients, but the evidence shown was hardly earth-shattering. Sam Allardyce came out worse, as we saw his son receiving illegal payments for transfers involving Bolton Wanderers, but ultimately nothing was to happen to Big Sam.

Throughout the programme several clubs’, players’ and managers’ names were beeped out and censored, showing that the Beeb were not altogether confident about the validity of their evidence and wanted to avoid the legal minefield that would have surely come their way.

Although Panorama didn’t achieve it’s goal of cleaning up football, it did bring the issue to the fore and this has since been tackled by Lord Stevens, who’s ongoing investigation has lead to a number of arrests. For the BBC, however, the show’s lasting legacy is the refusal of ‘Arry and Big Sam to talk to their reporters on Match of the Day, so every cloud, etc.

If you want to see Redknapp with even more egg on his face see below and come over this way tomorrow to for a look at one of the all-time greats.

September 18 – Dodgy Keeper

THEY say you have to be mad to be a goalkeeper. Whether it’s David James getting comedy haircuts or Rene Higuita scorpion-kicking his way out of trouble, goalies are always the eccentric ones. With his comedy moustache, wobbly knees and penchant for handstands Bruce Grobbelaar was one of football’s larger than life characters, but he was never far away from controversy, as was proved today in 1998 when he was charged by the FA over betting irregularities.

The Sun had broken the story, when they alleged that Grobbelaar, along with the former Wimbledon duo of John Fashanu and Hans Segers and businessman Richard Lim had conspired to corruptly influence the outcome of matches. They claimed that Grobbelaar had accepted £40,000 by his friend Chris Vincent to throw a match between Liverpool and Newcastle United in 1993. Although Liverpool lost 3-0, thanks to an Andy, sorry, Andrew Cole hat-trick, with one of the goals slipping through the Zimbabwean’s legs, it was proved in court by experts, including former Arsenal ‘keeper Bob Wilson, that Bruce was not to blame for any of the goals.

These revelations meant that Grobbelaar faced a number of court cases, where in what many described as his best performances since his Liverpool days, he just about escaped prosecution. The Sun was able to draw on video evidence that showed Grobbelaar accepting a £2,000 down payment, discussing future games that he was going to throw and also lamenting other matches where he had accidentally made saves that had cost him thousands of pounds from his Far East betting syndicate.

Grobbelaar had maintained that he was always going to give back the £2,000 he received on camera and all along he been trying to entrap Vincent and build up enough information to hand over to the police as evidence. Columbo eat your heart out. Eventually the legal system began to have it’s doubts and Grobbelaar was only awarded £1 in libel damages, the least possible in English law and him and Fash the Bash were ordered to pay their own costs of up to £650,000 after the judge concluded that their conduct ‘had brought suspicion’ on themselves.

Bruce was declared bankrupt and Fash no doubt wish he’d kept his post-football career down to presenting Gladiators with Ulrika, as one of English football’s most sorry affairs came to a close. For a bit of footage from a game that Grobbelaar definitely wasn’t trying to throw see below and come back tomorrow for more muck-raking.

September 17 – The Buddies Hit Europe

WHEN you think of Scottish football in Europe, most people’s thoughts go straight to the Old Firm plugging away in the Champions League. Every few years though, you’ll get a fairytale story of a minnow making it onto Europe’s big stage. Back in 1980 it was the turn of St. Mirren, who were packing their bags for their longest ever away-day.

A tie against Sweden’s IF Elsborg was St. Mirren’s prize for a third place finish in the 1979/80 season, behind Celtic and Aberdeen, who were managed by a certain Mr Alex Ferguson. Talking of Fergie, have a guess who the only club ever to give him the sack is? That’s right, it was Paisley’s finest, St. Mirren in 1978. Ferguson clashed with the board over a number of issues ranging from (if the rumours are to be believed) bonus payments to the players, wanting to change the club’s kit and also “unpardonable swearing at a lady on club premises” as a former director alleged.

It was the nucleus of the side that Ferguson built that took St. Mirren to the UEFA Cup. Their first round tie against Elfsborg ended in a 2-1 win that saw them drawn against Saint-Etienne, the French side lead by Michel Platini, not the Croyden pop group, in the second round. Alas, the dream was to end here as they went down 2-0 on aggregate and The Buddies have never reached these heights since.

They have, however won a hatful of Renfrewshire Cups (49 to be precise) and can boast of such alumni as Archie Gemmill, Frank McAvennie, Roy Aitkin and even former Spanish national team captain Victor Munoz.

For footage of St. Mirren’s heady days in Europe see below and I’ll give you odds of 2/1 if you can guess which dodgy keeper we’re looking at tomorrow.

September 16 – First Match on TV – Arsenal Can’t Lose

ALREADY here at OTFD we have told you about the first showing of Match of the Day in 1964, and the launch of Sky Television’s coverage of the Premier League in 1992. But it was on this day way way back in 1937 that football had its first flirtation with TV that would eventually lead to the close marriage the beautiful game enjoys with the small screen today.

The BBC had started its new television service in 1936 and it did not take long for some bright spark to think that John Logie Baird’s new invention might lend itself quite well to the game with the first match being broadcast only a year after the service began.

You might think the first game broadcast would be the FA Cup Final or an England match perhaps. But no, the first game to be shown was not even a competitive fixture. The BBC organised a north London derby of sorts to experiment with televising football, pitching the Arsenal first team against . . . . the Arsenal reserves.

We haven’t been able to find out the result of the match with records sketchy at best due to the fact that the match had no competitive significance. Similarly audience ratings are not known either but two years later only 10,000 people had TV sets so we can be sure the viewing numbers were some way short of that.

In the absence of any footage of the match itself, spend a couple of minutes having a chuckle at this take of an Arsenal team from the 1930s pitched against the Liverpool team of 1991 from Harry Enfield back when he was still funny.

September 15 – Derby’s Glorious Twelfth

European football ain’t like it used to be. Back in the day there was no group stages, no endless pots of television money and no red-button for interactive coverage. And English teams didn’t need to produce outrageous comebacks in order to win trophies. Today in 1976 Derby were proving this as they became the first English side to bag 12 goals in a European game.

Granted, the opposition was only the patriotically named Finn Harps from Ireland, but it shows an example of the gulf in class that used to exist in European competition. To knock down today’s cliche, there certainly were easy games in the old days.

For Derby County, the 1970′s were halcyon days. The legendary Brian Clough had dragged the Rams out of the old Second Division in 1969, and had it not been for a breach of financial regulations they would have been in Europe by 1970, following their fourth-place finish. Cloughy bought the title to the Baseball Ground in 1972 and their first season in Europe saw an exhilarating run to the semi-finals only to be denied by Juventus or the “cheating bastards” as the shy and reserved Cloughy diplomatically put it.

Clough left Derby in 1973 after he fell out with the board and although Dave Mackay was to lead them to another title in 1975, they were out of the top flight by 1980. Their 1976/77 UEFA Cup run started with a bang, as their 12-0 first-leg win against Finn Harps became a 16-1 aggregate victory, but their glory was short-lived as they tumbled out in the next round, losing 5-2 to AEK Athens over the two legs.

See all twelve record-breaking goals from that night below and come running this way tomorrow if you want to find out who you’d have been watching on TV seventy years ago.

September 14 – Maradona good, Pele better, George Best

IN 1961 Manchester United Manager Matt Busby received a telegram from Bob Bishop, one of his scouts in Northern Ireland. It read: “I think I’ve found you a genius.”

Two years later, on this very day in 1963, a 17-year-old George Best made his United debut in a 1-0 win over West Brom. The performer had found his stage and Bestie would grace Old Trafford for the next ten spell-binding years which would see him, and United at their peak.

Best picked up two league titles and the European Cup with the club under Matt Busby, and himself won the European Footballer of the Year and Football Writers’ Association Footballer of the Year, both in 1968.

Dubbed ‘the fifth Beatle’ by the press because of his long hair, champagne lifestyle and rock star status, Bestie dazzled with his skill, ball control and goal-scoring ability on the pitch. He was the sporting icon of the hedonism of the sixties, and he revelled in it, famously saying: “I spent 90% of my money on women and drink. The rest I wasted.”

Problems with gambling, womanising and especially alcoholism caused him to take his eye off the ball. He left United in 1974 aged only 27. Over the next ten years he drifted between various clubs, with a happy spell at Fulham followed by stints at various clubs in the USA, finishing up with Bournemouth in 1983.

Despite winning personal and club honours, Best’s international career would be the one area where he fell short – he is probably the best player ever to not appear at any world cup, Northern Ireland failing to qualify during his playing days.

As Best’s playing prowess declined, his lifestyle remained fast-paced and luxurious, prompting perhaps the most famous story about his antics. A waiter brought champagne up to Best’s hotel room and walked in to see thousands of pounds worth of casino winnings and the current Miss World on the bed. “Mr Best, where did it all go wrong?” he asked with a completely straight face.

Best’s drinking problems are well documented, as he said himself: “In 1969 I gave up women and alcohol – it was the worst 20 minutes of my life.” His alcoholism would eventually lead to his death in 2005, a sad end to a man who was blessed with remarkable talent.

Bestie once said :”When I die I’d like to be remembered as the greatest footballer of all time. When that day comes, they won’t talk about the booze, the women, the fast cars. They’ll talk about the football.”

Well George, we can do better than just talk about it. Watch the clip below for some of his on-pitch highlights, and come back tomorrow to see which current Premier League strugglers were scoring a genuine hat-full in Europe over three decades ago.

September 13 – Tanti Auguri Fabio

Tanti auguri a te,
Tanti auguri a te,
Tanti auguri a te,
Tanti auguri Fabio,
Tanti auguri a te.

And so say all of us. Today Fabio Cannavaro will be blowing out his candles, unwrapping his presents and listening intently to the radio in the hope someone has rung in and dedicated Joe Dulce’s classic hit Shaddupa Your Face for him as today he hits the big three-four.

Lets hope this birthday is better for Fabio than his last, when, playing for Real Madrid in the Champions League against Lyon, he was at fault for both goals in a 2-0 defeat for the Spanish giants.

An uncharacteristic lapse there for the famously short centre-half who has made a bit of a habit over the years of not conceding goals at all, and he’s usually pretty good at it.

So good in fact, that he is currently both European and World Player of the Year. No other defender is history has ever won the World Player award.

Fabio began his footballing life with his home town club Napoli, before financial troubles forced them to sell him to Parma.

At Parma Fabio, his defensive partner Lillian Thuram and goalkeeper Gigi Buffon formed one of the meanest defences in Serie A leading to Fabio being named three years in a row runner up as best defender in Italy. And apparently the Italians know a thing or two about defenders.

After a two year stint with Internazionale Fabio was on the move again, this time to Juventus where he finally won the best defender in Italy award, and two Scudetto titles in a row, which would subsequently be taken away following the Italian football corruption investigation.

As Juve were relegated as part of their punishment, Fabio followed his manager Fabio Capello to Real where he still plays today.

And he still found time to Captain Italy to win the World Cup in 2006. Nice.

Have a butcher’s hook at little Fabio’s defending exploits below, and pop back tomorrow for your next daily dose of football nostalgia.

September 12 – Do I Not Like That

Although Steve McLaren has been giving it a good go recently, the most mocked England manager of recent times is still probably Graham Taylor. It was on this day in 1990 that the Taylor era kicked-off, as his side faced Hungary at Wembley.

Under Sir Bobby Robson’s tutorledge, England had just come off their most successful international tournament since the 1966 World Cup as the Three Lions made it to the semis before they lost their customary penalty shoot out. Taylor didn’t rock the boat too much, with eight of the team who lost to the Germans in Turin two months earlier appearing.

One change that Taylor did make was handing the captain’s armband to Gary Lineker, who marked his first game as skipper with the only goal of the game. This would prove to be the start of a tumultuous relationship between the two, that resulted in the infamous scenes at the 1992 European Championships, where Lineker, desperate to score his record-equalling 49th goal for his country was subbed in his last appearance as England crashed out in the group stages.

The defining images of Taylor inglorious reign as England boss come from the Channel 4 documentary that followed him as he tried, and failed to get England into the 1994 World Cup. Somewhat naively Taylor gave the film crew unprecedented access to his staff and squad, and he came off looking hapless and surrounded by yes-men such as Phil Neal. The saying “Do I not like that” has entered the national football consciousness as a result, and the tabloids began their vegetable-caricature trick that has served them so well over the years, by branding Taylor a Turnip.

See up-close and personal footage of Taylor and his snappily dressed charges below and be sure to come back tomorrow as we look at one of Napoli’s favourite sons.

September 11 – FA Cup Stolen

ANYONE who watched the 2001 FA Cup final will know that Michael Owen and Liverpool robbed Arsenal of victory in the competition that year, but even the Scousers went to the trouble of playing the match to get their hands on the trophy.

It seems that not everyone can be bothered with the whole rigmarole of actually winning the cup because it was on this day in 1895 that the FA Cup trophy itself was half-inched.

Aston Villa had won it that season, having beaten local rivals West Bromwich Albion 1-0 in the final.

Villa were quite rightly proud of this achievement and decided to show off their spoils by displaying the cup, known as the Little Tin Idol, at a local football equipment shop on Newtown Row owned by William Shillcock.

Old Shillcock must have been as proud as punch when he locked up the shop that night and went home to Mrs Shillcock, happy in the knowledge that he had the most coveted cup in football in his charge.

Shillcock’s pride was sadly short lived, as when he arrived to open up the next morning, he discovered his shop had been burgled with the thief or thieves not only making off with some cash but also, shock horror, the Little Tin Idol itself.

Despite a £10 reward on offer to anyone with any information about the cup’s disappearance, it was never recovered and the FA were forced to fine Villa £25 to pay for a new trophy.

That is not quite the end of the story though. Some 63 years later in 1958 an 83-year-old man named Harry Burge told a reporter from a Sunday newspaper that it was he who had stolen the cup all those years ago. Harry, a local petty criminal who was, in 1958 living in a homeless hostel in Birmingham, claimed that he melted the cup down to make counterfeit half-crown coins.

Being so long after the event this was of course impossible to prove, so we will never know if Harry was indeed the culprit or if the cup still remains intact somewhere, perhaps adorning the mantel piece of one of his contemporaries in an unremarkable Birmingham terraced house.