November 10 – When in Rome

IS there a more dangerous situation for a football team when “all” they need is a draw to progress from their group/play-off/second-leg match?

Out come the well-used cliches from the players and manager that they will be ‘going for the win’ and that ‘playing for the draw would be foolish’. Meanwhile everyone knows that playing for the draw is exactly what they will be doing.

Today in 1997 England travelled to Rome to play Italy in a crucial World Cup qualifier with the Three Lions needing just a precarious draw to ensure their passage to the finals in France in 1998.

The match was played in the Olympic Stadium, where Italy had won all 15 of their qualification matches ever played in the ground.

Glenn Hoddle’s men turned up and gave the Italians an almighty dose of their own defensively-minded-football medicine. In a masterly disciplined display of catenaccio Hoddle’s men almost completely nullified the Italian attack with a Christian Vieri header that went wide in injury time about all that got through the rear guard of Tony Adams, Sol Campbell and Gareth Southgate. In midfield David Batty was immense and Paul Gascoigne gave his most measured performance in an England shirt.

No heroic England World Cup qualification match would be complete without at least one player drenching his white shirt in his own warrior blood. In 1989 it was Terry Butcher, at this match it was Paul Ince. After taking an elbow to the head from Demetrio Albertini, Ince had to play nearly the whole match with a white bandage around his head. Political correctness fans look away now as Gazza’s comment on Ince’s bandage look was that he looked like a pint of Guinness.

Still, England had done it, and rarely has a 0-0 draw ever been so emphatically celebrated by England’s fans. The path was now clear for the team to progress to the finals in France the following year for their inevitable exit on penalties.

Despite missing out on automatic qualification Italy also made it to the finals through the play-offs, although they were knocked out by eventual winners France in the quarter-finals.

While at the World Cup the England team decided to engage in a bit of tomfoolery which you can see below. Coincidentally another national team was securing its passage to a World Cup on this day. Check that little lot out here, and come back tomorrow for more of our usual fare.

November 9 – The Passing of the Crazy Horse

EUROPEAN Cup-winning Liverpool and England skipper Emlyn Hughes, nicknamed Crazy Horse, died today in 2004.

Hughes joined Liverpool in 1967 as a marauding midfielder after just 28 appearances for Blackpool, as Bill Shankly spotted his early potential and splashed out £65,000 for him.

When Shanks first drove Hughes to Liverpool he was stopped by the police but told the boys in blue that: “Don’t you know who’s in this car? The future captain of England!” And he wasn’t wrong.

It didn’t take long for Hughes to settle in at Anfield and after he rugby tackled Newcastle winger Albert Bennett he was given the nickname ‘Crazy Horse’ which would stick for the rest of his career.

His impressive performances for the Reds drew the attention of Sir Alf Ramsey, who included him in the 1970 World Cup squad, although Hughes never made the pitch.

Later that year Shankly reacted to a loss by lowly Watford in the FA Cup by clearing out a number of ‘Pool old heads, and Hughes became an integral part of the team and the medals would soon come pouring in for Hughes and his teammates.

Hughes won four titles at Anfield between 1973 and 1979, as well as an FA Cup, two Uefa Cups and Liverpool’s first two European Cups in 1977 and 1978.

A year after lifting the big one in Wembley in 1978 Hughes found his place in the Liverpool under threat from a young Scottish defender by the name of Alan Hansen and left Anfield for Wolves. In his first season at Molineux he won the League Cup, completing his set of domestic medals and was also given the OBE for services to football.

Crazy Horse retired in 1984 and hit the airwaves as a pundit and also as a captain on A Question of Sport, where he once , much to his horror, identified a picture of a heavily muddied jockey as John Reid, only for it to be revealed as Princess Anne. That, and the fact he named his daughter Emma Lyn are the only blots we can find on this Liverpool legend’s copybook. Hughes died at his home in Sheffield in 2004 following a brain tumour at the age of 57.

See a tribute reel for the man voted Liverpool’s tenth greatest-ever player below and check out what one of his Liverpool teammates was up to to today here.

November 8 – Coppell Quits City

AS Mark Hughes wonders how many more away-day defeats he’s got left in him before the Abu Dhabi United group get an itchy trigger finger, it’s back to 1996 when the City job saw enough managerial changes to make even Jesus Gil blush.

Steve Coppell was the latest to depart the Maine Road hot-seat, only 33 days after taking charge.

Since injury had prematurely curtailed Coppell’s career at as a Manchester United and England midfielder he had forged a reputation as an excellent young manager at Crystal Palace when he took his place in the dug-out at Selhurst Park as a 28-year-old in 1984.

Coppell gained promotion to the top flight with Palace in 1989 and took them to the 1990 FA Cup Final where they would lose to his former club United. The following season saw him guide Palace to third-place, their highest-ever league position, and their first major trophy, the now-defunct Zenith Data Systems Cup.

City meanwhile, had begun to unravel in the mid-90s. They had been relegated at the end of the 1995/96 season under the stewardship of Alan Ball and a poor start to the next campaign saw Ball get the chop in late August. Next up was Asa Hartford who kept the bench warm for six weeks until Coppell’s arrival.

Soon after he took the job, Coppell gave the look of a man who had the weight of the world on his shoulders. And sure enough, after only six games and 33 days in charge he quit, citing severe stress. His spell in charge was the shortest by any City manager and the club would go through another two managers that season.

Coppell returned to Palace as a scout following his departure from Maine Road and soon found himself back in the dug-out following the resignation of Dave Bassett. After spells at Brentford and Brighton he is now enjoying fifth year in charge of Reading and seems to have found a good way to relax if his story of the signing of Kevin Doyle is to be believed.

“I can’t really remember what it was I particularly liked about Kevin when I watched him in Ireland,” he said. “I had five pints of Guinness in the afternoon and it was all a bit blurred.”

We’ll drink to that. Here’s some retro City footage to marvel at and if you were wondering what else has happened today then click here.

November 7 – Spurs Derby Joy

THE animosity between Tottenham and Arsenal is well documented with the dramatic 4-4 draw at the Emirates last week just the latest installment in the North London derby story.

The Gunners have had the upper hand over their rivals for quite some time, although Spurs can point to last season’s League Cup while Arsenal haven’t won anything since the FA Cup in 2005. On their way to their League Cup triumph Spurs beat the Arsenal under-12 side 5-1 at White Hart Lane to make the run all the sweeter.

But in the Premiership it is a different story. Tottenham have enjoyed little success over Arsene Wenger’s charges and you have to go back to this day in 1999 for the last time Spurs came out on top in a League match.

The added spice to the encounter at White Hart Lane was former Arsenal manager George Graham’s place in the Spurs dugout, and the match was certainly a fiery affair.

Steffen Iversen got things underway with his opening goal after just six minutes and a quarter-of-an-hour later the Spurs fans were delirious when Tim Sherwood scored a screamer of a free kick to double their advantage.

This was all going a bit too well for the home team and soon the Gunners began to fight back. First a messy Kanu goal was disallowed for pushing, before Patrick Viera made no mistake and headed in from Emmanuel Petit’s free kick.

Half time: 2-1, and nervy second half in store for both sides. A North London derby wouldn’t be complete without a few red cards and this one had two – the first early in the second half when Freddie Ljungberg was sent for an early bath by referee David Elleray for pushing over Justin Edinburgh. Despite their numerical deficiency the Gunners dominated the second half as they looked for a winner that never came. They finished the game with only nine men after Martin Keown walked for a second yellow after fouling both David Ginola and Jose Dominguez.

To the surprise of exactly no one, Arsene Wenger did not see the Ljungberg incident, but did question why Elleray had not seen Tim Sherwood elbow Petit. “For me it was clear,” said Wenger. “Maybe if you had different glasses you didn’t see it.” Rich talk indeed for the most myopic manager in the Premiership when it comes to his own players misdemeanors.

As it was Spurs held on for a famous win, their first for four years at the time, while for Arsenal it was their fourth defeat of the season, which they would end trophyless.

To see what the Arsenal/Spurs derby means to the fans, watch this frankly disturbing clip from the Sky Sports Fanzone channel. More from us tomorrow, but until then, have a look here for a story about the most bonkers club in Scotland.

November 6 – Kidnap!

THERE are many rewards for being a top class footballer: fame, money, adulation, the ability to completely ignore any normal standards of good taste and style. But there are also drawbacks: you have to work almost every Saturday, and some evenings as well, you are forced by an obscure by-law to purchase the most oversized car possible (a nightmare for fuel economy), and there is always the possibility that a simple miss-placed pass could result in 40,000 people calling you a wanker.

Still, the sacrifices that footballers in Europe have to deal with are nothing compared to some of their South American counterparts, where extreme poverty and high levels of crime make being a high profile and rich figure a decidedly dangerous proposition.

Today in 2004 the mother of Brazilian superstar Robinho was kidnapped by bandits who then demanded a ransom from the player for her release and ordered him not to play football while they had her.

Marina de Silva Souza, 43, was getting ready for a barbecue with friends in Praia Grande, a working class area 45 miles from Sao Paulo, when gunmen burst into the house and bundled her into the boot of her car while the owners of the house were locked in a bathroom.

At the time Robinho was the latest player being touted as ‘the next Pele’. He had grown up in the same poverty ridden favelas as the Brazilian genius, and played for Pele’s old club Santos. His wonderkid status meant he was one of the country’s brightest young stars and he was being linked with a big money move to a host of European clubs including Chelsea and Real Madrid, where he did eventually move in 2005, citing the problem of kidnapping as one of his motives for leaving Brazil.

The kidnappers sent the 20-year-old player a video of his mother in captivity which showed them cutting off her hair. “I don’t know what sort of people do these things,” Robinho said, “they are people with evil in their hearts.”

After 41 days Robinho agreed to pay a ransom of $75,000 (£43,000) for the release of his mother, and she was returned to him. Police later arrested four people in connection with the crime.

The incident brought to light a massive problem with kidnapping in Brazil and Argentina, and Robinho’s mother was only the first of five footballer’s mothers to be kidnapped in a five month period in Brazil. Two were returned after successful police operations, while three had their ransom paid. The problem was so bad the authorities in Brazil even constructed a specialist wing exclusively for kidnappers to stop them passing on techniques to other prisoners.

The second woman to be targeted was the mother of Sao Paulo striker Grafite. “We thought that when it happened to Robinho it would be an isolated case because he is a big star in Brazil and abroad,” Grafite said.

“Sadly in Brazil, everything that’s bad becomes a fashion. Brazilians are like that. First it was kidnapping businessmen, then their wives and children and now they see an easy target in footballers.”

When he moved to Madrid Robinho moved his entire family over to Spain as well, no doubt anxious to avoid any repeat incidents, but it doesn’t seem to have affected his performances on the field, or his penchant for step overs, as you can see in the clip below.

Have a look here to see what else happened on this football day, and swing by again tomorrow for another footballing tale from the past.

November 5 – Huddersfield Shanked!

WITH Huddersfield wallowing around at the bottom of the third flight of English football it’s easy to forget that two of the greatest managers of all-time have sat in the dug-out at their former Leeds Road home. The first was Herbert Chapman, who led them to three successive titles in the 1920s and the other was Bill Shankly, who was appointed today in 1956.

Shanks joined the Terriers from lowly Workington AFC, as he was toured around a host of unfashionable northern clubs, such as Carlisle and Grimsby looking for his managerial career to take flight.

Huddersfield Town had just been relegated to the Second Division when they appointed Shankly and the Scot was given the task of an immediate return to the top flight.

During his first season Shanks would oversee one of the most remarkable matches ever seen in English football. If you think Tottenham’s recent comebacks have been impressive, then you obviously haven’t heard the one about Shankly’s Huddersfield team that were 5-1 up with 30 minutes to go against ten-man Charlton, but conspired to lose 7-6 in a frankly ludicrous game of football.

A more successful move was the signing of a 15-year-old Denis Law in 1956. After Law’s emergence in the first team the board at Town wanted to accept a £45,000 offer for the striker, but Shankly was not impressed. “Get out your diary and write this down,” he vented. “One day, Denis Law will be transferred for £100,000.” Law left the Terriers after four years for Manchester City in a £55,000 move and in 1962 Shankly’s prophecy came true when Manchester United shelled out £115,000 for Law’s services.

Shankly’s passion and commitment to the cause had alerted the suits at Liverpool, where the Scot had unsuccessfully interviewed for the job in 1951. In December 1959 he joined the Merseyside club, taking the Reds from the bottom of the Second Division to the pinnacle of English football.

See some cracking old-school footage of Shanks the player turning out for Preston against his future employers Huddersfield in the 1938 FA Cup Final. Whatever happened to Mr Radcliffe from the start of the clip? As luck would have it, the afore mentioned Herbert Chapman was also busy today, so check what he was doing here and we’ll be back tomorrow footy fans.

November 4 – Guardiola is Pepped-up

SINCE Barcelona legend Pep Guardiola took over the managerial reigns at the Camp Nou in the summer he’s not done a bad job, with goals galore and Los Cules sitting pretty at the top of La Liga. It was a different story today in 2001 though, as the Spanish midfielder failed a drugs test.

During the previous summer Guardiola had left the Catalan club for Italian side Brescia after 11 seasons at the heart of the Barca midfield where his trophy haul included six La Liga titles and a European Cup.

A product of the planter barcelonista, the star-studded Barcelona academy that has recently produced the likes of Cesc Fabregas, Lionel Messi and Luciano Becchio, Guardiola was revered as a legend during his spell at the club and notched up 47 caps for the Spanish team and also turned out for the Catalonia national side whenever he could.

After leaving Spain for pastures new, Guardiola struggled to get to grips with Serie A. After a league match with Piacenza on 21 October he failed a routine drugs test and a second positive test for nandrolone followed after Brescia took on Lazio, which bought the midfielder a four month ban.

Pep protested his innocence over the ban and in October 2007, after six years of appeals he eventually cleared his name and all charges that had lead to the ban.

Not that this did him any good at the time. The ban had put the brakes on his career as the defensive midfielder struggled upon his return to Serie A with Roma. In 2003 he jetted out to the pre-MLS retirement home that was Qatar, picking up some nice pay cheques from Al-Ahli before calling it a day after a ten game spell at Mexican side Dorados de Sinaloa.

In 2007 Pep was given the job of Barcelona B coach and after a successful campaign landed the top job following the departure of Frank Rijkaard. The former Barca skipper wasted no time making an impact, telling Ronaldinho, Deco and Giovani Dos Santos to all sling their collective hooks. With Barca sitting at the top of the pile in Spain it looks as though he’s not letting down the adoring Barca public.

See a Guardiola highlight reel, complete with baffling quotes from the likes of Jorge Valdano below and check out what else was going on today here.

November 3 – Lights, Camera, Corruption!

TODAY in 1997 West Ham United were hosting Crystal Palace in an evening Premiership fixture between the two London sides.

Neil Shipperley had scored twice to put Palace 2-0 up but Harry Redknapp’s Hammers battled back and equalised in the second half. With 65 minutes played, just after West Ham’s second goal, the Boleyn Ground was plunged into darkness as the floodlights went out without warning.

Engineers managed to get them going only for a few seconds before the went out again, and the referee had to abandon the match. The players and fans left the ground completely unaware that the game’s premature end was not down to a simple failure of equipment, but was in fact part of a multi-million pound, far eastern betting scandal.

The match was replayed the following month, with West Ham emerging 4-1 winners but the truth about the abandoned game was not revealed until two years later when some nefarious characters were attempting to pull the scam off again, this time at Charlton Athletic’s home ground, The Valley.

Wai Yuen Liu of Kensington, and Malaysians Eng Hwa Lim and Chee Kew Ong were convicted in August 1999 of being behind a plot to engineer a floodlight failure at the Charlton versus Liverpool match in February of that year. They approached Roger Firth, a Charlton security guard and offered him £20,000 to give them access to the ground. Firth let the cat out of the bag when he offered another security guard £5,000 to help him. The second man alerted police who arrested the others involved.

The plan hinged on the fact that in the far eastern betting markets, if a match is abandoned after half time the bookies will pay out on the result as it stood at the break. If it had succeeded, it would have netted an estimated £30m for the criminals that operate Asia’s illegal betting industry. After the arrest of the four men, it became clear that they had already influenced at least two previous Premiership games without arousing suspicion. The first was the West Ham match, and the second was a match at Selhurst Park where Wimbledon were hosting Arsenal in December 1997.

The scam was crucially different from other match-fixing cases which hinged on players or referees throwing a game or trying to influence the outcome. In this scenario none of the people involved in the match would have any knowledge of the plot so it would arouse no suspicion, and would be more simple to pull off than trying to get a goalkeeper to let in soft goals, for example.

When the case came to court Roger Firth, Eng Hwa Lim and Chee Kew Ong admitted conspiring to cause a public nuisance. Firth was given an 18 month prison sentence, while Eng Hwa Lim and Chee Kew Ong were both jailed for four years. Wai Yuen Liu denied the charge but was also found guilty and received a 30 month sentence.

Tomorrow the final vote will begin for the race to become the next President of the USA, finally bringing to an end what has seemed like years and years of media speculation and general tedium. Unless there is another one of those ugly to-close-to-call situations where both sides refuse to give in, leading to yet more months of toing and froing and recounts and so on and so forth. God preserve us. In any, we will be here as usual to take your mind off the whole thing. You can start by checking out what else happened on this day in football right here.

November 2 – Game, Set, Match

CROSSING over from one professional sport to another is rarely a good idea. Think Dwain Chambers and Sir Clive Woodward for recent examples, but today we are looking at a match made in Hull between football and tennis.

Hull City’s rise through the divisions has been almost as fast as it has remarkable, (just ten short years ago they were struggling in the bottom division) but what is even more remarkable is how they have coped with the leap up into the top-flight. Of course, a few seasons ago Steve Coppell’s Reading were wowing everyone with their attractive football and high league position in their first Premiership season. Coppell even told everyone how he didn’t believe in second season syndrome. Hmm, what odds on Hull being relegated next season?

Former tennis player, fitness magnate and coach David Lloyd proved in 1997 that Tim Henman wasn’t the only Tiger he loved when he bought control of Hull City AFC and immediately started making big promises to the fans. A new all-seater stadium would be built and a big-name manager brought in to oversee the club’s bright new future.

Former England striker Mark Hateley was appointed as the new manager on a huge wage and set about leafing through his little black book to bring in some experienced pros. Results failed to improve however and Lloyd started taking drastic measures to reduce the wage bill, sacking the clubs marketing and commercial staff, the club chairman and chief executive, and even more bizarrely, the club physio.

Then the promised new stadium fell by the wayside as Lloyd’s plan to secure council owned land fell through and he was unable to sell Boothferry Park.

Although the fans were still filling the home ground they had lost faith in Lloyd and things came to a head on this day in 1998 when he decided he had had enough, and sold the club to a Sheffield-based consortium for just £250,000.

The story did not end there though as Lloyd retained his ownership of Boothferry Park and later locked the club out of the ground over a rent dispute, and the team continued to struggle until Adam Pearson took over in 2001.

Below is Dean Windass scoring in the play-off final at Wembley to send the Tigers into the top flight. We will be back tomorrow but also on this day one of the Premiership’s most influential players was making his return to the field after a well deserved ban.

November 1 – Milan Hits the Midlands

LEICESTER City fans have been put through the mixer a fair bit the last few seasons, having to endure administration, relegation and even a strike force led by Adi Akinbiyi. Today in 2006 another dodgy character came onto the scene as Milan Mandaric bid to take over the Foxes.

Mild-mannered Mandaric had been out of football for a year since selling up at Pompey to Alexandre Gaydamak. His time on the south coast had been turbulent, as after winning promotion to the Premiership he irked off manager Harry Redknapp by bringing in a director of football, Velimir Zajec, causing ‘Arry to hotfoot it down the road to Southampton.

Redknapp would eventually come back to Fratton Park and as soon as Mandaric and his squabbling ways left the club they would enjoy their best-ever Premiership finish and pick up last season’s FA Cup.

Mandaric obviously decided he needed someone else to annoy. After lodging a £25m bid for Leicester he eventually took over in February 2007 and set about shaking things up.

It took him a month to sack manager Rob Kelly and bring in Nigel Worthington for the remaining five games of the 2006/07 season. The two of them failed to click though and Martin ‘Mad Dog’ Allen was brought in. With a nickname like that it wasn’t going to take long for them to fall out and by August Allen was on the scrapheap licking his wounds.

Gaffer number four of 2007 was Gary Megson who only hung around for six weeks as Bolton surprised the world of football and gave the ‘ginger Mourinho’ another shot in the Premier League. In November chipper ol’ Ian Holloway joined the cause and he would somehow manage to ride it out for the whole season.

As is normally the case when a chairman is so trigger happy, Leicester failed to gather any momentum on the pitch that season and despite Ollie’s best efforts, were relegated to League One, their lowest ever position. Holloway left the club by mutual consent (pull the other one Milan) and they now have Nigel Pearson in the dugout as they try and dig their way out of Madaric’s mess.

If you managed to keep up with Milan’s merry managerial merri-go-round, then check out this compilation of some of the Foxes’ finest goals and also check out which way the footballing planets were aligned today here. Unless we go leaving any untoward answerphone messages we’ll be right back atcha tomorrow, so see you then.