THERE’S been plenty of drab FA Cup finals in recent years (Chelsea versus Manchester United in 2007 and Arsenal’s win over United in 2005 both spring to mind immediately) where you wish you’d only watched the last five minutes, but when Arsenal and United fought it for the famous old trophy today in 1979, it was all about the last 300 ticks of the refs watch.
For 85 minutes the game had proved to be pretty unremarkable, with Arsenal scoring twice in the first half through Brian Talbot and Frank Stapleton. It looked as though a routine win was on the cards, with Liam Brady in a particularly potent mood that afternoon, strutting his stuff on the right of midfield.
When Gordon McQueen bundled the ball home from a set-piece with five minutes to go, it appeared to be merely a consolation, but straight after this Sammy McIlroy went on a mazy run and ended up dispatching his shot past Pat Jennings in the Arsenal goal.
As half of the 100,000-strong Wembley crowd were in raptures, believing their team had grabbed an extra-time lifeline from the jaws of defeat, Arsenal’s eyes went firmly back on the prize, and Alan Sunderland bagged a last-minute equaliser for the Gunners.
After the most frantic end to a Cup Final Wembley had ever seen, Arsenal were climbing the 39 steps and Pat Rice hoisted up the cup for the fifth time.
Ah, the highs and lows. That’s why we all love the game. See the goals below and read about another Manchester United man having a bad day here, but we don’t expect you to feel too much sympathy for him. See you tomorrow folks…
WHAT do you get the team that has everything? Having just cantered to the first three European Cups, it was hard to see where the great Real Madrid team of the late 1950s could improve.
Today in 1958 though, they signed up an overweight, aging forward who hadn’t played for two years. Not the obvious choice to compliment the likes of Alfredo di Stefano, but then again, Fernec Puskas was no ordinary player.
In 1956 his Honved side had been playing away at Atletico Bilboa in the first round of the European Cup when revolution broke out in Hungary. With Soviet forces trying to wrestle control back from the revolutionaries, and hundreds of Hungarians being killed in the struggle, the Honved team did not return back home.
After summoning their families from Budapest, the players who were now in limbo took part in a number of fundraising games in Italy, Portugal, Spain and Brazil, despite opposition from Fifa and the Hungarian FA.
Continuing to avoid Hungary, Puskas turned out in a series of unofficial games for Espanyol, whilst Italian giants AC Milan and Juventus made moves to sign him up.
Before this could happen Puskas was slapped with a two-year ban from Uefa. During this period he lived in Austria and then Italy, where he attempted to secure a club once his ban was over, finding no suitors due to his age and weight.
Jimmy Murphy, caretaker manager of the Munich disaster-ravaged Manchester United team made a move for the Hungarian, but FA rules prevented foreigners that could not speak English from signing.
Puskas would then spend the next couple of months losing 18kg to prove he could still cut it physically and was rewarded with a contract at the European Champions.
He wasted no time in making a mark at Los Merengues, scoring four hat-tricks in his first season and over eight years he would bag a remarkable 157 goals in 182 games as he formed one of football’s most deadly partnerships ever with di Stefano.
During his time in Spain, Puskas picked up Five La Liga titles and three European Cups, including the legendary 1960 7-3 win over Eintract Frankfurt, where he grabbed four goals in what is considered one of the greatest performances ever seen.
He hung up his boots in 1966 and began a managerial career that saw him work all over the world, from Panathinaikos to Colo Colo and even the bizarrely named San Francisco Golden Gate Gales.
In 2000 he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and fought this illness until he died in 2006, when he was granted a state funeral in his hometown of Budapest.
See Real Madrid paying their respects for one of their greatest ever player below and also check out what other goings on were going on today here. We’ll back tomorrow so don’t go changing.
ARSENAL is undoubtedly one of the most successful English club’s in the land with more league titles and cup wins under their belt than you can shake a stick at. But for some reason, the the Gunners have never cut it in Europe.
Not once have Arsenal won the European Cup, nor even the Uefa Cup. The only reward for years of toil on the continent is an Inter Cities Fairs Cup from 1970 and a Cup Winners’ Cup from 1994.
Today in 1995 the North Londoners were agonisingly close to adding to that meagre return when they reached the final of the European Cup Winners’ Cup for the second year in succession. To retain the cup they had won the previous year they would have to dispatch Real Zaragoza but it was the Spaniards who took the lead, Juan Esnáider scoring in the 68th minute.
John Hartson (along with Stefan Schwarz, one of only two non-Englishman in the team – how times change) equalised ten minutes later to take the match into extra time.
Neither side had made a breakthrough and a penalty shoot-out was just seconds away when Arsenal hearts were broken – and by a former Spurs player.
Dead on 120 minutes played, Nayim, the former Tottenham midfielder, noticed David Seaman off his line (again!) and lashed at the ball, sending a 40-yard lob over Seaman’s despairing hands into the back of the net.
The referee blew his whistle seconds later.
“It hurts to be beaten like that,” said Seaman (better get used to it Dave). “But as soon as he hit it I knew I was in trouble because I had started to move up as sweeper behind our defence. It was a superb strike. He certainly meant it.”
Stewart Houston, the Arsenal manager, called it “a magnificent strike” and no one celebrated it more than the Tottenham fans, some of whom even named a fanzine One Flew Over Seaman’s Head in honour of the moment.
Since then, despite the Wenger revolution, Arsenal have still not triumphed in European competition, much to Spurs fans’ delight.
There was more friendly cross-city rivalry being stoked up on this day in 1986. Check that out right here, and check us out again tomorrow.
BACK in the early 1970s, when Roy Keane was just a vicious toddler no doubt biting at people’s ankles, Sunderland AFC enjoyed their finest hour by winning the FA Cup at Wembley against heavy favourites Leeds United.
Understandably pleased as punch with the achievement of winning the cup for the first time in nearly 40 years, the club decided to parade the trophy around Roker Park before their next match, a Division Two game againt QPR held on this day in 1973.
After the parade, the trophy was placed on a table at the side of the pitch and the match got underway. The exact details of what happened next are debated, but what is certain is that the FA Cup itself was sent flying by a QPR player striking it with the ball with some force.
In his autobiography legendary Hoops midfielder Stan Bowles claims it was he who did the deed, to win a bet between his teammates. Bowles takes up the story: “There were a couple of us who had a bet on who could knock it off the table with the ball first. With the ball at my feet I tear off straight across the park. Everyone on the pitch is just staring at me – and then, bang! The FA Cup goes shooting up in the air.
“The whole ground knew that I’d done it on purpose – then the Sunderland fans go ape. They want my balls in their sandwiches. I wound up their fans even more by scoring a couple of goals and in the end there was a pitch invasion. At least I got my tenner, and my picture on News at Ten. And all because I was just having a bit of a laugh.”
But, that is not the end of the story. After this tale was recounted on the Guardian’s football website in 2006, Gordon Jago MBE, the manager of QPR at the time of the incident disputed Bowles’ version of events, and wrote to the newspaper with his recollection.
“The truth is that yes, the FA Cup was knocked off the table during the game against Sunderland, but not by Stan Bowles. It was Tony Hazell, the QPR defender,” Jago said.
“At some time during the game Tony cleared a ball and it knocked the cup flying. This incident really upset the home fans; so much so that the referee took both teams from the field to let tempers cool. The game was eventually restarted and we finished 3-0 winners. Stan had someone write a book for him and he tells the story about a bet and that he deliberately knocked the cup off the table. Fiction! I do not know if Tony or any of the other players have contacted Stan to correct him, but that story is typical of him and no doubt it helped to sell the book.”
So, a touch of poetic licence there from Stan, but it’s a good yarn nonetheless. We’ll be back tomorrow with more football japery, but until then, check out what else was happening in this football day right here.
THEY were one of English football’s powerhouses in the 1950s, but by the 1980s Wolverhampton Wanderers on- and off-the-field prospects looked about as good as a Mexican pig farmer with a sniffle.
Their fortunes started to pick up today in 1990 however, as local philanthropist and boyhood Wolves fan Sir Jack Hayward bought the club for £2.1m.
Millionaire and Sunday Times Rich List regular Haywood stepped into give his club some long-term security after the club had previously dallied with extinction, needing a complex deal involving the local council, supermarket Asda and the Gallagher Estates firm to save the club four years earlier.
On the pitch, Wolves had even sunk as low as the Fourth Division, as the disastrous reign of the Bhatti brothers had resulted in three consecutive relegations in the mid-80s.
By the time Hayward rode in on his white horse Wolves’ fortunes had begun to improve, thanks largely to club legend Steve Bull who had signed from neighbours West Brom in 1986, as seen in this Soccer Saturday retrospective.
Haywood wasted no time in splashing the cash, helping rebuild the aging Molineux Stadium to ensure it met the new regulations outlined in the Taylor Report.
Despite this cash injection, the club just couldn’t make it back into the top flight, where the likes of Billy Wright had made the club so famous, until 2003, after 19 years of ignominy. Unfortunately they would only last a year in the Premiership, but they’re now ready to give it another go next season.
Haywood was estimated to have spent more than £60m redeveloping Molineux before he decided to call it a day in May 2007, when he sold to the club to businessman Steve Morgan for a nominal sum of £10, in return for Morgan investing £30m in the club.
This has meant that Sir Jack has secured his name as one of the few good guys of football chairmen, along with the likes of Jack Walker and Steve Gibson and will never have to buy his own pint again at Molineux.
See Steve Bull in action for Wolves below and check out one of the greatest of great escapes here.
WHEN it comes to cup finals at Wembley in 1966, it’s only natural that one’s mind heads straight for England’s finest moment. Don’t tell Geoff Hurst and the boys, but the best final that the twin towers hosted that summer came today, when Everton took on Sheffield Wednesday in the FA Cup.
The Toffeemen were under the stewardship of former Wednesday boss Harry Catterick and cruised to Wembley without conceding a single goal, making them strong favourites to pick up the trophy for the third time.
Showing as much regard for the formbook as he Chelsea team did to Norwegian ref Tom Ovrebo last night, the Yorkshire side went 2-0 up with just over half an hour left to play and it looked like an upset was on the cards.
Wednesday’s second goal appeared to wake up the Merseysiders, as Mike Trebilcock bagged a quick-fire brace to draw his side level.
In case both sides pressing for a winner wasn’t entertaining enough, the Wembley crowd were then treated to one of English football’s best pitch invaders. Eddie Cavanagh has gone down in Goodison folklore, as the over-excited Everton fan darted around the pitch, showing more twists and turns than Stanley Matthews.
Commentator Kenneth Wolstenholme took relish in describing Cavanagh’s slaloming of various policemen and stewards, especially when one of the hapless policemen grabbed the invader’s coat, only to be left with it in his hands as Cavanagh gave him the slip. When the long hand of the law finally caught up with Eddie, Wolstenholme exclaimed: “And a great tackle, almost on the line”, which, if not for a few famous words a couple of months later, might have been his most famous piece of commentary.
Everton player Brian Labone (famous for once claiming that “One Evertonian is worth 20 Liverpudlians.”) had previously played football with Cavanagh, so asked the police to go easy on him. Urban legend has it that Cavanagh was such a staunch Blue that he even refused to have tomato sauce in his house and when he died it saw one of the biggest ever funerals on Merseyside.
Meanwhile, away from the distractions, there was a Cup Final to be won. Trebilcock had a several chances to complete his hat-trick, but it was Derek Temple that smashed home the winner with 16 minutes remaining, and Everton’s incredible comeback was complete.
See some glorious Pathe footage of the final below where you can marvel at the old-timer commentary and packed-out Wembley Stadium. For more north-west celebrations taking place today click here and join us tomorrow for the next installment of footballing history.
ALTHOUGH the Don Revie era was the most successful period in the history of Leeds United, all too often Revie’s team were unlucky runners-up. During his tenure, they finished second in the League five times, finished as runner-up in the European Cup, and runners-up in the FA Cup three times.
Having been beaten finalists in the Cup in 1965 and 1970, Leeds finally got it right today in 1972 by winning the famous old trophy at Wembley.
As it was the Centenary Final (although not the 100th final because of breaks for the wars) prior to the match all past-winners of cup paraded colours around stadium, but Leeds captain Billy Bremner was not impressed: “I believe it was all a bit of a shambles which did not surprise me. The only professional point was when Tommy Steele led some singing.” he said.
Both the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh also honoured the occasion with their presence – one of the few Cup finals that has seem them both in the Royal box.
Leeds opponents were Arsenal, Cup holders and League champions the previous season, but the double winners were largely second best throughout the match with the Leeds defence marshaled superbly by 36-year-old Jack Charlton who had one of his best games for the club.
Despite Leeds dominance, during the first half they were frustrated and Revie and the fans must have started to think it might be another case of the Yorkshire club not getting the result they deserved. They needn’t have worried. Eight minutes into the second half Mick Jones centered the ball and Allan Clarke headed home what would turn out to be the winning goal.
As the clock ticked down it looked like a day of unbridled joy for Leeds but in the 88th minute the atmosphere was tempered when Mick Jones, who had set up the goal, dislocated his shoulder. Just minutes later the referee blew for time and Leeds had won the FA Cup for the first, and so far only, time.
Billy Bremner delayed climbing the steps to get the trophy while Jones got treatment on the pitch. Jones eventually made it up the steps, heavily-strapped and aided by Norman Hunter, clearly in agony, to receive his medal.
FA Chairman Dr Andrew Stephen said: “We are all delighted with this young man’s (Jones) determination to be presented to the Queen. It was very much appreciated in the Royal Box.”
Meanwhile the rest of the Leeds players were celebrating. Bremnerrecalled afterwards: “I wiped my hands on my shirt and (the Queen) gave me a lovely smile. I think she said, ‘Very well done, you have earned it’, but you don’t really take it all in when you’ve got thousands of people just waiting for you to lift the trophy in the air.”
The mastermind behind the Leeds operation was similarly enthused. Don Revie said: “I have waited and sweated a lot of years for today but it has been worth it. This is the second happiest day of my life: the first was when we beat Liverpool to win the championship.”
Two days later Leeds played Wolves at Molineux in a ‘double decider’. This was their eighth massive game in a month and they needed a draw for title.
Leeds were denied what looked like three clear penalties by ref Bill Gow and lost 3-1. Brian Clough’s Derby won the title whilst the team was on beach in Majorca and Cloughy was with his family in the Scilly Isles.
FA Cup Final Saturday was today in 1956. The fans of Manchester City and Birmingham City flocked into Wembley Stadium for the showpiece match.
In the Man City side that day was Don Revie, the man who would go on to transform Leeds into champions showed some he already had a head for coaching and tactics when he implemented his ‘Revie Plan’ – a variation on the system played by the famous Hungarian team which had soundly beaten England at Wembley three years before, Revie’s plan saw Don play in a deeper position than a traditional centre-forward in order to draw a defender out of position and create space for his teammates. It worked a treat and City won 3-1 with Gil Merrick, Bobby Johnstone and Jack Dyson bagging the goals.
More remarkable than Revie’s system or the fact that Manchester City had won a trophy, was the performance of the Citizen’s goalkeeper Bert Trautmann, who incredibly played the final 15 minutes of the match with a broken neck. A. Broken. Neck.
Bert recounts the story: “I remember I was coming out to cut out a cross and Peter Murphy, the Birmingham striker, came in to challenge me. When we collided it was like two trains hitting each other – neither of us could stop and we crashed into each other at high speed. His thigh caught me in the neck and I was knocked unconscious.
“The physio came on with the magic sponge and I came round a few minutes later but I couldn’t recognise anybody or see properly. There were 15 minutes of the match remaining and, in those days, you were not allowed substitutions, so I had to continue playing.
“It was such a strange sensation. I wasn’t seeing any colour – everything around me was grey and I couldn’t see any of the players properly. I could only see silhouettes. It was like walking around in fog and trying to find my way.
“I can’t remember what happened during the rest of the match. I know now that I made one or two more good saves but it must just have been my subconscious taking over; everything was a blur of black and white.
“I collapsed two or three more times in those last 15 minutes. I was in absolute agony and I was having to support my neck with my right hand. I couldn’t move my head at all – if I wanted to look at anything, I had to turn my whole body around with my hand on my neck.
“After the match I went to pick up my medal from the royal box but I was still holding my neck. The Duke of Edinburgh asked me if I was in any pain and I told him that it was like having really bad toothache.
“The next day I was still in a lot of pain, so I went to a hospital in London and they told me that I just had a crick in my neck and sent me away. Three days later the pain was still there, so I went to see an osteopath in Manchester. He gave me an x-ray and told me I had dislocated five vertebrae in my neck. The doctors told me that I should have been paralysed and could have died.
“A lot of people have said to me that if I hadn’t been such a good goalkeeper and been so commanding in the penalty box, I wouldn’t have broken my neck. I was very, very lucky.”
Indeed you were Bert. Certainly luckier than Coventry City who were relegated on this day in 2001. But if you don’t want to read a tale about relegation woe, then just come back tomorrow when we’ll have more FA Cup action for you from yesteryear, when the phrase ‘big four’ was just a glint in Rupert Murdoch’s eye.
When Publicity Pete left Elland Road in March 2003 the club was in an estimated debt of £103m and sinking down the table faster then one of Peter Lormier’s 30-yarders.
Ridsdale’s replacement was economics expert Professor John McKenzie, who lasted a few months before insolvency specialist Gerald Kranser took charge, overseeing relegation from the Premier League, the departure of almost every first-team player and the sale of Elland Road and their Thorp Arch training ground.
Sensing his work was done, Kranser sold up to Ken Bates in 2004. A play-off final loss in 2006 followed and when manager Kevin Blackwell told the press that the club would be debt-free within a year, it looked as though life might be getting slightly easier for the Leeds fans.
Not so. A week later Blackwell was sacked and Bates brought in his old mucka Dennis Wise. The number of anti-Chelsea songs at Elland Road multiplied at quite a rate, as the fans failed to take to their former Stamford Bridge duo. The fact that Wise could do nothing to get Leeds out of the relegation zone didn’t help either.
By the end of the season it became obvious that Leeds would be relegated to the third-flight for the first time in their history, but this gave Bates a cunning plan. By placing Leeds into administration before the end of the season, he looked to clear the approximate £35m debt when the mandatory 10-point penalty would have no impact on the teams’ standing on the field.
Bates said: “The action taken brings to an end the financial legacy left by others that we have spent millions of pounds trying to settle.”
However, many Leeds fans queried the timing of the announcement. The club had recently brought in over £4m from the transfers of Rob Hulse, Ian Bennett and Matt Kilgallon to Sheffield United and also received a rumoured £5m in an out-of-court settlement after Chelsea poached two Academy starlets, Michael Woods and Tom Taiwo.
Batesy’s plan, however didn’t go all his own way, as Leeds being Leeds, nothing is ever that simple. He launched his bid to buy back the club which was accepted by administrators KPMG, but needed the Company Voluntary Agreement (CVA) to be cleared by the clubs creditors in order to gain full control of the club.
Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs refused to play ball though, which meant that Leeds were still in administration days before the 2007/08 season was about to start and under league rules, they would have been prevented from taking their place in the league.
After all kinds of Football League meetings, complicated lawyer business and endless debate Leeds were eventually allowed to take their place in League 1, but were docked an unprecedented 15 points, making it a total of 25 that they had been stripped of over the summer.
Leeds United are always at their best when up against it, and went on a barnstorming run at the start of the season, wiping the deficit with five wins on the trot as they made it all the way to the play-off final where they lost to Doncaster Rovers.
The curious case of Leeds and the minus 15 points has had a sizable impact on the Football League, with Luton, Bournemouth and Rotherham all being handed hefty deductions the following season, and the likes of Darlington, Stockport and Southampton all worrying about how many points they may have to make up at the start of next season, as the years of football clubs living beyond their means draws to a messy close.
See how Leeds went about wiping out their 15 points below and for today’s other story click here.
WHEN the Labour government swept to power in 1997 they introduced a system of directly-elected mayors that they believed would encourage the electorate to get more excited by the dull-as-dishwater world of local government.
Much to the chagrin of Blair and his cronies, this was proved right in Hartlepool, as football fans flocked to the ballot boxes and elected Hartlepool United’s mascot H’Angus the Monkey as their new boss of City Hall today in 2002.
H’Angus – or Stuart Drummond as his mother calls him – ran on a promise of ‘free bananas for all schoolchildren’ and narrowly beat local businessman Leo Gillen to the £58,000-a-year post. We’re not sure whether his salary was paid in cash or peanuts though.
H’Angus’ nickname comes from the affectionate term of ‘monkey hangers’ that Hartlepudlians have been known as since an incident during the Napoleonic wars.
According to local folklore a French ship was wrecked off the coast of Hartlepool, with the only survivor being a monkey dressed in a full French uniform. A group of locals took the opportunity to hold an impromptu trial and asked the monkey a series of questions. With many of them not knowing what a Frenchman looked like and the monkey not giving many answers the mob decided the simian passenger was a French spy and hanged it from the mast of a fishing boat. As you do.
H’Angus had often courted controversy during his time on the sidelines, twice being thrown out of away games for simulating sex, once with a female steward in Scunthorpe and once at Blackpool for frolicking with an inflaterable doll. Still, that makes him slightly better behaved than your average MP.
Downing Street was not amused by H’Angus’ election, issuing a terse statement that read: “It is only to be expected that new faces come to the fore.”
Labour chairman Charles Clarke was more damning, telling Radio 4′s Today Programme: “The one in the monkey suit ridicules the whole system.”
Drummond, a 28-year-old who had formerly worked in a call centre, was given control of a £100m budget and pledged to take his new role seriously.
“I’m not going to be taking any whoopee cushions into meetings,” he reassured the electorate as he hung up his tail and got to work. Drummond was as good as his word, doing such a good job that he was re-elected three years later in a landslide victory.
Perhaps we can convince Arsenal’s Gunnersaurus to take note and challenge Boris Johnson in 2012, as we’d much rather have a bright green dinosaur in charge of our capital city than a foppy haired, bumbling … er … dinosaur.
See H’Angus getting involved in some monkey business with Hartlepool’s most famous fan below and find out what else was going on today here.
