In 1950 the ‘kings of football’ were presented as certain to win, but what followed was calamitousRoll back 70 years to a grey, austere postwar Britain, still in ruins, still enduring food rationing, queues and misery, a nation where football provided a scarce escape. It was also when, for the first time, England took part in the game’s major global tournament, the World Cup, which began on 19 June 1950 in Brazil.To hyperbole stirred up by the national prints, England were presented as certain to be returning home triumphantly from South America with the Jules Rimet trophy. Failure was never considered. Here, after all, was the greatest assembly of footballing talent ever to leave England’s shores: Matthews, Finney, Mannion, Mortensen,...
For years I thought I hated a goalkeeper for denying Bruno Bellone and it seemed a black-and-white case. Until I met himFootball can give you completely the wrong idea about people. One incident in one match can skew the perception. For years I thought I hated Carlos, the Brazil goalkeeper who pulled back Bruno Bellone after the France forward had gone round him in the 1986 World Cup quarter-final and somehow went unpunished.How, four years after Harald Schumacher’s horrendous assault on Patrick Battiston, could that glorious France – Platini! Tigana! Giresse! – be cheated once again by a goalkeeper? Carlos’s offence had nothing like the raw violence of Schumacher’s, but it was cynical. And so, for compounding the injustice of...
Pledge to bring football World Cup ‘home’ in 2030 may be a bit more than wishful thinking this time – even if it lacks accuracyIt’s time, Boris Johnson assured us in the days leading up to the general election, for football to come home. The prime minister’s pledge to put the government machine at the heart of a UK and Ireland bid to host the 2030 Fifa World Cup was further embellished by a promise to spend £550m on creating 2,000 new synthetic pitches and renovating 20,000 existing grass ones.The instinctive response was to file this along with all the other campaign promises – 50,000 more nurses, 20,000 more police officers – received with such scepticism by his opponents. After...
Aaron Ramsey return to Wales after a year out, Naby Keïta must step up for Guinea and Iceland will face a frosty reception The build-up to Wales’s remaining qualifiers has been dominated by the dismay that Gareth Bale’s call-up has caused at Real Madrid, where the forward has been on the sidelines for a month nursing a calf injury. Bale’s late winner against Azerbaijan in September proved how influential the forward can be in swinging matches Wales’ way but the returning Aaron Ramsey may be just as important for Ryan Giggs. The Juventus midfielder has been absent for Wales for a year so his return now, with two must-win games ahead, could not be better timed. Having just returned to...
Press and possess is the method of many leading teams but Didier Deschamps’ side in Russia and Real Madrid before them picked up the biggest prizes playing in their own mannerThe same basics everywhere: it would be easy to believe that football in 2018 was about the victory of press and possess. Manchester City do it, Liverpool do it, Tottenham do it, Chelsea do it, Arsenal do it, Barcelona do it, Juventus do it, Napoli do it, Bayern Munich do it, Borussia Dortmund do it, even Paris Saint-Germain have been showing signs of doing it under Thomas Tuchel. Manchester United didn’t do it and José Mourinho was sacked after a grim opening to the season in which his ideas had...