Weak and frail, the player sent off at the 1974 World Cup after being wrongly punished for kicking a referee up the backside is struggling to make ends meetPoor and wheelchair-bound, Ndaye Mulamba has just been told he faces eviction from his rented home in Kinshasa, 44 years after he was ejected from the World Cup for kicking a referee up the backside.Mulamba is nearly 70 and that may be a surprise if the last time you heard mention of him was when a minute’s silence was held in his honour before a match at the 1998 Africa Cup of Nations, when the players of the Democratic Republic of Congo and Burkina Faso marked his “death” in an accident at...
Politicians were quick to jump on the World Cup and turn it into a political football in the week when 23 Russian diplomats were expelled from the UKAs Anglo-Russian relations grow ever more fraught it seems a good moment to consider just how upset Russia will really be, how deep its pit of anguish, if Prince William and other members of the British royal family refuse to attend the World Cup.There are some clues here. By an odd coincidence, the day after the World Cup final at Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium is also the exact 100-year anniversary of the Russian government-sanctioned murder of the country’s own royal family. Related: Gareth Southgate ignores Russia tensions for England’s World Cup bid Related: I’ve...
François Omam-Biyik’s goal and an unheralded team of journeymen defeated Diego Maradona’s world championsOf the great World Cup upsets – the USA’s victory over England in 1950, North Korea’s over Italy in 1966 and Algeria’s over West Germany in 1982 probably push it close – this one stands alone in myth and memory. It was not a perfect match but it was an irresistible narrative, as the World Cup champions, led by the great Diego Maradona, were vanquished by an unheralded team largely assembled of journeymen players from the French lower divisions – though for some of them even that was either an impossible dream or a distant memory.In the space of 90 minutes African football, once derided for being...
Police were desperately hunting for leads after the 1966 heist, but it turned out the most important one was tied around a collie’s collar in south LondonThe Jules Rimet trophy went walkies in March 1966. Upon discovering that the most precious prize in world football had been snatched from under their hapless noses, the folk at the Football Association responded in a manner that couldn’t have been more English had their press release been soaked in weak milky tea. “The FA deeply regrets this most unfortunate incident,” began their clipped, haughty study in brazen understatement. “It inevitably brings discredit to both the FA and this country.”They’d struck the right tone with that last bit, at least. The FA was way...
Manchester United’s manager finally finds himself in the right TV chair and after four days with RT at the start of Russia 2018, he will phone in his thoughts on the finalHaving seen José Mourinho slumped at a desk at Selhurst Park on Monday evening, looking as if he had been stuck on a coach for 72 hours at Dieppe, imagine my surprise when I got home and logged on to the RT YouTube channel. Yes, there he was, the Manchester United manager, clean shaven, in a fashionable fleece, and – could it really be – actually smiling. “Drop the cliché,” he joked as the voiceover announced The Special One was joining the channel as a World Cup pundit. The...