Giorgio Chinaglia 1947-2012

Socrates Brasileiro Sampaio de Souza Vieira de Oliveira (1954- 2011)

The Black XI

There were black footballers in the seventies. More than I remembered in fact, as I discovered when looking for information for this post.
But they were still such a minority as to be considered a novelty.
West Bromwich Albion were thought noteworthy in that they had 3 black regulars in the first team, and manager Ron Atkinson (enmired in a racial slur controversy some 25 years later), was, according to Brendon Baston, very supportive of the 'coloured players', which didn't prevent him from labelling them The Three Degrees.

In November 1978, Viv Anderson became the first black player to represent England in a full international . Since Anderson's début 62 black players have played for England, 1 in 4 of England débutantes has been black and in the 367 internationals played by England since there have been only 41 matches that have not featured any black players whatsoever.The last time no black player featured in an England game was in the quarter-final of Euro '96.
When England defeated U.S.A. in May 2005 there were 7 black players in the starting 11; against Japan in May 2010 10 black players were involved for England.

But this picture comes from another age- the age of monkey noises on the terraces and bananas thrown onto the pitch.It's May 1979, and West Bromwich Albion's Len Cantello has a testimonial at The Hawthorns. Len Cantello's XI take on what is now referred to as a Cyrille Regis and Laurie Cunningham XI, although at the time it was billed as a Black XI.

I've struggled to identify the line up, and would welcome any contributions to correct my errors and omissions.
Back Row: ? Justin Fashanu (Norwich City), ? Chris Hughton (Tottenham Hotspur) Brendan Baston (West Bromwich Albion), ?,?, George Berry (Wolverhampton Wanderers), Bob Hazel (Wolverhampton Wanderers), Garth Crooks (Stoke City)

Front Row: Winston White (Leicester City), Cyrille Regis (West Bromwich Albion), Laurie Cunningham (West Bromwich Albion) ,?Remi Moses (West Bromwich Albion) , ?.

http://www.englandfootballonline.com/TeamBlack/Black.html

Change strip...

In a consumer society there are inevitably two kinds of slaves: the prisoners of addiction and the prisoners of envy.

Ivan Illich in Tools For Conviviality (1973)




Fans groups have hit out at the increased number of Premier League clubs who are launching a new home shirt every season.

In 2000, the Premier League charter pledged that replica strips would be released every two seasons to save fans digging into their pockets too often.

But 18 clubs issued a new home shirt last season and all 20 Premier League clubs are doing the same this term.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/eng_prem/8848630.stm

Remember- you don't have to buy them...

On Football...

The 31st of May marks the 40th anniversary of the beginning of the 1970 World Cup, which culminated 3 weeks later with what many people consider to be the zenith of footballing excellence, Brazil's 4-1 victory over Italy.
To British TV viewers, though, the anniversary has another significance, for it is also the birthday of 'the panel' of pundits.
Like so many innovations in football in the second half of the twentieth century, the introduction of pundits was the brainchild of Jimmy Hill. Hill was the man that ITV turned to to give their football presentation that extra something that would give them the edge over the BBC.

Now at half time it was a case of back to the studio- and the 90 minute football match was expanded into a TV epic of predictions, analysis and post mortems.

Let's meet the panel:

Jimmy Hill- former Fulham and Brentford player, head of the PFA during their campaign to abolish the maximum wage. Hill manged Coventry City and in 1967 became Head of Sport at London Weekend Television.
I wanted men conceited enough to think that their opinion was the right one. I needed them to be articulate, knowledgeable and opinionated, but also to have personality. That's not the easiest combination to find- Hill interviewed by Brian Viner.

Malcolm Allison-Big Mal- former Charlton Athletic and West Ham centre half. In 1970 he was assistant manager of Manchester City. Big Mal was the outspoken member of the panel in glorious pre political correctness fashion.

Wolverhampton Wanderers centre forward and Northern Ireland international, The Doog was the eloquent, balanced member of the panel.

Patrick 'Paddy' Crerand of Manchester United and Scotland- the voice of the people.

Bob McNab.The 26 year old Arsenal defender's international career was already over (he made 4 appearances). Bob had to ring a bell in order that the other panellists would allow him to have his say.

The 1970 World Cup remains the only sporting event for which ITV's ratings have been higher than the BBC's in head-to-head competition. The panel inspired imitators- a televised football match today without punditry would be as unthinkable as an England triumph in a penalty shoot out.

For the next twenty years, though, punditry was pretty much limited to the TV studio, as England enjoyed a period of European club dominance, a World Cup drought (absent in 1974 and 1978), and the Golden Age of Hooliganism.

And then came the gentrification of football- the advent of The Premiership, the Fanzine boom, When Saturday Comes, England's heroic/ romantic endeavours at the 1990 World Cup. The early 90's seventies nostalgia boom. Suddenly everybody (politicians, actors, writers, artists, rock stars, academics- the very people who we knew in the 1970's and 80's had frowned on football and the culture associated with it; the sort of people who you just knew would never have dirtied their knees at playtime) claimed to have always been into football, everybody (see previous list) purported to support a team . And now, to prove their credentials, they began to talk like football pundits.

The media added to this via the emerging Lad Culture , creating an image of a regressive trainspotterish football obsessed male and an alternative sort of punditry emerged- not footballers talking about football but 'lads' talking about football. Danny Baker, Baddiel and Skinner, Simon O'Brien on Standing Room Only...
A special mention must be made of Paul Gascoigne's stint at ITV during the 2002 World Cup. The person who came up with the idea of using Gascoigne might have believed that being included on the panel would reveal some special and previously hidden qualities in a man (much loved) tormented by alcoholism and an affective disorder- or maybe they just thought Paul's good for a laugh. Gascoigne's main failing as a pundit was his inability to speak on camera, and it made cringeworthy viewing. At least Paul was in the studio - in 1986 the BBC hired George Best in a similar capacity- he never turned up.

On football...

Football is an art more central to our culture than anything the Arts Council deigns to recognise
Germaine Greer The Independent 28.06.96


Football is not an art, but there is an art to playing good football.
Ruud Krol (Ajax 1968–1980)


If I wanted to make you understand I would have explained it better.
Johann Cruyff (Ajax 1964–1973)


I've pretty much kept football out of Burning Aquarium up until now, but it is, after all, a World Cup year, and I've just read two very interesting books on the game...
Back in November there was a post on Ian Bone's blog that posed some questions about the concept of socialist football.
The Bonemeister settled on the Golden Squad of Hungary in the 1950's as being the likely epitome of this concept.
They were, as every schoolboy knows, managed by Gusztáv Sebes, who advocated what he referred to as socialist football. In the 1920's Sebes had worked as a trade union organiser in both Budapest and later Paris, where he was employed as a fitter for four years with Renault, who , during that decade also employed the exiled Nestor Makhno and Buenaventura Durruti (now, you couldn't make that up...).
As I commented at the time: Strange dressing room dynamics I’m sure- coach Sebes a commited socialist, centre back Lorant a rehabilitated political prisoner and keeper Grosics an SS veteran!
Hungary's succes lay in their fluidity. Other teams still relied on very regimented approaches, and when the Hungarians digressed from this rigid positional play nobody knew what to do about it. A similar phenomenon had been seen in the Dynamo Moscow team that toured Britain in 1945- organised disorder. In the fascinating Inverting The Pyramid-the History of Football Tactics Jonathan Wilson looks at the major tactical innovations that serve as milestones in the history of the game. These broadly involve a move towards more cohesive teamwork as opposed to individual endeavour and the need for greater flexibility and appreciation of the value of space. Wilson writes at length about the great Soviet tacticians Maslov and Lobanovski.
Lobanovski in particular viewed a game of football as a system in which the individual had clearly measurable targets to meet. He applied mathematical principles to the game- he said that a game was a system of 22 elements (the players), two sub systems of eleven elements (the teams) moving within a defined area (the pitch)and subject to a series of restrictions (the rules). If one system were stronger, it would win- simple.

It was Wilson's analysis of the Ajax teams of Michels and Kovacs that led me to read the second book, Brilliant Orange: The Neurotic Genius of Dutch Football by David Winner. Winner looks at the ways in which the Dutch game reflects the national psyche. He draws parallels between football, politics, art, architecture and town and country planning. The Ajax teams that dominated Europe in the early 1970's were, he says, close to being workers co operatives . The development of Total Football in The Netherlands is considered in the context of its being a reflection of the cultural revolution (inspired by The Provos) that produced an increasingly liberal and egalitarian society. Dutch society has a strong tradition of co operation, their earliest political systems evolved along these lines, and Winner stats that this is still evident in the society of the modern Netherlands. Similarly these great teams relied on those principles. Teamwork, understanding each others' roles, being able to step into the place of the next man. Indeed, once Rinus Michels had instilled the ideals of his system into the core of players, his successor, Kovacs, seems to have been content to allow them an unparalleled degree of autonomy . There was no place for reliance on dazzling individualism (although several of Ajax's players would have been capable of this) nor for strong but clumsy defenders. The system was everything, and devotion to the system was the player's greatest responsibility. A testament to this can be seen in the fact that under Michels The Netherlands reached the final of the 1974 World Cup with two central defenders who prior to the tournament had never played in those positions at international level.

Interestingly the Netherlands, like Hungary in the 1954, failed to win the World Cup despite their dominance (in fact, twice in a row. Winner also has theories of how Dutch nature is better suited to this ultimate failure rather than success ). When they did finally win their only major title, the UEFA European Championship in 1988 (with Michels as coach) it was at the expense of the Soviet Union, who were coached by Lobanovski.

The People’s Game…

Wouldn’t it be great if football clubs had kept their original names? In the Premier League we would be watching the likes of Dial Square (Arsenal), Newton Heath (Manchester Utd) and St Domingo (Everton). But when I was reading up on South American football the other day I came across one that really takes the biscuit.
Argentinos Juniors are a bread and butter team from the suburbs of Buenos Aires. Known as The Nursery (El Semillero) they have nurtured many talented players who have gone on to greater things, most notably Diego Maradona, Daniel Batista and Riquelme.
As their other nickname, Bichos Colorados (Red Bugs) suggests, they play in red, inspired by the club's socialist beginnings (now we are getting there).
In August 1904 a group of young men from the La Paternal Barrio , inspired by socialism and the movement to promote May the first as an international workers’ day, founded a football club, which they called Mártires de Chicago (the Martyrs of Chicago), in homage to the eight anarchists imprisoned or hanged after the 1886 Haymarket Riot in Chicago.
Yes, that’s right. A group of young Buenos Aires guys named their football club in honour of a group of American anarchists.
Sadly the name change came early on in their history, and there seems to be little evidence these days of any reverence for the likes of August Spies, Albert Parsons et al at the Estadio Diego Armando Maradona.