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June 1974: Johan Cruyff scores Holland's fourth goal against Argentina

AC Milan and the toothless striker

What springs to mind when you think of an AC Milan centre-forward? People of a certain age will immediately be reminded of Marco van Basten, an intelligent and technically gifted striker. The Dutchman was far from the only world class centre-forward to wear the red and black. In the fifties there was the Swede Gunner Nordahl, Milan's all-time goalscorer, and a decade later the Brasilian José Altafini stalked the San Siro. After Van Basten greats like Shevchenko, Weah and Inzaghi played for Milan. These days Ibrahimovic is spending his dotage there.

What few people will probably come up with when conjuring up a mental image of a Milan forward, is a classic British target-man. The kind that would long ago have lost his front teeth in some ill-fated areal duel. Yet that is exactly what AC Milan set out to take the Serie A by storm with back in 1981, after spending a year in the Serie B due to a betting scandal.

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December 1911: The Oldham goalkeeper kicks the ball downfield

Talking about Football...

Marco van Basten on Arrigo Sacchi:

I was used to Cruyff, who had been a great player. We thought the same way. Sacchi was more theoretical. We had to watch so many videos and he was always talking during training. It was too much. I told him: ‘Mister, you have already told me this 12 times. If I don’t understand it now, I never will.’

(Source: Guardian, 31 October 2020)

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May 1963: AC Milan's Cesare Maldini tackles Benfica's Eusebio

Lima, the Forgotten Stadium Disaster

“The mass is a river of screams and panic. Unstoppable and unknowing it crushes anyone who stumbles and falls. The avalanche of people goes from fear to hysteria when at the foot of the stairs, that descent into death, it encounters closed doors. Metal objects that only open to the inside. There is no turning back, away from that fatal escape route. No way back up to the stands, where, despite the asphyxiating gas, freedom awaits, instead of this prison of bodies that crush, suffocate, and kill each other. The pressure of those joining the human waterfall makes escaping impossible. The air gets exhausted. Lungs shrink. Ribs break.”

Thus, loosely translated, wrote the journalist Mauricio Gil in the Peruvian paper El Comercio. What is being described above is not the Hillsborough disaster or the Heysel drama, but by far the greatest football disaster in history. A disaster that has been almost completely forgotten outside of Peru.

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August 1936: Everton captain Dixie Dean leading out his team against Arsenal.

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Mario Kempes on César Luis Menotti:

Menotti's great virtue was to give players a lot of freedom. He gave them a lot of confidence. Of course, the player had to handle the three or four tasks he assigned each player for the team but, beyond these, players had full freedom to do what they would usually do for their own club. He was not restrictive, he would give you as much freedom as possible so you would feel comfortable on the pitch.

Source: Hunt, World Cup Stories, 177

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Euro 1992: Dennis Bergkamp in action for Holland against Denmark

The Vulture rips Denmark to shreds

These days, we associate Spain with tiki-taka, an attack-minded and free-flowing passing game. Before Johan Cruyff lay the foundations for that style during his time as Barcelona manager, the dominant playing style in Spain tended to be somewhat less exalted. In the mid-Eighties, merciless defending and unabashedly negative tactics were the order of the day for Spanish teams.

It hardly yielded the Spaniards a glut of trophies. Although clubs like Real Madrid, Valencia and Barcelona had been able to win the UEFA-Cup and the Cup Winners Cup, the biggest price in European club football had eluded them since 1966 and the national team hadn't been able to win a tournament since 1964. Things appeared to be looking up in 1984, when Spain made it to the final of the European Championship. But in that final they slumped to a 2-0 defeat against Platini's France.

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January 1926: The ref's coin gets lost in the snow at Highbury

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Carlos Alberto on the 1970 Brazil national team:

We had to change our manager just a few months before the tournament, but the players trusted each other totally. We gelled so well, I think that’s what made our play look effortless. And, of course, we had Pelé. We were team-mates at Santos so I knew how important he was to winning. Playing with Pelé felt like you had God on your side.

Source: Guardian, 30 october 2016

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October 1932: Matthias Sindelar training ahead of a game against England.

The Hungarian that enabled the Miracle of Bern

The 'Miracle of Bern' is what the West Germans called their victory over huge favorites Hungary in the 1954 World Cup final. Managing to overcome a two goal deficit against an opponent that had beaten them 8-3 earlier in the tournament, does indeed qualify as pretty miraculous. It would almost certainly not have been possible without the leadership of their captain, Fritz Walter, a player most people consider second only to Franz Beckenbauer as best ever German footballer. In an irony of history, Walter may never have lived to play that final but for the aid of an Hungarian guard.

Walter had made his debut for Germany as a nineteen year old back in 1940, scoring three goals in a 9-3 defeat of Romania. In spite of there being a war on, he would go on to earn 24 caps and score 19 goals over the two years that followed. That period came to an end when Walter was drafted into the army in 1943. At the end of the war he found himself in a POW camp in the Ukraine, waiting to be deported to a work camp further east. It is estimated up to one in three German soldiers taken prisoner by the Soviets would never see Germany again.

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1984: Fabio Carannante of Napoli falls at the feet of AC Milan's Sergio Batistini

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Franz Beckenbauer on his first weeks at New York Cosmos:

In fifteen years of football, I have never experienced anything like this. I came to America and within three weeks I've experienced a brawl in the dressing room, saw a club president fired, saw the coach fired and Pelé cry.

Source: Van Os, Cruijff - De Amerikaanse jaren, 81

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March 1968 - George Best robbed of the ball against Manchester City

Jack Charlton's Little Black Book

When Jack Charlton admitted to having a little black book during a television interview in 1970, viewers perhaps wondered if they were about to be made privy to some scandalous secrets by the seemingly happily married World Cup winner. But instead of providing juicy stories for the gossip pages, Charlton’s disclosure ended up sparking a scandal that would dominate the back pages for weeks, as journalists and officials tumbled over one another in self righteously denouncing the tough as nails veteran defender.

Charlton had made it clear that his little black book did not contain women’s telephone numbers, but names of players that he would do on the field if he got the chance because they had committed bad fouls on him. Charlton really hadn’t said much wrong. He had explicitly denounced bad or nasty fouls. It did not lessen the media frenzy that followed. “These sickening comments,” ran a headline in the Daily Express, above an article that called on Leeds to sack Charlton. Even Bobby Charlton was trotted out to denounce his older brother. The Football Association dutifully charged the man with 35 caps to his name with bringing the game into disrepute.

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July 1958 - Real Madrid's legendary forward line of Kopa, Rial, Di Stefano, Puskas, and Gento

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Bobby Charlton on scoring against Benfica in 1968:

I didn't know my header had gone in for the opening goal. This must be the first time I've headed a goal in about ten years.

Source: Bartram a.o., Manchester United Greatest Ever Matches, 115

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October 1994: Eric Cantona in action against Newcastle

Hughes and Rush beat Spain

Making it to the last four of the 2016 European Championship surely surpassed the wildest dreams of even the most optimistic of Wales fans and players. After all, for decades even qualifying for a major tournament had proved a pipe dream for generations of Welsh internationals. For all the European trophies players like Mike England, John Toshack and Ryan Giggs won with their clubs, they never played a World Cup or European Championship with their country.

Neither did Ian Rush and and Mark Hughes, even though they formed an impressive front two in the mid eighties that would have easily walked into the line up of much bigger countries. The pair complimented each other perfectly: Hughes was a powerful target man who fought for every ball, while Rush was a clinical finisher.

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May 1987: Marco van Basten during the Cup Winners Cup final against Lokomotive Leipzig

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Helenio Herrera on his reputation for being an authoritarian:

I've been accused of being tyrannical and completely ruthless with my players, but I merely implemented things that were later copied by every single club: hard work, perfectionism, physical training, diets and three days of concentration before every game.

Source: Wilson, Inverting the Pyramid, 184

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1938: players from Wolves study a 'football projector' that could fire balls during training

Writing the wrong kind of history

Playing in a major tournament, the dream of every team is to write history. But as England found out against Iceland during Euro 2016, that dream coming true does not necessarily equal a happy end, as you may find yourselves writing the wrong kind of history. That England team will live on in the memory of football fans, but they do so as the 21st century equivalent of that other England team suffering an ignominious defeat: the 1950 World Cup squad that were beaten 1-0 by the United States.

The World Cup was held in Brazil that year, and England had travelled to South America as one of the favorites. There was certainly a reasonable basis for that. England were able to field a strong team, featuring seasoned professionals like Stan Mortensen, Alf Ramsey, and Tom Finney. The team was captained by the Wolves centre back Billy Wright, who would collect more than a honderd caps even though he was active in a period when fewer international games were played then nowadays. Their first game in Brazil, against Chili, had been won 2-0. Lining up against the English professionals in Belo Horizonte’s Estádio Independencia was an American team consisting of amateurs and semi-professionals that had lost it’s first game 3-1 to Spain.