FourFourTwo - May 2015

FourFourTwo 251 May 2015

REVEALED! John McDermott, Jamie Forrester, Marcus Bean, Cian Hughton, Billy Kee, Jamie Cureton, James Constable

FOOTBALL LEAGUE'S 50 BEST PLAYERS

LIVERPOOL VS SPURS VS ARSENAL VS MAN UTD

Inside the race for the Champions League

KLOPP ARSENAL? MAN CITY? MAN UTD?

WHO WILL LAND THE WORLD'S HIPPEST COACH?

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MEET THE HARDEST PLAYER EVER

FENG SHUI FOOTBALL! YES, IT'S A THING

WIN! EUROPA LEAGUE FINAL TICKETS & TRIP

E D I TO R’ S L E T T E R

EDITORIAL

Tel 020 8267 5848 Fax 020 8267 5725 Email 442letters@haymarket.com – or to contact an individual, email firstname.surname@haymarket.com For work experience requests, please email 442workexperience@haymarket.com Editor Hitesh Ratna Managing editor Huw Davies Art editor Anthony Moore Deputy art editor Tom Chase Features editor James Maw Staff writer Andrew Murray Staff writer Jonathan Fadugba Chief sub editor Gregg Davies Performance editor Ben Welch Global digital editor Gary Parkinson Digital features editor Joe Brewin Editorial secretary Annika Baynham Thanks to Tim Barnett (production), Louis Massarella (contributing editor), Jeff Beasley (picture editor), Haymarket Pre-Press (repro), Yannick Hesse, Dominic Shine, Ellen Farrell, Adam Powers, Joe Nelson, Jamie Thomas, James Robinson, Gregor Vasconcelos, Duncan Ross (WMG) Pictures PA Photos, Action Images, Getty, Offside, Rex, Twitter

Brand director Hugh Sleight Editor-in-chief David Hall Business development director Andy Baker Marketing manager Ollie Stretton International director Alastair Lewis Senior direct marketing executive Michelle Le Grice Syndication enquiries Isla Friend Circulation manager Nick Lyon Production manager Ailsa Donovan Senior production controller Roxy Agius Subscriptions & back issues PO Box 326, Sittingbourne, Kent ME9 8FA For syndication sales enquires call +44 (0) 208 267 5396

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Editorial director Mark Payton Creative director Paul Harpin Managing director David Prasher Strategy and planning director Bob McDowell Chief executive Kevin Costello

HUDDLE ROUND...

It’s November 2010 and Jurgen Klopp is giving a post-match interview. He adjusts his glasses, wipes his nose and lays into his players for a series of random infractions: they played like the away team; they missed a penalty; they’re too old. As outbursts go, it was unexpected, bizarre and unlike him. It was also a joke.

Dortmund won the game against Hannover 4-0, deploying the smothering gegenpress that would bring back-to-back Bundesliga titles and universal hipster acclaim. Klopp thought it would be amusing to respond to recent criticism in the media by pretending, however briefly, to be embroiled in a relegation scrap (they were top of the table). It was classic Klopp: meet a challenge, laugh in its face. “HA HA!” It’s what makes him truly unique, and why everyone loves him.

Have any Five years later, there’s less to smile about. Dortmund thoughts on the have endured their worst league season during his time in issue? Feel free to share them with charge and at one point appeared to be genuine relegation a follow or tweet candidates. While they’ve recovered since the winter break, @FourFourTwoEd their slide down the table triggered an uncomfortable realisation: at some point they have to start thinking about life after Klopp.

And it’s for these reasons that he is the focus of our cover feature this month. Author and Dortmund fan of 38 years Uli Hesse explains how everyone at the club has coped during a season in which a title challenge descended into a basement battle. Perhaps most intriguingly, we hear that Klopp is as central to Dortmund as Steve Jobs was to Apple.

“We’re too Until this season. Does a future at one of the old, ha ha!”

Premier League’s top sides await?

Collaborating for our other big feature was you, the reader – well, specifically the army of fans who voted in our Football League Top 50 Players countdown. Believe us when we say the players are chuffed to be nominated, especially by fans of other teams.

Finally, I should probably acknowledge that this is my first issue as editor.

Taking over from Dave, who did a brilliant job during his time in the FFT hot seat, won’t be easy. But I am up for the challenge, will endeavour to give 110 per cent and take each mag as it comes. Naturally.

Hitesh Ratna Editor

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FourFourTwo.com May 2015 5

M AY 2015

UPFRONT 20 25 32 36 38

Top 10 fictional managers

Michael Caine, Gregory’s Girl and 4-4-f**king-2

Win a trip to the Europa League final!

Yep: flights, hotel, hospitality and tickets (obviously)

Samurai football vikings!

This just in: testing for app turns bloody in Japan

Feng Shui for your dressing room

You laugh, but soon you’ll thank the monkey statue

Letters

Featuring a world first: a love letter to Lee Probert

FEATURES 8

42

One-on-One: Alan Smith

The former Leeds man tells some truths (“I did say I would never join Manchester United”) and dispels some myths (“No, I’ve never owned a hair salon”)

COVER STORY Klopp at the crossroads

The neutrals’ favourite has been battling relegation with Borussia Dortmund this season – yet England’s biggest clubs would take him in a heartbeat. FFT explores what went wrong and learns why Jurgen Klopp and BVB may agree to see other people

FourFourTwo’s big half-time show

54

60

74

Grab an orange and take a breather as you dip into our half-time extravaganza. From the original break in play for a crafty smoke to the secrets of today’s managers and referees, via dressing room bust-ups and the best bits of on-pitch entertainment, there’s more than enough reading material for any interval

COVER STORY The Football League Top 50

Who will top FFT’s annual rundown of the best players outside the Premier League? The winner is revealed, plus the top talent at every club in the 72 and interviews with Jay Emmanuel-Thomas, our youngest entrant and League Two’s ‘Ginger Pirlo’

The Football League’s foreign gaffers

Read exclusive interviews with the next Mourinhos doing their time in the trenches, at Middlesbrough, Charlton, Watford and Leyton Orient

Race for the Champions League 80

We speak to Nacer Chadli, Simon Mignolet and Ryan Bertrand while answering the big questions as Liverpool, Southampton, Spurs, Manchester United and Arsenal battle for the two remaining places

Action Replay: Red Card Roy

88

Mr McDonough set a record for early baths, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Team-mates and the man himself recall a striking talent that went to waste on booze, belligerence and bad decisions

PLANET FOOTBALL 95 96 103 Plus

Best trophy ever? Gun-toting armadillo says yes Shakhtar’s Luiz Adriano hates winter breaks Europe’s Tree of the Year is on a football pitch Arturo Vidal’s VIP limo service; secrets of the PSG dressing room; Legia, Lens & Ludogorets

PERFORMANCE 105 108 112 Plus

Kicking punchbags – why keepers should try it Koke’s masterclass on how to rack up assists Build your own gym... in your garage Motivate yourself; Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain’s pre-match prep; what makes Ronaldo great?

6 May 2015 FourFourTwo.com

M AY 2015

THE TOP

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P42 THE END OF AN ERA – OR THE START OF A NEW ONE IN THE PREMIER LEAGUE?

ONE-ON-ONE

Why didn’t Leeds win anything? Was Sven wrong not to take him to the World Cup in 2002? What did he make of Keano’s MUTV rant? And is he still a BMX bandit?

YOUR QUESTIONS ANSWERED BY...

Alan Smith Interview Andy Mitten Portrait Jill Jennings

The Smiths play on a loop in the kitchen of Alan Smith’s new house, overlooking the rolling hills at the southern fringes of Derbyshire’s beautiful Peak District.

“The Smiths are class,” says Smith, a charming man as he puts a brew on while singing along. The Notts County player-coach shows us around the home that he will share with his wife-to-be. BMX, Motocross and Moto GP memorabilia adorn one room.

“She’s told me to put it all in here,” he laughs.

One hero is champion Spanish motorcyclist Jorge Lorenzo, “who risks his life and rides like it’s an art”, and Smith has a flag that affirms his loyalty to a man he’d love to meet.

“I’m not really one for interviews,” he says in a distinctive Leeds accent. Ninety minutes and another cup of tea later, he’s still talking, recounting a career that has taken in Leeds, Manchester United, Newcastle, MK Dons and now the world’s oldest club (oh, and 19 caps for England as well). But first...

Do you still BMX? I’m sure I read that you won trophies as a kid. How close did you come to dropping football because of it? Can you still do it? Just like riding a bike, right?

Joe H Harman, via Twitter It was the other way around – I started off riding BMX as a young kid, a long time before I played football. I was into BMX because my dad used to race motocross; my family was into bikes. I watched motocross videos every

8 May 2015 FourFourTwo.com

FACT FILE

Full name Alan Smith Date of birth 28/10/1980 Place of birth Rothwell, Yorkshire Height 5ft 11in Position Midfielder Clubs played for 1998-2004 Leeds United 228 games (56 goals); 2004-07 Manchester United 93 (12); 2007-12 Newcastle United 94 (0); 2012-14 MK Dons 83 (3); 2014Notts County 19 (0) International career 2001-07 England 19 (1) Playing honours FA Youth Cup 1997; League Cup 2006; Premier League 2007; Football League Championship 2010 day and watched Junior Kick Start religiously.

I remember films like BMX Bandits.

As for trophies, I won the British championship at eight. I had a few different bikes – my dad bought them, to my mum’s dismay. I’d race from Inverness to Slough. Dad was a heavy goods driver who would come home on a Friday, pack up the camper van and we’d be off for the weekend, driving through the night. My parents put a huge effort into my brother and me racing. Most mates wanted to be a footballer – I wanted to race bikes.

I think I’d struggle to get on one today.

Below Joy at beating Man United – he’d join them two years later

You attended the now defunct FA School of Excellence at Lilleshall when you were 14, featuring in an ITV documentary.

Is it true you were so unhappy that you walked out after a few months?

Kieran Kennedy, Winchester It is true. I was a very young 14-year-old coming from a close-knit family. I was at Leeds by that stage, but Lilleshall was a completely different environment.

I was homesick in the boarding-school environment and wanted to get back with my mum, dad and brother. It was a very hard decision to leave the national school, but I think my style of football suited Leeds better than how I was being coached to play at the national school.

How did you feel when you scored with your very first touch in the professional game, a rasping drive past David James at Anfield?

Robert Barry, Wokingham It felt important, but every goal meant the same to me, from the youth team to the first team. The difference was that scoring in the first team meant so much more to everyone else. That goal changed my life. I was meant to be in Israel with England’s U18s but it was cancelled because of the political situation.

I went back to Leeds, someone was injured and I was asked to train with the first team. I was picked in the squad and

“I did say I’d never play for Manchester United. If I had been a Leeds fan, I would have booed me as well”

ONE ON ONE thought I was going as an extra body. We were getting beat, but I got brought on and bang – I scored.

Lorenzo: I wanted more legend of that. We played Charlton a week later and I came on and scored again.

We had such a good environment at Leeds, and Eddie Gray was a massive influence on me.

He’d been managing the youth team with Paul Hart and I never wanted to let them down because they’d shown so much belief in me.

You were part of a very youthful Leeds side, playing alongside Jonathan Woodgate, Lee Bowyer, Harry Kewell and Stephen McPhail.

Who was the standout talent?

Dominic Mellor, Harrogate I was the youngest and they looked after me.

They all had talent and a hunger to succeed, which was vital. McPhail’s footballing ability was incredible, Kewell and Jonathan went on to do great things in football, and Bowyer did too. Stephen had a few health problems, which stopped him along the way, but I remember them all being great lads.

What were your highlights of Leeds’ Champions League run in 2000-01?

Scott Roberts, Dewsbury It was an amazing adventure for the whole club, and an incredible experience for a 19-or 20-year-old lad, right from the

Above Not all Leeds fans were quite so understanding Below “But I don’t want to play away at Gillingham, Robbo...”

beginning. I scored our first goal in the play-off match against 1860 Munich and the winner in the second leg at the Olympic Stadium.

In the second group stage we were drawn against Anderlecht, Lazio and Real Madrid, but managed to qualify with a game to spare.

I got another good goal against Lazio, but I have to admit I only did the easy bit – Mark Viduka did all the hard work for me!

We went through with a game to spare, and so did Real Madrid, so we went to the Bernabeu pretty relaxed. It was great for us to play at one of the biggest clubs in the world without any pressure, and we had amazing backing – I think half of Leeds was out there with us. Viduka and I both scored again, but we still lost 3-2.

We beat Deportivo in the quarter-final but the semi [against Valencia] was one step too far us. It was the only time we couldn’t impose ourselves on the opposition’s back four. We drew 0-0 at home, then lost 3-0 away. I was sent off for a bad tackle late in the second leg, mainly through sheer frustration. That tarnished our great run in the competition, for me.

I wouldn’t have changed it though; I loved every minute of the whole journey.

You must have played against some great defenders in that Champions League run. Who was the best?

Ryan Gulliver, Portsmouth I had the pleasure of playing against a man who, in my opinion, was the best defender ever – the great Paolo Maldini. Our game at the San Siro was an amazing night and we were backed by five or six thousand Leeds fans.

It was my best performance in a Leeds shirt: although I didn’t score, the rest of my play was the best it had ever been. I swapped shirts with Maldini at full-time and it’s still the only shirt I’ve ever had framed.

Why did that Leeds team fall short of winning anything? And when did you realise the club’s finances weren’t quite right?

Matthew Parkinson, via email There were better teams than us – great sides like Manchester United and Arsenal, with more experience and world-class players.

Being local and knowing the club as I did, I realised that everything wasn’t right and heard grumblings that players needed to be sold. We sold Rio [Ferdinand] to Man United in 2002 for £30m. Leeds couldn’t turn that down and it made me think we weren’t as close to bridging the gap as I’d thought. We finished fifth, fourth and third – David O’Leary got sacked for finishing fifth, which was ridiculous.

I realised there were problems when I came back for pre-season in 2003 and we had eight or nine players. James Milner and Aaron Lennon played at 16. We had lads from France who’d never played in England. Relegation was tough – the worst feeling ever. I blamed myself but I don’t think I could have done any more.

My last memory of playing for my hometown club was relegation. Horrible.

“We’ll swap shirts after the game, Alan”

Smith welcomed Wazza... honest

ON E ON ON E Ten years after this horrific injury, Smith is still going strong

“It was my fault I didn’t go to the World Cup. I got sent off. Sometimes I couldn’t help it” How upset were you to miss out on England’s 2002 World Cup? Ellie Coates, Madrid I felt I was better than people who were going, but it was my own fault. I’d been in every squad and I got sent off against Macedonia in a qualifier. Sven, who was always brilliant with me, needed me on the pitch, needed me to be reliable – I understand that more now. But sometimes I couldn’t help it [smiles]. I went to the U21 [European] championship instead with David Platt.

Considering you stuck around after many others had left, how disappointing was it to hear Leeds fans criticise you after you joined Manchester United? Is it true that you waived the personal transfer fee owed to you by Leeds? And is it a myth that you once said you’d “never play for Man United”?

Trevor Hobbs, London That’s not a myth [laughs] – I did say it. I was young and naive and never thought that a) Man United would ever want me, and b) Leeds would sell me. Look how silly I was.

I also didn’t envisage Leeds getting relegated.

I would probably never have left if we hadn’t gone down, but Leeds were trying to sell me to the highest bidder.

As for the criticism, I’d have been a fool if I thought that wouldn’t happen. I’d been at the club when Eric [Cantona] left to go to Old Trafford. I was ball boy the day he came back and scored at the [Elland Road] Kop and saw the feelings that day. I spoke to Sir Alex and he said: “I never thought you’d be brave enough to make that decision.” But the Leeds I left wasn’t the Leeds I knew. There were

Above “This meant more to me than I ever let on”

people in charge of the club who I didn’t like.

I went to meetings and saw some bizarre things. I had the chance to go from a team who’d been relegated to the champions.

Arguably the greatest club manager ever wanted me. How could I turn that down?

As for waiving the transfer fee – I had five years left on my contract. I was entitled to money, but the last thing I wanted was to see Leeds go bankrupt. I’ve never spoken about it because I don’t want to speak badly about my club. I’ve been back and most people were pleasant with me.

How did you feel when Man United signed Wayne Rooney so soon after yourself? Were you aware he’d be coming when you signed?

Shane Byram, via Twitter No, but it wasn’t an issue. There were already great strikers there, as you’d expect at a club with ambitions of winning titles and European Cups. Wayne would only help us to get better so I was fine with the club signing him.

Do you still own a hair salon?

Andy Cole, team-mate with Manchester United and England I’ve never owned a hair salon! One of my good friends owns one near Coley’s house.

I used to go and see my mate there most days, so he used to see me there. I painted it for him once. So Coley probably walked past and thought it was my shop. I used to get my hair cut there but not anymore – it’s too far away. That’s why my hair is in a state!

PAL’S POSER

?

What went through your mind after blocking that John Arne Riise free-kick when you broke your leg? Did you fear that your career would be over?

Kennet Tan, via Twitter I never let that cross my mind. It wasn’t Riise’s fault and he came to see me afterwards, but I attacked my injury as another challenge and it proved to be the biggest challenge of my career, keeping me out for 15 months. It was a severe injury – the dislocated ankle was worse than the leg break because I snapped ligaments and there were complications. I knew I was never going to be the same player again. I’ve appreciated every game I’ve played since that injury because I know how close I was to being finished. When the lads won the Carling Cup they wore T-shirts for me. I’d been in hospital for a week and got back to my flat in Manchester. I watched the game on TV, then saw my team-mates wear T-shirts with my name on. That meant more to me than I’ve ever let on. I had no idea they’d planned that.

Is the story true about Liverpool fans attacking the ambulance you were in after your leg break?

Stuart Smith, via Facebook It didn’t happen – fans were still in the ground. I went back to Liverpool a few years later with Newcastle and had a great reception. I had loads of mail from fans after the injury, including a lot from Liverpool.

And Liverpool’s medical staff were great.

They were worried that because there was no blood flowing that I could have had a club foot. Some might say I might as well have in my left foot now...

Who is the toughest player you’ve played alongside? And the toughest you’ve faced?

Brede Skahjem Tokvam, via Twitter That’s hard to judge. Football was more physical then than it is now, and that’s for the worse. If someone was better than me I’d have to find a way to stop them. Skill has triumphed.

The Leeds team of the ’70s would be appalled!

Do you think moving into midfield – to the right with Leeds, then centrally with Man United – hampered or helped your career?

Would you have preferred to stay upfront?

George Pitts, via Twitter It helped me – more so after my injury, which took 10-15 per cent of my capabilities away.

If you lose two or three per cent at the top you’ll struggle. I had to re-invent myself as a player; be a bit more reserved and learn the game again so that I knew how to play

FourFourTwo.com May 2015 11

ONE ON ONE We beat the club record for points in a season, had 20-odd clean sheets and played in front of 50,000-plus crowds. Incredible support.

a position properly. At Newcastle I learned to play in defensive midfield. I had my injury in 2005 – 10 years on, I’m still playing.

I’m pleased about that.

Did you try to talk Fergie out of playing you in central midfield? Did you honestly believe you could be the next Roy Keane?

John Norris, via Facebook People said I was going to Man United to take Roy’s place. Nonsense. Most of my games there were in a three-man midfield with Roy and Scholesy. Roy had such high standards and would always be on at me for flying into tackles. In one game at Liverpool I left my position and went flying into a tackle. Roy was shouting at me to stay on my feet.

Two minutes later he went after a ball and smashed a player. He got up and laughed at me, but he was the captain – he was allowed.

I spent a lot of time with him. He’s a good lad.

I liked your attitude at Manchester United – you were up for a laugh with fans. Do you remember scoring from the halfway line in Prague during the warm-down, then taking the piss out of the fans who were singing “Smithy, kiss the badge”?

Ben Moores, Urmston It was because I’d kissed the Leeds badge – the badge of my club. So the Man United fans were having a laugh. But it was quite intimidating, seeing 5,000 of them steaming in Prague and singing at me. I was a football fan and I still am: I’m a normal lad who ended up playing football, so I could see where they were coming from. I didn’t kiss it and they probably respected me more for that.

You’ve played alongside some great strikers in your time, but who was the best?

Bill Simpson, Staines They were all great, but I’d say Mark Viduka.

Just before he signed, David O’Leary came to me and said: “What type of striker do you like to play alongside?” I’d never been with a targetman and wanted to play with one. He came from Celtic and we hit it off straightaway. He never looked like he was trying, but he always was. His skill for such a big man was frightening.

“Roy Keane never said anything on MUTV that he wouldn’t say to us” Above “Hmm, now should I preach what I practised?”

Below Viduka: big but beautiful with a ball at his feet

complimentary about players who leave their club. If I had been a Leeds fan and one of the players had left for a rival club, I’d probably have booed. But if nobody cared when I left and wished me well because they weren’t bothered about me going, I’d have failed as a player. Leeds are the club I support. I’ve never spoken about leaving, but I don’t need to justify it given the circumstances at the time.

How did being relegated with Newcastle compare with the feeling of being relegated with Leeds? Which hurt more?

Kay Z, via Twitter I was injured for a lot of [Newcastle’s relegation] season, only playing a few games. But it still hurt because I was around people every day who cared about what happened. Nobody wants to get relegated. Luckily, we came straight back up. A lot of the players wanted to stay, pay back the fans and re-establish their reputation. Some people thought we’d go straight down again to the third division, but we had a great season.

What did you make of that interview that Roy Keane gave to MUTV? Sam Convery, Coventry If you’re captain of a football club, you’re entitled to say what you want. Roy never said anything that he wouldn’t have said to us. He was probably calmer in that video than he was in the dressing room. I had a great relationship with Roy. I read his book, enjoyed it and appreciated what he said about me.

What did you make of the reaction when you faced Leeds for the first time in the summer of 2009, in a pre-season friendly for Newcastle? What would you say to those fans who booed you?

Ed Brooks, Weybridge It wasn’t too bad. I’m not silly – I don’t live in a world where I think football fans would be

12 May 2015 FourFourTwo.com

“The Championship’s answer to Makelele?

Yes, Smithy, very funny”

You never scored for Newcastle, despite making 94 appearances.

Is this a disappointment?

Liam Nicholson, Stockport Not at all. I was a defensive midfielder.

But because I’d played upfront previously, people expected me to score. Defensive midfielders don’t tend to score. I think Claude Makelele got one for Chelsea. I had a couple of chances to score at Newcastle and would have loved to have scored, but I think my biggest achievement there was getting the team promoted, as team captain in many games as Nicky Butt was injured.

How close did you come to a Leeds return in 2012, when manager Simon Grayson expressed an interest in you?

Dave Woodfin, via email It was speculation. I heard nothing from Simon or Leeds. I don’t think I would have gone back – I don’t think I could have done myself justice. I wasn’t the player I had been; I was 33 and not 21, though I could have still had a big influence. Better for them to remember a younger me, and for me to maintain my unbelievable memories at Leeds when it was a different club.

You’re one of the few high-profile players of the last decade to drop down to League One. Should more pros follow your example, especially if they’re not getting a game?

Thomas O’Dea, via Facebook I love football and wanted to carry on playing.

I’d rather play and be part of something. I also wanted to do something different and give something to a team that maybe they don’t have. I’ve learned a lot about the other side of football: what coaches have to go through, coping with things that are taken for granted at a higher level, and that players who fight for a new contract every year might have great ability but one thing missing to take them to the top. I had two great years at MK Dons and we couldn’t quite get them over the line and get promotion. We were up against big teams and the standard is good.

You’ve said before that you’re interested in getting your coaching badges. I see you’re player-coach at Notts County…

Jane Graham, Newcastle Definitely. I’m getting married in the summer so it will be difficult to fit them in before then, but if I can get another playing contract I’ll do them next season. I’ve wanted to concentrate on playing and I’m still fit, don’t drink and feel fine playing, but I’m ready for badges now.

Paul Hart is head of the academy here.

The manager Shaun Derry, his assistant and the players are so hungry. It’s a buzz going in every day as a coach and a player.

Who would you like to see quizzed here?

And what question would you ask them?

Tweet us @FourFourTwo with #1on1

THE BEAUTIFUL GAME

UJAH GETS THE HORN

Hennes the goat is a big deal in Cologne. So striker Anthony Ujah should have known better than to celebrate scoring their fourth goal in a 4-2 win over Eintracht Frankfurt in March by riding the eighth incarnation of the club mascot.

Ujah later brought Hennes some carrots by way of apology. “It’s OK – Hennes is used to such stuff,” said sporting director Jorg Schmadtke. Tough old goat.

Picture Simon Hofmann/Getty

THE BEAUTIFUL GAME

“COME BAAAAAAACK!”

Determined to atone for conceding an earlier penalty, Paris Saint-Germain captain Thiago Silva (far left) plants a looping header beyond Thibaut Courtois to knock out Chelsea in the last 16 of the Champions League. As Courtois waved goodbye to the Brazilian’s brilliantly hanging effort, Blues boss Jose Mourinho was forced to bid farewell to the competition before the semi-finals for the first time in six seasons.

Picture Matt Dunham/AP Photo

THE BEAUTIFUL GAME

THE BEAUTIFUL GAME

COMING OUT TO PLAY

His home destroyed by Cyclone Pam’s 185mph winds in the early hours of March 14, 2015, a now-homeless child deals with the devastation the only way he knows – by playing football. Damaging 90 per cent of Port Vila, the capital of South Pacific archipelago Vanuatu, the storm brought out the best in the beautiful game, local academies offering shelter for families whose lives have been torn apart.

Picture Dave Hunt/AP Photo

UPFRONT

UPFR P R “Soon, the new kit had a superhero clashing with the Kraken and a T-Rex”

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TOP10 The

“Time? Don’t talk to me about time, Mr Mackay”

FICTIONAL MANAGERS Football is a game of characters – not just cover star Jurgen Klopp, but some made-up gaffers and their unbelievable antics

Upfront editor Andrew Murray; Top 10 words Nige Tassell

Ra-Ra-Rasputin, Dunmore’s greatest 1 fag machine

Mac, the titular star of ITV’s teatime kids drama Murphy’s Mob, was your typical dour, gum-chewing Scottish boss moving south in search of glory.

The 1982 opening episode finds Kevin Kilbane lookalike Mac rolling into fourth-division Dunmore United, trying to rescue his ailing reputation. His saviour is the club’s big-talking cigarsmoking chairman, roller-rink impresario and former pop star Rasputin Jones.

“Seen the ground?” Jones asks the visibly underwhelmed Murphy. “Hardly The Dell, right? But then you’re not Lawrie McMenemy either...” Harsh but fair.

Murphy’s Mob’s Mac – or is it Killa Kilbane?

comes in, albeit reluctantly. “Don’t look at me,” he pleads to alpha-male inmate Grouty. “I’ve grown disenchanted with the game. Twenty years of supporting Orient does that for a man.”

she’s a season ticket holder and the daughter of an Italian UEFA official.

But, to huge opposition from dressing room and boardroom alike, the fitness studio owner tries to introduce aerobics into training. “All that Jane Fonda bollocks?” moans one disgruntled player. “What’s that got to do with football?” Well, it was the ’80s.

Fletch: disenchanted Menzies’ meddling the game 2 with Fonda’s fitness freaks 4 3 The plot of 1979’s feature-length Porridge film revolves around a breakout from HMP Slade during a match between the prison team and a showbiz XI. The escape plan requires an insider coaching the prisoners – and that’s where Ronnie Barker’s decidedly unathletic Fletcher

20 May 2015 FourFourTwo.com

Hired by Warren Clarke’s cigar-chugging chairman (anyone spot a pattern here?) to manage his under-performing second-tier club, Cherie Lunghi’s Gabriella Benson was the heroine of late-’80s Channel 4 drama The Manageress. Benson knows her stuff:

In 1981 flick Gregory’s Girl, perma-tracksuited PE teacher Phil Menzies is the obsessed, deluded coach of Cumbernauld secondary school’s first XI. “Got to get some new blood in the team,” he reports to two nonplussed colleagues in the staff room, displaying all the zeal of a newly appointed Premier

League manager handed an oligarch’s cheque book. “Big changes. New regime.

Signing a new striker this morning...”

not quite at the races 5 Roy

Ably supported by his former gaffer Ben Galloway as general manager, Roy Race was player-boss of his beloved Melchester Rovers for the best part of 18 seasons before finally hanging up his boots at the end of the 1992-93 campaign, resigning live on Sky TV. During that time, though, a number of caretaker managers had looked after the side, too – most notably Sir Alf Ramsey, who took temporary charge of Rovers in 1982 while Roy lay in a coma after being shot in an attempted murder. Obviously.

UPFRONT

ONT NT T 32

PLAYING OFF THE SHOULDER OF FOOTBALL

YouTube views of disco anthem I Wanna Be Like Jurgen Klopp

IN 2012 KLOPP CALLED HIS PLAYERS “MONSTERS OF MENTALITY”

5

Days he kept his Mainz squad in a Swedish survival camp without food or electricity

KLOPPO’S BIGGEST ACHIEVEMENTS

MARTIN HUESCHEN

2

BVB fan who got a giant back tattoo of Klopp screaming

3 4

1. Knocking Bayern off their perch 10% 2. Reaching Champions League Final 10% 3. Comparing his team to heavy metal 10% 4. Making Germans cool 70%

KLOPPLE Nickname when he was a child

KLOPPO Nickname since he became a player

¤58,000 2014 Raging

2013 Wembley

2011 Title

2008 Schwarzgelben

2004 Promotion

2002 Pundit

1995 Student

1992 Hairy

Total in fines he’s had to pay as a boss for verbal attacks on match officials

1989 Mainz

7

10

244,458 1

1988 Father

6

Text he sent to KevinPrince Boateng when he joined the enemy.

“He was a good guy until this morning,” said Klopp.

1980 Tennis

“Oh, Gary Lineker, isn’t it?

Marvellous.

Paragon of virtue.

Unprecedented Tommy Brown, the “Wanna take in the modern sheepskin-clad boss of it outside?” game. Never Fulchester United in Viz’s booked, wasn’t Billy The Fish comic strip, he? Excellent led an even stranger life TV pundit. Crisp thief! Rarely wears than Roy Race. After having open-heart a tie but still remains a marvellous surgery on the pitch, he also turned out ambassador for the game...” Paul to be a woman. But then he was always Whitehouse’s Fast Show character ready for any eventuality, including his Ron Manager was perfectly pitched, his team being poisoned: “I suspected the stream-of-consciousness outpourings half-time tea would be drugged, so adroitly aping the clichés and I hired a team of actors to impersonate doublespeak of post-match analysis.

Fulchester in the first half. The real team are in this broom cupboard.” Actually, we’re pretty sure Jose has tried this one.

Jossy Blair “You’re playing banana football – always hanging around in “You’re only bunches,” says struggling sports shop supposed to kick owner Joswell Blair in the magnificent the bloody goals in” 1986 football drama Jossy’s Giants, When a star-studded Allied POW team – the creation of legendary darts Pele! Bobby Moore!! Kevin O’Callaghan!!! commentator Sid Waddell. Jossy – takes on Germany in 1981 film Escape coaches kids’ team Glipton Giants, To Victory, only one man can lead them: drawing on his experience as a mildly West Ham and England star John Colby, embittered former Newcastle United aka an off-the-pace Michael Caine. player forced into early retirement Though overruled at the tactics board by through injury. The team’s fortunes Pele’s Luis Fernandez, player-manager are less memorable than the show’s Colby does exert his authority over Sly Stallone’s keeper Hatch: “Use that bloody theme tune. Altogether now: “We’re called Jossy’s Giants / Football’s just American style here again and you’ll be a branch of science...” barred!” Worked, though, didn’t it?

Man! He feels like a woman!

‘SCHALKE????’

1973 Smooth

9 “Iznit?”

THE 60-SECOND DOSSIER

1967 Caesarean

“Ladies and gentlemen,” states Mike Bassett in the eponymous 2001 film, “England will be playing 4-4-f**king-2.”

When the England boss suffers a heart attack, the FA hire Ricky Tomlinson’s potty-mouthed mess of a man (left), who’s just led Norwich to the Mr Clutch Cup. The mockumentary follows his World Cup dream, with international incidents and Bradley Walsh doing something other than panto (just).

JURGEN KLOPP

ONE-WORD TIMELINE

goes back to basics 8 Bassett

FourFourTwo.com May 2015 21

UPFRONT

DUGOUT DESK

IN THIS MONTH APRIL 1980

FFT parks its bum on the

“Mmm, smells like Sherwood”

The FA Cup semi-final that wouldn’t end

Wiki says interview David Morris

Arsenal take on Liverpool for a place at Wembley. And again. And again. And again…

If April is the cruellest month, as TS Eliot claimed, 1980 was undoubtedly the cruellest year for Arsenal.

In the days before FA Cup penalty shootouts, it took the Gunners four games, 20 days and three different venues to see off Liverpool in the competition’s longest-ever semi-final, by which time May was upon them and the final just nine days away.

After 90 goalless minutes yawned by at Hillsborough, the first replay at Villa Park four days later was a much livelier affair, right from the moment a fan ran onto the pitch before kick-off and bared his arse in the centre-circle.

It finished a goal apiece after extra-time and, after another 1-1 draw in the league for good measure, it was back to Birmingham for replay No.2, and some proper drama.

Alan Sunderland, Arsenal’s cup final hero a year earlier, scored after just 13 seconds, only for Kenny Dalglish to draw Liverpool level in second-half injury time. Thirty more minutes still couldn’t separate the teams, prompting the FA officials present to suggest an impromptu penalty shootout. Both clubs refused, and plumped for a fourth game three days later in Coventry – the only time Highfield Road hosted an FA Cup semi-final.

It was a momentous one.

Bob Paisley had warned his

22 May 2015 FourFourTwo.com

Liverpool team before each game to beware the late runs of “Osborne, the lad from Ipswich”. “You mean Brian Talbot, boss?” the players would reply.

“Aye,” said Paisley. And it was the man in question – Talbot, not Osborne – who would finally settle the tie in its 341st minute, capitalising on a mistake from ex-Arsenal star Ray Kennedy to send Terry Neill’s side to Wembley.

They probably wish he hadn’t bothered. While Liverpool rallied to win the league title two days later against Aston Villa, the leggy Gunners succumbed to West Ham beneath the Twin Towers. Their epic 70-game season came to an end nine days later with a miserable 5-0 drubbing in Middlesbrough, less than a week after they lost on penalties to Valencia in the European Cup Winners’ Cup final.

Cruel indeed.

Also in this month…

1903 A bunch of students get together to form Atletico Madrid.

Presumably the union bar was closed.

1958 A young, relatively hirsute Bobby Charlton makes his England debut against Scotland.

1993 Tony Adams drops League Cup Final match-winner Steve Morrow on the Wembley turf, breaking his arm.

There’s an old-school romance to the word ‘dugout’. In the past, many were literally just that: underground pitchside shelters, shovelled out with spades and then concreted – a fine protection from the elements. Cue tough men in thin shorts watching from rock-hard sitting surfaces.

Today, however, cosseted subs with Dr Dre headphones and 15-tog puffer jackets demand luxurious reclining arenas for their backsides. We’re in the era of the airline-style bucket seat, in which a footballer can imagine they’re flying first-class to the Seychelles rather than watching Aston Villa. Many, such as Manchester City’s thrones, are heated (although the opposition ones aren’t).

Inevitably, commercial opportunities arose. First, the football marketing department got involved, slapping sponsor names on the headrests. And now a company called Dugout Seats has filled an imaginary gap in the market, launching

Wiki says what?

Graeme Le Saux Wiki says:

“Le Saux has reported and presented occasionally for BBC Two’s business news programme Working Lunch.”

Le Saux says:

“True: Adrian Chiles presented it.

I was asked to talk about sports finance and players’ pensions; it went well, and they asked me to do some presenting. Doing stuff live, with the red light on, was more terrifying than playing – at least I sort of knew what I was doing in football!”

UPFRONT

CHAIRS PERFECT FOR THE FOOTBALL OFFICE? “Who’s this Doug , and why do they want him out?”

As per Stamford Bridge, Goodison and The Weston Homes Community Stadium

a range of office thrones that let the daydreaming sitter imagine they are, in fact, Lukas Jutkiewicz or Joel Robles.

“Our aim is to bring you the highest quality sports seating available on the UK market in every common colour for your favourite teams… your dugout seat affords a level of luxury unavailable elsewhere on the market,” they claim, and the website does indeed feature every hue for most of the 92 League sides. “They are not officially endorsed

by any clubs,” it adds, quietly looking down at its digital shoes. And we do mean ‘most’ – as of yet, there’s no catering to clubs who play in certain colours. That, or the mass ignoring of Mansfield, Oxford, Watford and their yellow-bellied friends is a coincidence (orange, too).

Costing £99.99, these are undoubtedly well-padded, slick, office swivel ‘sports’ seats. But do supporters actually want to recreate the sideline experience as they tap numbers into an Excel spreadsheet?

“They’re not bad, actually,” Burnley supporter Mike Morris tells us. “They work nicely in the claret and blue. I’d consider getting one, for sure, but my wife supports Liverpool and I’m not sure she’d allow such a bold colour scheme in the house.”

Cardiff City fan Owen Walsh is more scathing. “This is essentially just a blue

chair,” he notes, sternly and correctly.

“There are many blue office chairs on the market. I can’t see how buying this one suddenly whisks me into the Cardiff City Stadium. Last year they changed the dugout seats at Cardiff to some horrible red ones, so it doesn’t really work, anyway. And most fans hate those new airline seats. They sum up football going a bit mad.”

Chesterfield physio Jamie Hewitt, who has experienced the real thing, concurs. “I’ve sat in the new airline-style dugout seats and they’re comfy, but they’re a bit of a gimmick, really,” he says. “It was always a wooden bench back in my day – and nobody wants to be on the bench, however comfortable!

“As a physiotherapist, I’d say that it’s important to get your posture right if you have a desk job, so a good seat is worth investing in. But I wouldn’t buy one myself – I like to be up and about.”

Our verdict? We’ll sit on the fence.

Browse the range at dugoutseats.co.uk

THE BIG FOUR

This month: Cream suits and football style. The two aren’t necessarily related

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1 Men In White Suits

Football FAQ

•••••

•••••

Simon Hughes (Bantam , £18.99) Liverpool’s cream suits at the 1996 FA Cup Final came to exemplify the club’s Spice Boy era. By interviewing that team’s lesser lights – John Scales, Nick Tanner and manager Roy Evans – Hughes gets closer than most to what it meant to be a 1990s footballer.

Best quote Evans: “Football was changing and I chose to embrace it freely, rather than take a tight rein.”

Dave Thompson (Backbeat, £14.99) Intended for the American market, Football FAQ serves as an introduction to ‘soccer’. It lags in places – especially when listing successful managers’ achievements – but it offers real insight into the sport’s early days in the USA. Good section on football songs, too.

Best quote “People have been writing football songs for almost a century now.

People have even been buying them.”

3

4

The Stylish Life Football

The Unbeatables

•••••

As coffee-table books go, this is a pretty good one, packed with pictures of uncomfortable-looking footballers in various fashion faux-pas situations – Bayern Munich’s 1988 squad in braces is a particular hightlight – plus a poodle wearing a Bochum kit. Which is amazing.

Based on the 2014 animated fantasy film of the same name, The Unbeatables charts the fortunes of shy Amadeo attempting to overcome local bully Flash in a table football tour-de-force. One for the kids, yes, but it’s a fun, chatty read that expands on the film, with Amadeo on more action-packed adventures.

Best photo Peter O’Toole kicking a football on the set of Lawrence of Arabia.

Best quote “You’re not a demi-God; you’re a psychotic braggart, stupid.”

(Teneus, £29.95)

Richard O. Smith (Signal, £7.99)

•••••

FourFourTwo.com May 2015 23

Words Nick Moore

new thing in workplace chic: a spinny chair in the style of a posh modern substitutes’ seat. Luxury!

UPFRONT

AND NOW MEET THE DIRECTORMANAGER

Lincoln City’s Chris Moyses isn’t afraid either to cross the divide from the office to the pitch

DOMINIC RIORDAN CHAIRMAN, CENTRE-BACK, GOALSCORER

Words Alan Johnson; Portrait Ross Parry

If you think all clubs are run by faceless suits who wouldn’t know a football if one hit them in the face, you’ve not been to Ossett Albion The thought of a goalscoring chairman might evoke disturbing images of Mike Ashley powering home a header and ripping his shirt off in front of the Gallowgate End, but it’s a reality at eighth-tier Ossett Albion.

At 27, Dominic Riordan is younger and (mercifully) a good deal leaner than Ashley, which is probably for the best given he’s the Unicorns’ first-choice centre-half and has even bagged himself a couple of goals.

Believing his playing career had been cut short by a serious ankle injury – he has no cartilage in the joint and is in constant pain – the former Bradford Park Avenue defender was unanimously elected to take charge of the West Yorkshire club last August, agreeing to turn out as a player in an emergency.

“I was told by ankle specialists that I wouldn’t play again, but I’ve had amazing treatment from one of Ossett’s major sponsors. Hopefully I can keep playing – if I’m wanted by the management!” says Riordan, who is sporting a black eye. Boardroom bust-up or on-field altercation? FFT dares not ask.

24 May 2015 FourFourTwo.com

“My ball!

And pitch, and club...”

It was a dismal start to the Evo-Stik First Division North season that saw Riordan thrust into the starting line-up, but his inclusion immediately paid dividends with three wins in his first four appearances. “The more I played, the more I enjoyed it and wanted to be part of it regularly,” he tells FFT. “It also frees up a bit of the budget for other areas.”

Just don’t expect to see him at training any time soon. Riordan has managed only one session all season due to, y’know, running the club.

“I spend my days working at a nearby insolvency firm,” he says, “but this gives me a great opportunity to attract new

sponsors for the club. Our secretary carries out administrative matters, leaving me free to attract sponsorship and put together plans for the club.”

It was a goal in January that caught FFT’s eye – Riordan’s first of the season in a 3-1 victory over promotion hopefuls Scarborough Athletic. Naturally, “the three points were more important” than any headline-grabbing goals.

Unusual as it is to play with individuals whose wages are your responsibility, Riordan is just one of the lads – at least, between 2pm and 5pm each Saturday.

“There are occasional jokes from the lads about bonuses or fixing the odd light bulb when it goes out, but it’s all in good spirit,” he laughs.

Riordan’s situation isn’t unique, but he does find himself part of a pretty exclusive club. “I think there was an owner in the Chinese Super League who played himself,” he muses. “Didn’t the Doncaster chairman do it at one stage?”

Yes, Dominic: John Ryan did appear for one minute as a substitute in 2003, at the tender age of 52. And you thought the image of Ashley was bad enough.

When Lincoln City manager Gary Simpson was sent to tend his garden last November, there weren’t many candidates for the hot seat at the skint Imps.

Step forward director Chris Moyses (that’s Moyses and not Moyles, thankfully), who took the managerial reins to save Lincoln a bit of cash, and has stayed in the dugout since.

“I took the job because I was asked to – I never demanded it,” he tells FFT. “I’ve only ever offered to help.”

Moyses (above) soon led the Imps to seven consecutive home wins – a feat not achieved by the club since 1983. Not bad for a man whose only previous management experiences were Lincoln Moorlands Railway and local Sunday league side Ivy Tavern.

Moyses has held almost every position at the club except tea boy.

A chronological CV lists youth-team then first-team player, director, youth team coach and director of football.

Somewhere in the midst of that he made money digging gas mains, which raised funds to invest in the club following relegation from the Football League in 2011 (which was some feat, incidentally, as they were 12 points clear with 10 games left; they drew one and lost nine).

“There have been dark days,” he says. “It has been stressful.

Conference clubs don’t get the financial support that league clubs do for things such as the youth setup. That’s why I invested.”

It’s needed. Last month the Co-op bank called in a debt of £380,000; Lincoln have to sell property assets to meet the repayment within 10 weeks. There might be a few more dark days before things get better down at Sincil Bank.

CO M P E T I T I O N

Warsaw, here you come!

Answer our ridiculousl y easy question correc tly and you could watch th e UEFA Europa League Final in the Polish capi tal, l courtesy of Hankook Tires. What ar e you waiting for?

Would you like a couple of days in Warsaw?

Probably. Fancy going to the UEFA Europa League Final in the Polish capital? Of course you do. For free? In a heartbeat.

Well, thanks to the wonderful people at Hankook Tires, now’s your chance to be there in person, with a mate. FFT has teamed up with the tournament sponsors to offer flights for two people to Warsaw, one night’s accommodation, corporate hospitality and, of course, tickets for the game itself on May 27 at the imposing Stadion Narodowy.

It started way back in July, but we’re now at the business end of the UEFA Europa League season. With the quarter-finals coming up at the end of April, whoever reaches the

showpiece will be among Europe’s best. Last year’s final in Turin was such a tight affair, the teams could only be separated by penalties (inset, bottom right), so you’ll be guaranteed drama even if it’s a two-hour stalemate. And, let’s face it: there’s something wrong with you if you don’t like a penalty shootout.

Plus, for the first time this year, the winner will book their entry into next season’s UEFA Champions League. So you can see tomorrow’s best teams, today. Which is hipsterrific.

To be in with a chance of winning this once-in-a-lifetime prize, all you have to do is log on to fourfourtwo.com/WIN and answer the following question correctly…

Who won the 2013-14 UEFA Europa League?

A) Sevilla fc B) sl Benfica C) Liverpool fc

Hankook Tires, one of the world’s largest and fastest-growing tyre manufacturers, are official sponsors of the UEFA Europa League.

For more info visit www.hankooktire-eu.com Competition terms & conditions 1. To enter, visit www.fourfourtwo.com/WIN. 2. Entries close 11.59pm on May 5, 2015. 3. Prize(s) are as stated on page. 4. Entrants must be aged 18 or over. 5. No cash alternative. Prizes are non-transferable. 6. Only one entry per person. 7. The Promoter: Haymarket Media Group, Teddington Studios, Broom Road, Teddington, Middlesex, TW11 9BE, UK For full terms and conditions visit http://surveys.haymarket.com/s3/Terms-and-Conditions

UPFRONT

“WE’VE GOT KING KONG

ON OUR BACKS…” How Jeroom Snelders, one of Belgium’s most famous cartoonists, came to design Sunday League side VK Linden’s kit with a difference

It started with a beer

The world took notice

“I work in the same office building as Linden’s sponsor. One day after work I was in the pub and bumped into one of the executives, who coaches the team.

He told me he dreamed of having the club shirt designed by me. He reminded me sober the next day, but I love to do stuff like that, so I thought, ‘why not?’”

“I never expected this to get much attention outside our office. Once the local media got a whiff of it, the story went viral. Soon the shirts were all over the world, from Brazil to Denmark to Greece. One English shirt collector contacted me, wanting to buy one.

Perhaps Linden should start auctioning off their kit? It could make a fortune!”

There are no substantial sums of money involved “They’re a non-league team, who are dealing in pocket money, but I couldn’t care less. It’s all about the experience.

I’d love to design more football kits, actually. If Real Madrid come knocking on my door, I’d happily listen to them, but I would have to raise my fee!”

Words James Robinson

Interview Bart Cop

The shirts scare other teams “The first time Linden were due to wear it, they didn’t even get to christen the shirts in a Sunday League swamp because the opposition didn’t show up.

My monsters must have scared them off! I just hope this trend doesn’t continue – I want to see my superhero scoring goals soon.”

Hail King Kong “For the back, I took the whole fantasy monster theme a bit further and had King Kong fighting off a giant snake.

Why not, eh? Pretty unusual for a footie kit, I admit, but the guys loved it the moment they saw it. I only needed about two days to finish it. It took way longer to get the shirts actually made!”

...and the Kraken “I just sat down, let my imagination run wild and started drawing on my computer. I’m a sucker for superheroes and fantasy stuff. Soon, I had a superhero clashing with the Kraken and a T-Rex. I added some UFOs and that was the front side of the shirt.”

“WHAT ARE YOU WEARING?” Jeroom’s cartoons are far from the only weird stuff found on kits

26 May 2015 FourFourTwo.com

Rosario Central

Colorado Caribous

La Hoya Lorca

Sometimes football kits are too special to see the light of day.

Case in point: one flamboyant effort from Argentines Rosario Central, a snazzy dedication to lifelong fan and comedian Alberto Olmedo. Fans basked in its Charlie Chaplin-esque glory.

If you’re only going to spend one season in NASL, you’d better make sure you stand out. How? Put tassels on your beige kit and a collar wide enough to star in a John Wayne film. fi lm. They finished finished bottom, as you would in this monstrosity.

Finding inspiration in their surroundings, La Hoya Lorca paid tribute to Murcia’s title as ‘Spain’s vegetable garden’ with this broccoli-based strip.

What better way to bring five-a-day fi ve-a-day chic to the footballing masses?

KEEP YOUR BOOTS IN TOP CONDITION WITH THE BOOT BUDDY

Order your boot buddy now at thebootbuddy.co.uk The Boot Buddy instagram.com/thebootbuddy twitter.com/TheBootBuddy info@thebootbuddy.co.uk

UPFRONT

TITIKI-WHACKA IIKI-WHACKA K Forget the intricate passing webs – no team in Europe has scored more goals from outside the box in the past five seasons than Barcelona. FFT investigates who else likes a long-distance punt

% OF GOALS SCORED FROM OUTSIDE THE BOX SINCE 2010-11

Barcelona score lots, which is why they come out on top. But who ping the most long-rangers, proportionally? Clue: it’s not Barça. And yes, that says Blackpool.

Team

GOALS SCORED FROM DISTANCE SINCE 2010-11

Aww, just look at their faces – Suarez, Neymar and Messi are happy because they’ve pinged more long-range goals than anyone else. Tiki-taka is dead!

Long live tiki-whacka!

Team

Goals

Barcelona

69

Real Madrid

68

Tottenham Hotspur

64

Manchester City

64

Juventus

62

Fiorentina

59

Milan

53

Liverpool

50

Manchester United

49

Napoli

47

Montpellier

46

Everton

46

Chelsea

45

Lyon

45

Rennes

44

Hoffenheim

43

Lille

43

Bayern Munich

43

Player

Borussia Monchengladbach

42

Christian Eriksen (Tottenham)

5

Newcastle United

42

Alexandre Lacazette (Lyon)

4

Bayer Leverkusen

41

Zlatko Junuzovic (Bremen)

4

Marseille

40

Hakan Calhanoglu (Leverkusen) 4

Wolfsburg

40

Lionel Messi (Barcelona)

28 May 2015 FourFourTwo.com

GOALS FROM OUTSIDE THE BOX IN 2014-15 Goals (outside box)

4

% Long range

Pescara

37%

Nancy

27%

Novara

26%

Livorno

26%

Queens Park Rangers

23%

Fiorentina

23%

Tottenham Hotspur

22%

Nuremberg

22%

Kaiserslautern

22%

Verona

22%

Paderborn

22%

Palermo

21%

Leicester City

21%

Rennes

21%

Brescia

21%

Wigan Athletic

20%

Blackpool

20%

Eibar

20%

Montpellier

20%

Barcelona

14%

UPFRONT

WHICH LEAGUE LOVES A SHOT FROM DISTANCE IN 2014-15?

Serie A has long held the reputation as the go-to place for defensive excellence, and this season is no different. Tactically astute, Italian sides’ commitment to

99

defensive shape forces opponents into more long-range shots (2,080) than any other major European league. They score more goals from outside the box,

84

too: 10 more than Premier League sides and 38 more than La Liga. Proportionally, however, it’s the Bundesliga that is home to the howitzer. German teams

Goals from outside the box

109

% shots from outside the box that result in goals

hit the target from distance more often than any other league. More of these also find the net. So that’s why the league badge has a fella kicking a ball...

91

71

5.0% 5.2% 4.8% 3.6% 3.9% 36.2% 38.0% 34.7% 36.6% 35.6% % shots from outside the box that are on target

LOOK WHO’S IN ON THE ACTION...

ARTUR BORUC ON LETTING IN A GOAL FROM A FELLOW KEEPER

“This is my job and I should protect those kind of situations and, in the end, I didn’t do anything. That [Asmir Begovic goal] cost us two points and it’s hard for the lads because they put in a lot of effort and probably deserved three points. What can I say?

I can promise I will get those two points back.”

TIM HOWARD ON SCORING PAST ANOTHER KEEPER

“It was cruel. You saw all night that the defenders and keepers couldn’t believe the balls [Merseyside was buffeted by gale-force winds that evening], and at the back, one wrong step and it can be a nightmare. For our goal, I was disappointed from a goalkeepers’ union standpoint. You never want to see that happen. It’s not nice – it’s embarrassing. I felt for Adam [Bogdan]. But you have to move on from it.”

TIM HOWARD n ert Ev on 1-2 Bolto January 4, 2012

ARTUR BORU C Stoke 1-1 Sout hampton November 2, 2013

UPFRONT

AT THE END OF THE DAY GRAEME SOUNESS

“Am I embarrassed about some of the tackles I made? Yes. But I wasn’t dirty” Liverpool’s former midfield midfield enforcer talks confrontation, camaraderie and cups – lots of them I knew I’d made it as a player the day I left Liverpool. There was this culture where we’d run around every week and someone would say, without fail: “You think you’re a f***ing good team?

You’re not as good as the teams we’ve had in the past.” There was always a feeling that they wanted you to feel good because you’d won a few trophies, but that there was always someone better. When you leave and you reflect on what you’ve won, you say to yourself: “We must have been pretty good.”

Champs in ’84 after “nobody ” gave us a chance

I didn’t have a hero growing up, but there was George Best. He was so handsome, stylish and glamorous as a young man, and the way he played football got you on the edge of your seat. He was a dribbler. It was exciting.

I was happiest when I was winning trophies every year, and doing something that secretly you would do for nothing, or even pay someone to do.

Those would be the times at Liverpool.

People see the game differently abroad. I went because the money was better, but in 1984 our culture wasn’t the most professional, so going to Italy, where they were all consummate pros, taught me a great deal.

Football has never really broken my heart. I’ve won 26 trophies and been involved since the age of 15 until right now, in one profession or another.

Football has been very kind to me; it has never broken my heart and it never will.

As a manager it’s part of your job to get sacked – you accept that, the minute you decide to become one – so they weren’t lows for me.

Interview Joe Brewin

I still see Galatasaray fans everywhere.

I go to Turkey a couple of times a year and love it – I’ve got some great friends out there. When I went there, I’d just had open heart surgery. One of the directors at Fenerbahce said: “What are Galatasaray doing, signing a cripple?”

Nine months later we won the Turkish Cup in their stadium. I’ve got this big flag, the stand is empty and I can see

Best: handsome, stylish, glamorous

30 May 2015 FourFourTwo.com

You don’t get to 60 and not have regrets. Do they cause me sleepless nights? No. Am I embarrassed about some of the tackles I made? Yes. In my defence, they were tackles in retaliation for other things that had gone on. I was not a dirty player.

Chop Souey

the guy’s face in the directors’ box.

So I stuck it in the pitch. I thought, “I’ll show you who’s a cripple.”

you want to be playing every other day, not every other fortnight.

To me, football is the most wonderful period in a young man’s life. You’re part of a group: you win together, you lose together. The camaraderie is fantastic, and the higher you go, the more severe the dressing room is in its humour.

My proudest moment was winning the European Cup against Roma in 1984, after nobody gave us a chance. I was captain and scored in the shootout. It was the last time I ever kicked a ball for Liverpool.

Footballers shouldn’t need rests.

Managers who talk about it are planting a seed that the player is tired.

I personally never felt tired. Ever. I know strikers have different demands on their body, but I only ever felt tired psychologically, maybe after losing a couple of games. When you’re winning games you’re looking forward because

Captaining Liverpool didn’t register at the time – it’s only after you’re finished with it, because being captain is really only a name. You haven’t got a bigger say; people don’t listen to you any more than usual. It’s just an armband, and in terms of the group, nothing changed.

Although you do get to go up the stairs first to get the cup...

The one thing I couldn’t live without is my family. I hope that I live long enough to see my children all settled as adults.

The one thing I would change about football is making it 10-a-side. It’d be more open – more goals, more room for better players to express themselves.

I can’t remember offering to fight Kieron Dyer and Lee Bowyer [Dyer claims Souness said he’d fight them both after their on-field bust-up in 2005]. I must have been on the brain pills that day.

Graeme Souness was speaking on behalf of Capital One, the credit card company and sponsors of the League Cup

UPFRONT Stage fright with Pulis

“When I thought of doing a show about a computer game, my wife said, ‘It’s far too niche’, but I’m two years in and doing the Leicester Square Theatre now.

It has totally validated all the time I wasted on the game! I’ve performed it at football clubs – Blyth Spartans, then Huddersfield, Tranmere and Wimbledon – and I did it for the Football Manager guys, which was nervy, given the title, but they’re on board. It’s my life now.

I even went to the League Manager Awards and took a p*ss next to Tony Pulis. That was quite impressive.”

MEET BLYTH SPARTANS’ GAFFER OF 50 YEARS (NO, REALLY) Comedian Tony Jameson talks us through his popular show Football Manager Ruined My Life. Euro glory at Croft Park, anyone?

YOU ASKING?

“I was disappointed with the reactions – it turns out people don’t really like being messaged randomly about how good they were as a ‘regen’ on Football Manager. My captain, Derek Reynolds, was a legend: he came through the youth team to become one of the best centre-backs in the world. He was also some bloke on Facebook. I said, ‘You won the Champions League!’ and he said, ‘Er, what are you on about?’ I sent his list of “O Cameroon, achievements and he Thou Cradle of told me, ‘I think you’ve our Fathers...” got the wrong fella’.”

“I did some sums and worked out that I’ve spent two-and-a-half years of my life playing Football Manager about three hours a day for 20 years. I’ve done the weird stuff: standing outside my bedroom while serving a touchline ban, learning the Cameroon national anthem – just the first few lines; I’m not mental – and I once snuck out of a wedding to finish off transfer deadline day. I’ve heard some great stories. Some fellas told me they used to manage Belgian teams so for their lads’ holiday they visited the grounds and bought the shirts.”

Anti-social media

Derek the Great

“I’ve been managing Blyth Spartans for 50 years. I’m about 85 now. So for a follow-up show, I tried to meet the boys who had won me the Champions League. Football Manager generates new players after a while, so I searched

Never meet your heroes

“A couple of guys got into it, although I ended up with three Johnny Wilsons.

Ideally I wanted to get the team together and play a match against the actual Blyth Spartans, to see if I can be a real manager. But I’ve been through a lot with these guys, and obviously the random people won’t match up. I’d be saying, ‘You won the Champions League!

Come on, man, stop being rubbish!’

Although it would be good to hear the fans chanting: ‘Three Johnny Wilsons, there’s only three Johnny Wilsons…’”

Football Manager Ruined My Life is at the Leicester Square Theatre, April 13-18

FRANCIS BENALI

MARK WARBURTON

Whowillbethe PremierLeague’s four qualifiersforthe ChampionsLeague?

“Chelsea and Manchester City have the top two sewn up, but I’ve got to say Saints and after that, who cares?!

I’ll say Manchester United.”

“I think it will almost be a clean sweep for London – Chelsea, Arsenal and Spurs, joined by Man City. Not necessarily in that order.”

“Man United are my team so I’ve got to have them in there. Then Chelsea, Manchester City and Arsenal. Fingers crossed.”

“I can’t see past Chelsea, Man City, Arsenal and Man United. It’s going to be tight, though, so don’t discount Liverpool or Spurs either.”

Theuniversityboat raceis inApril.Will youbewatchingit?

“I know what those guys go through and it’s tough. But I love it when a boat sinks or someone jumps in!”

“I love it. It signals the start of the sporting summer.

It’s a great English tradition – I love what it stands for.”

“I can’t say I will. I haven’t been in many dressing rooms that have been keen to have it on at half-time.”

“I’m not sure. When is it?

I might be busy that day.”

Saints legend

Brentford boss

JAMIE CURETON

Experienced Dagenham goal-getter

Interview Si Hawkins

Deadline day or a wedding?

for people with the same name. But it’s been tricky. A Milos Djordjevic was the most difficult to track down. Ray de Boer wasn’t too hard, but his Facebook profile picture was of what I presume was his genitalia. I didn’t get in touch with him.”

STEVE WALSH

Ex-Foxes defender and author

FourFourTwo.com May 2015 31

Interviews Richard Edwards

Where football folk ponder the issues of the day

UPFRONT

SAMURAI FOOTBALL What’s the best way to finesse the gameplay for a historical fantasy cut-’em-up app?

The gore is “child-friendly”

“You lying sods – don’t bother wearing trousers, you said”

Downtown Tokyo, and an otherwise normal-looking small-sided football pitch is hosting the oddest five-a-side tournament ever. Men sporting Viking helmets, shields and axes tackle chaps in gladiator capes, while grasping for tools tossed in by The Emperor. Is this what would-be FIFA president David Ginola had in mind for the World Cup? No – it’s a live-action test run for an even loopier version, now available as an app on iPhone or iPad. Striker Arena is

THE 110% FOOTBALL QUIZ 1

What did Barcelona goalkeeper Antoni Ramallets do against Benfica in 1961 that nobody has repeated in a European Cup or Champions League final since?

9

Leicester City racked up 102 points last season; who were the last team before them to reach the 100-point mark in the Championship?

Q9: Kasper gets his dad’s star jump all wrong

10

Which retired Italian footballer, formerly of the Premier League, is the only player to have been sent off in the World Cup on his birthday?

2

Two former Manchester United goalkeepers were nominated twice for Best Save in the Premier League’s ‘20 Seasons’ awards, annnounced in 2012. Who?

3

Q12: Tim knows

Name the six players to have won 100 or more caps for the Republic of Ireland.

4

7

In what country’s top division would you find the teams Shonan Bellmare, Urawa Red Diamonds and Vissel Kobe?

5

What connection do the University of Greenwich have to the Championship?

6

Who scored Brazil’s goal in their 7-1 defeat to Germany?

32 May 2015 FourFourTwo.com

True or false: Germany (or West Germany) have always reached the last eight of a World Cup that they’ve entered.

Q3: Banging the drum for the Boys in Green

8

Which Serie A club are nicknamed The Little Zebras?

11

What is the biggest margin of victory in a World Cup third-place play-off, and what was the score?

12

Fill in the gap: David O’Leary, Martin O’Neill, __________, Alex McLeish, Paul Lambert, Tim Sherwood.

13

Which country’s clubs have won the European Cup or Champions League in the most consecutive seasons (i.e. including different clubs from the same league)?

UPFRONT

VIKINGS!!!

Dress up and recreate the mayhem, of course

Q14: It wasn’t 7-1, as Brazil weren’t involved

14

Both semi-finals in the 1930 World Cup ended with the same scoreline. Was it 2-1, 4-1 or 6-1?

15

“Who’s marking the snow monster?”

18 Name the four players below who have scored a penalty in a European Cup or Champions League final (not including shootouts).

Which team kept the first clean sheet in a World Cup match?

16

True or false: Yeovil Town’s 2004 single Yeovil True was a Top 40 hit.

Q17: Sorry, Paolo

17

What do Paolo Di Canio and Roberto Di Matteo have in common with Alan Curbishley & Paul Hart?

A

B

C

D

Yes, there is som e semblance of football in all thi s

Wizcorp’s Spanish developer Carlos Vallve planned a more, er, normal game – but the backer pulled out. Enter Francois-Xavier Meglioli (aka ‘FX’), a French designer obsessed with Vikings, and Spanish artist Julian Cabrera, who really fancied creating some square-headed footballers. No longer having a client calling the shots, they binned the rulebook. “We stuck to indoor soccer,” says Korving, “and that opened the doors to ‘why would we care about offside? Or corners, or penalties? Let’s just One way of make this brutal.’” shielding Snow monsters aside, the defence Korving insists the game’s attraction is its tablet-friendliness, as most iPad football games are “mediocre”.

Two-player games are especially tricky – “your fingers get

19

Only two players have won both the Golden Boot and Golden Ball at the same World Cup. Can you name them?

20

Which team was relegated from the Football League in 2013-14 despite spending less than an hour of the entire season in the drop zone?

crossed,” he says – but after much fiddling, they created a nifty turn-based system – like chess, but frantic. Think Subbuteo for psychopaths.

They also ran that live-action test of the gameplay, of course. The result?

“We won!” says Strohmann, whose victorious Vikings relished one power-up tool in particular. “We used a plastic hammer to hit people on the head.”

Wizcorp are currently hiring, according to their website, and you do wonder what sort of applicants they’ll attract.

“We’ll only do interviews with people dressed as Vikings,” Korving grins.

“Or Gladiators. Or Samurai.”

Turns out they do love rules after all.

Striker Arena is available on the App Store

25

“It looks like Jamie Carragher has cramp in both groins.” Which TV commentator said this during the 2005 Champions League Final between Liverpool and Milan?

Turn to p39 for answers

21

Which World Cup was the last to feature fewer than three goals in the third-place play-off?

22

Who sold Thibaut Courtois to Chelsea in 2011?

23

What have Altrincham done no fewer than 16 times, more than any other non-league club?

24

Name the five clubs who have won the Scottish top flight most recently.

Q22: Courtois in action for Chelsea – but which team sent him there?

FourFourTwo.com May 2015 33

Words Si Hawkins

a bonkers, bloody and rule-free football game that’s as cute as a Labrador puppy but as vicious as a Rottweiler.

“The level of gore is quite child-friendly, in a weird kind of way,” muses producer Ron Korving of Wizcorp, the Japan-based company behind the carnage. “It’s a 12+ game. If it was realistic, with all that blood coming from human characters, I don’t think we’d get away with it.”

Striker Arena takes place on a mythical planet where the warring Gladiator, Samurai and Viking tribes resolve their beefs via a football tournament, held once every 10 years. There’s even a Karate Kid-style ‘Story’ mode, where your novice striker wanders the land, honing his football and fighting skills.

Wizcorp’s Christian Strohmann, who penned much of that story, is especially proud of ‘The Frozen Lands, Challenge 10’ in which the Viking king appeases the gods by annihilating his own subjects.

“You have to kill them with super-shots,” he hums. “It’s a hell of a lot of fun!”

Feedback from FFT’s own research panel ranges from “It’s so cute!” to “Haha, look at the little guy impaling himself” to “Ooh, there’s a lot of blood on the floor now”. Fun for all the family.

Or you can just launch straight into the five-a-side, with its bewildering tricks, weapons and traps, including awkward on-pitch inconveniences such as spikes and snow monsters. Take that, ‘wet Wednesday night in Stoke’.

Surprisingly, Striker Arena’s roots are actually quite traditional.

UPFRONT

ASK A SILLY QUESTION The Gluhwein-loving former midfielder talks about sunburn, ‘Sicknote’ and the speaking clock

Hi Darren. Your name is an anagram of “tanned ’nad error”.

Have you ever accidentally sunburned your testicles?

I’m happy to say I haven’t. I’ve had some pretty bad sunburn over the years, though. The worst was when I was in Dallas. I was 17. I sat by the pool all day and made the basic English error of not bothering with any lotion. I was burned to a crisp.

Oof. Back in those innocent days, would you have gone on a blind date with the lady who did the voice of the speaking clock?

Her voice was fine, but I’d like to see who I was going on a date with first. Blind dates weren’t really for me. It’s not worth the risk, is it?

True. Now, considering you played more than 500 games, the ‘Sicknote’ thing must have galled.

Would you like to punch keeper Andy Gosney for giving it to you?

Football’s all about fun, so I wouldn’t smack Andy. It’s just unfortunate the media picked up on it three or four years later. It was when I was an integral part of teams, but was getting injured, that it stuck. It became a big deal around Euro 96.

Has the nickname made it difficult for you to call in sick for work?

It has! I used to get migraines, and when you have one of those, you can’t do anything. You’ve got to lie in the dark. But if I have to cancel something, I wonder: ‘Jesus, what are they going to think of me?’

When was the last time you had a massive vomit?

I came close last week, actually. I went skiing with some friends and we’d been hitting the Gluhwein [Austrian mulle d wine, very popular on the slopes] – at lunch, dinner, in the evening... I was hammered. I was on the couch all of the next day. At dinner, I ate two mouthfuls and felt it coming back up.. up But luckily it passed.

our to taste What’s the worst flav up? k on the way bac worst. A few Gluhwein is probably the skiing, I had a e wer we en years ago wh ins and it came couple of morning Gluhwe over the snow. all – e her ryw back out eve loved it. nds It was disgraceful. My frie d: ‘The ete twe ly ent rec Rotters. You ld smells of crazy bear in Beaconsfie animal on the piss’. Was there a wild kinghamshire? loose around leafy Buc

“When I was 17, I sat by the pool all day with no lo tion

on. I was burned to a crisp”

It’s a pub and restaurant – a very nice restaurant, actually, but that day it smelt terrible. Perhaps somebody had thrown up. The bar can get a bit lively, and someone may have overdone it.

Enough talk of chundering. Do you think the illusionist Derren Brown, with his odd name, is a traitor to Darrens everywhere?

It’s pretty unusual, but I don’t hold it against him. Maybe there was a mix up at the registration? I don’t know much about Derren – I’ve not watched his show.

If you had to be called Dirren, Dorren or Durren, which would you go for?

Dorren. Dorren Anderton. It’s the most normal-sounding.

Do you own any collectable Dorren Anderton figurines?

Yes. I suspect my mum has a load in a box somewhere, along with the scrapbooks. They were quite a good likeness, so I can’t really complain.

I haven’t got one perched on my desk, though.

Do you own any other figurines?

Maybe one of a porcelain Spaniel?

I’m not into figurines, generally.

I like to keep the house quite sparse, really – lots of neutral colours, nothing too fancy.

Tasteful. Were footballers’ legs longer in the ’90s?

Good question. They did seem to be, didn’t they? But I don’t think they actually were. It was an illusion, because of the shorts. I didn’t like the short shorts – I’d rather have played in the modern ones.

Finally: have you ever eaten paper?

I’ve never eaten it, but I used to chew it a lot to make ammunition for a peashooter in school. Once I hit the teacher – great days.

Brilliant. Thanks, Dorren!

No problem.

Interview Nick Moore

Darren ‘Lobster’ Anderton

UPFRONT

WIND CHIMES ABOVE THE LOO? SALT ON YOUR KNEE?!

Football is increasingly looking to feng shui to harmonise the dressing room. Paul Darby, author of The Feng Shui Doctor, explains how

TORTOISE PICTURE

Symbolises resilience, strength and power

WIND CHIMES

Squash down the negative energy.

Hang up kit 24 hours before the game so it soaks up the positive energy

NORTH

MONKEY STATUE

WEST

Water element (showers or an ice bath) produces quick-flowing energy, like an isotonic drink

Originator of good ideas and a problem solver

Symbolises new beginnings: young players or someone recently returned from injury should change here

SEA SALT AND RICE

Sprinkle it in the corner to stimulate positive energy, making it flow around the room

EAST

Dragon statue for power and good luck

GREEN PLANT Symbolises growth of energy

SOUTH

Words Crispin Andrews; Illustrations David Semple

Keepers, with bright jerseys, should change here. Heating and lighting here raise positive energy

ASK PAUL! FOOTBALL’S PROBLEMS SOLVED DEAR PAUL How do I stay fit for the rest of the season? Daniel, Liverpool Put a bright red pashmina over the injury to stimulate healing. Salt will stop the injury re-occurring, so sprinkle some on your thigh as well as your fish and chips.

36 May 2015 FourFourTwo.com

DEAR PAUL How do I keep my team in the Bundesliga? Jurgen, Dortmund During training, get your players to dress like your mascot, Emma the Bee. Bees stimulate positive energy and work well together.

DEAR PAUL How do I get my dream move? Morgan, Southampton Put musical instruments in the western part of your house – the area for new beginnings. Music gets the positive energy moving, so try anything that signifies music – even a bottle of Bell’s whisky. Keep the car keys in another part of the house, though.

DEAR PAUL How can I ensure I have a nice birthday? Yaya, Manchester You were born in 1983, the year of the pig. Pigs tend to blame everyone else when things go wrong. White is a good colour to lift your spirits, so buy yourself a nice, new, white Ferrari.

DEAR PAUL How do I get my team back into the Scottish Premiership?

Stuart, Glasgow Your problem is money, not talent. Frogs are good for attracting abundance. Set up a French restaurant in the south-east corner of the stadium.

UPFRONT

[ Job centre ]

THEE CLUB TV PRESENTER The job Presenter of Palace TV Name Chris Grierson Age 31

You’re a Crystal Palace fan. What’s it like to work with your heroes?

Quite surreal. I’m lucky, though, because all of the Palace players are genuinely really nice. There are no stars or prima donnas, and the team spirit and camaraderie is brilliant. I still find it weird being able to walk along the touchline at Selhurst Park or go inside the dressing rooms. I’m not sure that will ever truly sink in.

Describe your typical day.

My main job is interviewing. We’ll do a few players through the week, asking their thoughts on the season or an upcoming or previous opponent. There’ll also be some more general chats, and we try and film a bit of action at the training ground too.

I do a video of the team news on a matchday about an hour before kick-off, which is shown

You play the hapless defender in skills videos with Yannick Bolasie and Wilfried Zaha. Ever been tempted to put in a meaty challenge?

I’ve considered it, but I’m not sure the club would be too happy. I actually intercepted one of Yannick’s flicks with my chest and played the ball away, but my editor cut it out before the final take.

I was gutted. It’s brilliant watching the team train. You see some jaw-dropping stuff. Adlene Guedioura scored an overhead kick a few weeks back and never shut up about it!

Who loves the camera the most?

Brede Hangeland [left] is really open and amenable. He told me that he always stops off for coffee at Brixton market on his way to training, which shows how down-to-earth he is. Marouane Chamakh is a nightmare: he keeps disappearing when I try to interview him.

Any good anecdotes?

Neil Warnock was on his phone an awful lot. I once saw him trip over a fence while he was chatting to someone. His sunglasses came flying off. I don’t think he ever realised that I’d seen him – he probably still thinks he got away with it to this day.

Fan vs (Caretaker) Manager Millwall

Harry Baker Electrician Neil Harris Lions legend, in charge to the end of the sesaon

Q: What was Millwall’s name when they were founded in 1885 by workers at Morton’s Jam Factory?

HB: I think it was Millwall Rovers. ✓ NH: Er... let me think... I don’t know. The Dockers or something? ✗

1-0 Fan

Q: What did the FA give each Millwall player for going 59 league games unbeaten in 1964-67?

HB: A medal? ✗ NH: Jeez, do these get easier? A video of the ’66 World Cup Final. ✗ [Correct answer: a gold cigarette lighter]

1-0 Fan

Q: Who was sacked as Millwall manager in 2005 after just 36 days, without having taken charge in a competitive match?

HB: Steve Claridge. ✓ NH: Ah, Stevie Claridge! ✓

2-1 Fan

Q: What was significant about Millwall’s league game against Fulham in January 1974?

HB: Did it put us top of the league? ✗ NH: First game... not to kick off on a Saturday?

No – the first game played on a Sunday. ✓

Q: Who is the only person since 1980 to win Millwall’s Player of the Year twice?

HB: Tony Cascarino? ✗ NH: I had a first and a second if that counts.

I’ll go for Alex Rae. ✗ [Correct answer: Darren Ward, in 2004 and 2005]

2-2

2-2 Draw!

FourFourTwo.com May 2015 37

Interviews Huw Davies

ONE MONTH ONLY!

around the ground. After the game, I’ll chat to Alan Pardew and a couple of players to see what they made of things.

Interview Greg Lea; Portrait Ian Tuttle

What’s it like being the first-ever face of Palace TV? It’s great. I’ve been an actor for 10 years, but lately I hadn’t been getting the type of role that I wanted, so I decided to try something a little bit different. I’m pretty fortunate: my two hobbies are acting and football and this job perfectly combines the two.

UPFRONT

LETTERS AUF WIEDERSEHEN, PEP

I’ve just finished reading your fascinating Players’ Poll [FFT 250], which gives great insight into what the modern player really thinks about the beautiful game.

The part that really got me thinking was the players’ answers regarding their ideal manager, with 48 per cent saying Jose Mourinho would be their first choice. Now, we all know the guy is a winner, a motivator and a father figure to his players who worship him, but I found that percentage staggering!

Pep Guardiola received 31 per cent of the vote, which I thought was very low, considering his magical work at Barcelona. He produced the best team I’ve ever seen and nurtured the likes of Victor Valdes, Messi and Pedro.

His tactical work is outstanding and constantly ahead of trends in football.

I guess it goes to show that players admire a manager who pits the world against him and his team every week.

Very boring. It’s Pep for me, all day long – he pulls off the roll-neck jumper much better, too!

Oh, and can you name and shame the one per cent who voted for Hodgson? Please?!

Mark Anderson, Suffolk Good try, Mark, but the 123 players polled all have to remain anonymous. Sorry!

LEFT BACKS LEFT BEHIND NO LONGER

After reading your brilliant article on full-backs [FFT 249], I can only say it filled me with pure joy.

Let me explain why.

I still remember the day of my first ever 11-a-side Sunday League game. My manager was discussing tactics. “You’re playing left-back, lad,”

38 May 2015 FourFourTwo.com

mail FourFourTwo, Teddington Studios, Broom Road, Teddington, TW11 9BE Twitter @FourFourTwo Facebook FourFourTwo

Lee Probert, man of the

he told me. At the time, I was distraught. Left-back!

The only recognition came from being “left-back in the changing room”.

Now, though, I have been playing as a left-back for years, up to academy level, and it really is the hardest position to play. The required stamina is unbelievable. The line “Once, a full-back couldn’t play anywhere else; now they can play everywhere” rings especially true as I’ve been used at centre-back, right wing and even as an attacking midfielder.

We’re at the centre of tactical innovation, too.

This is why most teams playing with a back three fail, and why Bayern Munich were so successful with Pep Guardiola’s wide overload system.

So, thank you FourFourTwo for giving us hard-working full-backs the recognition that we deserve!

Harry Smith, Birmingham

REFEREES: SPEAK UP TO GET HEARD

“It’s OK, Mark from Suffolk. I don’t need people to like me”

I work at the University of Bath, where the referee Lee Probert trains. Recently, he gave a lecture about the job and was extremely illuminating, going into tremendous detail on the lifestyle and routine of a top-level referee. He was engaging, informative and comprehensive, as well as being self-deprecating.

The level of commitment and training required is truly remarkable – similar, it seems, to an Olympic athlete. This goes largely unnoticed, especially as the game continues to speed up.

Probert also showed video clips of the same incidents, shown from different angles. One angle would make a tackle look like a 50-50;

★ STAR LETTER Will we see a day where there is an open market for referees to move across Europe, and leagues recruit the best refs available? It would essentially be a referee transfer market.

It would be the Premier League or the FA’s responsibility to find the best officials possible. They’d be more accountable for refereeing performances

email 442letters@haymarket.com

because, well, they’d done the recruiting!

Imagine Spain’s Alberto Undiano

people

the second, a two-footed lunge; and the third showed them missing their opponent entirely.

It opened my eyes to how incredibly difficult the job is, to the extent that I’m finding comments by managers and pundits alike increasingly unpleasant.

Pulling apart decisions from innumerable camera angles is hardly fair.

Wouldn’t it be great if more referees could do this, as opposed to the current trial-by-media?

Daniel Graves, via email

BAN THE BRITISH BLACKOUT!

It’s not often that I feel compelled to send a letter to any magazine, but this is one of those rare occasions.

With all the talk of the new £5 billion Premier League TV deal, and collective rights soon to be agreed in Spain, there’s one TV broadcasting issue that seems to have been neglected somewhat. I’m talking about the window between 2.45pm and 5.15pm, during which live football cannot be shown legally on UK TV. In February, the derby between Atletico and Real Madrid – a re-run of the 2014 Champions League Final,

Star letter & Spine Line prizes courtesy of

WIN!

Premier Mallenco gracing the Prem League. It would raise the League profile and, with profession’s profi le and 50 Adidas f luck, improve a little bit of luck r e Leath standards. For too long, they’ve been the fall guys, guys but ultimately it’s a tough job.

A season of officials moving around different leagues would be an

experiment worth looking at for Europe’s top leagues, with different approaches implemented and tweaked to highlight what’s done well and badly.

And why not an all-out open market to top it, culminating in a deadline-day swoop for a referee? Jim White would be in his element!

Grant McNeil, via email

UPFRONT

TWEETS OF THE MONTH REAL PLAYERS Mikael Forssell

@MikaelForssell Now I’ve seen it all: this is taking Mario Kart to another level. My teammates Danny and Selim having a battle in the shower

Jamie Carragher

@Carra23 40 goals now for Messi 6 seasons running!!

Maybe that’s why his penalty misses are forgiven more than mine at the World Cup!!!

Messi comes to terms with the fact that he’s only human

“A transfer market for referees would raise their profile and improve standards” no less – kicked off at 3pm GMT. It had to be shown at 5.15pm on Sky, delayed due to these archaic laws.

This came after UK viewers missed the first 13 minutes of the season’s first Clasico, including Neymar’s opener, because of the same issue.

Don’t get me wrong – I understand the rules are there to protect domestic attendances. But surely for European games the law can be relaxed, can’t it?

Mark Salkeld, via email

PITCH INVASION FURORE HIGHLIGHTS HYPOCRISY

I couldn’t believe the reaction to Aston Villa supporters running onto the pitch after their FA Cup quarter-final win over West Bromwich Albion.

The fans were widely condemned. At first they were subjected to the same level of criticism as the Baggies fans who ripped up Villa Park’s seats to throw at men, women and children in the stand below them – a much more violent, dangerous act – and then the Villa fans were singled out as the real... well, villains.

If you think their pitch invasion that day was stupid and a threat to players’ safety, I can understand that.

But many people took this stance while, at the same, calling pitch invasions from fans of non-league or lower-league clubs “wonderful scenes”, “great to see” and more along those lines. Even the BBC did this: they reported the Villa fracas with the headline ‘Football returns to the dark ages’, but back in November, when Warrington shocked Exeter City, the same Match of the Day account tweeted: “There’s no pitch invasion like an FA Cup pitch invasion.”

Sure, Villa are a bigger team than Warrington (just), but their fans were deliriously happy after a horrible few years. A pitch invasion may seem over the top, but who are we to decide what merits one? Does Warrington’s joy matter more? Is their pitch invasion less dangerous to players? All I ask for is consistency.

Gavin Westley, via email

PLAYERS ARE PEOPLE, TOO...

Reading the brilliant interview with the mind-boggling Leo Messi [FFT 250], something occurred to me as he talked about his daily routine. These guys are humans.

Though his skills may be from a different planet, he himself isn’t. He suffers the same feelings we do, so why do we expect any different? When Cristiano Ronaldo’s form dipped in early 2015, it was after he’d spilt up with his girlfriend Irina Shayk, yet it was unacceptable for him to be affected by this.

The same goes for Messi’s form after the World Cup. He’d just missed out on the biggest prize in the world; it would have taken some time to get his head straight.

Every once in a while we should step back and admit it: they’re only human.

Adam Austin, via email

SPINE LINE WINNER After all these years, I think I’ve finally worked out the Spine Line! ‘Lajos Tichy’ [FFT 250] spent his whole career at Honved who, as identified in your article ‘Should the away goals rule be scrapped?’, were the first beneficiaries of the new ruling, against Dukla Prague in the 1965-66 European Cup Winners’ Cup second round. Tichy scored a hat-trick in the 3-2 away first leg win and so is the fi rst player influence to directly infl uence a result on away goals. Please say I’m right for once!

Geear, via email James Geear Trusox You’re right for once, and not many got it!

Enjoy your Trusox.

WIN!

Nacer Chadli

@NChadli I wonder what everyone does? What’s your job?

David Villa

@Guaje7Villa Back in new York! What great company from @TiaN_Futbol during the flight

THE FAKES Kevin Keegan

@GalacticKeegan Pitch invaders are the lowest of the low. The Romans invaded Britain 2000 years ago; why would you want to emulate that? Disgusting.

YOU @FOURFOURTWO Jonny Leighfield

@JonnyLeighfield Just opened April’s @FourFourTwo to find it’s @FourFourTwoEIC’s last issue. Why must all good things end? #PhilosophicalFootball

Adam Harding

@adamharding76 @FourFourTwo loved reading the Mascots Knockout article, who knew Schalke’s mascot was so cool #Erwin

Ben Thornley

@B_Thornley Great image of Acrefair game with the aqueduct in the background in @FourFourTwo by @simonstacpoole

twitter.com/FourFourTwo

Follow us for all the latest and funniest tweets on the net… at no extra charge!

1 Score an own goal 2 Peter Schmeichel and Tomasz Kuszczak (one of them for West Bromwich Albion) 3 Robbie Keane, Shay Given, Kevin Kilbane, Steve Staunton, John O’Shea and Damien Duff 4 Japan 5 They are Charlton Athletic’s shirt sponsor 6 Oscar 7 False: they lost to Switzerland in the first round in 1938 (they didn’t enter in 1930 or 1950) 8 Udinese 9 Newcastle United (102 in 2009-10) 10 Gianfranco Zola 11 Sweden 4-0 Bulgaria, 1994 12 Gerard Houllier (Aston Villa managers) 13 England (six seasons from 1976-77 until 1981-82, through Liverpool, Nottingham Forest and Aston Villa) 14 6-1 15 USA 16 True: it reached 36 17 They’ve all been the first managerial casualty in a Premier League season 18 A) Alfredo Di Stefano (Real Madrid vs Fiorentina, 1957); B) Phil Neal (Liverpool vs Gladbach, 1977); C) Stefan Effenberg (Bayern Munich vs Valencia, 2001); D) Ilkay Gundogan (Borussia Dortmund vs Bayern Munich, 2013) 19 Paolo Rossi (1982) and Salvatore Schillaci (1990) 20 Torquay United 21 1974 (Poland 1-0 Brazil) 22 Genk 23 Beat a Football League team as a non-league club 24 Celtic (2014), Rangers (2011), Aberdeen (1985), Dundee United (1983) and Kilmarnock (1965) 25 Andy Townsend

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JURGEN KLOPP

CALAMITY PRESSURE

BROKEN

INJURY CRISIS

STRESS

MALAISE

NEGATIVE

JADED

ROTTEN LUCK

I HEAR MANCHESTER’S NICE THISTIMEOFYEAR… Fighting to save their season, Jurgen Klopp and Borussia Dortmund can, for once, imagine a future apart. FFT reveals why football’s most charismatic coach might fancy a fresh start Words Uli Hesse

O

n December 14, Jan-Henrik Gruszecki walked towards the door of his Dortmund flat with a heavy heart. The 30-year-old was returning from Berlin, where he had watched his team, Borussia Dortmund, put in yet another depressing and by-and-large inexplicable Bundesliga performance.

The same players who not very long ago came close to winning the Champions League and thrilled an entire continent with daring attacking football, turning spectators into fans wherever they went, had stumbled across the pitch like shell-shocked soldiers. Jurgen Klopp, their iconic coach, had watched from the

42 May 2015 FourFourTwo.com

sidelines with the body language of a man who was rapidly reaching his wits’ end.

A rather pedestrian Hertha team had won the game 1-0, sending Dortmund back into the relegation zone.

Relegation. As Gruszecki grabbed the door handle, this most unthinkable of scenarios was no longer out of the question. In fact, Dortmund had been in last place a couple of weeks earlier, for the first time in almost three decades. But back then, following another stinging setback in Frankfurt, most observers still felt that Borussia were merely unlucky.

Ridiculous injury woes and a string of bad

breaks had conspired against a team that was doing many things right. They played well, they put in the requisite effort, they created goalscoring opportunities.

But now that was no longer the case.

There had just been too many unlucky defeats and too many bad breaks for the players.

Now they had begun to play as the table said they were – candidates for the drop.

Gruszecki turned the handle and wondered how you could stop such a downward spiral.

At every other club, the solution would have been obvious: sack the coach and bring in what Germans call a fireman – a manager

CHANGE DOUBT

JURGEN KLOPP

RELEGATION HELPLESS

FRUSTRATION NO JOY

FORM TIRED

ENDD OF AN ERA FourFourTwo.com May 2015 [[2R]]

JURGEN KLOPP who specialises in hopeless situations. But in Dortmund, this was not even a theoretical possibility. Gruszecki wondered if he could think of a precedent in Bundesliga history.

Had there ever been a team that was supposed to challenge for the title and then hit rock bottom without eliciting calls for the manager’s head? No, he concluded, this was a first. It made him proud of his club, but it didn’t make the situation any less desperate.

Gruszecki opened the door to his flat and squinted. He turned his head to shield his eyes from the light. Then he looked again.

There were heavy wooden tables, littered with beer steins, in the middle of his living room. There were stag antlers on the walls.

Cigar smoke hung in the air. And there were 18 young men in dark three-piece suits and stiff collars milling about. Gruszecki knew what these men were doing in his flat. They were forming Borussia Dortmund. But that doesn’t mean it didn’t still blow his mind.

“I was literally stepping from December 2014 into December 1909,” he recalls.

“When I’d left my flat to go to Berlin, they had only just begun building the set.

But when I returned, I walked straight into a faithful reconstruction of the pub room in which Borussia were founded.”

Gruszecki is not a normal Dortmund fan.

Two years ago, he started a crowdfunding project together with two friends. Their aim was to raise at least 120,000 euros to finance a film about Borussia’s formative years. During the initial research, Gruszecki learned that the actual room where the club came into being would soon be auctioned off by court order.

He put in the winning bid and now lives in what is literally his club’s birthplace.

[[1L]] 44 May May 2015 2015 FourFourTwo.com FourFourTwo.com

Cramer was present when Gruszecki returned from Berlin to stumble into the filming of the actual moment when Borussia were founded.

At one point, Cramer turned towards Gruszecki and said: “This makes you realise how big the club is – and how fleeting the presence.” Gruszecki had a similar thought.

“I was watching the filming and realising that our problems in the league were nothing to worry about. I said to myself: if we go down, so what? This club is about much more than just winning or losing a few football games.”

“The reason the Dortmund supporters have been so patient is the personality of the coach – he is still immensely popular”

“If we go down, so what?

This club is about much more than football games” The three film-makers eventually collected 259,000 euros, a national record for such ventures. The money came from close to 3,000 individuals, among them Dortmund forward Marco Reus, who sold one of his match-worn shirts, and Jurgen Klopp, who held an autograph session and then donated the revenue. The club was very supportive, too, which is why director of marketing Carsten

Above Klopp was just as fired up as a player Below “Yes, Marco, of course you can be Batman next time”

It’s one of the many perplexing side issues in the mysterious tale of Dortmund’s fall from grace that even die-hard fans such as Gruszecki, whose entire life revolves around the club, watched the decline with the serenity of Tibetan monks. Actually, it almost seemed as if the support grew more understanding and forgiving the worse the results became.

After the Berlin game which had left Gruszecki so depressed, the Dortmund fans chanted “Borussia, Borussia!” until the players, their heads bowed, walked over to the curva.

And then the entire away stand sang a popular terrace song which states that the club is everyone’s pride and joy. It gave even the neutrals at the ground goosebumps.

“I think there are three reasons why the fans were so patient,” Gruszecki says. “The first is they haven’t forgotten that this very team has given them so much to celebrate. The second is the personality of the coach. He is still

JURGEN KLOPP immensely popular. And the third is the skill of the coach. The fans knew that Klopp had been in many relegation fights with Mainz.

So the feeling was that someone like Pep Guardiola might not be able to cope with a situation like this, but Klopp could.”

Truth be told, though, he didn’t always look the part. In fact, Klopp sometimes wore such a pained expression on his face during the first half of the season that his former player Patrick Owomoyela, now a pundit, remarked on television: “At the moment he comes across as quite helpless and defensive. I don’t think he would be above saying: ‘Well, maybe I’ve done all I could do here, and now somebody else must come and help.’”

Many supporters, however, interpreted Klopp’s distress differently. They’d always loved him for his emotions, for wearing his heart on his sleeve. When things went well, this meant he would be celebrating wildly and cheering the team, just like any regular fan. But of course it also meant that when things were going wrong, he would be visibly frustrated, just like the people in the stands.

And so it wasn’t until a home defeat in early February, at the hands of an Augsburg team reduced to 10 men, that the fans finally

Below Immobile rues the missed penalty that arguably began Dortmund’s decline, before Weidenfeller and Hummels hold a Q&A with the fans

reached the end of their tether. For the first time, boos and catcalls rang around the ground so forcefully that after the final whistle the players kept a respectful distance to the terrace – the Sudtribune – and sent their two captains, goalkeeper Roman Weidenfeller and defender Mats Hummels, over to the fence to discuss the team’s performance with the ultras.

Interestingly, this game marked the end of Borussia’s rough patch. Three days later the team scored three goals without reply away at Freiburg. It was Dortmund’s first league victory in 64 days, and the starting point of a four-game winning streak highlighted by an impressive 3-0 derby triumph over fierce rivals Schalke. An incredibly emotional afternoon was capped by Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Marco Reus celebrating the first goal by donning Batman and Robin masks, prompting predictable headlines proclaiming the ‘Return of Dortmund’s Superheroes’.

What is much harder to pinpoint, though, is when the rough patch began – and why.

Gruszecki reckons Borussia started to unravel away at Mainz, on matchday four.

With Dortmund a goal down, the visitors were awarded a penalty. In-form attacker Aubameyang was ready to take it, but Italian centre-forward Ciro Immobile, a new signing understandably eager to prove himself, grabbed the ball and placed it on the spot. His shot was saved and Dortmund went on to lose a game they should have never lost – for the first but certainly not the last time this season.

However, it wasn’t Dortmund’s first defeat of the campaign. And so there are others who say that the drama really began to unfold

YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE MAD TO MANAGE HERE...

...but it helps. So Klopp’s bonkers? Meet this lot The motivator Luis Aragones

“See this?” Luis Aragones asked his Atletico Madrid players before the 1992 Copa del Rey final against city rivals Real, pointing at the tactics board.

“Well, it’s irrelevant. If you don’t win, I’ll stick this Coke bottle up my arse.” They won 2-0.

Master motivator Aragones – a manager in a record 791 La Liga matches – also ended Spain’s 44-year wait for a trophy at Euro 2008, crossing a hitherto goal-shy Fernando Torres’ forehead in the tunnel and saying: “You’ll score today.” Guess who netted the winner.

Though his comments about Thierry Henry should never be airbrushed from history, no one could inspire quite like El Sabio (‘The Wise Man’). His football philosophy? “Win, win and win. Win, win, win and go back to winning and win and win.” Can’t argue with that.

The religious zealot Giovanni Trapattoni

One of only four coaches to have won league titles in four different countries, Trap attributes his managerial acumen to one secret – Him upstairs.

He was raised in a strict Catholic home, and his older sister Maria is a practising nun.

A member of Opus Dei, an unofficial branch of the Church so conservative some describe it as a cult, the former Republic of Ireland boss has sprinkled holy water over every dugout since taking the Italy job in 2000.

The Spanish Ian Holloway Manolo Preciado

Resembling an ageing Groucho Marx, but without the glasses, Preciado always had a way with words.

Whether describing former Valencia winger Joaquin as “about as dangerous as a monkey with a gun” or huffing, while under pressure at Sporting Gijon, “if I lose all of the next three games, I’ll shoot myself in the head, but I’m not thinking of losing”, the chain-smoking former Racing Santander, Levante and Sporting manager mixed his metaphors with Holloway-pleasing regularity.

He also ended Jose Mourinho’s nine-year unbeaten home record with a 1-0 win at the Bernabeu in April 2011, saying: “Sometimes, when you spit upwards, it comes back down on you.”

FourFourTwo.com May 2015 45

JURGEN KLOPP

during the first eight seconds of the season.

On opening day, Bayer Leverkusen travelled to Dortmund, scored the fastest goal in Bundesliga history and deservedly bagged three points against a Borussia side that never recovered from falling behind so quickly.

Some claim the seeds of struggle were in fact sown way back in the summer. Dr Jeannine Ohlert, a sports psychologist, told Sky Austria that things went wrong as early as the pre-season preparations, when “some players came back from the World Cup exhausted and struggling to find motivation”.

The second bit may sound improbable, but it’s not a far-fetched theory. Over the previous four seasons, Borussia Dortmund and Bayern Munich had become so dominant in Germany that most observers considered the top of the league table a foregone conclusion. And if one of the two giants should slip up really badly then the worst that could happen to them, many fans felt, was that they dropped to third or fourth place. Bearing this in mind, it’s not inconceivable that the players themselves subconsciously felt they might get by with giving only 95 per cent on a few occasions.

Not that you should ever dare to mention this theory in Klopp’s presence, though. In October he told a reporter: “If this was our problem, I’d be the first to give the players a kick up the backside each day of the week.”

Then he angrily added: “Whoever says that this team has motivational problems suffers from Alzheimer’s disease.”

46 May 2015 FourFourTwo.com

“Whoever says this team has motivational problems suffers from Alzheimer’s disease” But it was a tempting argument. How else could you explain the discrepancy between Dortmund’s league form and their Champions League performances? In mid-September, Klopp’s side played Arsenal off the park in a commanding manner. Four days later, they lost at Mainz and then didn’t win another Bundesliga game until November.

At the press conference following the home defeat against Hamburg, Klopp was asked to give his own explanation for the striking difference between the fine results in Europe and the poor showings in the Bundesliga.

Wearing his trademark Borussia hoodie and looking as if he’d aged five years over the previous five months, the coach furrowed his brow. “Form, that’s all,” he said. “We have players who can summon their form on

Above Dortmund have rarely hit the heights of their European demolition of Arsenal this term

some days, but on some others they cannot do this.” He went on to explain that there were several reasons for this but that the most important one was an almost absurd number of injuries. “We have players who are coming off lengthy layoffs but who can’t be eased into the side now – they immediately have to be on top of their game,” he said, meaning someone like Ilkay Gundogan, who had been sidelined for no fewer than 430 days with back problems. Klopp added: “We also have players who had only a very short pre-season preparation but need to play in every game now.” He was referring to players like Hummels, who had come back from the World Cup with a nagging injury.

So it takes just a few injuries and some rotten luck to turn one of the best teams

JURGEN KLOPP Preciado’s tragic death from a heart attack in June 2012, just 24 hours after being named the new Villarreal manager, saw Spanish football lose its biggest character.

The artful contract dodger Bela Guttmann

“If Kloppo quits, I’m jumping”

Lewandowski has been missed in Dortmund

As a survivor of the Holocaust, nobody knew their own worth quite like the legendary Benfica manager. “The third season,” Guttman once said, “is fatal.”

With Europe ravaged by post-World War II hyperinflation, he insisted on being paid in food by Romanian side Ciocanul, before reacting to a director trying to interfere in team affairs by leaving, grumbling: “OK, you run the club – you seem to have the basics.”

His departure from AC Milan – after again clashing with the board, this time with the Rossoneri top of Serie A – was equally tempestuous. Thereafter, Guttmann had a clause inserted into every contract that he couldn’t be sacked while top of the league.

Amazed he didn’t get a bonus for winning consecutive European Cups with Benfica in 1962, he left. “Not for 100 years will Benfica be champions of Europe without me,” he proclaimed. They’ve played in eight European finals since, and lost the lot. Spooky.

The ‘enlightened despot’ Guy Roux

Hoodie – standard; despair – not so much

in Europe into a bunch of donkeys? In January, with Bayern in first place, Dortmund in last and 29 points separating the two pre-season favourites, Pep Guardiola said: “What happened to Dortmund can happen to us, too. In football, you can never relax.

At any given moment, anything can happen.”

What happened to Borussia was that a simple run of bad results slowly but surely turned into a self-fulfilling prophesy. If you ever wondered how important the mental aspect of the game is and how quickly a player can lose confidence, all you had to do was watch Henrikh Mkhitaryan.

The Armenian playmaker, one of the most naturally gifted footballers in the whole of Europe, gradually became so consumed by fear – fear of another stray pass, another wasted chance, another defeat – that Klopp finally had to bench him.

Because make no mistake, even if the fans were totally behind the team and trusted their beloved coach with finding a way out of this mess, he had to do

Hummels’ triumph in the World Cup came at a cost

something – and fast. On the day the club celebrated its 105th birthday, December 19, Jan-Henrik Gruszecki told a club representative: “If we lose tomorrow, in Bremen, we are in serious trouble.” They did and they were.

“All I can say is: I wouldn’t write us off,” Klopp said after this game, standing on the pitch in Bremen and having to explain his team’s 10th league defeat. He defiantly added: “At the moment we look like complete idiots, and it serves us right.

But we’ll be back, looking different.”

He was right. But what ultimately saved him was that great German football invention – the winter break.

“Dortmund feels as dependent on Jurgen Klopp as Apple used to be on Steve Jobs” Another perplexing aspect of Dortmund’s mysterious fall from grace was that the men who run the club were apparently prepared to go down rather than part company with their

A 22-year-old Roux became Auxerre player-coach in 1961 when the Burgundy-based amateurs were no-hopers in the fourth division. Over the following 44 years, the self-proclaimed ‘enlightened despot’ transformed the club into 1996 double-winners, Champions League regulars and UEFA Cup semi-finalists.

He ruled by fear, like a strict grandfather with a lived-in face trying to keep his family in check. “I have a network of informers,” he once said, including one at every toll booth on the motorway to Paris. “But, with security cameras in nightclubs these days, it’s easier.”

“It was like a paramilitary regime,” his greatest success, Eric Cantona, once moaned.

“Having said that, I learned how to make my bed. My wife certainly appreciates it.”

Roux fined ‘Le Roi’ so often, he was able to buy a pool table for the whole squad.

The “crazy” journalist Pepe Pena

Commentator Pepe Pena decided he’d had enough of simply talking about Argentine football, so, in April 1961, the 40-year-old became manager of Primera Division side Huracan instead.

He then boasted that “at least six” members of Argentina’s World Cup squad would follow him the next year. As you do.

Pena’s trademark was a method for dealing with free-kicks on the edge of his own team’s box. If Huracan were winning, his players should shoot at their own goal (for practice), with the keeper under instruction to let it in.

FourFourTwo.com May 2015 47

JURGEN KLOPP

Nobody can accuse the Yellow Wall of only singing when they’re winning

coach. During the winter break, the magazine Sport Bild asked the club’s chairman, Hans-Joachim Watzke, how safe the manager’s job was. “We will never dismiss Jurgen Klopp,” Watzke replied. “The services he has rendered to Borussia are exceptional.

No confrontational situation will ever arise.”

Four weeks later, after the Augsburg debacle and with the team still in last place, Watzke renewed his promise, adding that the club’s faith in Klopp was “beyond debate and doubt”.

Saying that this was a most unusual state of affairs would be an understatement.

Only once before in league history had a reigning runner-up sunk as far as last place this deep into a season. That team was Alemannia Aachen in 1969-70. Needless to say, they sacked their coach as early as December (and still went down).

The only fairly recent comparable case that comes to mind concerns Bayer Leverkusen.

Under coach Klaus Toppmoller, the team reached the 2002 Champions League Final and the domestic cup final, and finished

48 May 2015 FourFourTwo.com

Only once before had a league runner-up sunk as far as last place this far into a season second in the league, playing tremendous entertaining football along the way. Months later, in February 2003, Leverkusen found themselves in a relegation spot – and the club’s then-business manager Rainer Calmund announced that to his “greatest regret” he “didn’t have a choice” but to fire the coach.

Dortmund CEO Watzke could have done Watzke’s stood the same without losing by his man face – or a friend – because everyone, not least Klopp himself, would have understood that football clubs can’t afford to be sentimental. That Watzke stood firm regardless wasn’t met with universal admiration.

In a much-publicised interview in late January, the columnist and philosopher Wolfram Eilenberger compared Borussia to a sect. “A crisis calls for an honest analysis,” he said. “But that’s not possible in Dortmund, because seeing the coach as the cause of the crisis is taboo.” He added: “I have spoken with many Dortmund fans, and the general thrust is: we cannot imagine the club without Klopp. Dortmund feels as dependent on Klopp as Apple used to be on Steve Jobs.” Eilenberger then drew a comparison with Arsenal, saying the Gunners were stagnating

JURGEN KLOPP

because Arsene Wenger had become unsackable. The philosopher, who also holds a German FA coaching badge, offered a simple solution for both clubs: “Klopp to Arsenal; Wenger to Dortmund.”

Perhaps Watzke viewed things differently because he had learned the hard way that bringing in a new coach may indeed put an end to stagnation, but that you can’t be sure in which direction you’ll start moving.

Watzke became the club’s chairman in early 2005, when Borussia were on the verge of going bankrupt.

The following year, a week before Christmas 2006, he fired the popular Dutch coach Bert van Marwijk, despite the fact that Borussia were in a perfectly respectable ninth place. The dismissal threw the club into turmoil. Van Marwijk’s successor, Jurgen Rober, lost six

Below “I know, they can’t fire me either!”

of the next eight games. Suddenly Dortmund were only one point above the drop zone.

It took another sacking and another coach – Thomas Doll, to whom Borussia’s fans never warmed – to avoid relegation at the 11th hour.

And so the board wouldn’t sack Klopp, and the fans wanted him to stay. However, that didn’t automatically mean he would last the season. As Owomoyela’s comment on television suggests, the longer the drama lasted, the more people could imagine that there would come a day when the coach himself felt he had taken this as far as he could and that now “somebody else must come and help”.

Klopp himself fuelled such rumours after the Frankfurt game on the last day of November.

Dortmund lost the match partly because of yet another unfortunate mishap at the back.

A week earlier, Stuttgart coach Armin Veh had stepped down, saying that luck had deserted the club and he somehow felt responsible for this. Klopp was asked if he would follow Veh’s example, whereupon the Dortmund coach replied: “If it’s only about luck and if changing the coach brings this luck back, then just give me a call and a guarantee that it’s going to work – I won’t be standing in the way.”

However, reading jadedness or even helpessness into such a comment was taking things too far. Because all through that almost comically terrible run, Klopp was very much aware that there was one powerful ace still up his sleeve. Gruszecki is right: although the circumstances of this one were highly unusual, the coach had been in relegation fights before, in the first division and the second. He knew that what you needed first and foremost was defensive stability. He also knew that all it took to restore that was time.

When Klopp was standing on that pitch in Bremen a few days before Christmas, he could promise the fans that, although all signs pointed to the contrary, his team would be back, looking different, because he knew he would now have six precious weeks to take the players’ minds off the league standings and work with the team on their problems.

Not to mention that the physios would have time to get the injured players back into shape.

If ever a Bundesliga team desperately needed the winter break, it was Borussia Dortmund.

For the fourth time in a row, the club set up their winter training camp in a slightly remote resort near Murcia, in south-east Spain. It may be just a coincidence that in each of the previous three seasons, Dortmund had played better and with more success after the winter break. But if you’ve ever watched Klopp conduct one of those training sessions under the Spanish sun, you know there is a connection. The coach may have a reputation as a master motivator, but his aggressive pressing game is based on supreme organisation and he simply has

Rules state this ploy results in a corner, rather than an own goal. This, Pena believed, gave his team a good chance to start a counter-attack, as his defenders were tall and would clear the set-piece.

Did it work? Not really, no. They were 5-0 down after 50 minutes of his first game against San Lorenzo, eventually losing 5-2.

They then drew 2-2 at home to Velez, before being defeated 4-2 at Atlanta. Pena resigned, reverting back to the microphone before becoming head of PR for Adidas.

“People always called me crazy,” he once observed. “But they’re just scared of living.”

The welly-wearer Egil Olsen

A committed Marxist who memorised the height of every mountain on the planet basically for fun, Olsen seemed the perfect fit for Wimbledon: eccentric, but a sports science evangelist who had taken Norway to No.2 in FIFA’s world rankings. The welly-wearing Norwegian seemed the perfect man to modernise the Crazy Gang’s outdated ways.

However, his attempts to install order and stop the all-day binges were as successful as his attempts to curb SW19 of smokers (he tried to stub out any lit cigarette he came across on Wimbledon High Street).

The nadir came at Bradford. The Dons lost 3-0 and after the game Olsen didn’t even realise John Hartson had been sent off.

In later years, he was sacked by Iraq after five games for “being too nice”. Poor soul.

The attacking mentalist Zdenek Zeman

FFT may not be the greatest military strategists, but we can’t help imagining the Charge of the Light Brigade when a Zdenek Zeman team is about to kick off. Eight players line up on the halfway line, ready to spring forward; two sit behind the centre circle, backed up by the keeper.

The Czech-born manager’s ridiculously attacking 4-3-3 is about as close to football poetry as you get, and it took unfashionable Foggia from the third tier to Serie A in 1994.

His teams might not win (the Serie B title is his highest honour as a coach), but the former Roma and Lazio boss’ style and verve had football hipsters drooling before the sport’s learned analytical types began sighing their way around East London in organic flip-flops.

The torturer of groundsmen Uwe Klimaschefski

Kloppo inspired this list, so it’s only fair we include another mad German: a quote-spewing gaffer who once attributed his second-division Homburg (yes, Homburg) side’s disappointing draw to that week’s death of Chinese leader Chairman Mao. Later in September 1976, after another defeat, he ordered his players in for extra training. As they trained, the groundsman – drunk, naturally – staggered out, screaming

FourFourTwo.com May 2015 49

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JURGEN KLOPP at the team to get off his land, unaware of the dictat. Klimaschefski promptly tied his green-fingered foe to a goalpost and ordered his squad to shoot footballs at him.

Fifteen minutes later, the groundsman’s bread knife-wielding wife came running from the canteen, screaming they desist. “I was always very nice to him,” Uwe winked.

The stats obsessive Valeriy Lobanovskyi

Portrait Thomas Rabsch / Laif / Camera Press

Klopp had time to work on Dortmund’s pressing game in the winter break more time to work on it during the quiet winter weeks than he has in the summer – especially a summer following a big tournament.

During the winter break, Klopp must have come to the conclusion that the situation called for another form of stability as well.

Having experimented with various formations and line-ups during the first half of the season, he went back to the 4-2-3-1 system he had used almost without exception from October 2009 to May 2014. Shinji Kagawa was put in his old position, in the hole behind the lone striker.

And this striker was Aubameyang. As much as Klopp liked the two forwards he had signed in the summer to replace Robert Lewandowski and provide extra options (Immobile and the Colombian Adrian Ramos), both now had to accept they were going to be subs at least until the worst of the crisis was over.

The same team that had kept only two clean sheets in the first half of the league season racked up five in the first eight games after the winter break. Dortmund conceded only five goals in those seven matches and climbed from last place to 10th in a little more than three weeks. While some fans took a furtive glance at the table to calculate if there were enough games left in the season to bridge the gap to the Champions League slots, Klopp said: “Even after four wins on the trot, we’re only five points above the relegation zone. That shows you in what kind of situation we were – and still are.”

Above Shinji Kagawa’s return to playing ‘in the hole’ has helped dig Dortmund out of one

It is conceivable that Klopp will leave at the end of the season The final perplexing facet of Dortmund’s season in Hell was made public on the morning of February 10. With his team in 16th place in the 18-team Bundesliga, Marco Reus extended his contract until 2019. As the club later confirmed, the new contract didn’t include a get-out clause and was valid for the second division as well. When Reus walked into the dressing room an hour later to prepare for that day’s training session, the rest of the squad gave him a round of applause.

For the general public, this contract extension – later described by Klopp as “an extraordinary act” – came as a massive surprise. It was also deeply significant for the club’s support. A few months earlier, Bayern Munich chairman Karl-Heinz Rummenigge told a newspaper the much-coveted Reus could leave Dortmund in the summer “for a rumoured 25 million euros”.

Ever since that disclosure, many fans feared Reus would be tempted to ‘do a Lewandowski’ (or Mario Gotze) and leave Borussia for Bayern.

And even if he didn’t, chances appeared to be slim that he’d stay in Dortmund if the club failed to qualify for the Champions League.

When asked about his motivation, he said all the things a player should say. He mentioned that Dortmund was his hometown and how important his family and his friends were to him. Reus, who joined the club in 2012 after their back-to-back Bundesliga titles, also said that he dreamed of one day winning the league with Borussia just to see “what the city will be like then”, which echoed a point of view many fans take – that signing with Bayern to win silverware is the easy and therefore less satisfying route. But most important of all was what Reus didn’t say, because he didn’t have to: that, like many other people in Dortmund,

Even as an individualistic left-winger, Lobanovskyi was always looking for perfection. “Yes, we have won the league,” the future Dynamo Kiev legend once huffed. “But so what? Sometimes we played badly. We just got more points than other teams who played worse than us.”

Alongside right-hand man and statistician Anatoliy Zelentsov, football became a self-perpetuating statistical eco-system cooked up in the pair’s Kiev laboratory.

Through his training as a heating engineer, Lobanovskiy became obsessed with the efficiency of the collective (the antithesis of his playing style). His players had to complete a minimum number of ‘actions’, from runs with the ball to interceptions and passes – short, medium and long – or face the axe.

Red-faced and taciturn, Lobanovskiy demanded ‘universality’ from his multi-functional players, producing Oleg Blokhin, Igor Belanov and Andriy Shevchenko. Across 21 years as Kiev boss, the forefather of statistical analysis won 30 honours, including two Cup Winners’ Cups. “Don’t think!” he once spat at Aleksandr Khapsalis as he offered an opinion. “I do the thinking for you. Play!”

The mentor of Magath Ernst Happel

Yes, the crazy former Fulham boss learned his managerial ethos from another: chain-smoking Austrian Happel.

Fond of women and wine nearly as much as his three-pack-a-day habit, Happel was a nightmare as a Rapid Vienna defender who seldom trained. “If you ever go into management,” ranted one former coach, “I hope you’ll have a bastard like yourself as one of your players.”

Incredibly, Happel the coach turned into a slave driver, obsessed with fitness and zonal marking. His players trained until they vomited. Then trained some more. Like Magath, he wasn’t exactly communicative. “If you want to talk,” he once told Hansi Muller at Swarovski Tirol, “become a vacuum cleaner salesman.”

But, unlike Magath, he was successful in Europe. Along with Ottmar Hitzfeld and Mourinho, Happel is one of only three managers to have won the European Cup with two clubs – Feyenoord in 1970 and Hamburg in 1983, with Magath his midfield star – and introduced the 4-3-3 to Holland before Ajax. Plus, he never used a block of cheese to cure a muscle injury.

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JURGEN KLOPP

Reus has signed a new deal – with no get-out clause

Just when you think you’ve heard it all, Klopp will offer a fresh perspective on the game he didn’t have the slightest doubt the coach would not only find a way to turn things around and avoid relegation, but that he would stay to build a new team – a new title contender.

Whether this is really the case remains to be seen. Eilenberger’s claim that Dortmund’s fans can’t imagine the club without Klopp was certainly true a few months ago, but no longer. For most supporters, there was at least one point during this cataclysmic season – maybe the Berlin game, probably the Bremen game, certainly the Augsburg game – when they simply had to entertain the thought that the pressure could become so strong that the coach might have to step down.

In other words, they had to realise that the club is truly bigger than any one person.

In fact, in early February the tabloid Bild reported that the club had set themselves “an internal deadline” which said that Klopp would resign if the team was still in the relegation zone at the end of the month, meaning the coaching staff’s winter-break magic would have failed to improve morale and organisation. Borussia denied this report, but of course it fired people’s imagination.

Money will be tighter next year if Borussia fail to reach the Champions League (Watzke has estimated that this will cost the club

52 May 2015 FourFourTwo.com

about 15 million euros). Combined with Dortmund’s recent spending spree – at least 60 million euros were paid in transfer money this season – that makes it likely the coach won’t be allowed to add star players to his squad in the summer, a situation Kicker magazine labelled “an investment freeze”.

So is it conceivable that Klopp, following a season that must have drained even his outstanding energy resources, follows the example of Guardiola – or that of another former Mainz coach, the highly-touted Thomas Tuchel – and goes on a sabbatical to recharge the batteries? Or that he rereads the Eilenberger interview and takes up the philosopher’s well-intended piece of advice about Arsenal?

Conceivable, yes – an outcome that was a near-impossibility at the start of the season.

Over the past few years, Klopp has been linked with numerous English clubs not only because he is rousing, engaging, entertaining and successful; it’s also because just when you think you’ve heard it all, he will offer a fresh and different perspective on an aspect of the game. And he did this again during

Above Rummenigge’s plan for Reus to follow Lewandowski and Gotze to Bayern has been foiled

Dortmund’s horrific run. A few days after the team had first dropped into last place and most fans had begun to seriously fear for the future, he opened one of his regular press conferences by letting his gaze wander over a packed press room. Then he cracked a grin and said: “It hasn’t been this crowded in a long time. Is there a new rumour I don’t know about?” A few minutes later, he told the journalists: “One day, when we look back on this, we’ll find that the whole thing has brought the club closer together. We have the great chance to come out of this crisis stronger than we went in. But only if – perhaps for the first time in football history – we do it without allowing a wedge to be driven between us while we’re in the crisis.”

They say you don’t know who your real friends are until the going gets tough.

When the going got tough in Dortmund, Klopp found he has a lot more friends than he might have thought possible – in the stands, in the boardroom, in the team. This will strengthen his emotional bond with the club.

Then there’s this theory he has to prove – about the team coming out of it stronger. He isn’t the only one in Dortmund who believes it.

“Sometimes I think this whole thing might turn out to be a blessing in disguise,” Gruszecki says. “We’ve been punching above our weight since 2010. Maybe it’s good that we got this wake-up call; that we all realise how quickly it can all change.” Then he excuses himself. He has to attend the premiere of his film about Borussia’s founding fathers.

JURGEN KLOPP

LOOK OUT, LADS: KLOPP’S COMING

If the 47-year-old swaps Germany for England, he’s tailor-made for several teams

1

1

He brings a tactical ideology

He brings Champions League experience

1 His intensity levels

Klopp isn’t one to flit between formations in the way Louis van Gaal has this season, and a more settled tactical identity would serve United well as they continue to adapt to life without Alex Ferguson. Klopp is still capable of switching things up, and would deploy United’s multi-talented squad cannily, but he’d have a plan in mind.

Like Fergie’s early United outfits, who struggled to turn domestic dominance into European progress, City have looked like tottering baby foals in the Champions League. Klopp, who got Dortmund to the final in 2013, would surely improve the side’s performances in this tournament.

Even the most hardcore Wengerite must occasionally experience meltdowns over the Gunners’ lack of intensity. This would never be a problem under Klopp, whose favourite word is kampfen: fight. “[Wenger’s sides] are like an orchestra,” he once said. “But it’s a silent song.

I like heavy metal.” Time to turn it up to 11?

2

2

2

He’s a media maestro

He maximises ability

He’s ‘mindgame-proof’

Van Gaal has mithered and moaned about commercial pressures on his players, but Klopp openly embraces “media opportunities”. After all, he’s the man who got Dortmund’s players to pose for FourFourTwo’s giant feature on the club in 2013. That’s an extra asset at a side such as United, who trade heavily on their global brand.

If there’s one area where Klopp is a bone fide genius, it’s in milking the very best out of every player at his disposal. Manuel Pellegrini seems to have struggled lately with getting his superstars to blend into something bigger than the sum of their shining parts. Klopp demands everything from his players – and they respond.

Wenger has been KO’d time and again by Jose Mourinho’s mental meddling – eventually snapping and shoving the Portuguese provocateur last autumn – but Klopp is a master in this arena.

“Mourinho will return home with reports that will be useless to him,” he deadpanned back in 2013 after the then-Madrid manager came to assess his side.

3

3

3

He’s Mr Personality

He can build a new team

There’s one part of the United job upon which Van Gaal cannot be faulted: he has a sense of self-confidence bordering on the absurd. Moreover, a key failing of David Moyes was his lack of exactly that. Klopp’s assurance level – charming with just the right amount of cocky – is undoubtedly high enough to occupy the Old Trafford hot seat.

City’s squad is in need of an overhaul. The average age of the team that was knocked out of the Champions League last month was just shy of 30 – comfortably the oldest of the sides in the last 16 – with Sergio Aguero the youngest at 26. A major injection of energy is required.

Klopp can provide that and an emphasis on youth.

He has defensive savvy

A former defender himself – he started out as a forward during his 12-year Mainz career, but switched midway through to become a smart, combative stopper – Klopp sure knows how to set up a rearguard and, of course, get his whole team to defend as a unit. He’s also got Mats Hummels on speed-dial, which is handy.

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HALFTIME

IT’S AMAZING WHAT YOU CAN CRAM INTO

15 MINUTES Mascot brawls, potty-mouthed popstrels – half-time is about more than a tepid Bovril. FFT reveals the history and histrionics, and finds out what really goes on in the dressing room...

Words Nick Moore, Paul Brown, Richard Edwards, Louis Massarella, Joe Brewin

[[1L]] May 2015 FourFourTwo.com

HALF-TIME

“MAYBE I’LL JUST READ THE PROGRAMME INSTEAD” Half-time usually means substitutes in big coats practising crosses. But sometimes inspiration strikes for 15 minutes of magical entertainment… or utter nonsense. We pick out the best and worst of ‘the break’.

Double trouble

Flash-in-the-pan 2006 pop act Twin (who are indeed former womb-sharers) briefly achieved notoriety at a Sheffield Wednesday match by shouting, as they stormed onto the pitch, “F**k off Barnsley” at visiting Tykes supporters.

The daft duo were promptly arrested and fined. ●●●●●

“Now over to the racing...”

During the break in their September 2014 Championship fixture with Blackpool, nag-mad Brighton loyalists were able to watch the Ayr Gold Cup live on the Amex Stadium’s big screen. “We hope it’ll be rolled out across the UK,” said Clive Cottrell, Marketing Director of Racing UK. We bet you do, Clive. ●●●●●

Gaelic football... in Spain

In January 2013, the Primera Liga clash between Sevilla and Granada saw a six-minute long game of Gaelic football staged at half-time – and broadcast on Marca TV – as part of ‘Irish Day’ (which we understand isn’t officially affiliated to St Patrick’s Day) at the Sanchez Pizjuan Stadium. Handball, ref! ●●●●●

Saints try out their new injury-prevention plan

Sheds heaven

Cunningly marketed by sponsors Wickes as “On Me Shed, Son!”, Crystal Palace’s long-running competition was inspired: punters gamely attempted to chip a ball into a roofless goalmouth hut. Succeed, and they won a free garden building (with roof, we assume). FourFourTwo actually came close once, but sadly our garden remains shedless. ●●●●●

When the Seagulls follow the trawl – er, horses...

Flash dance

As a 2013 Christmas ‘treat’ for their fans, Everton hired 50 dancers to dress as stewards and then burst into a flashmob-style dance routine to some brain-pounding rave anthem. Most were drenched by a sprinkler. ●●●●●

Shootout for berks

That James Corden doesn’t get on TV enough, does he? Pleasing, then, to see him getting some publicity by taking a penalty against fellow wallflower Andrew Flintoff at last November’s Manchester derby. ●●●●●

An ab-Zorbing encounter

Freddie and Smithy engage in a spot of hilarious half-time banter

Ah, rolling downhill in an orb of giant plastic.

It proved chucklesome entertainment at Southampton last Christmas, as men in transparent spheres blundered around and fell on their backsides, raising memories of Neil McCann’s two-and-a-half years on the south coast. ●●●●●

Major League mayhem

After the 2002 MLS All-Stars game was delayed by bad weather, TV company ABC decided

What if Everton’s hokey-cokey really is what it’s all about?

that screening the half-time ‘entertainment’ – which for some reason featured dancing, inflatable bottles – was more important than the sport, which was cut short. Furious fans protested, and one was arrested for mooning. ●●●●●

Shy teenagers – LIVE!

With West Ham trailing Chelsea 2-0 in 2010, two spotty herberts took to the Upton Park pitch, awkwardly turning over cards as part of the Match Attax World Championships (a kind of football-themed turbo Top Trumps, if you were wondering). A fine playground pastime, but as a spectator sport… not so much. ●●●●●

FourFourTwo.com May 2015 55

HALF-TIME

HALF-TIME: A HISTORY

Blades take up bats

There’s nothing wrong with a hand-to-hand combat display performed by Royal Marines, but there’s a time and a place – and a heated Sheffield derby perhaps isn’t the ideal setting to explain the best way to inflict injury on your deadliest foe using a baseball bat.

Didn’t stop ’em in 2008, though! ●●●●●

Supergran!

October 2014: Katy Perry riding a lion it ain’t, but who wants such showing off when Sunderland can offer an old lady in sandals, a hoodie, sensible coat and a Black Cats scarf dribbling a mad green ball across the turf? Not us, that’s for sure. ●●●●●

The 21st-century stocks

Phil Brown was always “good value”, and in 2008 he provided a half-time show to rival Bruno Mars, dishing out a barmy bollocking-come-flipchart presentation to his faltering team on Manchester City’s pitch.

Nicely parodied by Jimmy Bullard a year later. ●●●●● “Right, which one of youse nicked my fake tan?”

Chelsea’s Stan Willemse tucks into a half-time lemon. Mmm, tasty

HALF-TIME WITH THE GAFFER

“I would never chuck a teacup but you’ve got to have that in your locker” SEAN DYCHE, BURNLEY

Does how you address your players at half-time depend entirely on the score?

“You have to appraise the situation – there’s no set formula. The perception is that if you’re losing, you get a strip torn off you, but that’s not the case. In many ways, the score can be an irrelevance. I’ve had times when we’ve been comfortably winning the game but, deep down, I’ve known that something isn’t right and that we’re not operating the way we

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Footballers haven’t always had 15 minutes to catch their breath.

The original Laws of the Game, published by the FA in November 1863, included no reference to half-time, and instead required teams to change ends after each goal was scored. The first game played under the association rules, between Barnes and Richmond in December 1863, involved no change of ends. It finished 0-0.

There was no requirement to separate matches into two halves, although some early games did have informal breaks, allowing for a pep talk and a quick smoke.

The Sheffield FA, which had rules predating the ‘London’ FA’s Laws of the Game, did require its teams to change ends halfway through a game – but only if no goals had been scored. The London FA eventually adopted this rule.

Aside from giving players a break, and reversing any advantage provided by weather and pitch conditions, half-time also provided an opportunity to switch rulebooks. This proved useful in the years before a universal set of laws was adopted.

In March 1873, the Sheffield and London FAs arranged an exhibition match that was played by ‘Sheffield Rules’ in the first half and ‘London Rules’ in the second.

In 1875, Queen’s Park proposed that every game should have a half-time break, and ends should be changed only at half-time, regardless of the scoreline.

Half-time didn’t necessarily take place after 45 minutes, though; although most clubs had settled on 90 minutes as a convenient length, there was no rule regarding how long a match should last until 1897.

Is there a danger of giving the players too much information to contend with?

“You can overload the players, yes. The key is determining the nugget of information that’s going to help you get what you want. I try to keep things simple so they can draw a picture in their minds – you might use tactics boards at times, too, so they have that visual aid.”

my subs were on and I had to make big changes. Kieran Trippier was playing left-back; Ben Mee centre-half; Steven Reid right-back. We were dropping like flies.

But I was impressed with the players taking on board the information. We came back from 2-1 and 3-2 down to draw 3-3.”

Is it possible to make sweeping tactical changes at half-time, or only tweaks?

“You can make wholesale tactical changes, but generally you try to tweak things to get the best out of the players. Crazy things can occur – people can come in and start being sick.

That’s when you have to think on your feet, because clearly that’s not part of the plan.

When we played Newcastle at Christmas, we lost three players in the first 30 minutes, so all

Ever hurl the crockery around the dressing room?

“I’d never chuck a teacup but you need that in your locker, to let the players know you’re not happy.

I’m there to get the best out of them so it’s a mix of motivating them and giving them the information they need to succeed.”

should be. That’s when you need to make it clear that this is about more than the score and that what you’ve seen isn’t acceptable.”

Energy gels Wayne Rooney

Bananas Newcastle U nited

FIFTEEN-MINUTE MAKEOVER

Rice Krispie bars d Scunthorpe Unite

Fruit Pastilles Tom Ince

Protein bar Tom Ince Jelly Babies Lincoln City

HALF-TIME

Fig rolls s d Schole g Gig s an

Cristiano Ronaldo has been known to swap hairstyles during half-time – so why shouldn’t you? Celeb snipper Andy Smith, from RealHair in Chelsea, gives us the skinny on the best styles switches

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HALF-TIME ORANGE? Answer: it

was replaced by this lot

The side parting

“You should start a parting from whichever side works best for you – there’s usually a natural flow you should go with. Never go too low or too high. The parting should drop around the corner of the opposite eyebrow.”

The mohawk Haribo Tangfastics Scunthorpe United

“Your hair needs to go from short to longer through the centre to do this. With the right cut, you just add paste – or a wax if you want wet-look – to dry hair, and style it up.”

The One Direction quiff

Red Bull t Simon Mignole

“Put a bit of mattifying hair powder like Schwarzkopf Dust It around the roots of dry hair, then use a brush or comb to quiff it up.

Don’t back-comb – it’ll look girly. This won’t last long on the pitch, mind!”

The top knot

“This is very fashionable. Scrape your hair loosely up and secure it into an elastic band.

Don’t pull the whole ponytail through, just some, and you’ll get a ‘Samurai top knot’ which looks good. Make sure you have your sideburns trimmed, though.”

The mixture

“Take the best of all these styles and mix them in. I like a combo of the parting and top knot – cut the back and sides short, but tie the rest up in a top knot. A combo of techniques gives you more half-time hair-switching options.”

s Jaffa Cake ited n U e rp o Scunth

HALF-TIME WITH THE REF

“We won’t watch any of the first half during the break but managers will try to collar us anyway” MARK HALSEY, FORMER PREMIER LEAGUE OFFICIAL

Does the length of half-time depend on how far the dressing rooms are from the pitch?

No! It’s 15 minutes from when the whistle blows. The referee rings the bell two minutes before he goes back out, and the teams then make their way out to the pitch. If they miss kick-off, they’ll be reported and fined.

Do officials really re-watch contentious first-half incidents during the break?

There was a time when there were TVs in the team dressing rooms, but the new general manager doesn’t allow that. Generally as a referee you don’t watch the TV, but if you’ve made a mistake you’re soon told by the floor manager or by the managers themselves – that news filters back pretty quickly.

Will the officials discuss the first half in any great detail?

Of course. You go in and discuss what’s gone well and what hasn’t. If you’re not happy with your assistant, or a certain decision, you need to have those frank discussions to make sure those errors aren’t repeated in the second half.

How often will a manager try to talk to the officials at the break? Do you think officials could ever be influenced by this?

Managers try, but they’re not supposed to.

I remember once giving a penalty against

Aston Villa, and Martin O’Neill and his assistant John Robertson were going beserk.

I told them to get lost. Five minutes later, I got a knock at the door.

It was Robertson – he’d seen the incident back and wanted to apologise.

Others aren’t so gracious. As a ref you can’t let a manager influence your performance, and I honestly don’t think many do.

What do officials actually do in the referees’ room?

I would have a sports drink; sometimes a cup of tea and a biscuit. The most important thing for a referee is to come back out for the start of the second half with your foot on the gas. If you let your concentration levels drop for a moment, it will eventually come back to bite you.

A LEAGUE OF OUR OWN

Buy your tickets now:

TICKETSTORES.CO.UK/FAWSL

#ALeagueOfOurOwn

HALF-TIME

BRING YOUR DINNER! The mid-match interval’s most heated dust-ups have seen punches, flying cups – even guns Sitton’s swear-fest

Neil Warnock and Peter Reid are among the managers who know the perils of allowing TV cameras into the dressing room at half-time, but none can hold a candle to John Sitton.

In 1995’s Leyton Orient: Club for a Fiver, Sitton’s now-legendary X-rated rant included sacking defender Terry Howard and telling a player to “bring your f**king dinner”, a confusing allusion to some kind of East End tear-up.

Vinnie plays a tough guy

Mr Vincent Jones began honing his acting skills back in his Wimbledon days, by following manager Joe Kinnear’s orders and picking a fight with a team-mate that his boss thought was “a lazy git”. “It all kicked off and we tore lumps out of each other,” recalled Jones. “The player scored a free-kick in the second half and we won 1-0. Joe gave me a little wink.”

Stomach for the fight

“Have you ever been hit in the stomach before?” Brian Clough asked Nigel Jemson, accusing the young striker of showboating in front of his parents during the first half of a Nottingham Forest reserve match. “No,” replied Jemson, naively. “You have now,” said Clough, delivering the blow. Discussion over.

Branston gets in a pickle Many an object has been destroyed during a fit of half-time rage, but Guy Branston managed to wreck several. “I was on loan at Rochdale,” recalled the journeyman Football League

“And don’t forget the bleedin’ cutlery”

Rooney fights for Becks

defender, “and the gaffer [Keith Hill] told me I was coming off… I went into his office and kicked his door off its hinges… [it] landed on top of all their computers and equipment.”

The tunnel is often the venue of choice for half-time handbags, and one of the most memorable bouts came in England’s Euro 2004 qualifier in Turkey. The Sun gave Wayne Rooney a match rating of 8/10 primarily for decking Alpay Ozalan after he said something unsavoury about David Beckham’s mother.

Tigre outgunned in Brazil

“They pulled two guns on us. The rest of the match is not going to be played.” The words of Nestor Gorosito, coach of Argentine side Tigre, after a half-time brawl involving players, officials and police in the second leg of the 2013 Copa Sudamericana Final got out of hand. Match abandoned; Brazilian hosts Sao Paulo declared champions. Well, it’s one way to win.

Anyone for a cuppa?

A legendary tea-cup thrower, Alex Ferguson went straight for the urn during one European game in 1981, after Gordon Strachan had told him to “f**k off and shut your face”.

Bayer Leverkusen get shirty over Messi

The pettiest half-time punch-up belongs to Bayer Leverkusen duo Michal Kadlec and Manuel Friedrich, who fought over Lionel Messi’s shirt during a 3-1 Champions League defeat to Barcelona back in 2012.

Having had the shirt wrestled from him by Friedrich during the interval, Kadlec nabbed another at full-time, only for sporting director Rudi Voller to confiscate both tops and auction them off for charity.

Enter the Dragon

Messi hands over his shirt… again

The 1998 ding-dong between Bristol City’s cat, Wolves’ Wolfie and three little pigs is the most famous half-time mascot melee, but the funniest took place a year later.

Rochdale’s Desmond the Dragon took exception to Halifax’s Freddie the Fox cocking his leg up against the goalpost during the prize draw and bopped him square on the snout.

Far better than actual fox hunting.

…AND FINALLY, DON’T FORGET TO FLUSH Michael Dawson, Hull

“The first thing I’ll do is get a drink, get settled and take my boots off. Then the manager will come in and say a few words.

He’ll maybe speak for five minutes – it really depends on how the game’s going.

Then obviously you tie your boots, and I might go for a quick poo. It just depends on the situation.”

Insert your own ‘career down the pan’ gag here

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FOOTBALL LEAGUE

HOW DID WE DO IT?

49 Bruno Ecuele Manga Cardiff City Position Defender Age 26

#FLTOP50

Manga is one of the few favours that Ole Gunnar Solskjaer did Cardiff, lighting up an otherwise dark and dismal season in this part of South Wales. Having been monitored by the likes of Liverpool, Arsenal, Everton and Southampton, the Gabonese centre-back surprised many by leaving Lorient – eighth in Ligue 1 last season – for a Championship side, and he has looked a cut above. The 26-year-old is strong in the air, repelling balls into the box and troubling goalkeepers up the other end, plays with his head up and has in his armoury both a wise reading of the game and a crunching tackle.

Did you know? Manga could have been forgiven for looking a little lost after returning from the Africa Cup of Nations: he had left a club playing in red and returned to one playing in blue. Cardiff had reverted to their traditional colours while he was away.

50 Benik Afobe

48 Paul Gallagher

Could Arsene Wenger have made an error by letting Afobe – an Arsenal player since he was six years old – leave for Wolves? The forward, who had spent five seasons on loan with Huddersfield, Reading, Bolton, Millwall and Sheffield Wednesday, showcased his class this season for MK Dons by netting 19 goals in 30 matches, including two against Manchester United in the League Cup, before securing a full-time switch to Molineux and continuing his spree. Powerful, pacy and prolific, he has also looked the part for England’s youth sides.

Did you know? Afobe claims that more than a dozen clubs attempted to sign him once it became clear that Arsenal were prepared to release him in January – “two Premier League and about 15 Championship sides,” he says. “But I didn’t want to go to the Premier League and not play.”

Scotland’s one-cap wonder has never been a prolific goalscorer, but he marked himself out as a man for the big occasion with his recent FA Cup exploits.

He scored twice against Norwich and three times across two clashes with Sheffield United, as North End reached the last 16 before losing to Manchester United. Gallagher is likely to be a crucial figure if Preston are to secure promotion back into the Championship: he can chip in with goals and assists at similar rates, regardless of whether he plays out wide, through the middle or behind the main striker. A second Scotland cap more than a decade after his first isn’t beyond the realms of possibility.

Did you know? Gallagher became the first loan player in Preston’s history to score a hat-trick, against Barnet in the FA Cup last season.

Clichés be damned – when it comes to our Football League Top 50, we couldn’t have done it without you. FFT has listened to fans across the three divisions and the country, from Cheltenham to Charlton, Norwich to Newport – regular match-goers, all. You named the three best players in your division (outside your club, naturally), based on this season’s performance, taking overall class into account. Then we used a sliding points scale for each player, based on division and position in every fan’s vote (1st, 2nd or 3rd), and hit ‘calculate’. Disagree? Of course you do! Tell us why on Twitter, using the hashtag:

Wolverhampton Wanderers Position Striker Age 22

Preston (on loan from Leicester) Position Striker Age 30

YOUNGEST PLAYER

46

Lewis Cook

Leeds United Position Midfielder Age 18

NICKNAME Just a classic ‘Cooky’, I’m afraid.

HEROES Probably Steven Gerrard [below]. On and off the pitch, he’s an inspiration. He’s a leader, as well as having great technical ability.

DRESSING-ROOM JOKER Billy Sharp is the banter king. He’s a funny guy, always taking the mick.

TOUGHEST OPPONENT Joao Carlos Teixeira at Brighton [on loan from Liverpool]. I was playing in defensive midfield midfield and he was always looking for space in behind me. I spent the whole game looking over my shoulder to see where he was.

STRENGTHS I’m a hard worker, not scared of a tackle and I’m good at picking out a pass.

WEAKNESSES My left foot and my shooting.

Did you know?

Paris born-and-raised, Sako opted to play for Mali over France, and scored one of the goals of the tournament ournament for the Eagles against Ivory Coast at the 2015 Africa Cup of Nations.

47 Bakary Sako

Wolverhampton Wanderers Position Midfielder Age 26

Sako has almost become a Premier League player already: he was Wolves’ standout operative in their difficult difficult 2012-13 season, which saw the side relegated to League One, and came close to joining Fulham when they were in the top flight. flight. But that move (and a proposed switch to Nottingham Forest) broke down and he has since mesmerised at Molineux, finishing finishing joint-top scorer as they won promotion from League One, then carrying his great form into Wolves’ Championship charge.

Quick, skilful and crafty, he can beat a man, lay on laser-guided assists and score all manner of goals, from cheeky dinks to spectacular free-kicks.

FIRST MOTOR A Vauxhall Corsa. I only passed my test a month ago, so technically it’s my mum’s!

FAVOURITE MOVIE Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. It’s a bit before my time, but I love Jim Carrey [below].

IF I HAD ONE SUPERPOWER... I’d like to go back in time. Whenever we lose, I’d go back to the start of the game and keep playing until we win.

MOST EMBARRASSING MOMENT I once kicked the ball out of play for basically no reason. I could hear the fans moaning and laughing.

IN FIVE WORDS, I AM... hard-working, energetic, aggressive, calm, hungry.

IN FIVE YEARS’ TIME I’LL BE… still playing, hopefully.

It’d be awesome to be in the Premier League with Leeds.

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45 James Hanson

43 Adam McGurk

42 Joe Garner

Bradford-born ‘Big Jim’ Hanson became something of a household name in 2013, when his goalscoring heroics against Aston Villa helped the Bantams to the League Cup final at Wembley. It’s a measure of the faith Phil Parkinson has in Hanson that he retained the striker’s services when culling the rest of his squad across the two transfer windows in 2014. The departure of penalty-box predator Nahki Wells to Huddersfield threatened to expose a few limitations in his 6ft 4in strike partner, but Hanson has responded by adding more goals to his game over the past 14 months, turning what was a one-in-four goal ratio to nearly one in two.

Did you know? Bradford fans have been known to chant, “He used to work in the Co-Op” at Hanson, who was on the staff at the supermarket when he played semi-professionally.

The former Tranmere forward has recently bounced back from a crisis in confidence to become a key figure in Burton’s promising League Two promotion push. A delicious free-kick that dumped Queens Park Rangers out of the League Cup in August was a mere glimpse of the match-winning potential of this Northern Ireland Under-21 international. His two goals in last term’s play-off semi-final triumph over Southend suggest he can play a decisive role in the closing weeks, as Albion look to go up automatically after experiencing disappointment at Wembley last year.

Did you know? McGurk missed the Burton players’ Christmas party in Liverpool after being knocked unconscious in an FA Cup tie at Fleetwood – it took some persuading from his parents and Gary Rowett to prevent him turning up after a visit to the hospital.

Now in his third season at Deepdale, Preston’s talisman is a marked man in League One – but Garner isn’t the sort of striker who shies away from the extra attention. Indeed, 2014-15 has seen him often taking on two centre-backs at a time, playing as the lone striker in North End’s 4-2-3-1 system.

And he’s adapted so well that Simon Grayson felt compelled to revert to two upfront when the former England youth international was sidelined for three months by a knee tendon injury in November, such was the void around the opposition penalty box in his absence. Garner’s return to action in February coincided with a six-game winning streak in the league as Preston rose to second in the table.

Did you know? Garner scored 29 goals in 2014, and no fewer than 21 of them – 72 per cent – came after the hour mark.

Bradford City Position Striker Age 27

44 Joe Jacobson

Wycombe Wanderers Position Defender Age 28 Driven on by the desire to one day represent Wales at senior international level, Jacobson has been an instrumental figure in a Wycombe outfit defying the odds to feature heavily in the League Two promotion race this season.

The former Shrewsbury left-back captained his country’s under-21 side back in 2008, and his determined performances for the Chairboys show that he hasn’t given up on the dream of full recognition just yet, despite a shortage of opportunities so far to test himself at a higher level.

“Oi, FFT! Where’s Demarai Gray?!”

The talented young cure for the Blues leads our list of those who came close

Burton Albion Position Striker Age 26

Preston North End Position Striker Age 26

Did you know?

Joe Jacobson attracted criticism from then-West Ham boss Alan Curbishley in August 2007 when, playing for Bristol Rovers, he broke Kieron Dyer’s leg in a League Cup match.

Curbishley later apologised in writing to the youngster.

41 Paddy Madden Scunthorpe United Position Striker Age 25

Paddy Madden is proving that his 24-goal haul in Yeovil’s 2012-13 League One promotion campaign was no one-season wonder. The Irishman, who began with Bohemians in his home country before moving to the UK with Carlisle in 2011, is on course for 20 goals once again, albeit this time playing wide on the right of a 4-2-3-1 rather than through the middle. “I’m asking him to do a job for me and he’s doing it brilliantly,” says Irons manager Mark Robins. “It doesn’t affect his game because he doesn’t sulk – he just goes out and performs and gets in positions to score goals.

His work-rate is phenomenal.”

Did you know? When a cash-strapped Scunthorpe fan tried to sell his iPod on Twitter in order to fund a recent away trip, Madden noticed, intervened and offered him a free ticket to the match.

Kal Naismith

Sam Winnall

Demarai Gray

Andrea Orlandi

Darren Pratley

Ryan Donaldson

Accrington Stanley

Barnsley

Birmingham City

Blackpool

Bolton Wanderers

Cambridge United

Winger Age 23

Striker Age 24

Winger Age 18

Midfielder Age 30

Midfielder Age 29

Midfielder Age 23

His girlfriend’s tragic death in October has understandably affected the Scot’s form, but for Stanley he is a prized asset; they rejected a bid from Bury last year.

Voted League Two’s best player in FFT while at Scunthorpe last term, Winnall’s been held back by injury but still finds the net, including an FA Cup hat-trick.

The jewel of the Blues’ academy has made the step up with ease, attracting many a suitor. Bid after bid failed for Bournemouth, even one as high as £5m.

It’s been a year to forget for Blackpool, but Orlandi has brightened things with his sweet left foot and blog, giving fans insight into the dressing room.

Zach Clough has been a revelation at Bolton but Pratley was Mr Consistent under Neil Lennon, scoring vital goals before tearing his hamstring.

U’s fans are loving their return to the Football League, and their Geordie wizard – man of the match against Manchester United – is one reason why.

62 May 2015 FourFourTwo.com

40 Johann Gudmundsson Charlton Athletic Position Winger Age 24

The signing of the lanky Gudmundsson was one of the very few good things to come out of a summer of upheaval at The Valley. After five decent years playing for AZ in Holland, the Icelandic winger adapted immediately to the hurly-burly of the Championship, impressing with his pace, energy and willingness to chase down loose balls. He has chipped in regularly with goals, too, and popped up with some stunning finishes, such as his curled cracker against Rotherham in September. He also notched a superb international hat-trick against Switzerland back in September 2013.

Did you know? Gudmundsson trained with both Fulham and Chelsea as a 16-year-old while studying at the International School of London, but missed his school and friends in Iceland and moved back to the country of his birth in 2008.

39

Reuben Reid

Plymouth Argyle Position Striker Age 26 It all turned on an FA Cup hat-trick against Lincoln in November 2013 for Reuben Reid. Since then, a career that strayed close to the wilderness – with nine loan spells since he broke into senior football in 2006 – has been re-energised under John Sheridan, and the Bristol-born hitman is banging in the goals back at Argyle, where it all began a decade ago. It’s a remarkable turnaround for a player who had spent so many years struggling to find form, consistency and the net, but few ever doubted that he had the potential to pull it off. The next four years will be career-defining.

Did you know? Reid’s match-winning hat-trick in the Devon derby against Exeter City in February was attributed to a pair of lucky pants, provided by a local garment company who specialise in counteracting ‘groin discomfort’.

38

Jota

Brentford Position Midfielder Age 23

LOWER LEAGUE LIFE ENGLAND vs SPAIN THE FANS

CHAMPIONSHIP “Every ground seems to be full and everyone is really up for it.

Fans live for their football here – they structure their entire weekend around their team.”

SEGUNDA “You don’t see the same level in Spain. The majority support the big teams, and [watching lower-league football] can be more of a social occasion. Here, if you’re at a Brentford game, it means you’re a Brentford fan.”

THE ATMOSPHERE

CHAMPIONSHIP “No matter how you play, you always feel support until the end of a game. It’s beautiful. You really take the team to your heart.”

SEGUNDA “There’s a broader range of atmospheres in the Segunda, but often the noise feels a bit removed from the action on the

pitch. You can hear the fans’ individual shouts to a greater extent in the Championship.”

THE FACILITIES

CHAMPIONSHIP “They’re very good – exactly what I was expecting from England: loads of pitches, a viewing gallery and a gym. It’s not a club that can match Manchester City, but the facilities are great.”

SEGUNDA “Eibar are a small club with a tiny budget. We trained on an artificial pitch next to the stadium because there wasn’t the money to maintain a lot of grass pitches.

Brentford have a bigger internal structure and project.”

THE INTENSITY

CHAMPIONSHIP “You notice the extra physicality and pace, no doubt. Football in the Championship is pretty direct.

You go from back to front very

quickly, whether it’s with a long ball forward or quick passes.”

SEGUNDA “I think teams focus more on tactical play and less on physique.

It’s only natural the pace slows down a bit. You can see the extra calmness in any [Spanish] league.”

THE WAGES

CHAMPIONSHIP “I would say that with the exception of Real Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia and Atletico Madrid, Championship clubs pay higher wages than in Spain – more than even the rest of La Liga, let alone teams in Segunda.

Contracts here are much better.”

SEGUNDA “The economic downturn has affected nearly every club. Very few are doing well and some in the second tier can’t afford to pay the players. That could have a massive effect on the future of Spanish football. It’s a shame.”

Kyle Dempsey

Trevor Carson

Jimmy Ryan

Gavin Massey

Jim O’Brien

Izale McLeod

Nicky Ajose

Carlisle United

Cheltenham Town

Chesterfield

Colchester United

Coventry City

Crawley Town

Crewe Alexandra

Midfielder Age 19

Goalkeeper Age 27

Midfielder Age 26

Winger Age 22

Winger Age 27

Striker Age 30

Striker Age 23

With his confident displays, academy graduate Dempsey has far exceeded all expectations in his first year as a pro, becoming a regular under Keith Curle.

Clean sheets have been rare, but if it wasn’t for Carson’s fine shot-stopping the Robins would surely be adrift at the foot of League Two.

Part of Liverpool’s Youth Cup-winning teams of 2006 and 2007, Ryan has helped the Spireites’ charge up League One and looks at home in Derbyshire.

The Essex side look set for yet another relegation scrap – but would they have such problems if the rest of the squad displayed Massey’s consistency?

Picked up on a free after rejecting a new contract at Barnsley, O’Brien has been a worthy acquisition for City, putting in tidy, energetic displays.

MK Dons, Barnet, Pompey, Crawley – wherever he goes, McLeod tends to win the club’s top player vote. A hat-trick in February took him to 15 goals in 2014-15.

If it wasn’t for the Leeds loanee, Crewe would be in major strife. His eight goals between December and February lifted them out of the drop zone.

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37 Jonathan Forte Oldham Athletic Position Striker Age 28

No longer the nomad, Forte has finally found himself a place to call home, with the Latics the 10th club he has turned out for in 11 years as a professional.

The Barbados international is putting his searing pace and tidy finishing to good use with Oldham, hitting double figures in a season for the first time in his career. “He spent a good part of his life frustrated at Southampton not doing anything,” says his former Latics boss, Lee Johnson.

“Sometimes it doesn’t matter how much money you are on – it doesn’t bring happiness. What brings happiness is being valued, performing and being able to look in the mirror and say ‘Look, I have had a good game today’.”

Did you know? Forte has already scored more league goals this season than in the previous four campaigns combined.

36 Eoin Doyle Cardiff City Position Striker Age 27

35

Andy Williams

Swindon Town Position Striker Age 28

MY SEASON IN GOALS

THE FIRST

GOAL NO.1, GILLINGHAM, AUGUST 19 “This was my first goal in my first start of the season. It was also my first back at Swindon after returning from injury [following a loan spell at Yeovil in 2013-14] . Last season was one to forget – I was sent on loan and then picked up a bad knock – so it felt good scoring early in this campaign. This was an equaliser before half-time and it went right in the corner, which is something I work hard at doing.”

THE THUNDERBOLT GOAL NO.3, OLDHAM, SEPTEMBER 16 “I’m torn because this was my best finish of the season, but we didn’t win the game. Nathan Byrne has provided a few assists and he cut inside before finding me with the outside of his boot. I was in quite a wide position, but in training we’d spoken about taking shots early, so I hit it as hard as I could. I was still fighting for my place in the team at this stage.”

THE REDEEMER

An old-fashioned poacher who comes to life inside the 18-yard box, Doyle’s game is based on shedding his marker and making split-second judgements – and it brought him 25 goals in 33 matches at Chesterfield this season. A deadline-day transfer to Cardiff followed, and while results have initially been slow (due to the Championship side’s inconsistency as much as the personal step up, Doyle being the 10th striker to feature for them this season), history suggests his productivity improves with experience as he adjusts to new surroundings – the Irishman’s goal ratio has improved year on year at Sligo Rovers, Hibernian and Chesterfield.

Did you know? Doyle scored two hat-tricks in the space of four days last September, the first in a 4-1 win over Scunthorpe and the second in a 3-3 draw with Preston after the Spireites went 3-0 down.

GOAL NO.7, YEOVIL, OCTOBER 18 “This was my first return to Yeovil since my loan spell and injury. Jack Stephens did well on the right-hand side, something he’s done on a number of occasions – not bad for a centre-back. He showed great composure to lay it back and thankfully my shot found the top corner. It was a nice lay-off, so it didn’t need much power; all I had to do was redirect it.”

THE HEADER GOAL NO.9, PRESTON, NOVEMBER 4 “I’ve scored four headers this season, but the one against Preston is my favourite. It came late in a key game and turned out to be the winner. Jordan [Turnbull] passed out wide to Ben [Gladwin] and his cross took a slight deflection. I managed to get above my man to direct the ball home. It was more instinct than anything else.”

THE DINK GOAL NO.13, WALSALL, DECEMBER 26 “I really enjoy playing alongside my strike partner Smithy [Michael Smith], and this goal came as the result of some nice link-up play. With the weight of his pass and the position of the goalkeeper, it was just instinct to dink this one over him. It’s easy to get too much on that kind of finish, but thankfully everything came together. I had family there on the day, so it was nice to be able to enjoy the moment and celebrate in front of them.”

Mark Cousins

Dean Furman

Tom Nichols

Chris Maxwell

John Egan

Scott Flinders

Chris Dagnall

Dag & Red

Doncaster Rovers

Exeter City

Fleetwood Town

Gillingham

Hartlepool United

Leyton Orient

Goalkeeper Age 28

Midfielder Age 26

Striker Age 21

Goalkeeper Age 24

Defender Age 22

Goalkeeper Age 28

Striker Age 28

After injuring his finger in pre-season, then losing the draw for the No.1 shirt, Cousins’ luck turned.

Defenders like the Chelmsford-born keeper’s composure.

“Quite unbelievable” is how Furman described the support he got as South Africa’s new captain, but he’s just as loved at Donny for his tireless shifts.

Nichols has become one of Paul Tisdale’s leading lights since emerging last term.

He fired nine goals in just 11 games between October and January.

The Welsh stopper had to wait two years for his Town debut, but since being given the nod last February he has hardly put a foot – or hand – wrong.

A few eyebrows shot up when Sunderland offloaded Egan, and he has shown why.

Tough in the tackle and strong on the ball, he’s handy in the other area, too.

He may not have scored this season (ask a Pools fan) but Flinders has done admirably between the sticks for a side deservedly last in the Football League.

The O’s are misfiring after an excellent 2013-14 season, but Dagnall has at least retained his accuracy in front of goal from last term, hitting double digits.

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FOOTBALL LEAGUE

34 Sean Scannell

32 Britt Assombalonga

31 Lewis Dunk

Scannell burst onto the scene as a 17-year old with then-Championship side Crystal Palace back in 2008, where his rocket heels, smart link play and range of skills suggested a top-class operative who would be lighting up the Premier League sooner rather than later. Injury plagued his development, though, and despite some decent performances for Palace, it’s taken the move to West Yorkshire – and a regular spot on the wing – to see Scannell fulfil his potential. Hitting a rich vein of form this season, the Croydon-born flyer has proved that he can be a match-winner at this level.

Did you know? Scannell was eligible to play for England, Jamaica, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. He eventually plumped for the Republic, and has played at under-21 level but not for the senior team – yet.

After a terrific year menacing League One defenders for Peterborough the DR Congo-born speedster hit the ground running after becoming Forest’s £5.5m record signing. A menace thanks to his pace, Assombalonga also possesses a nice line in hold-up play – and in February notched his 15th goal of the season, against Wigan.

That match also saw him stretchered off with a knee injury that will keep him out of action for a year.

What a difference a new coach makes.

Eighteen months ago, Dunk was struggling to get into the Seagulls’ first XI, and spent a month at Bristol City to get some football, having fallen out of favour with Spanish boss Oscar Garcia. Sami Hyypia reinstated the local lad to the first team last summer and he’s jumped at the opportunity, impressing under the Finn and new gaffer Chris Hughton. A towering stopper, the 6ft 4in Dunk does the simple things well at the back, and has also been the side’s top scorer for much of the season, with five goals to his credit by October – which reflects rather better on Dunk than Brighton’s shoddy forward line.

Did you know? Dunk scored one of the most elaborate own goals of all time in front of the Kop at Anfield in February 2012, juggling the ball into the wrong net as Liverpool beat Brighton 6-1.

Huddersfield Town Position Winger Age 24

Nottingham Forest Position Striker Age 22

33 Christophe Berra Ipswich Town Position Defender Age 30

Sporting an exotically European name thanks to his French father, Berra is very much a centre-back in the British mould.

He starred for hometown club Hearts before moving to Wolves for four seasons, but was frozen out at Molineux during their relegation year after contract wranglings with Dean Saunders.

In 2013 he was snapped up by former gaffer Mick McCarthy, by then at Ipswich, and the Scot has since formed a fine partnership with Tommy Smith, been voted 2013-14’s Player of the Year and has even started scoring goals. McCarthy rates him as the best defender outside the top flight.

Did you know? Berra dreams of playing at Euro 2016 in his dad’s homeland, saying, “It would be special. He moved to Scotland in his twenties to be a waiter and learn English, and the rest is history. He’s more or less Scottish now.”

Did you know?

Britt Assombalonga’s father, Fedor, played internationally for Zaire, and Britt was called up for the DR Congo’s Africa Cup of Nations squad – but eventually withdrew, and still “hasn’t ruled out” choosing England instead.

Brighton & Hove Albion Position Defender Age 23

30 Jose Baxter

Sheffield United Position Midfielder Age 23 The creative spark behind Sheffield United’s string of FA and League Cup giant-killings, this player of old-school values has an ideal home in Bramall Lane. “There’s a lot of matey-matey stuff in the Premier League,” he says. “I don’t like it – hugging and kissing each other before games and all that.”

Baxter is proud to play for a team that gets in people’s faces, allowing him to pull the strings behind the forward line largely unhindered. His cup exploits with the Blades, and Oldham before that, suggest he can cut it at a higher level and perhaps adds credence to the ‘better than Rooney’ claims when he broke into the Everton first team at 16.

Did you know? Baxter nearly quit the game altogether after leaving first club Everton in 2012, but was kept motivated by a boxing coach called Michael ‘Cracker’ McNally.

Andy Drury

Ryan Tafazolli

Sid Nelson

Shaun Beeley

Mark Byrne

Roy Carroll

Danny Hylton

Luton Town

Mansfield Town

Millwall

Morecambe

Newport County

Notts County

Oxford United

Midfielder Age 31

Defender Age 23

Defender Age 19

Defender Age 26

Midfielder Age 26

Goalkeeper Age 37

Striker Age 26

Drury is one of the most skilful players in League Two. A snip at £100,000 (from Crawley), the versatile playmaker has been a revelation in his second spell at Luton.

The Stags’ giant centre-back was their 2013-14 Player of the Year, and the Southampton youth product has hogged man of the match awards this term.

Born into a family of diehard Lions, the teenager – who has already worn the captain’s armband – says he’s “living the dream”. Big things lie ahead.

Snapped up from Fleetwood, bustling right-back Beeley has been a model of consistency for the Shrimps. He’s a hard-working raider fond of an overlap.

The midfield marvel from Dublin was a terrace favourite at Barnet for his energy and top tackling.

Now he drives the Exiles’ unexpected promotion bid.

The ex-Manchester United stopper and Northern Ireland No.1 – still – is the main reason a poor year in League One hasn’t been even worse for County.

After putting in fine performances for Aldershot across nearly a decade, Hylton now has a second home. This season could be his most prolific to date.

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FOOTBALL LEAGUE

28

27 Luke Freeman

Jonny Howson

Norwich City Position Midfielder Age 26

Did you know?

Almen Abdi speaks fluent English, German, French and Italian, making him part of Watford’s charm offensive. “I help the overseas players out when I can – it is hard in a new country,” he says.

Bristol City Position Winger Age 23

The Yorkshireman was a much-loved club captain with Leeds United and his time with the Canaries has also won him plenty of admirers, not least the former Norwich City gaffer Paul Lambert.

Having witnessed an outstanding midfield passing performance from his man against Everton in 2012, the Scot compared the elegant Howson to none other than Andres Iniesta. He may not quite be East Anglia’s answer to the tiki-taka Barça overlord, and Howson’s form dipped alarmingly for a while in 2013, but this season has seen the box-to-box midfielder recapture the kind of verve that brought such tributes, as resurgent Norwich have started to again resemble a side worthy of the Premier League.

He’ll be a crucial figure during the run-in.

Did you know? Howson is an obsessive fisherman whose best catch was apparently a “14lb carp, caught at Grafton Mere”.

Bristol City signalled their title intentions with several big-money transfers last summer, but it was the capture of Freeman in particular that grabbed the attention of League One connoisseurs. The left-sided former Arsenal schemer impressed in a variety of roles for relegated Stevenage last season, and under Steve Cotterill he has matured into a workaholic box-to-box midfielder. Freeman now carries more defensive responsibilities but he remains a potential match-winner for the Robins, while his deft first touch and excellent close control continue to thrill.

Did you know? Freeman is the youngest player to appear in the FA Cup proper, having turned out in the first round for Gillingham against Barnet in November 2007 at the tender age of 15 years and 233 days.

29 Almen Abdi

26 Rudy Gestede

The Kosovo-born Switzerland international (six caps) has had a solid career over the last decade with Zurich, Le Mans and Udinese, but since arriving at Vicarage Road on loan three summers ago he has matured like a fine wine, and can now be held up as one of the most composed midfielders outside the Premier League.

He was Watford’s Player of the Year in 2012-13 before suffering a long-term injury, but has retuned to his best this season – and at times he has been sublime. Allying technical excellence with a fantastic engine, Abdi can deliver pinpoint set-pieces and is clinical in front of goal.

After arriving from second-tier Metz in 2011, Gestede failed to cement a starting berth at Cardiff City, making 42 of his 52 Championship appearances from the bench, and when the Bluebirds considered him ill-equipped for the Premier League he was flogged to Blackburn for £200,000. How the struggling Welsh side now rue their assessment: the France-born Benin international has been on fire since landing in Lancashire, banging in goals at an average of one every other game and acting as the perfect foil for Jordan Rhodes. An old-school battering ram, the 6ft 4in Gestede is lethal in the air and the dictionary definition of “a handful”.

Did you know? Gestede decided to scale back his social media activities last summer, signing off with the excellent message: “Hi friends! I delete my twitter! Take care of you! See you!!”

Watford Position Midfielder Age 28

Blackburn Rovers Position Striker Age 26

Marcus Maddison

Tom Pope

Adam Federici

Rhys Bennett

Matt Derbyshire

Ben Coker

Charlie Lee

Peterborough

Port Vale

Reading

Rochdale

Rotherham United

Southend United

Stevenage

Midfielder Age 21

Striker Age 29

Goalkeeper Age 30

Defender Age 23

Striker Age 28

Defender Age 24

Midfielder Age 28

Having made his name at Gateshead, the ex-Newcastle trainee has come on at Posh. Still raw, he’s quick, well-balanced and flexible, with a lethal left foot.

Vale’s Player of the Year for the past two seasons, Pope helped them up to League One, and the targetman’s goals look like keeping them there.

After last season’s struggles, the strapping Socceroo has recaptured the Royals’ No.1 shirt in style this year, making numerous stunning stops.

Comfortable at right-back or centre-back, the former Bolton defender has been outstanding as Dale have consolidated in League One.

The ex-England U21 hitman has been unsettled since leaving boyhood club Blackburn in 2009, but seems to have found a home in Rotherham.

Bouncing back from a three-month injury in the autumn, Coker was up for January’s League Two Player of the Month and found form in his side’s promotion bid.

A summer arrival from Gillingham, Lee’s ability to play across the defence and midfield has been a bonus for Boro manager Graham Westley.

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FOOTBALL LEAGUE

24 Michail Antonio Nottingham Forest Position Winger Age 25

25

It has been a topsy-turvy season at the City Ground, but despite Forest’s variable form Antonio has remained one of the Championship’s most consistent performers. The London-born winger has been a prolific loan ranger since signing for Reading from non-league Tooting & Mitcham United in 2008, heading out of Berkshire on five temporary deals, but after arriving at Forest via Sheffield Wednesday, he looks completely at home on the banks of the Trent. He has also been impressing the new man in the dugout. “Antonio was almost unplayable at times,” said Dougie Freedman after 4-1 Forest’s win in February against his former employers Bolton.

Did you know? Antonio played alongside Ross Barkley for Sheffield Wednesday after David Moyes sent the England international to Hillsborough on loan during the 2011-12 season.

Jed Wallace

Portsmouth Position Midfielder Age 21

The best thing about being a footballer is the feeling you get in those moments when the fans are going crazy.

My season highlight so far was our 6-2 win at Cambridge. I scored one and got four assists. Man United went there a couple of weeks before and drew 0-0. Cambridge were a bit more defensive that day!

If I wasn’t a footballer I’d be a personal trainer.

I’ve always had an interest in sport – I loved PE and did a college course in Sports Science. I think I’d do that rather than being a plumber like my old man.

My hero growing up was Steven Gerrard. As a goalscoring midfielder, the way he drives forward is a real inspiration. I also loved The Rock – I repeated all of his wrestling moves and catchphrases.

My one regret is that we haven’t done as well as I hoped this season. Some people see Portsmouth getting 15,000 every other week and assume it should be easy, but it isn’t that simple. We may have the best fans, but it’s still 11 vs 11 on the pitch.

If I could change one thing about the game it would be scrapping yellow cards for celebrations.

If you score a last-minute winner you shouldn’t have to hold back. I’d love to celebrate a goal by crowd-surfing to the back of the Fratton End! My proudest moment was playing for England Under-19s against Scotland in 2013. I’d been on loan in non-league with Whitehawk in January; by May I was playing for my country. We won 3-0.

Max Power

The item I cherish most is the shirt I wore on my debut for England U19s. I had it signed by everyone.

The future isn’t something I think too much about.

I’ve got aspirations to play at a higher level than League Two, but I owe Portsmouth a lot and I want to repay them. It’s flattering to be linked with Championship and Premier League teams, but that just makes me want to prove myself here even more.

23 Daniel Ayala Middlesbrough Position Defender Age 24

Four stuttering years on the fringes at Liverpool and Norwich City, and on loan with Hull, Derby and Forest, seemed to suggest that the 6ft 3in Spaniard might not be cut out for the English game. But an emergency loan to Middlesbrough back in 2013 kickstarted a splendid run of form in the centre of defence, and he’s since become a reliable stopper in the Championship, convincing Boro to sign him on a permanent contract. His positioning, reading of the game and man-marking have been near-impeccable, and he’s also got that trademark Spanish footwork, which helps him start attacks and provide assists up the other end.

Did you know? Ayala is a product of the Seville youth academy, but was poached by Liverpool – and fellow Spaniard Rafa Benitez – at 17. He has been capped once by Spain at under-21 level.

Richard O’Donnell

James Perch

Michael Coulson

Wigan Athletic

Adebayo Akinfenwa

Kieffer Moore

Tranmere Rovers

Yeovil Town

York City

Midfielder Age 21

Walsall

Defender Age 29

AFC Wimbledon

Striker Age 22

Winger Age 26

Having arrived from non-league, 6ft 5in Moore’s impressed for the Glovers, both as a battering ram forward or as an excellent makeshift centre-back.

The hard-working Coulson is strong defensively and has looked sharp this term, having missed his own stag do for the League Two play-offs last year.

Goalkeeper Age 26

The aptly-named Birkenhead boy is a dynamo in midfield. A shining light in Rovers’ difficult season, the versatile, aggressive youngster is on the radar of several clubs.

Having been on the books of 10 sides over the last eight seasons, O’Donnell has become a forceful presence in the Saddlers’ net.

Striker Age 32

It’s been a dismal year at the DW, but at least right-back Perch, a versatile grafter who can do a job across defence or in midfield, has been reliable.

The well-travelled ‘Beast’ is a cult hero and he still bangs in the goals, hitting double figures by February and scoring against Liverpool.

Disagree with our final 50?

Of course you do – that’s how football works.

Who should have been included?

And who should have been left out?

Join the debate on Twitter with #FLtop50

FourFourTwo.com May 2015 67

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22

Jay EmmanuelThomas

Bristol City Position Striker Age 24

JET’S GUIDE TO BRISTOL Best non-football sport

“I go to the basketball as much as I can – whenever they have a home game and I’m not travelling. It’s only a 10 or 15-minute drive from my house. The London Lions are my local team, but after getting to know some of the [Bristol] Flyers I’ll still support them. NBA is a long way ahead, obviously, but it’s still a really high standard.

There’s a lot of technically gifted players.”

But JET, what about Clifton Suspension Bridge?

Where I go with my mates

“It depends how I’m feeling at the time: Sometimes Rileys to play pool; other times we go to a little dessert place called Sundaes Gelato.

You can get good milkshakes and waffles there.”

Best place to eat

“I’d probably say Byron Burger – my favourite is the BBQ one with bacon, cheese and pickles. If I was taking my girlfriend out I’d go to Piccolino, an Italian restaurant.” restaurant.

All the major food groups

Best thing to do on a matchday

“ you’re with “If a group of mates then you could go to Cabot Circus for a bit of food, and there’s a cool miniature golf place, too. I’ve been there with my mates before – it’s good fun.”

Best night out

“A club called Java. I like hip-hop and R&B. I don’t think grime is big in Bristol, but back in London a few of my friends are artists. They’ve had a couple of events here in the past, though.”

The Bristol derby is...

“Really different to what I’d experienced previously.

I didn’t actually know how big the game was until we played each other in [September] 2013 and there were over 5,000 tweets about it. I spoke to the kit man, who gave me a brief lowdown about how big it was. The game itself was crazy. It was a big game to score in [City won 2-1], which made the atmosphere amazing.”

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FOOTBALL LEAGUE

21 Keiren Westwood

18 Danny Mayor

Sheffield Wednesday Position Goalkeeper Age 30

After three seasons mostly keeping the bench warm at the Stadium of Light – although many recall a magnificent performance he put in for Sunderland against Manchester United – Westwood could easily have found himself on a downer. But the Mancunian custodian instead switched to Hillsborough, where he has been an immediate hit.

A fine shot-stopper and something of a penalty specialist, the 6ft 2in keeper has been on such fine form that he could well fight his way back into Republic of Ireland contention – and may get another shot in a Premier League goalmouth, too.

Did you know? After being rejected by both Manchester United and City as a boy – and then snubbed by Accrington Stanley – Westwood applied to join the police force, before being rescued from the football scrapheap by Carlisle United.

Bury Position Winger Age 24

Did you know?

When Preston recruited Danny Mayor at the age of nine, the signing-on fee was a season ticket and a bottle of milk.

A direct winger who likes to drop the shoulder and glide beyond the best full-backs League Two can offer, Mayor is arguably a player of Championship pedigree, having matured and grown in confidence since stop-start spells in the second tier with Preston and Sheffield Wednesday.

Manager David Flitcroft certainly agrees, likening his displays this season to those of David Nugent a decade ago.

“It’s a bit like when I was here as a player with Nuge,” says Flitcroft. “He outgrew the level. I saw it unfold; it was embarrassing at times.

I believe Danny’s getting to that stage.”

20 Ross McCormack

19 Harry Arter

17 Matt Done

Eyebrows were raised when McCormack was signed by the soon-to-be-gone Felix Magath back in July, but the former Leeds man has now begun to justify his hefty £11m price tag after a slow start at Craven Cottage. It took him seven Championship matches to get off the mark, but McCormack is now far more chipper than he was under Magath, who suggested the striker was overweight, rather than overpriced. “When I came here and was told I was not fit enough, I felt a bit silly and that hurt me,” he said. If he keeps scoring and Fulham win promotion back to the top flight next season, that figure might ultimately look like money well spent.

Did you know? McCormack puts his 29-goal success at Leeds last season down to a simple formula. “Last season, I was upfront with big Matty Smith – he took the hits, and I just walked around.”

Another player who has been rejuvenated under the tutelage of Eddie Howe at Bournemouth, the former Charlton trainee has emerged as one of the Championship’s standout midfielders this season. Signed by the Cherries in June 2010 after a season with Woking, the cultured Arter’s route to the top hasn’t been straightforward, but his journey might progress beyond English football’s second tier. “I had been put on a pedestal way too early at Charlton and when I fell off I didn’t really understand why,” he said. Now he is being built up once again, and the reasons why are clear to see.

Did you know? Arter is former England midfielder Scott Parker’s brother-in-law, with the pair enjoying Christmas dinner together the day before Bournemouth’s Boxing Day clash with Fulham, in which Arter scored in a 2-0 victory for the Cherries.

A late night phonecall in August last year changed the course of Matty Done’s career forever. Rochdale assistant Chris Beech wanted to know whether the former left-back fancied playing centre-forward in a new 4-1-2-3 system, and a slightly bemused Done accepted the challenge.

His impact was sensational, a hat-trick in a 5-2 win at Crewe triggering a run of 14 goals in 23 matches.

Bigger clubs were watching, and a January move to Sheffield United followed, where Done continued to catch goalkeepers cold by getting his shots away early, scoring six times in his first eight appearances for the Blades, including a pair in a 3-1 win away at table-toppers Bristol City.

Did you know? Done’s new nickname is ‘Seagull’ because of the way he swoops on opposing defenders and robs them of possession.

Fulham Position Striker Age 28

Bournemouth Position Midfielder Age 25

16

Things are looking up for Ighalo, says his boss

Odion Ighalo

Watford Position Striker Age 25

BY HIS MANAGER SLAVISA JOKANOVIC

“I have to admit that when I arrived at Watford in early October, Odion Ighalo wasn’t really in my plans. He was more of a back-up option – a squad player first [Ighalo started six of Jokanovic’s fi rst 12 matches in charge of the Hornets, scoring twice].

“However, he didn’t have any problems with this situation. He continued working hard and showed me exactly what he could do for this team.

Now, Ighalo is an important part of our team.

He’s a really professional football player and he understands his role in our system. Now we see that he has scored many goals for us.

“I can also tell you that he’s a very clever guy, he’s always available to help the team and his

Sheffield United Position Striker Age 26

team-mates, and he clearly has great technical quality. He suits this team’s characteristics perfectly, which has helped both him and his team-mates.

“Sometimes in football you need a bit of luck and you need to be prepared to take your opportunity when your time comes. He’s been patient and done that.

He has been in his best run of form over the last few months and helped us a lot, particularly with his goals.

“He’s still young and still has room to improve.

In the future he will have enough quality to play in the Premier League – 100 per cent. He has the ability. Of course, I hope it can be with Watford.

“Of course I am very happy with the level of his performances since I became manager at Vicarage Road, but I can’t give myself a medal because he has had a good season – all I can do is encourage him and push him to continue to do the same, or even better.

“Ighalo listens to ideas and he’s always ready to learn. That’s good news for any coach.”

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FOOTBALL LEAGUE

15 Alex Pritchard

14 Patrick Bamford

Snapping up the attack-minded Pritchard on a season-long loan from Spurs has proved to be a masterstroke from Brentford boss Mark Warburton.

After impressing for Swindon in a similar arrangement last season, Pritchard has been an influential presence in the Bees’ midfield during a dream campaign at Griffin Park. He will hope that his performances in West London have caught the eye of Spurs boss Mauricio Pochettino. “Hopefully people will be watching and I can show them what I can do,” he said back in September. He has been turning heads ever since as Brentford have launched an assault on the Championship’s top six.

Did you know? To date, Pritchard has made only one appearance for Tottenham, making his bow as a substitute in the North Londoners’ 3-0 win against Aston Villa on the final day of last season.

Having filled his goalscoring boots for MK Dons and Derby, Bamford’s magic touch has continued with a fine spell at Boro. The youngster has spearheaded the side’s charge up the Championship, winning comparisons with such great former North East poachers as Alan Shearer.

His 6ft 1in physique and strength are highly impressive for his age, and he is combative in the air, but Bamford also possesses a canny touch and fine footballing brain, able to drop off centrally and run at defenders.

Whether he’ll eventually lead the line for Chelsea – and even England – should start to become clear over the next couple of seasons.

Brentford (on loan from Tottenham) Position Midfielder Age 21

Middlesbrough (on loan from Chelsea) Position Striker Age 21

13 Marc Richards

11 Nathan Redmond

Now in his seventh successive campaign as an automatic starter at League Two level, Richards won the title with Chesterfield last season but opted for a return to Sixfields – where he had previously plied his trade between 2003 and 2005 – rather than be unsure of a starting berth in League One at the Proact Stadium. He remains the archetypal all-round centre-forward; a master of his craft, combining brains and brawn depending on whether the Cobblers are chasing a lead or defending one.

This is shaping up to be his best season yet – the first in which he surpasses 20 league goals (he had already racked up 17 by the beginning of March) and potentially collects the top scorer gong.

Did you know? Richards laced up his boots to make his 500th senior appearance in February, as the Cobblers beat Morecambe 2-1.

The former Birmingham City and England Under-21s star is now firmly established as creator-in-chief at Carrow Road after Norwich’s relegation from the Premier League last season.

The 21-year-old has been a pivotal presence for new manager Alex Neil as his side have climbed imperiously up the Championship table in the second half of the campaign. Redmond has always appeared destined for a career on the highest stage and Neil will hope he returns there with Norwich, sooner rather than later. “The benefit he has is that he started very young and has [already] played a lot of games,” said the 33-year-old Scot.

Did you know? Redmond’s first senior goal came in a Europa League qualifier for Birmingham against Portuguese outfit Nacional in August 2011.

He was only 17 at the time.

Northampton Town Position Striker Age 32

BEST IN LEAGUE TWO

12

Ryan Woods

Shrewsbury Town Position Midfielder Age 21

with Schurrle having won the World Cup just a few months before. I was excited rather than nervous.

David Thornton, 55

The first moment I saw him play, I knew he had something. Playing in League Two as a youngster isn’t easy, but he always seems to have so much time on the ball and has an incredible engine – he’s a real box-to-box midfielder. We’ve played Chelsea and Leicester this season and he was sensational in both games.

A lot of sides in this league have cottoned on to the fact that he’s our main threat and are now man-marking him. But that’s all part of the learning process, isn’t it? He’s already started adapting. He has been superb in his favourite central midfield position this season. Believe it or not, he spent most of last year at right-back.

RW: I really enjoyed both of those [League Cup] matches. We beat Leicester, and gave Chelsea a very good game – I don’t think I did myself any harm with how I played in either match. Against Chelsea I was mainly up against Oscar and Andre Schurrle, which was a big thing for me, particularly

RW: Playing at right-back wasn’t as enjoyable as it’s not my favoured position, but at that age it was really important for me to get some Football League

The Shrews’ rising star responds to fan flattery Steve Bromley, 53

70 May 2015 FourFourTwo.com

Did you know?

On-loan Chelsea striker Patrick Bamford has four A-levels and turned down a Football and Business Studies scholarship at Harvard University. Not a bad back-up plan, Pat…

The brunette Ryan Woods

Norwich City Position Winger Age 21

appearances under my belt, and playing there allowed me to get into the team and do that.

Then towards the end of last season I moved into midfield, which was where I’d been playing since joining the club at 15, and that extra experience of senior football really helped.

Karl Jones, 20 His nickname is ‘the Ginger Pirlo’ as both players appear to have more time on the ball than anyone else on the pitch. And he’s ginger!

RW: [Laughs] I’ve heard the nickname, but I don’t really know about that comparison!

Naturally he’s a player I look up to, although the player I look up to most, being a big Liverpool fan, is Steven Gerrard. I’ve also been compared to Paul Scholes – and not just because of the hair!

FOOTBALL LEAGUE

10 Jordan Rhodes Blackburn Rovers Position Striker Age 25

Now firmly established as one of the Championship’s most reliable goal-getters, Rhodes has enjoyed another prolific season of net-bulging at Ewood Park in 2014-15. Signed by Rovers for £8m from Huddersfield in August 2012, the predatory Rhodes scored 53 times in his first two seasons at Ewood Park and although that rate has slowed slightly he’s still the Championship’s Mr Consistent in front of goal. “He gets goals for fun,” said Rovers manager Gary Bowyer. “If you put balls into the box you can guarantee Jordan will get across his man and give you a goal.”

Did you know? Rhodes scored only once in January, but you could hardly blame him for taking his eye off the ball after being linked with high-profile moves to Southampton, West Brom, QPR, Swansea and even Real Sociedad as the month went on.

9 Massimo Luongo Swindon Town Position Midfielder Age 22

For Mark Cooper, the final whistle on a Saturday afternoon prompts a recurring sense of deja vu – shaking hands with his managerial counterpart to hear the same observation every week: his midfielder is too good for League One. A crafty playmaker who likes to drive strongly into the 18-yard box and slip through a killer pass, Luongo – born in Sydney, Australia, to Italian and Indonesian parents – has developed an almost telepathic understanding with his team-mates this term. Inspired by the experience of appearing at last summer’s World Cup in Brazil, he has added incredible consistency to his game.

Did you know? Luongo picked up the Most Valuable Player award at the 2015 Asian Cup, having contributed two goals and four assists to Australia’s first major tournament success.

7

Dele Alli

MK Dons (on loan from Spurs) Position Midfielder Age 18

How many 18-year-olds are their club’s best player? In fact, how many 18-year-olds are the best in their entire league?

Dele Alli is unequivocally the former, and according to our panel of fans, he is the latter as well.

The midfielder became a £5m signing for Tottenham when he left hometown team MK Dons for the Premier League giants in January. But so important is Alli to Milton Keynes’ promotion ambitions in League One that the deal was only finalised when Spurs agreed to let the teenager return to his boyhood club on loan for the remainder of the season.

Alli’s eye for goal, great tackling and passingarecentral to MK Dons’ aims The Dons are pursuing a first-ever campaign in the second tier, and Alli, with his eye for goal, precise passing and full-blooded tackling, is central to that aim. His contribution this season is quantifiable – 14 goals from midfield before injury in February – and anecdotal, through a series of performances that have often overshadowed players 10 years his senior.

When MK Dons stunned Manchester United 4-0 in the League Cup back in August, the two goals each for Will Grigg and Benik Afobe snatched the headlines, but it was Alli who stole the show.

Up against the international quality of Danny Welbeck,, Shinji Kagawa and Adnan Januzaj, Alli ran the game with controlled calm, undaunted ndaunted and unfazed. United couldn’t get near him.

Alli’s confidence predates his first-team arrival. In fact, you can trace it back seven years. After spending two weeks training with MK Dons’ under-11s, the club told him he wouldn’t be needed for a game down at Chelsea. “I got in a bit of a strop and said ‘I’m not coming back’,” he recently recalled. It was inevitable that he would return, but it wasn’t until a year later.

He made his senior debut at 16, as a substitute in an FA Cup tie at Cambridge City. His first-ever touch as a professional player was a backheeled pass.

Dons boss Karl Robinson, a constant champion of the boy, almost throttled him. In the replay, Alli rattled in a 25-yard stunner in a 6-1 win. He had arrived.

Goals are a hallmark of his game – he already has 20 from 68 matches – but it’s his all-round skill set that had Bayern Munich, Liverpool and Arsenal watching at the beginning of this season. He has a knack for finding the right tempo; an ability to judge whether his team need a foot on the ball, or if a quick turn and burst across the halfway line is in order.

Then there’s the tackling, the harrying, the defensive awareness – all things Alli commits to and understands. It’s clear why there have been comparisons to Steven Gerrard. It’s perhaps unfair to measure the teenager up against one of the greatest midfielders of the past 20 years, but his potential is that huge. He has been well protected by Robinson, who made it his personal responsibility to make sure Alli remained undistracted by the hype, and that he moved on when the time was right.

Are there weaknesses? Of course. He has a tendency to fade out of games, a natural side-effect of his youth, and he has yet to fully work out whether his attributes are suited to an midfield advanced or traditional central midfi eld role.

He can’t be expected to light up the Spurs team just yet, but don’t bet against the 2016-17 campaign being the year that the Premier League learns exactly what Dele Alli is about.

8 Will Hughes

Derby County Position Midfielder Age 19 How the Premier League scouts have gazed in admiration as Will Hughes thunders around Pride Park, running the show from midfield with his top-notch passing, vision, tackling and shooting. It’s the blond barnet that first catches the eye, but those flickering feet soon follow: Hughes can leave defences scattered. Better still for Rams fans, the youngster seems to realise that, for now, playing a lot of matches at Championship level is probably better for his development than sitting on a bigger club’s bench. Steve McClaren can feel smug about Hughes penning a new four-year deal back in June, and the midfielder has helped lead Derby’s promotion bid.

Surely he’ll be a Premier League regular soon.

Did you know? Hughes became the Three Lions’ second-youngest U21 international when he came on against Northern Ireland in 2012, aged 17.

BEST IN LEAGUE ONE

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FOOTBALL LEAGUE

6 Daryl Murphy

3 Callum Wilson

The Irishman is revelling in his role as Ipswich’s primary source of goals in his fourth spell with the club. Murphy was on loan three times at Portman Road before becoming a permanent Tractor Boy in June 2013. The ex-Celtic and Sunderland player is one of a number of free transfers to flourish under the guidance of Mick McCarthy in Suffolk.

“He’s settled, he’s got the No.9 shirt, he’s not been playing out wide left or right and he works damn hard in front of goal,” said the Ipswich boss.

Did you know? The prolific Murphy has already saved himself a few quid. McCarthy made the players back themselves in “a little sweepstake” before the start of the season, with £100 going to charity if they didn’t hit their target. Murphy’s ton is safe, it seems, after he racked up his 20th and 21st strikes of the season, against Fulham in February.

Bournemouth’s promotion-chasing form has been built on the back of a prolific season for Wilson, with the 23-year-old making the step up from League One to the Championship look like child’s play following his summer move from Coventry. He opened his Cherries account against Huddersfield on the opening day of the season and hasn’t looked back since. Spells on loan with Tamworth and Kettering gave Wilson his first taste of regular football, but his next port of call looks set to be far grander. “It was always going to be a tough ask for Callum coming from League One, but he has hit the ground running,” said his manager Eddie Howe.

Did you know? Wilson’s hero is Thierry Henry, and the youngster recently admitted that he’d be happy to achieve “a quarter” of what the Frenchman had managed before he hung up his boots last year.

5

2

Ipswich Town Position Striker Age 32

Chris Martin

Derby County Position Striker Age 26

The former Canary has been flying with Derby County this season, scoring freely as Steve McClaren’s men have emerged as front-runners for the title. Martin left Norwich in the summer of 2013, after finding his opportunities at Carrow Road limited, and hasn’t looked back. His form at the iPro Stadium has already won him an international call-up with Scotland and his club manager has no doubt that the striker has progressed into a player of the highest calibre. “He’s really developed over the last year in terms of his professionalism and belief,” said former England boss McClaren.

Did you know? Last season, Martin became the first player in 18 years to score 20 goals in one season for the Rams. The last player to achieve the feat was Dean Sturridge – uncle of Liverpool striker Daniel – back in 1995-96.

4 Troy Deeney Watford Position Striker Age 26

Deeney’s goals have propelled Watford into the promotion race in the Championship, with his hat-trick in the 5-0 pummelling of Fulham in December remaining one of this season’s stand-out performances in the division. It has been quite some turnaround for a striker who left school to be a bricklayer earning £120 a week. Last season he became first the fi rst Watford player in 50 years to score 20 league goals in two successive seasons and is now widely recognised as one of the hottest properties outside the Premier League.

72 May 2015 FourFourTwo.com

Bournemouth Position Striker Age 23

Grant Leadbitter

Middlesbrough Position Midfielder Age 29

The former Sunderland midfielder has been a revelation since returning to his native North East in May 2012.

Clearly thriving under the leadership of Aitor Karanka at the Riverside, Leadbitter is playing some of the best football of his career and is eyeing another crack at the top flight as Middlesbrough chase a return to the elite for the first time since 2009. “I believe I can play at Premier League level again,” he said. “All it takes is an opportunity, and this year I’ve got a great chance of getting there with Middlesbrough.”

Did you know? Roy Keane once likened Leadbitter to Paul Scholes when the pair worked together at Ipswich. “There were questions [asked] about Scholesy because of his build, and sometimes there may be the same about Grant, but if you can handle the ball, you’ve got a chance,” said Keane.

Did you know?

Troy Deeney was once offered a four-day trial with Aston Villa. He says: “I was more interested in making mischief. I didn’t turn up until the fourth day and they sent me packing, saying I wasn’t packing interested enough.”

1

Matt Ritchie Bournemouth Position Winger Age 25

The fans have voted you as the best player in the whole Football League – congratulations!

Brilliant. It’s nice to get recognition for the hard work we’ve put in. Individual awards are nice, but I think the team this season has been outstanding.

How do you sum up the season so far?

No one expected us to be up where we are and doing so well, but we believed that we could achieve great things. If we work hard and set our bar high, then our performances will reflect that. All the teams from eighth upwards will be thinking they have still got a chance, though.

What’s the best thing about playing for Bournemouth this season?

The manager allows us to express ourselves. I’ve played in teams before where it was a bit more rigid, but it’s great here. There are phases of play that we work on, but we’re free to play our own stuff.

Nobody has a bad word to say about your manager, Eddie Howe. Why is he so liked?

He has high demands for the players, and he raises the bar when we reach a good level. He knows how to manage me. I’m a deep thinker, and sometimes that’s not good. He’ll tell me to relax, play my stuff and be natural. He’s definitely destined for the Premier League, hopefully with Bournemouth.

Your assist stats have exploded. What’s changed?

Nothing major, really – it’s probably just that our lads in the box are putting them away. I’ve managed to put in some good deliveries and they’ve got on the end of them.

You’ve been deadly yourself, too...

I’ve always scored goals – I think that’s one of my strongest attributes. Being a winger you’re expected to score, and fortunately enough I have done that pretty regularly this season.

FOOTBALL LEAGUE

TOP 50 WINNER

“Establishing myself in the Championship has been a good test”

Do you prefer scoring or assisting?

I’m going to say scoring because I’m honest! But the manager will probably say the assists please him more [laughs]. There’s no better feeling than when you score a goal. It’s the best in the world.

You supported Pompey as a kid. What are your best memories of those days?

Playing for the youth team on a Saturday morning and then going to Fratton after. It was the years of Patrik Berger, Tim Sherwood and Paul Merson, when we got promoted.

I live in the area and I still look out for their results.

What was it like trying to get into an FA Cup-winning team?

Portsmouth was my team and it was hard then, trying to be one of the players. It was difficult always going to be diffi cult breaking into a Premier League team that had the likes of Lassana Diarra, Sulley Muntari, Kevin-Prince Boateng, Peter Crouch and Jermain Defoe. But being around them showed me the level I had to get to.

Dagenham & Redbridge, Notts County, Swindon – did you enjoy your loans?

It’s nice to settle at a club, but that wasn’t to be. My loan moves were valuable, though. You get to see that not everywhere is run the same. You’re thrown in, and if you don’t perform then you’re back out.

It was good moving away from home as well – that experience helps you grow and become a man.

Why didn’t it work out at Portsmouth?

I started well in the Championship, Championship despite being out of position at left-back, but we weren’t doing great and the manager [Steve Cotterill] wanted experience. It wasn’t too long before we sat down; Swindon wanted me and I just wanted to play.

You played with Charlie Austin there. What do you make of his rise?

From the minute he signed, he scored goals, like he’d done at Poole. There was a stage when him and Billy Paynter were scoring every week. His all-round game has come on leaps and bounds, and now he is sniffing sniffing around the England squad. I’d be delighted for him if he gets in.

What was Paolo Di Canio like to work under?

People say he’s like Marmite, but I loved his enthusiasm. I had a lot of respect for him. The gaffer here is a bit calmer, but Paolo was similar in some ways: he had high demands and expected the best.

The press paint a picture of him, but he’s soft really.

What’s been the best moment of your career?

Playing for Portsmouth in the Premier League, but also promotion from League Two with Swindon.

Establishing myself in the Championship has been a good test. I feel like I’ve done that now, but I know I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me to improve.

What’s the big dream now?

Going out there and making promotion happen. You don’t get anything without working hard, and we’re all striving every day to try to achieve that.

Disagree with our final 50?

Who should have been in?

And who should have been left out? Join the debate on Twitter with #FLtop50

FourFourTwo.com May 2015 73

FOREIGN GAFFERS

[[1L]] May 2015 FourFourTwo.com

FOREIGN GAFFERS

“Iwanttotransform BorointoRealMadrid, ateamthathasto wineverygame”

FourFourTwo hears the one about the Spaniard, the Serb, the Israeli and the Italian currently taking England by storm from various Football League dugouts

AITOR KARANKA

Age 41 Club Middlesbrough Nationality Spanish It seems apt that FourFourTwo pulls up to Middlesbrough’s training facility on a typical Teesside day; there’s that crisp coldness in the air, a soulless sky and not even the slightest hint of sunshine.

Upon seeing FFT at the doorway, exactly at the agreed time of 2.15pm (he’s meticulous that way), Aitor Karanka greets us with the look of a contented man. Understandable, given that, a mere 16 months into his first major coaching gig, the Spaniard is quickly becoming one of the hottest managerial properties in the game.

“I couldn’t have imagined we could be in this position so quickly,” he tells FFT. “I’m certainly surprised – and I’m sure the fans are too.

“When I joined, I knew my job was to get Middlesbrough in the Premier League again.

If it can’t be this season, we will try again next season. I can’t guarantee what is going to

happen for the rest of the season. If we can get promotion this year, perfect; if not, we’ll have to think about the future. Football has a short memory. It’s easy to forget we were just above relegation not long ago.”

The footballing landscape in Middlesbrough was certainly very different on November 23, 2013. That day, Karanka’s first in the dugout, was a microcosm of their time in the Championship since relegation in 2009 – a 2-1 defeat at Leeds that left them looking nervously over their shoulders. Middlesbrough did not have so much as a play-off appearance to show for their first four seasons back at this level – a record that didn’t look like changing any time soon. Fans were facing up to the grim reality of being a mid-table Championship team just eight years after a glorious run to the UEFA Cup final.

However, the attitude from their new boss was far from defeatist. He was planning to change the culture, and quickly. “I remember that when the players came into the changing room, there was only one who looked really

sad and upset. The other 17 weren’t happy but I felt for them it was a case of ‘Well, we can win the next game’.”

For a boss with a doctrine formulated across two extended stays in football’s Titletown, the attitude was staggering. While Karanka is Basque, he has Real Madrid blood running through his veins, having spent five years at the Bernabeu as a player before returning to be Jose Mourinho’s chief lieutenant.

“When you arrive at Real Madrid, you have to win,” he explains. “Playing at Real Madrid transformed me into a winner. And that’s the mentality I want my players to have. You have to win every single point, every single ball.

It’s curious because sometimes people say, ‘I prefer to play well’ – people who say these kinds of things never win.”

But while the attitude in the dressing room was changing, Karanka’s efforts did not initially show on the pitch. His first five games brought just one victory and, with the threat of relegation increasingly real, some fans’ initial excitement at the appointment of a young

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FOREIGN GAFFERS

GUY LUZON

Words Matt Sherry

“People in Spain speak poorly of Jose, but if you work with him you learn a lot” foreign coach (aren’t they always sexier?) was turning into disillusionment.

The worry, though, didn’t reach board level.

Middlesbrough chairman Steve Gibson was in it for the long haul, and his chosen leader knew it. “He is a great person,” Karanka says of the Boro fan-turned-benefactor. “In my life and work, I want to be around good people.

Within five seconds, I knew I wanted the job.

“I nearly signed for Middlesbrough in 2005, so I knew the club. Many players who played with me at Madrid or in the Spanish team played here – like Gaizka Mendieta, Christian Karembeu and Geremi – so there was always a link. It was an easy decision because two seconds with Steve Gibson is enough.

“It was very important to know I’d be given time. We lost three of my first five games; those results could have been a problem elsewhere, but here I was always trusted.”

The patience was rewarded, too, as Karanka – boosted by sensible summer recruitment – began to look every bit like a ‘mini-Jose’.

A pragmatist in his former master’s mould, the Spaniard builds his team around a solid spine, with Grant Leadbitter and Adam Clayton anchoring a midfield that sits in front of a stingy defence. There is plenty of creativity further up the field, with Karanka rotating an array of forwards – from summer recruits Kike, Jelle Vossen and Patrick Bamford, to the inherited Lee Tomlin and Albert Adomah – depending on the opposition.

The comparison with Mourinho is one Karanka does not shy away from. The list of coaches he has worked with reads like a who’s who of football management: Jupp Heynckes, Vicente del Bosque, Mourinho. And such link-ups have created a rare breed in football: a 41-year-old rookie manager with complete conviction in a football ideology built on flexibility. He is happy to switch tactics and personnel from game to game in a league where that’s seen as unfashionable; this is, after all, a league where momentum is king.

“The first manager who did that was Jupp Heynckes 21 years ago – this philosophy is 20 years old so it is nothing new,” the Boro boss says of his rotation policy. “I was with Jose and he was very similar. You have to take things from everybody [you work with].”

It is Mourinho that Karanka cites as his biggest influence. Their first conversation in 2010 came as a surprise to the coach – then 36 years old – of Spain’s under-16s.

“I got the call saying he wanted me at Real Madrid and I thought it was a joke,” the former defender admits. But Karanka

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Age 39 Club Charlton Athletic Nationality Israeli

“You’re choosing Teesside over Kensington? Yes, Aitor, very funny...”

would soon realise this was a serious offer – and one he couldn’t refuse.

“A lot of people in Spain speak poorly of Jose, but his numbers, titles and legacy are amazing,” Karanka insists. “To combine that personality, organisation and knowledge is rare. You learn a lot when you work with him.”

The pair enjoyed a three-year run in Madrid before Mourinho departed for Chelsea in June 2013, leaving Karanka at a crossroads.

“Jose offered me the chance to go with him to London, but I didn’t think I’d be as useful as I was in Madrid,” he admits. “My role wouldn’t have been the same. I had a very good relationship with lots of people at Real Madrid and they offered me a chance to stay there.”

But while he and Mourinho clearly remain firm friends – Chelsea have, after all, loaned Middlesbrough five players during the pair’s brief tenures – Karanka was ready to forge his own path. He says: “After three years with Jose, I thought my moment had arrived. It’s one thing to work with him; after that, you have to take things from him but be yourself.”

So if Jose Mourinho is The Special One, who is Karanka? “Nothing at the moment,” he says.

“I have been a manager for 16 months and I haven’t done anything special.”

You won’t find many Middlesbrough fans who agree.

s League In Champion al Madrid Re r fo n tio ac

“My target is to coach in the Premier League one day. When I was young we were big on Liverpool with Rush, Dalglish, Souness... Football was my love when I was six, and it’s stayed my love ever since. The game isn’t my work, but my hobby. I don’t feel like I’ve worked one day in my life.”

If Guy Luzon sounds like a happy man, it’s no wonder. Having left his last club in the midst of a riot, he must be relieved to find himself in more sedate surroundings.

When FFT meets Charlton’s Israeli boss at the club’s training ground, he has just finished a brief press conference attended by a total of three local journalists.

In October, three months before arriving in England, he’d been forced to resign from Standard Liege after a dismal start to his second season climaxed with a 2-1 defeat to bottom side Zulte Waregem, leading to Standard’s furious fans tearing apart their own stadium. This after bossing the Belgian Pro League last season, before losing to Anderlecht in the play-off round. “We were the only team in the world who achieved the most points and still weren’t champions,” Luzon sighs.

Roland Duchatelet, owner of both Standard and Charlton, then made Luzon his fourth Addicks manager in a year.

After an initial 5-0 thumping at Watford Rushy: big (“I knew then we had a in Israel, appa big problem”), Charlton’s rently fortunes have improved.

Luzon’s first five matches produced two points and cries of ‘You don’t know what you’re doing’, but five wins from his next six silenced the jeers. “Charlton hadn’t won for two months – we needed to rectify that,” he says.

“I knew the Championship was tough and powerful. I love that about England.”

Luzon comes from powerful stock himself, with uncles on UEFA’s Executive Committee and the board of former club Maccabi Petah Tikva. Yet he denies nepotism helped his rise. “My results brought me here. In my first job I got Petah Tikva to the UEFA Cup group stage.

They were a medium club, never playing in Europe. It was the same at Bnei Yehuda – I took them to their first-ever win in Europe.”

From there he guided Israel’s under-21s to a first-ever European Championship win – against England, no less. “In 2007 we finished with zero goals and zero points,” he recalls. “So beating England in 2013 was a great achievement.”

Making it into the Premier League would be even greater, but with Luzon not yet 40, there’s no rush. This is a hobby, after all.

“I knew the Championship was tough and powerful.

I love that about England” FourFourTwo.com May 2015 77

Words Joe Brewin

FOREIGN GAFFERS

FOREIGN GAFFERS

SLAVISA JOKANOVIC Age 46 Club Watford Nationality Serbian

Words Jonathan Fadugba

Clinging attentively to a crinkled-up Kleenex, Slavisa Jokanovic clears his throat before answering FFT’s first question. He has a cold, but you could forgive him for having travel sickness.

Watford is just the latest destination on the whistle-stop tour that has been his managerial career to date. So after a thrilling run that has propelled the Hornets into the Championship’s top three, is he finally ready to settle down? “I’m very happy here,” he says. “Watford gave me this chance and I am grateful. I spend my days trying to show them they didn’t make a mistake and that I can help them. It’s very difficult to have long-term plans.”

Jokanovic’s outlook seems wise. The former Chelsea midfielder is the club’s ninth manager since relegation from the Premier League in 2007, and, amazingly, their fourth gaffer in eight months.

His predecessor, Billy McKinlay, lasted just eight days. That parallels Jokanovic’s own path: after winning back-to-back titles at Partizan Belgrade in his first coaching role, Watford is Jokanovic’s fourth job in three years. “My contract ends in two months but I don’t worry about these things,” he insists. “I would prefer to stay at Watford for many years, but I can’t Gaffers-in-waitin control what happens in g at Chelsea the future. It depends on my work and on results. I only worry about what I’m going to do tomorrow in training and in the next game.”

Whatever the Serb is doing, it’s working.

Fourteen wins in his first 24 league games had the Hornets buzzing, while the swagger and panache on display in the 5-0 thrashings of Charlton and Fulham brought real optimism to a club that’s lived through uncertain times. Jokanovic also went a season unbeaten at Muangthong United in Thailand, to accompany those Partizan league titles. So what’s his secret?

“Secrets don’t exist,” Jokanovic responds, with the cold realism of a dream-crushing dad telling his kids the truth about the tooth fairy. “In football there are no big miracles. The most important quality is to believe in yourself.

“You also need time. Players observe what you can offer them; they look closely at whether or not they can improve with you in charge. The situation is easier now – my players believe in me more than they did at the start – but if I start making mistakes they will lose confidence. It comes down to results. It’s a daily challenge.”

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Jokanovic cut his teeth as a manager in his homeland, but it was in the dressing room at Stamford Bridge, where he spent two years as a player in the early 2000s, that the Serb learned some of his most valuable lessons.

“The dressing room was full of quality, intelligent players,” explains the 46-year-old. “We were quite an old team with a lot of experience. So many of that Chelsea team became coaches – I’m not surprised Gustavo Poyet is a coach; I’m not surprised Gianfranco [Zola] is a coach.”

He may be a hazy memory for most fans, but as a manager Jokanovic is making a bigger splash in English waters. “I wasn’t at the best level of my football career when I arrived,” he says, “but it was a positive experience.

I enjoyed myself.”

“Players look at what you can offer them. If you make mistakes, they will lose confidence”

FABIO LIVERANI

Age 38 Club Leyton Orient Nationality Italian Fabio Liverani isn’t the first Italian to try his hand at coaching in English football.

Yet his story is far from conventional.

The 38-year-old enjoyed a fruitful playing career: he made 288 Serie A appearances, represented Italy three times and won the Coppa Italia with Lazio in 2004. However, unlike Carlo Ancelotti, Roberto Mancini and Fabio Capello, Liverani arrived on these shores to take on not a glamorous, high-profile role, but to oversee Leyton Orient’s battle against relegation from League One. The former Lazio, Fiorentina and Palermo midfielder’s previous coaching experience was limited – his managerial CV consisted solely of a six-match tenure at Genoa in 2013 that was short even by Italian standards. Even so, Liverani’s decision to get his hands dirty in the East End surprised many.

But, sitting in his poky office at Orient’s Matchroom Stadium, he staunchly declares to FFT that he made the right choice. “I’ve always been fascinated by English football,” he beams. “Obviously, I watched more of the Premier League [than League One], but it was the football culture in England that captivated me – the way people live it and interpret it – so this was an adventure that I’d put in my plans.”

Despite the drama surrounding the club (new owner Francesco Becchetti is already on his fourth manager since buying the O’s last summer), Liverani has retained his focus.

“This season the aim is to stay up, so we can put a plan together to try to win the league next year,” he calmly explains.

He has quickly had to adapt to a new culture and language, but Liverani claims he already

recognised the contrast between Italian and English football. “The biggest difference is on the tactical and physical levels. Italian football is more patient and the pace is slower. Here, you play from first to last minute always looking to win and score goals.”

And according to Liverani, League One is streets ahead of Lega Pro, the semi-pro third tier of Italian football. “There’s definitely a lot more enthusiasm here. There’s also a much stronger support, a higher intensity of football and the standard is better. Also there’s certainly a much stronger attachment here compared to Lega Pro and on top of that, there are some big-name players. I really like the atmosphere that I’ve discovered here – the stadiums, the people and the passion.”

The O’s boss may have started his English adventure in the lower echelons, but he remains a figure of historic significance in his homeland, as Italy’s first black player (2001) and Serie A’s first black manager (at Genoa).

He is now one of just six black managers in the top four divisions of English football, yet he is unconvinced by the proposed ‘Rooney Rule’ – an NFL-inspired directive by which clubs are obliged to interview at least one minority candidate for each coaching vacancy. “If there are restrictions or obligations when selecting people for interviews, we’ll be going in the wrong direction,” Liverani insists. “There must be willingness to have an interview with a good manager who is black, but he must go on equal terms. Personally, I’d like to be called for an interview because of my thoughts about football. I don’t want someone to have to call me because of the colour of my skin.”

If Liverani can keep Orient in League One, then complete his masterplan of promotion next season, he’ll have proven himself a more than capable boss.

Getting to grips with Pavel Nedved in 2005

“There’s a lot more enthusiasm here than in Italy for the lower leagues” FourFourTwo.com May 2015 79

Words Alasdair Mackenzie

FOREIGN GAFFERS

RACE FOR THE CHAMPIONS LEAGUE

RACE FOR THE CHAMPIONS LEAGUE THE BIG QUESTIONS, STARRING...

Coutinho Can he be Liverpool’s Neymar?

After a slow start to life in Europe, the Anfield No.10 is living up to his billing as one of Brazil’s brightest young attacking talents – and there’s more to come

Words Jonathan Fadugba

W

hen Jose Carlos Passos Correia heard the news, he stopped his car, called his wife and started crying.

It was the month after the World Cup and the local radio was announcing Brazil’s squad to face Colombia and Ecuador, the Selecao’s first matches since their 7-1 semi-final humiliation against Germany. As the names were read out, there – between Willian and Hulk – was the name of Jose Carlos’ youngest son: Philippe Coutinho.

“I was in the car alone, and when I found out I called [Coutinho’s mother] crying,” the 22-year-old’s dad later told SporTV. “We had faith that sooner or later he would be called up. We’ve had big hopes for it, and finally the day has arrived.”

The rise of Philippe Coutinho has been a long time coming. Buried in the archives there exists a photo of Coutinho and Barcelona superstar Neymar as teenagers; two awkward figures standing side-by-side as their teams – Vasco da Gama and Santos – met in the 2008 Under-17 Copa do Brasil Final. At the time, these were two of Brazil’s most-hyped young footballers; this was a titanic clash between icons of tomorrow. But by mid-2014, while Neymar

80 May 2015 FourFourTwo.com

was carrying his team at a World Cup – already one of the top scorers in Brazil’s history – Coutinho was nowhere: left out of the squad completely.

While Coutinho’s first cap in four years left his father overjoyed, it also marked the vastly different trajectories of Neymar and his old friend, whose path has been so wayward since signing for Jose Mourinho’s Inter Milan as a 16-year-old.

The Coutinho we know now is a different animal, one rapidly earning the respect, admiration and fear you’d expect of a Brazilian with a No.10 shirt on his back. Daniel Sturridge calls him ‘David Blaine’ due to his ability to conjure moments of magic, and he left Pablo Zabaleta – perhaps the best full-back in England – dazed and confused with the tricks he pulled in Liverpool’s 2-1 win over Manchester City in March.

With his sensational winning strike in that game, alongside remarkable long-range efforts o against Southampton and Bolton, A teenage Coutinh e the Rio de Janeiro native seems to wasn’t given tim be staging his own personal goal of to grow at Inter

the season competition. “He joined us for £8.5m three years ago – it’s frightening to know what he could be worth now,” purred manager Brendan Rodgers after Coutinho’s screamer helped see off City at Anfield.

Besides Liverpool’s rivals, the only ones who may disagree with that statement are likely to be found in Milan’s black and blue quarter. The better Coutinho gets, the more obvious it is that Inter made a big mistake in writing him off. After working so hard to beat Real Madrid to his signature when Coutinho was a 16-year-old lighting up youth championships in Brazil, Inter never really gave him sufficient time to acclimatise. Coutinho arrived at the San Siro after his 18th birthday, due to laws on foreign transfers. The humble youngster was determined to fit in. “I want to win loads of titles and give joy to the people of Inter,” he said, likening his characteristics to those of team-mate Wesley Sneijder.

“He is the future of Inter,” said a beaming Massimo Moratti, then club president.

Coutinho went into a dressing room fresh from an unprecedented treble but in a state of flux. Jose Mourinho had left and Inter had begun a decline that endures to this day. In tough circumstances, Coutinho toiled – first under Rafa Benitez and then Leonardo – while learning the differences between Brazilian and European football.

“Coutinho is a wonderful young talent and can make a difference in attack,” Benitez stated after a 0-0 draw with Juventus in the teenager’s first season. “But he does not have a defensive bone in his body.”

Today Coutinho cites Benitez as an important influence during his time in Italy, saying: “I had a good relationship with Rafa – he was always very considerate towards me and gave me a lot of confidence.” The pair worked on improving Coutinho’s tactical awareness and defensive contribution. He made 10 league appearances and three in the Champions League – two against Tottenham - before picking up a knee injury in November 2010.

By the time he returned, Benitez had been sacked. Coutinho would only feature in three more league games all season and, starved of playing time and far from Rio, he grew homesick. “We got upset because he wanted out, wanted to return to Brazil,” says Coutinho’s father. “But he always found support with us. We said he had to adapt to life in Europe, as his new life was there.”

Deprived of opportunities, the next season he was loaned to an Espanyol side then coached by

RACE FOR THE CHAMPIONS LEAGUE

Superstar selfie: the Neymar-Coutinho double act

Mauricio Pochettino, who never doubted the player’s talent. “Philippe has special magic in his feet,” the Argentine would later five rave, after Coutinho hit fi ve goals in 16 games for the Catalan club. “He also has an amazing work rate. He’s a good lad – a great, humble person. I do think Coutinho has that same quality that Ronaldinho and Messi have, but he has much to prove yet.”

After impressing at Espanyol, Coutinho confidence. returned to Inter full of confi dence. He scored in his fi first rst game back in Serie A, but the writing was on the wall and eventually he was sold. “We have a greater need in different areas than Coutinho’s position,” Moratti concluded in January 2013, after Anfield. rubber-stamping the move to Anfi eld.

Rodgers had bagged a bargain.

In his new 3-4-3 system, the Liverpool boss appears to have discovered the way to get the best out of his ‘little magician’.

Deployed as one of two No.10s floating floating behind a main striker, Coutinho is allowed the freedom to drop deep and collect the ball, to make the most of his exceptional passing range. He’s also showing signs that he can become a more regular goalscorer – a vital addition to his repertoire if he’s to be one of the Premier League’s best players. Rodgers, as always, is confi confident. dent.

“Coutinho has that same samequalityasMessi” quality as Messi” – Mauricio Pochettino

“He will become world-class in the next couple of years,” he gushed after the Brazilian recently penned a new five-and-a-half-year five-and-a-half-year contract. “Luis Suarez was at a level, then he played in this team and grew and grew and went into the world-class bracket – I can see Coutinho [going] the same sort prolificc as of way. He might not be as prolifi Suarez, but he is on the way to that.”

Most encouraging for Liverpool fans is that Coutinho isn’t resting on his laurels.

He admits to being a football fanatic who studies matches, which extends to his own game: he regularly watches DVDs of his performances, looking to gain an edge.

“I’ve been working to better my final final touch,” Coutinho told Liverpool’s website earlier this season. “I have post-training sessions to improve my shooting accuracy.”

In contrast to his time at Inter, Coutinho appears settled at Anfi Anfield. eld. This was encapsulated when the player went on Instagram to thank fans for a recent banner erected on the Kop as a tribute to Liverpool’s No.10. ‘O Magico’ read the banner, with a picture of Coutinho pointing to the heavens.

The magician. Perhaps he is still the future of Brazil after all.

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RACE FOR THE CHAMPIONS LEAGUE

RACE FOR THE CHAMPIONS LEAGUE THE BIG QUESTIONS

Simon Mignolet

Is he the most underrated player in the league?

You recently became the first Liverpool keeper to keep five [now six] successive Premier League clean sheets away from home. What do you put that down to?

I’ve been pleased with my form, but I don’t really look at records. The most important thing is the team, and winning points.

Keeping a clean sheet isn’t something you do on your own – it’s a group effort.

Since November, when we changed to the new system, we’ve been well organised.

You concede – or score – as a unit.

It’s been a season of two halves for Liverpool, and for you. Why do you think you had a dip in form at the start?

I don’t like to look back over it. There can be loads of explanations and excuses, but as a player the only match you remember

How much has Liverpool’s use of sports science been a factor?

[Sports psychiatrist] Steve Peters has been very helpful. After the Burnley game, when I came back into the side, I had a chat with Steve and changed a few things. He has improved my concentration levels. That’s something you need when you play for a big club, because you tend to have fewer saves to make – being ready is important.

What are Liverpool’s strengths?

Unity. You can pick out individuals like Sterling, Coutinho, Lallana and Sturridge, but it’s about the team. Nobody is letting themselves down. We aren’t conceding many, and we’re scoring some nice goals.

Were you always a goalkeeper?

No, I played outfield until I was 15.

I was released at 14, and because my father was a goalie, I tried that.

Experience playing outfield can help with your feet in goal, but there’s nobody behind you as a goalkeeper.

is the last one. I’ve always been a positive character; I don’t dwell on things, because that won’t help.

I want to keep on my toes, because things can turn around quickly.

Did you always have belief in your ability to bounce back?

I was positive. Every goalkeeper goes through those stages, and you only get mentally stronger from them.

Because we play so many games, I just looked forward to the next match.

I always wanted to keep improving and moving forward. I’m in my second year here and I’ve learned a lot. There’s always something to work on. I’ve

just turned 27, but that’s not old for a keeper. I still pick up new things every day.

Unity is Liverpool’s big strength, says their Belgian keeper

Which teams did you follow as a kid?

I always watched Match of the Day, but I didn’t have an English team. I played for Sint-Truiden, where I was born, so I supported them. And I liked Barcelona, because my parents went on holiday there and bought a kit for me.

Is it true that you have a degree in political science?

Yes. I finished it when I moved to England – I had lots of spare time because my missus was in Belgium. My mum and dad always told me to have a back-up career.

Interview Nick Moore

Simon Mignolet, MP? I don’t think so. Football and politics don’t mix. The degree helped me learn a couple of languages, which is good, and I follow politics back in Belgium, but I’d rather analyse opponents than policies.

“I’m in my second year now at Liverpool and I’ve learned a lot.

I always want to keep improving”

82 May 2015 FourFourTwo.com

Mignolet is part of BreatheSport, where fans and personalities can meet and react to live sports news and events (available on both iOS and Android)

RACE FOR THE CHAMPIONS LEAGUE

RACE FOR THE CHAMPIONS LEAGUE THE BIG QUESTIONS

Ryan Bertrand

Can Southampton really do it?

You were in demand during the summer.

What made you choose Southampton?

Once I’d met the manager, staff, chairman and owner I understood the ethos of the club.

They matched my ambitions and sold it to me instantly. In a perfect scenario I would have gone on to play at Chelsea for the rest of my career, but it was important for me to start playing games and in a system that would allow me to express myself. Southampton was the best place for that.

What was the mood of the squad during the summer, when everyone was writing you off?

I can understand why people doubted us – we were selling all our big-name players – but that atmosphere wasn’t matched within the club.

When I saw the quality of the players we were bringing in, and then saw them train day in, day out, I was more than confident.

deploy in every match, but within that he allows the players to put their own stamp on it. For me, it’s the perfect combination.

How have Southampton kept pace with the Champions League contenders?

The club deserves credit for assembling this group of players and bringing in the manager. Everyone is playing their part. The manager gives us confidence and structure, the players have stood up to the task, and we’ve put ourselves in a good position for the remaining games.

Bertrand interview Ben Welch; Blind words Michael Cox

Which of your new team-mates has really impressed you?

It’s a pleasure playing with Victor Wanyama and Morgan Schneiderlin. It’s one of the best midfield partnerships in the league. They give us mobility and physicality and they’re both great technicians on the ball. When we play with a midfield three, and Steven Davis is in there, it’s a great combination.

What’s it like working with Ronald Koeman?

His achievements in the game earn him instant respect. When he talks, everyone listens. He was a great player at the very highest level and now he’s doing it as a manager. He gives you useful little tips and points out things you already know but need to remember. It’s been fantastic learning so much from him.

How does his approach differ from other managers you’ve worked with?

Although he’s achieved so much in the game, he’s really humble and laid-back – but not in a bad way, because if you do something wrong he’ll let you know about it. His system and his relaxed approach give the players the freedom to express themselves. We have tactics to

84 May 2015 FourFourTwo.com

“Everyone is playing their part” as Saints target a top-four finish

Bertrand is used to “bigger, more fiery cauldrons”

Have you brought the winning mentality you learned at Chelsea to Southampton?

Definitely. No game fazes me. I’ve played in big games, during good and bad times, when [Chelsea] needed to perform. That’s left me in good stead mentally. The difference between playing for Southampton and Chelsea is the expectation. At Chelsea you’re favourites to win every game and anything other than three points is unacceptable. We don’t necessarily have that feeling every week on the terraces at Southampton.

You won the Champions League final on your debut in the competition: box ticked or appetite whetted?

It was a fantastic experience, but I don’t sit there thinking: ‘I’ve done that now’. I want to push on and do it again. It’s an experience I can draw inspiration from. Now, when the chips are against me I can say, ‘I’ve been in bigger, more fiery cauldrons than this one, so I should be able to perform today’.

How would you assess the strengths of your rivals for the top four?

We were most disappointed with the 3-0 loss at home to Manchester City.

Funnily enough, that was one of their best performances of the season.

RACE FOR THE CHAMPIONS LEAGUE

Daley Blind Chelsea are solid all round and within that they have a couple of geniuses who can unlock any doors. Man City are very much the same.

Arsenal are a possession team – you need another ball to get a touch sometimes! This hasn’t been one of Man United’s best years, but what’s really helped them is their history and fans – that still has a psychological effect.

You can get caught on the back foot against Liverpool with their speed and directness.

And Mauricio Pochettino deserves credit for the way he has instilled his philosophy at Tottenham. They like to press, they’re really aggressive and they finish games strongly.

Do the Southampton players talk about playing in Europe next season?

We go round each other’s houses on Champions League nights and watch the games together. It’s only natural to want to be involved. We’re going to try our best to get there. There’s no point playing unless you aim high. It’s the pinnacle for any player.

What would it mean for Southampton to qualify for the Champions League?

It would be a fantastic achievement. It is hard to imagine how much it would mean.

If it does happen, I’m sure it would surpass any expectations at the club.

Is he the solution to Manchester United’s long ball problem?

Among a wave of Manchester United signings last summer – Angel Di Maria, Luke Shaw, Radamel Falcao, Ander Herrera, Marcos Rojo – it was Daley Blind who felt most suited to Louis van Gaal’s style of play at Old Trafford.

The connections were obvious. Blind played under Van Gaal for the Netherlands, where his father Danny was assistant coach. Danny had also played for Van Gaal in the classic Ajax side of the mid-1990s, while Daley was at the Amsterdam club from the age of eight. It’s difficult to imagine a better preparation for playing under Van Gaal.

Blind has become a top-quality footballer primarily thanks to that excellent education.

He’s not an overwhelmingly impressive player physically, but his technical quality is high and his footballing intelligence remarkable for one so young. He knows how to position himself, how to receive and play passes, and how to dictate a match’s tempo.

Van Gaal hopes Blind will help to redefine Manchester United. The 25-year-old can sit deep in midfield and receive passes from the centre-backs, before transferring the ball into more attack-minded players. His passing is short and simple, but quick, and he’s the antithesis of the ‘long ball’ style Van Gaal infamously refuted following comments made by West Ham United manager Sam Allardyce earlier this year.

This season, he’s been one of only three Manchester United players whose pass completion rate is close to the 90 per cent mark, alongside Juan Mata and Michael Carrick. Blind will eventually replace Carrick in the deep central midfield position, and the stats suggest the Dutchman plays around 25 per cent fewer long balls than he does.

Blind has been the most successful of Manchester United’s six major signings of last summer, but that’s not to say there’s no room for improvement. The good news for United is that the Dutchman is still about five years away from the typical peak age for a player of his type. Therefore, while Blind epitomises Van Gaal’s football approach, he’s also likely to outlast him at Old Trafford.

However it finishes, this season won’t have been a vintage one for Manchester United.

Blind could be key to ensuring their famously high standards are met in future. And that begins with Champions League qualification for the 2015-16 campaign.

Blind faith: the Dutchman could be key for United for years to come

FourFourTwo.com November 2014 [[2R]]

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RACE FOR THE CHAMPIONS LEAGUE

Chadli interview James Maw; Gabriel words Marcus Alves

RACE FOR THE CHAMPIONS LEAGUE THE BIG QUESTIONS

Nacer Chadli Who will lighten the load on Kane and Eriksen?

This season has seen you score far more regularly in the Premier League than you did last season. What has changed?

Firstly, I needed to settle into the team – it takes time when you come to a different league and a different country. The way we train and play now also suits me better than last year. We train more than we used to and it’s more intense. I feel fitter, and fitness is one of the things that is helping us score a lot of late goals.

How have you found working under Mauricio Pochettino?

I’m enjoying working with him. I think he’s a manager who can get the best out of me. The way we play now is more intense – I have to do more both defensively and going forward, but this is part of the game for a winger.

The Premier League’s most beautiful man celebrates his success

86 May 2015 FourFourTwo.com

Pochettino is a good person and a winner.

He understands the players and he wants to help us all to be the best player we can be.

Ryan Mason and Harry Kane have made a massive difference to Tottenham’s season – is it important for a club to have a couple of local players in the squad?

Of course. They’re young lads who have come up from the academy and done well. They have a lot of quality and want to continue to improve. They believe in

eat Mason: a gr e at -m am te

Kane is able and wants to get even better, says Chadli

themselves and we believe in them, which is important. As team-mates, they’re great – they work hard and do their best for the team.

Will team spirit be important in helping to get over the disappointment of losing the League Cup Final to Chelsea?

Everybody was very disappointed to lose at Wembley, and we had to bounce back. The league games keep coming, so it’s important to find momentum. Our focus now is getting into the Champions League. It’s important for the club and we still have a good chance, but we have to keep calm, work hard and win as many points as we can.

You’re one of a small number at Spurs to have played in a Champions League game at White Hart Lane. What do you remember of that experience?

The Champions League is the best competition you can play in with your club, and that experience was unbelievable.

For me, it was special to play at White Hart Lane as a 21-year-old [for FC Twente in September 2010]. I loved the atmosphere, the stadium. I want to experience this again, but this time playing for Tottenham.

Your celebration at the Emirates suggested you know about the importance of the North London derby – how good would it be to finish above Arsenal?

I was surprised to be booked for that [Chadli shushed the Arsenal fans after opening the

RACE FOR THE CHAMPIONS ANGEL DILEAGUE MARIA

scoring at the Emirates in September] because it wasn’t as if I did something very bad.

It was just a reaction and a celebration.

For our fans, it was very nice to see us beat [Arsenal] at home and go there and get a draw, and we really deserved those four points. Of course we want to finish ahead of them if we can, but it is not easy. Arsenal are good at picking up points even when they have not played as well. They are very strong going forward – they have a lot of players who can win games at any moment.

And what of your other rivals for a top four spot this season?

I was a bit surprised to see Southampton doing so well, but they have a great manager and are very well organised in defence.

They have shown their strength by continuing to win when they have had a lot of injuries.

Manchester United also have great players in their attack, and a very good manager in Louis van Gaal, while Liverpool are a complete team with a lot of good players. They are all very strong teams. The competition is tough.

There was recently a poll to determine the ‘best-looking’ Premier League XI, which you featured in – did you hear about that?

Yeah, I heard about it. Some of my friends made a few jokes about it. They said I was just one of 11 rather than the No.1. Fortunately, nobody at Tottenham mentioned it. I’m not sure if that was because they didn’t know about it or because they were jealous!

Gabriel Will Gabriel Paulista fix Arsenal’s defence?

Fifteen minutes. That’s how long it took a teenage Gabriel Paulista to convince the scouts of Brazilian Serie B side Vitoria he was the real deal.

The Salvador-based club are known for having one of Brazil’s best academies, having built a reputation for producing promising defenders. The production line has also churned out David Luiz, Gabriel’s predecessor in the heart of Vitoria’s defence.

But Arsenal fans trembling at the thought of their £11.3 million man being a ‘PlayStation defender’ should fear not: that’s pretty much where the comparisons end, according to Vitoria’s former academy director Joao Paulo Sampaio. “There’s no crime in comparing them, but David is more of a complete player,” Sampaio tells FFT. “Gabriel is a defensive defender. He can beat anyone with his speed and offers the strength Arsene Wenger was looking for.”

The 24-year-old has another advocate in the form of Paulo Cesar Carpegiani, the experienced Brazilian manager who gave a young Gabriel his first-team bow. He had previously coached Paraguay at the 1998 World Cup, where he cultivated a reputation for organising a particularly stingy defence.

“When I arrived [at Vitoria], I played him at right-back because I believed he could adapt to every position across the defence,” Carpegiani explains. “I got a lot of criticism, but it was worth it – he’s now playing for one of the best teams in the world.”

A successful 18-month spell in Spain with Villarreal was the stepping stone, with Gabriel helping the Yellow Submarine, then a newly promoted side, to qualify for this season’s Europa League.

“A lot of people told me I would never get this far; that I wasn’t good enough,” the Arsenal new boy once said. “Every player faces this. Even Neymar told me once that he had to go though the same.”

Still, there seems little doubt Gabriel is strong enough to make a name for himself in English football – both physically and mentally. “He’s a leader, [though] maybe it’ll take a little while for Wenger to see this, as Gabriel speaks almost no English at this moment,” Joao Paulo Sampaio explains.

“I even remember an episode when I had to calm him down in the dressing room as he was so out of control after we lost to one of our main rivals.”

Arsene Wenger will hope that a similar intervention will not be necessary between now and the season’s end.

Gabriel Paulista: quick, strong and a “defensive defender”

FourFourTwo.com November 2014 [[2R]]

ACTION REPLAY

He may not be as recognisable as Chopper Harris, Billy Bremner or Vinnie Jones, but Roy McDonough was a tough nut like no other.

After all, you don’t get a record 13 red cards unless you like a scrap Words Louis Massarella

T

here’s a long pause as Roy McDonough considers the question. “How would I cope in today’s game?” ponders the former Walsall, Colchester, Southend, Exeter and Cambridge hitman.

“I wouldn’t even make it past the warm-up.”

‘Donut’ received 13 red cards in his professional career – a number matched only by former Wigan and Leicester defender Steve Walsh – and 22 in total; hence the title of his 2012 autobiography, Red Card Roy. But it’s the book’s subtitle that paints a more complete picture: Sex, Booze and Early Baths: The Life of Britain’s Wildest-Ever Footballer.

While McDonough’s familiarity with the referee’s notebook is well documented, and his womanising legendary, it was the drinking that makes the mind boggle most. At the height of his boozing, McDonough would drink 70 pints a week – 24 in a single session; 12 the night before a game. His party trick was to down a pint in seven seconds while standing on his head. “I saw him do it on a moving train once,” friend and former team-mate Perry Groves tells FFT. “Very impressive.”

Winning the Conference with Colchester in 1992

Behind the bravado and boorish behaviour, though, McDonough was, in his own words, “a gentle soul who just needed an arm round the shoulder”. A man who was only drawn into a world of punch-ups, piss-ups and leg-overs by “frustration and insecurity”. A player whose career was blighted by bad decisions, touched by tragedy and riddled with regret.

As with many things in McDonough’s life, even the macho moustache favoured by the hardmen of the day was rooted in insecurity, grown as a teenager to cover up a blemish on his top lip. “He was,” says Groves, “a Rottweiler on the pitch but a poodle off it.”

So where did it all go wrong?

Sir Alf Ramsey told McDonough he was “a jolly good player”

Above Over the top: the headlines...

Right …and the meaty challenges

Although McDonough received his marching orders for the first time aged 16, when he lifted up a referee by the throat during a Birmingham Schools’ Cup final, he simply put it down to ‘John McEnroe Syndrome’, believing his volatile temper would not get in the way of his undoubted talent.

Born and bred in Solihull in the West Midlands, he had all the makings of a top centre-forward. “The football world was his oyster,” Ian Atkins, a friend since childhood who had a 30-year career as player and manager, tells FFT. “He was seriously quick, six foot plus, and could lead the line. What would a striker like that be worth in today’s game?”

Rejected by Aston Villa as a schoolboy, McDonough joined rivals Birmingham City. A dedicated, teetotal young pro, he made his first-team debut in 1977 aged just 18, partnering Blues and England star Trevor Francis, whose boots he had been cleaning as an apprentice just months earlier.

McDonough scored his first professional goal in his second appearance, a headed equaliser at Loftus Road on the last day of the season. On the coach trip home, he got drunk for the first time in his life. “Next season,” he vowed, “I’ll keep my place

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ACTION REPLAY

“You looking at me?” 18-year-old Roy at Birmingham

and become a top-flight star.” In fact, he would never play in the First Division again.

That summer, England’s World Cup-winning manager Sir Alf Ramsey joined the Birmingham board and immediately recommended the signing of England U21 striker Keith Bertschin. McDonough was back in the reserves. The situation didn’t improve when Even refs didn’t want a run-in with Ramsey moved into the St Andrew’s hot seat, Roy, while Alf Ramsey replaced the even though he told Roy he was “a jolly good forward with Keith Bertschin (inset) player”. When Ramsey’s successor, Jim Smith – “the best manager I ever played for” – told McDonough he was free to speak to other clubs, the youngster was devastated.

Third Division Walsall seemed an unlikely place to resurrect a promising career, but McDonough wanted to stay close to home, believing it wouldn’t be long before he was fated to cross paths with some of the back up the ladder. It was a decision he most famous figures of his generation – soon regretted. “What the f**k was I doing, and Smith was the first of many leaving Birmingham for Walsall?” he says. notorious nutjobs. Having been at “Within a week, Francis and Bertschin both got Birmingham with Mark Dennis (12 red serious injuries, which would have given me cards), Pat Van Den Hauwe (“a scrapper”) my chance, but it was too late.” and Kenny Burns (“a law unto himself”), “When he left Birmingham things started to ‘Big Roy’ went on to lock horns with Mick go wrong,” believes Atkins. With the Saddlers McCarthy (“a gobs**te”), Terry ‘Animal’ struggling and their new striker misfiring, the Hurlock (“the first one in if a row kicked boo-boys had an easy target. During one off”), John Fashanu (“lanky plank”), Steve game, McDonough had to be restrained from Walsh (“hard but jumping into the crowd Cantona-style after fair”), Sam Allardyce receiving a “volley of insults” from one (“the biggest head “mouthy pr**k”.

I’ve ever seen”), Tony Walsall were relegated, with Pulis (“a little f**king squirt”) McDonough’s spell upfront and Vinnie Jones (“a bully”). memorable only for a first Although Walsall bounced professional red card and back up at the first attempt, a run-in with legendary Liverpool McDonough was becoming more hardman Tommy Smith, then pre-occupied with scoring off the at Wrexham. “The ball went pitch than on it. True to form, he down the touchline and he signed off by picking up a dose of was favourite to get there,” gonorrhea on an end-of-season trip says McDonough, who recalls Vinnie Jones to Magaluf. His reputation as “clattering straight through” comes out a troublemaker firmly established, the Kop enforcer and swinging Walsall offered him a new contract “dumping him in a pile of snow”. but on reduced terms. “Stick it up Like English football’s answer to your arse!” he replied.

Forrest Gump, McDonough seemed

“McCarthy? A gobs**te. Allardyce? Biggest head I’ve seen. Pulis? A little f**king squirt”

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“Chelsea was like a circus, and Geoff Hurst was a clown”

Above Roy’s joy at joining Chelsea in 1980 was short-lived

Arriving at Stamford Bridge in September 1980, McDonough reckoned he was back in the big-time, and ready to fire Chelsea’s return to the top flight. But he reckoned without his new gaffer, who, like Ramsey, was a hero of England’s 1966 World Cup win. “Chelsea was like a circus,” explains McDonough, “and Geoff Hurst was a clown. The worst manager I ever played under.”

Not that he saw the England legend much. According to McDonough, Hurst didn’t see him play before Chelsea signed him and never came to watch him in the reserves, where McDonough spent most of the next 18 months. In his one first-team appearance, he was thrown in at centre-back to perform a man-marking job on Dutch World Cup star Rob Rensenbrink, who was one of a handful of stars appearing for FC Dordrecht in a mid-season friendly. “He barely broke sweat,” recalls McDonough. “Johan Cruyff played behind the front two, so I had to occasionally abandon Rensenbrink to put a challenge in.

I was chuffed I managed to tackle Cruyff twice. I missed him the other 39 times.”

ACTION REPLAY

Above Winning the 1992 FA Trophy Left Roy went from cleaning Trevor Francis’ boots to lining up next to him for Birmingham

Chelsea won 4-2, but Hurst blamed McDonough for the Blues’ “bad 10 minutes”.

Homesick, lodging with a married couple on a council estate near Heathrow Airport and clearly not in the manager’s plans, the 22-year-old reached the pivotal moment in his career. “Chelsea broke my heart,” he says.

“Looking back, I wish I could have sat down with a psychologist, because I’d lost all my self-respect and love for the game. From that point on I became a big drinker and womaniser. Bollocks to it, I thought, I’m just gonna party.”

Desperate to end his Chelsea nightmare, McDonough joined the “nearest club that showed interest”. “What division are we in?” he asked on arrival at third-tier Colchester United in 1981. Not that he cared.

Birds and booze were now McDonough’s priority. One session involving some of the stars of nearby Ipswich, then at the height of their success under Bobby Robson, ended with England defender Terry Butcher hopping naked around the bar with a hand over one eye – a forfeit known as ‘The Pirate’.

“Terry was a good lad but he couldn’t keep up with us,” says McDonough.

“We were f**king monsters.”

Yet tragedy soon struck.

McDonough’s strike partner, David

Above He could play a bit, too – pick that one out, Shilts...

Below Player-boss at Colchester in 1993

Lyons, with whom he had been drinking only hours earlier, took his own life three days after his 26th birthday, the victim of mounting depression that had gone all but undetected.

McDonough wore his friend’s No.9 shirt in the game against Tranmere two days later, celebrating wildly when he scored after just 45 seconds. He soon reverted to type, though, getting sent off in a reserve-team game for giving a former team-mate “a right hook”.

After leaving Colchester, spells at Southend, Exeter and Cambridge followed. Each lasted less than a season; two ended in relegation.

His first stint beside the Essex seaside concluded when he punched assistant manager Colin Harper in the face during a game of five-a-side in the Roots Hall car park.

He then turned down George Graham’s Millwall (“another huge mistake; the fans would have loved me there”) to play for Exeter, managed by former England captain Gerry Francis. After a 10-month, Stella-fuelled party in the West Country, it was back to East Anglia and an uneasy alliance with the Abbey Stadium’s threeman ‘God Squad’, including David Moyes.

“How could a giant ginger Jock from Glasgow Celtic play with absolutely zero aggression, putting all his energies into bleating on about Jesus instead?” wondered McDonough.

Cambridge was also the scene of the most extraordinary of many drink-driving episodes.

So plastered after the club’s Christmas night out that he was unable to feed coins into the parking meter, McDonough put his foot to the

floor and hurdled the 10-inch ramp guarding the exit “like the Dukes of Hazzard”. His final game for the U’s was a similar blur: McDonough was “so messed up” that as he looked at the ground he saw “two distorted balls” at his feet.

McDonough was sent off in the FA Cup for a flying kick to the chest of Tony Pulis

“You all right, big fella?” enquired Southend manager Bobby Moore. “You won’t let me down, will you?”

“Course not, boss,” McDonough replied.

Seven minutes later, he was heading back up the tunnel for an early bath, the first of seven during his second spell with the Shrimpers, and one of few he regrets. McDonough finally had a manager he wanted to play for, was paying (a little) more attention to diet and fitness and had stopped living in the past, now drinking purely for social reasons and not to numb the pain of his unfulfilled promise.

But England’s World Cup-winning captain could see the look in his targetman’s eyes as he lined up opposite Tony Pulis ahead of an FA Cup third round tie. The Newport County midfielder had “got right under” McDonough’s skin during a previous encounter and he was looking for his opportunity to “even things up”.

A flying kick to the chest did the job, but as he trudged off the pitch, McDonough felt “gutted” he had let Moore down.

Dave Webb replaced Moore in the hot seat, but for Roy it was more of the same. During

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ACTION REPLAY time, having been warned he would be fined if he fielded a weakened line-up for a “meaningless” Bob Lord Trophy match, McDonough named a full-strength team, with every player out of position and ordered not to make a single tackle. Colchester lost 6-2.

The rivalry continued when Wycombe were promoted to the Football League the season after Colchester. McDonough goaded the Adams Park fans following his side’s 5-2 victory, prompting an attempt by Wycombe director and TV commentator Alan Parry to have him arrested for inciting a riot.

By then, though, McDonough was losing favour with the board, despite keeping the club in the fourth tier on a tiny budget. His inability to practise what he preached was wearing thin. Kinsella explains: “Before one game, he said, ‘This lot are going to try to get under our skin. Don’t retaliate. Bite the bullet, play your game and let’s get out of here with three points’. Within 10 minutes he’d been sent off!”

A flying sock risks its future

a pre-season friendly, he offered to help Southend’s “top boys” when a scuffle broke out with Crystal Palace fans in the stands.

He then tried to reposition Shane Westley’s dislocated knuckles after Palace’s Ian Wright trod on his team-mate’s hand, succeeding only in rupturing the tendons, leaving “soft c**t” Westley requiring five hours of surgery.

Despite another relegation, McDonough’s penultimate season with Southend finished with a bang. On the final day of the campaign, some on-pitch verbals with Bristol Rovers’ Ian Holloway spilled over, sparking a 16-man brawl in the players’ lounge after the game.

Reduced to the role of bit-part player in his final season, McDonough still managed to get sent off in a League Cup tie against Spurs, and again the one time in his career he was made captain – the latter for an alleged stamp on Burnley’s Roger Eli. “Most of my red cards were fair enough,” he says. “But that one was a f**king howler. I never touched him.”

In September 1990, he returned for a second spell at Colchester, and was sent off in his first start – but after that, not again for a relatively impressive two years. McDonough wasn’t a changed man exactly, but he was a married one – since June 1988, in a strange twist after his womanising had continued unabated to that point – and at 32, playing in the Conference (“a Mickey Mouse league”), he knew this was probably his final shot at a return to the Football League. What nobody could have predicted, though, was the manner in which he did it. Manager Ian Atkins left after just one season to become coach of Birmingham, and if it was a surprise that McDonough succeeded him as player-manager, it was also proof that his outward persona didn’t tell “If I’d packed in the whole story. playing, it would “Roy was still a player, have been easier first and foremost, and to manage” still at the front when it came to the boozing and banter,” recalls Mark Kinsella, the future

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“I never intentionally set out to hurt anybody”

“I’d lost all my self-respect and love for the game – all I wanted to do was party” Republic of Ireland midfielder who was at the time a young pro at Colchester. “But he also took young players under his wing, gave them the lessons of life and football, and demanded 100 per cent in training as well as matches.

And in a league where there was a lot of kick and rush, he wanted to play football.”

Indeed, the U’s won the Conference and FA Trophy double in record-breaking style, McDonough banging in 29 goals.

Sure, his management style was unconventional – he once cancelled training to play indoor cricket, and occasionally played porn videos on the team coach – but it worked.

Most amusing, though, were his run-ins with Martin O’Neill, then manager of Colchester’s Conference rivals Wycombe Wanderers. McDonough took every opportunity to wind up his more serious, studious counterpart. He once instructed his team to play ‘olé football’ when 3-0 up against the Chairboys, keeping the ball to leave Layer Road in raptures. Another

Above Goals aplenty for Roy as Colchester player-manager Below Letting down Southend boss Bobby Moore was one regret

‘ROY OF THE RAVERS’ screamed the headline on p7 of The Sun. ‘Soccer boss runs off with his wife’s lookalike best pal’. Throw in that his wife was the Colchester chairman’s daughter and her ‘best pal’ was the groundsman’s wife and it looked like just the latest chapter in a career of controversy and calamity.

The truth was, McDonough hadn’t been a ‘soccer boss’ for more than a year, and the ‘best pal’ in question is now his wife of 16 years, who, he says, saved his life.

After getting sacked by Colchester in the summer of 1994, McDonough gradually wound down his career in non-league.

The red cards kept coming with startling regularity, but the jobs in management did not.

“I still wanted to play, but I was unemployable because after a few bad results the fans would be calling for the club to ‘give the big fella the job’ after I’d made the step up at Colchester,” he explains. “If I’d packed in playing, it would have been much easier for me to get back into management.”

After a successful stint as a car salesman, McDonough moved to Spain, where – after a three-year spell running a Charlton Athletic soccer school – he now flogs property in and around the swanky La Manga resort.

And while he doesn’t regret the red cards (“I was wholehearted but I never set out to intentionally hurt anybody”), and is philosophical about the boozing and womanising (“it ain’t big and it ain’t clever, but it got me attention”) he knows his was ultimately a career of ‘what if’s.

“On a Saturday night, I watch X Factor and I watch the contestants get kicked out, and a little tear’s running down my cheek – and I know why,” he says. “These people are living their dream, just like I did – then the game kicked me in the nuts.” You could say he kicked it right back.

Red Card Roy, published by Vision Sports, is available to buy online now

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YOUR PASSPORT TO THE GLOBAL GAME Armed but not dangerous – the poor critter can’t even reach his guns

[ USA ]

STICK YOUR FA CUP! Football’s oldest competition can’t top this gun-toting Texan trophy in the silverware stakes. Yee-haw!

“Austin has a reputation for being a bit... how can I put this... weird,” Jeffrey Burns tells FFT. The director of marketing and communications at the Austin Aztex continues: “This place embraces bizarre and different - this trophy reflected that perfectly.”

He’s not wrong. The Aztex have just presented possibly the greatest piece of

silverware ever conceived. Even better, the club have absolutely no idea who designed a gong that has captured the imagination far beyond this self-proclaimed peculiar area of Texas.

When the Aztex hosted the inaugural ATX Pro Challenge, winners D.C. United got their hands on a gun-slinging, stetson-wearing armadillo trophy that

has raised the bar for silversmiths everywhere. “Since we saw the trophy we had a little extra motivation,” said United forward Chris Rolfe after victory in the four-team tournament. “We’re going to try to take it to dinner tonight.”

So what’s the story? “Someone gave us an armadillo and we asked where they’d found it,” explains Burns. “They

told us it was from a souvenir shop. We recognised that this was very symbolic of how weird this place is; how proud we are to be different. We’ve been looking for the designer, but we can’t find them.

“We’ve been back to the shop and bought the rest – now we can give one out every year and keep the original.”

Now that’s what we call incentive.

Spain In sadly unsurprising news, Madrid’s Museo Cera wax museum have revealed that, once a month, Cristiano Ronaldo sends his own stylist to brush his likeness’ hair

FourFourTwo.com May 2015 95

Words Richard Edwards; Pictures Carlos rlos Barron, James Goulden; Planet Football editor Huw Davies

“Is this the we ight of Armadillo? ”

P L A N E T FO OT B A L L

[ INTERVIEW ]

“We have so many Brazilians, the coach speaks in Portuguese” Shakhtar Donetsk’s Luiz Adriano was named the Champions League group stage’s best player for scoring a joint-record nine goals. He sits down with FFT to talk Selecao and armed conflict Shakhtar have become Champions League regulars but not a real force in Europe. Why is that?

The winter break is one reason.

Other European teams keep playing, while we have to stop everything.

We play some friendlies in that time, but it’s not the same thing – the opponents aren’t as strong, and we don’t play with the same level of concentration. This interruption is a major disadvantage. I’d be lying if I said it was as competitive as, say, the Premier League.

Is it especially difficult right now, playing away from Donetsk due to the conflict in eastern Ukraine?

We play for the people in Donetsk.

More than anyone, they need those wins. We have to show them Shakhtar aren’t finished. I get a lot of messages on social media from people saying they miss us, which touches my heart. As for playing... there’s no problem. The situation is based in Donetsk; the rest of the country is OK, and we’re all in Kiev now. I brought everything I had to Kiev – my cars, my clothes. At first, we thought we would have to leave those things behind. But it hurts me – of course it does. I love Donetsk.

One day we hear 10 people are killed; another day, 20. It’s very sad.

What about your future as a player with Shakhtar?

I have one year left on my contract.

I’ll keep working – that’s the only

way to make offers show up. We all know Shakhtar’s president is very tough in negotiations, but any offer has to be interesting to both parties, and I feel at home here. I’ve been with Shakhtar since 2007 and in that time I’ve never had anything to complain about.

Would a move to the Premier League interest you?

I’ve never had an offer. I hope to get a chance to play there in the future – it’s the best league in the world. Arsenal are a great team, so are Manchester City, Chelsea and many others, too. How can you not be attracted to it? If I went to the most remote island I could imagine, there would still Lucescu loves be someone there a Brazilian watching the Premier League.

Meanwhile, there are rumours you offered to play for Ukraine instead of Brazil...

I don’t know where that came from!

[Laughs] There was a joke about this once, but nothing serious. Nobody has ever talked to me about a new passport. It was just a big joke that started about three years ago – I have no intention of playing for another country.

And you’ve made your senior debut for the Selecao now, in a November friendly against Turkey. Can you become Brazil’s first-choice striker, following Fred’s nightmare World Cup? To be fair, the chances he had, he scored. The problem was that the ball never arrived for him. Every striker will face that one day; he was unlucky to experience it during a World Cup. But I’m ready if Dunga needs me. I believe I left a good impression against Turkey, and I hope to have more chances.

Dunga comes from the same state as me, Porto Alegre – that might count for something, right?

[Laughs] [Laughs Speaking of strikers, you and Alex Pato started your careers at Internacional before leaving around the same time – you for Shakhtar, Pato for Milan. Now, aged 25, he’s back playing in Brazil. Why hasn’t he reached his full potential, do you think?

That’s a question I’ve asked myself many times, but I still haven’t found the answer. He used to be a real phenomenon in training. From the first day we worked together, I had the impression he could make a difference. I don’t think I could

give a reason why he hasn’t fulfilled the expectations that surrounded the first steps of his career. Maybe he was unlucky. There were the injuries – he should have gone to the World Cup in South Africa but had physical problems, and it was the same in 2014. I hope we can meet again one day, playing for Brazil.

Perhaps he could be the 15th Brazilian player in this Shakhtar team. Why does Mircea Lucescu – coach for more than a decade now – love Brazilians so much?

The Brazilians he’s brought in are good people who have helped him win titles. He says that it’s because he fell in love with the country while on tour with the Romanian national team once. That’s why he likes us so much. In the dressing room, he speaks in Portuguese and the translator speaks in Russian for the rest of the squad.

What is your own relationship with Lucescu like?

He had to be very patient with me in the beginning. It’s tough for a Brazilian to move to Ukraine, young players especially. In my first season, I decided to leave Shakhtar a few months after I joined. There had been so many fights between the club and me. But he [Lucescu] was always very kind to me. He was the first person I looked for when I was called up by Brazil last year.

I thanked him for everything.

LUIZ ADRIANO BY NUMBERS AND TWO LETTERS

He was born in South America, but he’s a record-breaker in Europe

Interview Marcus Alves

3

Only Mario Gomez & Messi have also hit two hat-tricks in one Champions League

32

Adriano’s 32 goals make him Shakhtar’s all-time leading scorer in Europe

5

Goals in a match vs BATE; only Messi has also scored five in one game post-1992

Stats provided by

CR7

Ronaldo is the only player ever to match Adriano’s nine goals in the groups

Turkey One fan briefly became an internet legend after being caught on video trying – and failing – to enter a stadium smuggling in not one, not two, but 24 bottles of beer

96 May 2015 FourFourTwo.com

P L A N E T FO OT B A L L

RIO TO

DONETSK Shakhtar have more Brazilians on their books than all 20 Premier League teams combined, but they are not that unusual in their own country. The Ukrainian Premier League has 27 players from the South American nation currently registered, nearing a total of 100 since its inception in 1991.

The Donetsk club’s policy began in 2002, as striker Brandao [right] signed from tiny Brazilian club Iraty.

Numbers shot up two years later when Mircea Lucescu became manager, the Romanian successfully blending local and South American styles. Now, Croatian captain Darijo Srna is their only player from neither Brazil nor Ukraine.

Lucescu sees Matuzalem joining from Italian side Brescia in 2004 as a crucial moment, saying: “That transfer became a turning point; we created a new team around him.”

Elano, who arrived from Santos the same year, was another cornerstone of the Brazilian revolution. When he left for Manchester City in 2007, the economics of developing unknown players and giving them Champions League exposure, before potentially selling them for profit, became an attraction for Shakhtar. The wealth of owner Rinat Akhmetov means the club can offer enticing wages, and even if players then move on, there’s genuine integration: Lucescu speaks Portuguese, while Fernandinho became near-fluent in Russian during his time at the club.

Elano blazed Teams can field only a trail to Ci ty seven foreigners at one time – a rule imposed partly in response to the Brazilian influx – but Shakhtar, and Ukraine, remain a favoured first European stop for young Brazilians.

Germany Paderborn keeper Lukas Kruse unwittingly used his face to stop a shot from Bayer Leverkusen’s Stefan Kiessling and was knocked briefly unconscious in doing so

FourFourTwo.com May 2015 97

Words Nick Ames

Why do Brazilians flock to Ukraine?

P L A N E T FO OT B A L L

★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★

ARTURO VIDAL’S

Prepare to pop your cork in Arturo’s m otor

VIP LIMO SERVICE

★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★ ★★★★★★★★ ★★★ Words Andrew Murray; Pictures La Cuarta; Twitter

Want to go one better than your mates as you tie the knot? Well, you can’t hire Juve’s driving midfielder to chauffeur, but you can have his car ★ Get m arried in style! ★

★ Fully stocke d bar! ★ nce! ★ ano insura ★ Full volc

It’s your wedding day – time for something special. Horse and carriage? Too clichéd.

Releasing 1,000 doves? Too much guano in the photos.

But what about borrowing a Juventus star’s stretch limo? You old romantic, you...

Yes, for just £210 per hour the happy couple can rock up in

Arturo Vidal’s 24ft 7in Chrysler 300 stretch limousine – the very car used by the 27-year-old and his wife for their own nuptials last December.

As well as the lingering scent of South America’s finest midfielder, it has capacious leather seats, a fully stocked bar and a banging stereo,

complete with LED light show.

The limo even seats 13 people, in case you fancy some serious wheels for your hen do prior to the wedding. Sadly, stags are a no-go.

‘Rey Arturo’ (King Arthur) set up Limusina VIP Chile after getting hitched – though he had a little help. “The idea of renting out the limousine was born because Arturo loves going on holiday to Miami and decided he wanted [a limo] after seeing so many there,” explained his cousin Carlos Albornoz, who is studying for a business degree. “We want to convert Arturo’s hobbies into saleable business.”

The limo cost £93,000 to buy, fly to Chile and convert into the country’s longest car, including being cut in half for added decadence in the middle. Plans are afoot to increase the fleet,

[ Museum piece ]

KLINSI’S WORST ENEMY

Words Ben Fuller

Museum Bayern Munich Weirdness Anyone visiting the German champions’ museum may be perplexed to see what is essentially a free-standing drum with a hole in it. But there is a story behind it.

Bundesliga centre-halves weren’t the only thing that Jurgen Klinsmann was getting stuck into in 1996-97.

Frustrated at coach Giovanni Trapattoni’s decision to take him off with 10 minutes remaining in a goalless draw

with Freiburg, the striker – and top scorer that season – took out his simmering anger on an innocent bystander.

As a packed Olympiastadion looked on, Klinsi smashed his foot straight through a giant fake Sanyo power pack with a reckless lunge, studs up and all.

Assault on battery, your honour!

Now the stricken advertising hoarding is a historical artefact in the Erlebniswelt. Should’ve stuck to diving, Jurgen.

Italy Antonio Candreva tried to celebrate with the fans after scoring a screamer to seal a 2-1 win over Palermo, only to slip and injure his knee; he then had to be substituted

98 May 2015 FourFourTwo.com

P L A N E T FO OT B A L L

The limo makes its debut at the Vidals’ own wedding in December 2014

“You may kiss the er” Juventus midfield

adding another behemoth and two conventional limos to Vidal’s pride and joy, which is nicknamed la limusina ortuga (the caterpillar limousine) by Chile’s press. And that’s not all.

“We’ve had talks with a few retail companies to develop an Arturo Vidal clothing range,” says Mauricio Acuna, director general of Vidal Investments.

“It will be comparable to Zara, H&M and Calvin Klein.

fitting seeing as the festival takes place in the Quinta Vergara Amphitheatre.

“We could also take it to El Derby [Chile’s Royal Ascot],” added a smiling Carlos Matus, Vidal’s new father-in-law (it’s a family business, this).

“The demand has been pretty good. We’ve got a couple of weddings booked.”

However, one booking in Pucon, south Chile, has unfortunately fallen through – due to a volcanic eruption. It’s an understandable cancellation.

Driving an international footballer’s stretch limousine through neighbourhoods destroyed by lava does smack of rubbing people’s noses in it.

F IR ST NA M E ON THE TEAM SHEET

WHO HE IS

n among other countries. any, Switzerland, Angola and Gabo Former striker who played in Germ by the Republic of the Congo.

Pleasingly, Bongo has been capped

WHO HE SHOULD BE

r whose disciples are wooed by his A deranged doomsday-cult leade tricked into moving to equatorial then ies, abilit ssive hypnotic percu their PIN. er Africa and telling The Great Lead

Ludogorets Razgrad Bulgaria

Why should I care?

Because they’ve smashed it to the man by ending the dastardly duopoly of CSKA and Levski Sofia, becoming only the third side to win a domestic treble in Bulgaria (and in their first top-flight season, too). That was in 2012, just 11 years after formation, and they won the next two league titles just to make a point.

Take that, establishment. The club’s name means ‘region of wild forests’, after Razgrad’s topography, which is nice and organic.

Right, so presumably they’re bankrolled by an oil tycoon. What’s good about that?

Actually, owner Kiril Domuschiev may be worth £400m but if you’re suggesting the club has bought success, you’d be wrong.

Ludogorets operate carefully on an annual budget of around £4m, and Domuschiev was recognised by Economy magazine in 2011 for his contribution to the development of industry.

Oh, and he made his money in pharmaceuticals. So there.

Weren’t they in the Champions League?

*sigh* Yes, all the Johnny and Jenny-come-latelys latched onto the fairy tale of defender Cosmin Moti saving penalties to get them into the group stage, before near-upsets against Liverpool and Real Madrid. But while you were probably watching Swansea play Napoli, Ludogorets knocked Lazio out of the Europa League. Of course, I liked them before they were cool.

They must have enjoyed seeing the world’s biggest stars in Razgrad...

If only. Their stadium wasn’t up to UEFA’s dictatorial standards, so they played their home games 200 miles away in Sofia.

What should I say in the pub?

“With Ludo leading Madrid 1-0, Ronaldo’s dive to con the ref into giving a penalty was one of modern football’s great injustices.”

Venezuela Zamora showed Candreva how it’s done, marking Arles Flores’ 35-yard piledriver by lining up six players like bowling pins for Flores to knock down with the ball

FourFourTwo.com May 2015 99

Bongo words Nick Moore

tuga La limusina or business r fo es ar ep pr

At one point we wanted to associate ourselves with some of those names, but we decided his name alone is potent enough to market in itself.”

Like the limo, that might be a bit of a stretch.

So for now, the focus is on Limusina VIP Chile. Vidal’s own wedding car will be made available to the elected queen of the Festival de Vina del Mar, the beauty pageant attached to South America’s version of Eurovision. One previous winner was current Modern Family star Sofia Vergara, which is only

“Let me educate you...”

P L A N E T FO OT B A L L

NO MONEY NO HOME NO HOPE

Words James Eastham

Lens’ season was already going badly – then they were told they’ll be relegated whatever happens on the pitch No season is a write-off. There is always hope. But not for Lens, whose battle against relegation was rendered meaningless in late January by a court ruling that even if they escape the drop zone, they’re going down.

Lens have endured a testing 2014-15, but this took the French biscuit. In a move that would make Neil Warnock proud, the case was brought by Sochaux, who were relegated last season. They argued Lens’ promotion from Ligue 2 was invalid, and the court agreed.

With the French FA’s backing, Lens have appealed against automatic relegation – and they could win (something they’ve yet to do on the pitch in 2015). But there are still two other ways they could go down.

First, they could go bankrupt. for Ligue 1 to look at the Azerbaijani businessman Hafiz situation four days before the Mammadov, whose failure to 2014-15 season kicked off, sigh buy Sheffield Wednesday last and let them in for simplicity’s year represents a bullet dodged sake. The club’s been banned for Owls fans, took over at Lens from buying players in the past in 2013, but there are growing two transfer windows. concerns over how much cash “We have never met he actually has. Even Lens Mammadov or had a clear president Gervais Martel explanation about his plans admitted in March: “The or why he invested,” reality is he can’t pay.” complains Pierre To add to the farce, Revillon of Lens problems were put supporter group Young down to a typo in The Red Tigers. hopeful their bank details “The nearer we Gbamin (presumably get to the end of followed by “un chien a mangé mon homework”).

Lens’ promotion was rejected twice in the courts, but protracted appealing slowed the process enough

the season, the more we see this might end in bankruptcy. Then we’d have to climb back up from the amateur leagues.” Fans protested – a rarity for Lens – during

Lens’ fans make their point at Caen

“The staff are the 4-1 defeat at nervous about Caen in February, The enigmat the future,” and even Martel, ic Mr Mammad says Romain a popular figure ov Arghirudis, having been a former Lens president in 1998 sporting director when the club won their only now working closely with the Ligue 1 title, is in the firing line. club as an agent. “The mood Then there’s the football itself.

Lens are nine points from safety was low four or five months ago – it’s even worse now.” as FFT goes to print. The only And if that’s not enough, positive is the club’s promising Lens’ stadium is being youth setup, thrown into the deep end sans armbands by the renovated for Euro 2016 so they’re playing home games 50 transfer ban (one starting XI miles away in Amiens (despite had six players aged 19 or 20).

Lille having a 50,000-seat In recent years Lens’ academy arena down the road). Lens’ has produced Real Madrid’s average attendance in Ligue 2 Raphael Varane and Monaco’s last season was 31,000.

Geoffrey Kondogbia; now teenagers Jean-Philippe Gbamin Capacity in Amiens? 12,000.

“Everyone’s had enough of and Baptiste Guillaume could this catastrophic season,” says fetch a fair price this summer – Revillon. All to play for? Hardly. if the club’s still around.

JAVIER PASTORE TEAM-MATES

Interview Jonathan Johnson

FourFourTwo takes you inside the dressing room at PSG

THE OPTIMIST

MOST LAID-BACK

MR COMPETITIVE

THE SPEEDSTER

THE PRANKSTER

“Ezequiel Lavezzi is always in a good mood. El Pocho [The Chubby One] always gives off positive vibes and transmits an energy to the group. He has a strong sense of humour.”

“Marco Verratti is a very quiet person. I’ve never seen him get angry, and he’s even less animated off the pitch than he is on it.”

“Ibra, without a doubt!

On and off the pitch, he wants to win at everything.”

“Lucas Moura is the fastest – he has more speed than anybody I know.”

“There are lots of jokes that go on in our dressing room, and lots of funny moments, but Lavezzi is never far away from trouble!”

Argentina A San Lorenzo fan made his newborn son a member of the club and named him Azul Grana (Blue Red) after their colours. No pressure on who to support, then...

100 May 2015 FourFourTwo.com

P L A N E T FO OT B A L L

Polish champs salute support

It could have been Tony Pulis or Sam Allardyce, but it was actually George Orwell who said, “Sport is war minus the shooting.” And Legia Warsaw are the real deal, founded as the military’s team during World War I, and the chosen club of the Polish Army ever since. So naturally they don’t have fans – they have soldiers.

To mark their centenary, the 10-time Polish champions have launched a campaign that entitles loyal fans to all manner of great prizes and an enviable military rank to show off.

So, attend one Legia match and you get 10 points and the ed No uniform requir for these soldiers

“Who are we again?”

title ‘Private’. Go to more games and you fly up the ranks like a Polish Frank Underwood, becoming ‘Sergeant’ (110 points), ‘Warrant officer’ (140), ‘Major’ (170) and more, garnering better prizes all the way. The ultimate tag is ‘Colonel’, which entitles you to not only high-five players in the tunnel before a game and embark on a guided stadium rooftop walk, but enjoy a night inside it “with musical setting” and even participate in a team tactics and strategy meeting with the manager and coaching staff. Not bad, eh?

“Legia have great traditions,” marketing director Wictor Cegla tells FFT. “The Polish Legions gave foundations to our club in 1916, inspiring us to launch the Legiony programme.”

You might think that the chance to attend your team’s training sessions and take photos on the pitch before a game, all the while being called ‘Lieutenant colonel’, would be a pretty popular

initiative among supporters.

And you’d be right.

“I really like this idea,” beams Maciej Sobczynski.

“I’ve been coming to games for many years, and every time I have to travel more than 100km. I especially like the opportunity to take part in the tactics presentation.”

Michal Kaminski, a Warsaw resident, is also in favour. “I’ve already missed a few games this season,” he says, “but my goal next season is to attend enough matches for me to high-five players on their way from the locker room.”

“We created this with the Polish Legions in mind: that’s why we introduced the military ranks based on those used a century ago,” says Legia vice-president Jakub Szumielewicz. “We want to give the fans prizes and experiences they really care about, and we hope Legiony increases attendances.”

The phrase ‘barmy army’ has taken on new meaning.

HARD MAN

TRAINING NUT

MIRROR HOG

GAMES MASTER

HIP-SWINGER

“Of all our players, Thiago Motta is the one who is always committed and always lives life to the full. I would definitely rather be on his team than playing against him.”

“We have a team of professionals and everybody trains very hard – that wasn’t the case when I arrived [in 2011]. Maxwell is always the first to arrive to training.”

“We have a few players who spend a lot of time in front of the mirror! When it comes to fashion, Yohan Cabaye and Lavezzi are the most conscious about their appearance.”

“Maxwell, Zlatan, Motta, Salvatore Sirigu, Blaise Matuidi and I would always challenge each other, but I haven’t played that much this year. I am the best, though, without a doubt.”

“Sirigu is the best dancer, hands down. He has some smooth moves. As for the worst, I can’t say. I only pay attention to the good ones!”

Iran Bahram Afsharzade – Tony Pulis lookalike and Esteghlal chairman – took offence to a reporter’s questions, seemingly punching him in the knackers to end the interview

FourFourTwo.com May 2015 101

Words Bartosz Krol and Dawid Wojcik

Legia Warsaw are honouring diehard fans with an army-themed loyalty scheme that lets them high-five players and stroll along the stadium roof. Atten-shun!

P L A N E T FO OT B A L L

retold ] ls a o g t a e r G [

N A I T S I CHR MAGGIO

FourFourTwo.com

rie A, 2010 vs Livorno, Se

Words Simone Stenti; Illustration German Aczel

“I lived a week in Van Basten’s shoes,” says a joking Christian Maggio about the events of January 24, 2010 – when the Napoli wing-back scored “the best goal of my life”.

His life, or almost any other player’s. Maggio’s astonishing strike against Livorno bore close resemblance to Marco van Basten’s for the Dutch in the Euro 88 final; from less of a tight angle, perhaps – and a smaller

occasion, certainly – but just as perfect in its execution.

“We were at the end of the first half,” recalls Maggio, “and Livorno’s keeper cleared the ball quickly. Unfortunately for him, it went to my team-mate, [Salvatore] Aronica.

“He hit it long into the box, because the speciality of our forward, German Denis, was his heading. But when I saw the ball flying high, I instantly decided I would shoot. It was mine, without discussion.”

Get online to see this and other great goals from FFT’s archives

After his sumptuous strike, Maggio could share his pride with his team-mates… right?

“Actually, they asked me how I could think of taking such a foolish shot!” he laughs.

For days afterwards, ‘Maggio van Basten’ understood how the Dutch striker felt after his 1988 heroics. “For a whole week, they spoke only about Marco and me,” he chuckles.

“It got quite embarrassing.”

But the defender bags enough goals – more than 30

in Serie A during his career – for this cracker against Livorno to be “not the most important” he scored. For that we must go back to 2008, when he faced off against Genoa for their bitter rivals, Sampdoria. He fondly reminisces with FFT: “Genoa’s derby is one of the most heartfelt in the world and I scored the winning goal in the 87th minute – an incomparable joy.” Who cares that it was a deflected strike from a rebound, eh?

[ Derbies Deconstructed Cerro Porteno vs Olimpia ]

A SCORE TO SETTLE IN ASUNCION The sides are hard to split as passion flares in South America’s closest clash of clans

Words Adam Powers

Why all the fuss?

Formed in 1902, Olimpia were Paraguay’s first club, and are associated with the elite as only the wealthy could play at the time. But popularity spread and Cerro Porteno, formed eight years later, came to represent the working class. Foundations for a rivalry were laid when Olimpia didn’t turn up for the pair’s first scheduled meeting.

Reasons for aggro

Derbies don’t get much more closely fought. They are tied on 144 Super Clasico wins apiece, with Cerro’s 1-0 win on March 1 pulling them level following Olimpia’s triumph by the same margin in August. It’s believed that more than 90 per cent of Paraguayan fans support one or the other, making every meeting a national event.

Maddest moment

Class war: a Cerro fan makes his presence felt

When it comes to derby-day disrespect, nobody tops Miguel Angel Sosa. When the two clubs met in 1969’s continent-wide Copa Libertadores, Cerro’s Sosa rounded the goalkeeper with the scores locked at 1-1 – then stopped the ball on the goal-line and sat on it. After he finally deigned to roll it in, Cerro went on to win 4-1.

Cult figures

Sosa staked a claim with that display of cheek, and in 1999 Roque Santa Cruz would earn a move to Bayern Munich with his performances for Olimpia, but Ever Almeida is a legend of the Paraguayan Superclasico.

The keeper played for Olimpia for nearly 20 years and has coached them three times since, including a stint last year.

Indonesia Sportswear company Salvo Sports had to apologise after their Pusamania Borneo shirts’ washing instructions read: “Give this jersey to your woman – it’s her job”

102 May 2015 FourFourTwo.com

P L A N E T FO OT B A L L

THIS TREE

A legendary pitch-dwelling oak is branching out beyond the Baltics. It’s the best bit of timber in Europe, y’know...

Mart Poom can vividly recall scoring a thumping header for Sunderland against his former club, Derby (cue Des Lynam: “So goalkeepers never score in these situations? Yes they do”). However, his football career wasn’t complete until September 2014 when, at the age of 42, he played against the Orissaare oak tree.

“I was here for the first time and I finally saw this famous tree,” said the breathless ex-Arsenal stopper after playing for the Estonian All-Stars – yes, they exist – against a local side who boast the most immovable midfield barrier since Papa Bouba Diop. The Estonian national team goalkeeping coach (who else would it be?) continued: “I can go abroad and say that I’ve played on a pitch with an oak tree in the middle!”

This man has a Champions League runners-up medal.

Poom, it turns out, isn’t the only tree-hugging football fan.

Some 60,000 people clearly agree with him, because they

Mart Poom loses another staring contest

voted the Orissaare oak as 2015’s European Tree of the Year – again, this exists – in a poll run by the Environmental Partnership Association (EPA).

It saw off competition from a 230-year-old Hungarian sycamore (second with 53,000 votes), Robin Hood’s supposed hideout in Sherwood Forest and a Scots pine in Wales that fell over last year.

The real question is: what is a tree doing on the only football pitch in Orissaare village? Well, the story dates back to 1951, when the expansion of a local sports complex meant that it ended up in the middle of the football facility. Try as they might, Stalin’s tractors couldn’t pull it out of the ground, and

with Uncle Joe apparently prioritising the Korean War over the arboreal minutiae of a small Estonian island, the tree was left to flourish.

The 150-year-old oak remains as a testament to stubborn resilience. It also provides shade for knackered footballers and a place to practise your one-twos.

Martti Pukk, a legend on the island having played several hundred games for local heroes FC Kuressaare, also took part in the aforementioned match with ‘the Poominator’. “It was a unique experience,” the 38-year-old Pukk, still playing in the second tier, tells FFT. “Besides having the chance to play alongside Mart, I could face this special opponent.

“I was on the right wing and it was a funny feeling not being able to see the other side of the pitch. I couldn’t see our left-back. And the ball got stuck in the branches a few times!”

Well, that’s what you get for playing ‘root one’ football.

THE BOY’S A BIT

THE MEXICAN MADMAN ALWAYS UP FOR A SCRAP Jesus Corona

Position Goalkeeper Age 34 Nationality Mexican Club Cruz Azul

Nutter credentials

As with his lime-laced beer-y namesake, going one too many rounds with Jesus Corona may leave you flat on your back.

The rogue forearm to Neymar’s head in the 2012 London Olympics Final (pictured above) could be put down to the same element of chance that saw Corona himself knocked out by a team-mate’s knee last year, but the Cruz Azul No.1 is no stranger to a scrap. Corona was dropped from Mexico’s 2010 World Cup squad after a bar fight, and his involvement in a post-match brawl last April saw him suspended for one leg of the CONCACAF Champions League final.

Most spectacular outburst

After Cruz Azul went 3-0 down to Morelia in May 2011, one fan’s pitch invasion prompted a melee involving players, staff and officials. Corona’s contribution to proceedings?

Headbutting Morelia coach Sergio Martin. Not your typical players’ forehead-nuzzling, either, but a full-on Glasgow kiss.

Corona was dropped from Mexico’s Gold Cup squad. Déjà vu.

He said

“Of course I distrust him [now]. It was locker-room talk that should have stayed in the locker room. Imagine if every conversation was aired in public – it would be unethical.”

Expert on ethics Corona slams Mexico manager Miguel Herrera for revealing the goalkeeper’s sulk about being back-up to Guillermo Ochoa at last year’s World Cup.

Chile Santiago Wanderers’ Marco Medel succeeded in injuring himself in record time, pulling up short as he jogged onto the pitch as a substitute, then being stretchered off

FourFourTwo.com May 2015 103

Loco words Ben Fuller; Estonia tree words Angelo Palmeri; Tree picture Elina Kalm

ESTONIA’S GR EATEST CO N T R I B U T I ON T O F O OT BA L L :

VISIT US ON

LINE

at performa nce.fourfourt wo.com

PERFORMANCE ANCE WHERE PROS REVEAL THE SECRETS OF THEIR GAME

BALL? .

CHECK GLOVES? CHECK. ?

PUNCH BAGA !

H C T E B U O Y Calling all goalkeepers: don’t get pushed around in the box. Prepare for the scrap with som e knockout training straight out of Germany

of the punching bag is to simulate the game’s aggressiveness and combine it with normal goalkeeping sequences.”

What Rabe means by this becomes clearer when you watch Orlishausen in warm-up action.

The keeper is positioned on the line slightly towards the right. He begins with quick sidesteps towards his left, kicks the bag on the turn, then moves back to his right and parries a low shot aimed for the corner.

Finally he moves forward and beats the punch pad with his fists.

You wouldn’t want to be in this goalkeeper’s way when he comes out to collect a corner.

Performance editor Ben Welch; Words Uli Hesse

We all know that goalkeepers are a different breed, but German Dirk Orlishausen makes his fellow custodians look positively normal.

In a training exercise that wouldn’t look out of place in a martial arts gym, the captain of German second-tier side Karlsruher kicks a punch bag that dangles from the crossbar, and launches into a punch pad held by an assistant.

If you think it’s hard to imagine a match situation that could be prepared for in this way, think again.

“As a rule, all exercises should be game-like,” says Karlsruher’s goalkeeping coach Kai Rabe. “In this case it’s about explosive strength, power and speed. The main function

THE FOURFOURTWO PERFORMANCE PANEL Meet the experts available to answer your questions about every aspect of the game PSYCHOLOGY

PRO TIPS

MASTERCLASS

MATCH PREPARATION

Dan Abrahams

Tim Howard

Koke

Nick Grantham

The mind doctor to some of the country’s leading players offers uplifting advice.

The USA No.1 gives one FFT reader tips on inspiring his defence with well-chosen words.

The Spain superstar reveals the secrets that have helped make him master of the assist.

Our elite fitness guide explains how you can get trim using everyday kit in the garage.

Psychologist

Everton goalkeeper

Atletico playmaker

Conditioning coach

PERFORMANCE

NO.1 IS THE LONELIEST NUMBER

Pro goalkeepers are less likely than other players to have brothers or sisters. In a survey of footballers and family make-up, British experts discovered that midfielders have 2.4 siblings and strikers 2.2 (on average, obviously), while shot-stoppers are most likely to be only children.

DON’T GIVE IT A REST

Tests on the effects of treadmill running against playing football found that the knee stayed strong during both activities, but that rest during half-time only induced changes in the joint that “may have implications for anterior cruciate ligament injury risk”.

BAND FOR LIFE?

Researchers looking into the effects of heading a ball have been trialling protective headbands among 25 college soccer players in the US. They tested how using your nut could affect memory and reaction times with and without the headbands, and found… no difference.

SKIP TRAINING FOR A CHANGE

Jumping, hurdling, bouncing and skipping could all make you a better player. Two new studies – from Spain and Australia – confirm that plyometric practice carried out among junior elite players led to better shooting, sprinting, jumping and agility data.

KEEPING IT LEAN

Analysis of Liverpool’s under-18, under-21 and first-team squads showed that while there was little difference in the fat mass that players carried, those who made the first team also had a greater amount of lean muscle mass.

10 THINGS

WE’VE LEARNED THIS MONTH GERMAN CARDS COME LATER

A study of referees in the Bundesliga found that they develop their own ‘judgement scale’ as the game progresses and usually don’t penalise fouls to the letter of the law until they’ve got into the flow of the game.

TACTICS: AN OLD MAN’S GAME

Experienced footballers have a memory of tactics that enables them to react faster than young pros to a change of plan or formation.

German researchers found that playing more games conditions the brain to process tactics more fluidly.

BANANAS FOR BRADLEY WIGGINS

Italian researchers comparing the eating habits of young footballers and cyclists found that the former carry less fat than cyclists in their teenage years – but don’t take on enough blood-boosting potassium, found naturally in bananas, nuts and avocados.

WISER HEAD – WEAKER BODY

A study of 18 German veterans’ teams found that older players were at a greater risk of muscle injury. Though they were not injured more often than younger players, they were much more prone to muscle tears and strains.

THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT (AT TAKING PENALTIES) After finding that ‘current stars’ (who had won individual awards) were 65 per cent successful in shootouts, while ‘future stars’ (who went on to win them) had a conversion rate of 89 per cent, experts suggest that less experienced players see penalties as a chance to earn a reputation.

Studies and authors: St. George’s Hospital Medical School, London (‘No.1 is the loneliest number’); Journal of Sports Science (‘Don’t give it a rest’ & ‘The kids are all right’); University of Arkansas, USA (‘Band for life’); University Pablo de Olavide, Seville, Spain & Edith Cowan University, Australia (‘Skip training for a change’); LFC Melwood Training Ground (‘Keeping it lean’); Psychologisches Institut, University of Heidelberg, Germany (‘German cards come later’); Bielefeld University, Germany (‘Tactics: an old man’s game’); University of Florence, Italy (‘Bananas for Bradley Wiggins’); Institute of Sports and Preventive Medicine, Saarland University, Germany (‘Wiser head – weaker body’)

PERFORMANCE

[ You ask, we answer ]

Keep the critics quiet Don’t let the touchline tormentors get inside your head, says the tricky Hammers playmaker “I play in front of a few hundred supporters as a semi-pro and our own fans have given me some stick during a bit of bad form. How do you handle that?”

Stay brave on the ball to stick it to the boo-boys

Daniel Navarrete, via Twitter

Stewart Downing

Interview Ben Welch

West Ham midfielder “When you start as a young lad, it’s all rosy. Then after six or seven weeks you may have a dip in form, and it does affect you. But careers go up and down, so try to block out any negativity. You’ve got to have self-belief. When things are not going well, think: ‘It will turn.’

“If you’re losing at home and the crowd are edgy and something you try doesn’t come off, they might boo or shout, but you’ve got to be brave and keep trying.

“When you’re getting abuse from the opposition fans it’s because they see you as a threat. You have just got to take it as a bit of fun.

“You get players that will kick you and try to intimidate you, but they are doing it for a reason – they’re trying to put you off your game.

“You’ve just got to get on with it and not react, because that’s what they want. If you don’t react, it deflects the pressure onto them.”

DID YOU KNOW?

ers have and manag Four Engl eir plans. th in ng owni included D s debut hi e elder mad The midfi iksson -Goran Er under Sven nded ha so been and has al laren, cC M e ev caps by St llo and Fabio Cape gson od H Roy

Downing is speaking with Adidas’ #ThereWillBeHaters campaign.

Join the conversation @adidasUK

“My defenders moan that I talk too much as a goalkeeper. How do you get the balance right?”

Martin Magrit, via Twitter

Tim Howard

Interview Charlie Ghagan

Everton and USA No.1 “I’m very vocal, but it’s only worthwhile if you have respect. If you’re a guy the outfield players can’t stand and you’re chatting about goodness knows what, then yes, you can talk too much.

“I talk a lot, but I think most of it is relevant. The reason I know

it is relevant is because I get positive reinforcement from the defenders, who will say ‘thanks for that shout’ or ‘great talking’.

“That gives you the confidence to think: ‘OK, I’m doing the right thing here’. As long as you stay positive with your players and you’re trying to be the eyes in the backs of their heads and a voice to help them with things they can’t see, then you can never talk too much.

“If you are always nagging at them and being negative with your words, then that can end up being detrimental.

“I’m non-stop the whole time, and over the years I’ve worked out ways to get my point across.

“It’s much easier to get a plan across at a set-piece, especially corners when you have the midfielders, wingers – most of the team – back in the box.”

The Keeper, by Tim Howard, is published in hardback and ebook

by HarperCollins, priced £18.99

Stay positive when you chat, says Tim Howard

Performance.FourFourTwo.com May 2015 107

PERFORMANCE

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PERFORMANCE

1

Get your head up

Know your surroundings immediately

“The most important quality you need to play off a striker is vision. Being able to see everything is vital.

As soon as you receive the ball, you must immediately look around for your forward or wide midfielder. One of the best ways to develop this vision is by practising rondos. This piggy-in-the-middle game gets you working in tight spaces and improves your touch. With one or two people in front of you, you must know your surroundings before you even get the ball.”

Interview Andrew Murray

4

Know your foe

2

“The secret to playing between the lines is to know your opponent. Playing out wide, it’s more obvious who your direct rival is, but that doesn’t mean you should stop thinking if you’re playing inside. Study them before the game if you have access to videos; if not, look at them in the warm-up and beyond. How do they move?

Which foot is stronger? In which situations do they appear the most comfortable? All this information helps you to get the most from your game.”

Use training sessions to improve your attacks

“Get to know your attacking team-mates, too. If you know the runs they’ll make and what passes they like to receive, that improves your team’s chances of scoring. Work on it in training. It’s fundamental – a function of your hard work throughout the week.

Why shout an instruction at someone, when only a look will do? That way, the opposition can’t predict what you’re going to do. This creativity is brilliant to have, regardless of where you’re playing on the pitch.”

5

Get clued up before kick-off

Understanding is vital

Work on through balls They’re the best way to create danger

“A through ball is your best route to an assist, so it should form a big part of the creative midfielder’s armoury. There’s no single thing you can work on to improve them. Every move is different, especially if you’re a midfielder who alternates between central and wide areas. The way defenders operate changes, too, so vary your passes. Play along the floor, go aerial and scoop the ball over a packed backline. Variation is important, so have plenty of tricks open to you.”

3

Pass and move

How to counteract close attention

“If there’s no other way to deal with that situation, you have to try to play with one or two touches. If the defender is right behind you, your only option is to keep things simple. If it happens a lot, you need to go looking for space in which to play. By doing this, you either get the breathing space you need, or create some for your full-back or another midfielder to move into. Don’t get drawn into their game: if they hit you hard, just laugh it off and they’ll get frustrated.”

6

Make life easy

Your team-mates will appreciate quality

“Variation may be a big factor, but it’s not all about doing the unexpected and making things difficult for the opposition. To be able to play either wide or through the middle, you must make life easy for your team-mates, too. Don’t be predictable, but if you only think about the most difficult ball, you lose focus. You should already know what your team-mates want (see point two), so give them the quality they need to make the most of their chance. They’ll thank you for it later.”

Lucozade Sport is all about enhancing performance – and now it can enhance your practice sessions with exclusive training gear If you’ve collected the codes from promotional bottles of Lucozade Sport and Lucozade Sport Lite and registered to take part, you have till 31 May 2015 to redeem them online.

Equipment includes balls, cones, kit-bags and training and match-day strips you can customise. Get the edge over your opponents in style.

REDEEM CODES, GET KIT

WWW.LUCOZADESPORT.COM/KITOUTPROJECT Lucozade Sport provides carbohydrates and electrolytes to enhance hydration and help maintain performance during prolonged endurance exercise.Opening date: 1 July 2014, Redeem vouchers by 31 May 2015. Terms and conditions apply: www.lucozadesport.com/kitoutproject. LUCOZADE SPORT and the Arc Device are registered trade marks of Lucozade Ribena Suntory Ltd. © Copyright Lucozade Ribena Suntory Limited, 2015. All rights reserved.

GROOMING

CRISTIANO RONALDO

Get the wet look

“Ronaldo has his hair short at the back and sides, with a clear disconnection on one side of the parting as it sweeps over his head like a breaking wave. Use OSiS Dust It matt powder by Schwarzkopf to give your roots real density.

For CR7’s wet look, load your hair with OSiS G.Force gel.”

e speed o f Th

The Portuguese powerhouse has the lot: athleticism, talent and Hollywood style. You can emulate him with help from our experts

R

on

ll

[ Performance Lab ]

n ie

eb ’s knuckl

a

MUSIC

Get in the zone like CR7: “Ricky Martin’s tunes are very catchy; Livin’ La Vida Loca is my favourite.” And his favourite song ever “without a doubt”, which is a “real inspiration” to him? R. Kelly’s I Believe I Can Fly.

NUTRITION

Just like mama used to make CR7’S MUM’S BACALHAU A BRAS

78 cm

“This Portuguese salt cod dish, bound together by protein-rich eggs, is a great source of low-calorie protein and Omega 3. The matchstick potatoes are a good form of carbs; monounsaturated fat in the black olives can lower blood pressure; and the onions are high in fibre, Vitamin C and anti-oxidants.”

How high CR7 can jump – more than the average NBA player

EXERCISE

Get CR7’s six-pack

110 May 2015 FourFourTwo.com

ACTION Position yourself upright in the Captain’s Chair, bodyweight suspended on the forearm pads. Keeping your legs together and back straight against the pad, raise your legs until level with the abdominals, finishing with a small curve of the pelvis off the pad, ‘crunching’ the abs and pushing the pelvis upwards. Slowly lower legs to the start position.

SETS 3-4 REPS 12-15 FREQUENCY 3 times a week

EXERCISE

Leap like Ronaldo ACTION The Power Clean will help you to transfer force through your body when you jump. Start with your feet under a barbell, slightly wider than shoulder-width apart.

Grab the barbell and explode upwards to bring it up onto your collarbone. Lower weight to start position and repeat.

SETS 2-5 REPS 2-5

Words Louis Massarella; Illustrations Jason Pickersgill; Grooming Andy Smith, creative director at Real Hair; Nutrition Tim De’Ath, England head chef; Power Clean exercise Karl Halabi, elite performance coach; Captain’s Chair workout Duncan French, strength and conditioning coach

Lucozade Sport provides carbohydrates and electrolytes to enhance hydration and help maintain performance during prolonged endurance exercise. LUCOZADE SPORT and the Arc Device are registered trade marks of Lucozade Ribena Suntory Ltd. © Copyright Lucozade Ribena Suntory Limited, 2015. All rights reserved.

PERFORMANCE

[ Fitness ]

DIY MATCH FITNESS

INNER-TUBE PULL DOWNS Hook a tyre inner tube to a fixed point. With your feet apart and knees bent, pull the inner-tube down while flexing at the hips, maintaining a strong, flat back. Return to the start position and repeat.

REPS 12 SETS 3

RUCKSACK PUSH PRESS

The garage holds everything you need to build a match-winning body, says strength and conditioning coach Nick Grantham

Take a rucksack and load it up with tools from around the garage – it needs to be a challenge to lift towards the end of each set. Hold at shoulder height, dip and drive the rucksack upward so it finishes overhead.

REPS 10 SETS 3

ONE-ARM PAINT POT ROW Grab a full five-litre paint pot.

Put your right hand and knee on a work bench. Place your left foot on the ground and lift up the pot with your left hand until the rim of the base touches your rib cage.

REPS 12 (alternate arms) SETS 4

GARDEN BUCKET SWINGS Grab a bucket and half-fill it with wet sand. Hold the handle with both hands.

Bend your knees and move your shoulders forward so that your forearms contact your inner thighs. Drive the weight upward and out by extending the hips.

REPS 10 SETS 3

112 May 2015 Performance.FourFourTwo.com

TYRE TWISTS

TOOL BOX PUSH-UP Rest toes on a tool box and get into the push-up position.

Lower yourself close to the ground then rise back up and fully extend your arms for one rep. Drive through your chest, shoulders and triceps – engage your abs and glutes to stabilise.

REPS 12 SETS 3

Take a tyre and sit on the floor with your hips and knees bent 90 degrees. Hold the tyre out in front of you and keep your back straight – your torso should be at 45 degrees to the floor. Twist your torso as far as you can to the left, and then reverse the motion to the right.

REPS 10 SETS 3

PERFORMANCE

RAFTER LEG RAISES

PAINT POT SUMO SQUAT Hold a paint pot by the handle in front of you, positioning your feet beyond shoulder-width apart. Sit into the squat as far as possible, maintaining an upright torso and keeping your feet flat on the floor.

REPS 10 SETS 3

This is great for building core strength. Hang from a rafter (ensure it can safely take your weight) with a shoulder-width grip. Feet together, raise your legs by flexing the hips and knees. Return, so that the hips and knees are extended downward, for one rep.

REPS 10 SETS 3

INNER TUBE WOOD CHOP Hook a tyre inner tube to a fixed point. Grip the tube with both hands and keep your arms straight. Pull the tube diagonally downward, across the left shoulder and chest, down towards the right knee, and rotate your torso as you extend.

REPS 10 SETS 3

STRAIGHT LEG SHOVEL SIT-UP

Words Rob Kemp; Illustration Jason Pickersgill

Hold a shovel in both hands against your chest as you lie flat on the floor. Push the shovel forward as you sit up and push it above your head as you reach the midpoint.

Finish sitting tall with your legs straight and weight above your head.

REPS 12 SETS 3

SUCK IT UP

Stay hydrated and get the most out of your training sessions with kit from Lucozade Sport’s Kit-Out Project

Staying hydrated is essential to success. The one litre water bottles mean your team can get access to all the fluids they need quickly, easily and without spillage. Liquid football.

REDEEM CODES, GET KIT

WWW.LUCOZADESPORT.COM/KITOUTPROJECT Lucozade Sport provides carbohydrates and electrolytes to enhance hydration and help maintain Ma 2015. performance during prolonged endurance exercise.Opening date: 1 July 2014. Redeem vouchers by 31 May Terms and conditions apply: www.lucozadesport.com/kitoutproject. LUCOZADE SPORT and the Arc Device are registered trade marks of Lucozade Ribena Suntory Ltd. © Copyright Lucozade Ribena Suntory Limited, 2015.. All rights reserved.

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With a unique shimmer effect created through a new iteration of NikeSkin on a textured Flyknit upper, Cristiano Ronaldo’s signature Superfly delivers an almost barefoot touch for glittering performances. The Dynamic Fit Collar locks the foot in place while direct-inject blades dig in and release quickly for explosive speed.

NEXT DAY DELIVERY - ORDER BY 4PM AND GET IT TOMORROW. SEE ONLINE FOR DETAILS

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NIKE

MERCURIAL VAPOR X CR FG: 102051 AG: 101802

£180

TWITTER: ProD_Soccer

Wrapping the foot for a locked-down fit, a tongue-less ultra-thin Teijin synthetic upper features a grippy micro-texture for excellent touch. ACC ensures consistent performance in all conditions. For extra bursts of speed, the lightweight nylon sole plate includes a forefoot grip zone providing toe off traction.

NIKE

NIKE

MERCURIAL VELOCE II CR

MERCURIAL VICTORY V CR

Providing a second-skin fit and supreme comfort, a soft and lightweight synthetic leather upper forms to the contours of the foot. A perforated sockliner offers low-profile cus hioning and helps minimise stud pressure. A full-length TPU sole plate delivers explosive acceleration and multidirectional grip.

Snug fitting and stable, a soft and flexible synthetic leather upper delivers enhanced ball control. The contoured sockliner mirrors the shape of the foot for superior support and cushioning. A lightweight moulded rubber outsole includes a Vapor traction pattern for superior grip.

FG: 102052 AG: 101803

FG: 102053 SG: 101799 AG: 101804

FROM

£110

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I N S TA G R A M : p r o d i r e c t s o c c e r

FROM

£65

THE PROFESSIONAL’S CHOICE DIRECT TO YOUR DOOR

Bringing the foot closer to the ball, the Flyknit textured upper provides exceptional touch. NikeSkin prevents water getting in and ACC ensures consistent control. The revolutionary Dynamic Fit Collar locks the foot in place while a responsive carbon fibre sole plate includes direct-inject blades that penetrate and release quickly for instant acceleration.

A one-piece NikeSkin upper brings the foot closer to the ball for a barefoot-like feel. The 3D textured upper with ACC technology helps to grip the ball for unrivalled control. A lightweight nylon chassis with Pebax base includes a split-toe plate for maximum agility and a stud configuration designed for sudden changes of direction.

PR I C E S F R O M £45

PRI CES FROM £45

NEXT DAY DELIVERY - ORDER BY 4PM AND GET IT TOMORROW. SEE ONLINE FOR DETAILS

THE WORLD’S LARGEST ONLINE SOCCER STORE

Flyknit, NikeSkin and ACC technologies combine to provide an almost barefoot touch. Areas of high breathability, stretch and support are knitted directly into the one piece upper. The Dynamic Fit collar fits over the ankle to lock the foot in place. A lightweight Pebax nylon sole plate with conical studs delivers 360 degrees of rotational traction.

Ultra-soft kangaroo leather and Kanga-Lite creates a soft and water-resistant upper that conforms to the foot. Moisture blocking Hypershield technology ensures a fit that stays snug for longer while ACC offers consistent performance in any conditions.

A full-length TPU sole plate is designed for flexible transition and comfort.

PR I C E S FR O M £ 4 5

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I N S TA G R A M : p r o d i r e c t s o c c e r

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NIKE MERCURIALX PROXIMO - 101844 PUMA NEVOA LITE 2.0 - 96237 ADIDAS FREEFOOTBALL SPEEDTRICK - 94553 ADIDAS FREEFOOTBALL CRAZYQUICK - 94551

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£125 - £45 - £52 - £65

THE WORLD’S LARGEST ONLINE SOCCER STORE NIKE MAGISTAX PROXIMO - 101807 - £125 ADIDAS FREEFOOTBALL RIDER - 94552 - £60 ADIDAS FREEFOOTBALL BOOST - 94548 - £75 PUMA EVOSPEED SALA - 96236 - £50

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I N S TA G R A M : p r o d i r e c t s o c c e r

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MYPERFECT XI

KEVIN PHILLIPS Evergreen goal machine Super Kev stays close to home, with nine English players and two Irishmen lining up in his old-school 4-4-2 GK JOE HART

I had a season with him when he was on loan at Birmingham from Manchester City. You could tell straight away he was top class and was going to be England No.1 for a long time.

RB STEPHEN CARR

In the two years I played with him at Birmingham, I don’t think I saw one winger get the better of him. He’d been retired for three months before he joined us, but was still a great player.

CB MARTIN KEOWN

I played with him for England and had countless battles with him throughout my club career. As a striker he was your worst nightmare; the sort of defender that you wanted to steer clear of.

LB MICHAEL GRAY

He set up so many of my Sunderland goals – I couldn’t leave him out. He would bomb down the left and get the crosses in, but he had bundles of energy so would always get back to defend.

RM DAVID BECKHAM

His range of delivery was incredible.

Watching him in training and during the England matches I was involved in was a privilege. To be on the same pitch as him was an absolute pleasure.

CM PAUL SCHOLES

There’s no other option but to put him in. I played alongside him for England and he was the complete central midfielder – nobody could touch him. He was a quality player and so consistent.

CB STEVE BOULD

GK

RB

JOE HART

CB

STEPHEN CARR

DAVID BECKHAM

SUBSTITUTES

1

LM NICKY SUMMERBEE

This selection may surprise a few people, but at Sunderland he was a different class – one of the best crossers of a ball I’ve ever seen.

He could deliver the ball on a sixpence.

JAMES BEATTIE He was superb at Southampton – a joy to play alongside.

CF ALAN SHEARER

He has to go in. I cleaned his boots as an apprentice at Southampton, so it was weird lining up alongside him when I made my England debut. As a goalscorer there was nobody better.

CF NIALL QUINN

He came to Sunderland at the end of his career, and although his legs weren’t what they were, his reading of the game was something else. As a centre-half he was second to none.

RM

CM JAMIE REDKNAPP

We played together for Southampton and England, and he was superb. He was coming to the end of his career while at Saints, but his range of passing and technical ability were excellent. A leader.

MARTIN KEOWN

This is a no-brainer. The relationship we had at Sunderland was fantastic – he helped put my name on the map. His ability to hang in the air was incredible, but he had really quick feet, too.

CB

STEVE BOULD

CM

ALEX RAE A really key man for us at Sunderland during my time there.

MICHAEL GRAY

CM

PAUL SCHOLES

2

LB

JAMIE REDKNAPP

LM

NICKY SUMMERBEE

3 GARETH BARRY He had a great season for Villa during my one year at the club. He’s been so consistent for so long.

Interview Richard Edwards

COACH

CF

CF

ALAN SHEARER

NIALL QUINN

PETER REID I had over 20 managers in career, but it has to be my career Peter Reid. I worked under him at Sunderland for five-and-a-half five-and-a-half years and he was great. He was a no-nonsense kind of guy. You could go out and have a beer, so long as you put a shift in at training and on a matchday.

YOUR NEXT FOURFOURTWO IS ON SALE MAY 6