Champions League Final

AC Milan 4-0 Barcelona 

With England travelling to Montenegro with some trepidation on Tuesday night, what better time to revisit the finest hour of their greatest ever player, Dejan Savicevic?

Savicevic was perhaps the epitome of the 90s flair player – highly strung, often less than industrious, but capable of the seemingly impossible. Technically, there wasn’t a better footballer around that decade than the man Silvio Berlusconi named “Il Genio”. His dribbling skills were unparalleled, and his low centre of gravity, married to incredible spatial awareness, meant he was able to emerge from many a crunching tackle or seeming crowding out by defenders with the ball still glued to his feet, and get himself out of the tightest of tight spots.

The 1994 Champions League final seemed to take place in some sort of bizarro-world parallel universe, where the opposite transpired to what pretty much everyone had predicted. It was supposed to be the true crowning of Johann Cruyff’s Barcelona ‘Dream Team’ after they’d rather laboured to their first European Cup, two years previously, against Sampdoria. Boasting names like Romario, Stoichkov, Guardiola and Koeman, Barca had already secured another La Liga title and went into the final in rare form, winning their last five games to round off a 15-match undefeated streak. It was anticipated that they would make short work of Fabio Capello’s Milan side, who were missing key players, and who (despite holding onto the Scudetto for another season) had found goals hard to come by and stumbled over the line, failing to win their last six games.

Even Cruyff himself appeared to treat the outcome as a foregone conclusion, making disparaging comments about Milan’s defensive style in the build-up and even going as far as to be photographed with the trophy before the match. However, Capello’s under-strength side surprised the Catalans by going for the jugular from the outset, and would turn the Dream Team’s big night into a nightmare.

Milan’s path to Athens really started with Capello’s appointment almost three years prior. Going into his first managerial job with some hefty shoes to fill in replacing Arrigo Sacchi, Capello made the best possible start as his side breezed to the Scudetto without losing a single game, rattling in 74 goals. That summer, President Silvio Berlusconi decided to fix what wasn’t broken by spending around £35m on new players, breaking the world transfer record twice (£10m on Jean Pierre Papin, £13m on Gianluigi Lentini) in the process. Other new arrivals in this monumental spending spree included Savicevic (£9.4m from Red Star) as well as, among others, Zvonimir Boban, Marcel Desailly and Stefano Eranio. Although Capello would often ignore a lot of these new toys, leaving many of the ‘flair’ players on the bench in favour of those more in tune with his mantra of “work, work, work”, Milan retained their title, and almost matched their unbeaten run of the previous campaign, extending it to an incredible 58 games in total until March 1993, when the Parma of Brolin and Asprilla finally defeated them.

However, while they were absolutely dominant domestically, not everything was perfect. Berlusconi’s impulse buying essentially forced Capello to pioneer the rotation system, which didn’t go down well with certain new players acquired at some expense only to find themselves kicking their heels on the bench, as well as other, more established stars previously considered untouchable – such as Ruud Gullit – whose playing time was suddenly reduced. Opportunities were further limited in Europe by UEFA’s short-lived three foreigner rule, and Milan could not immediately translate their Serie A success to the European Cup, being shocked by Marseilles in the first final of the Capello era in 1993.

The 1993/94 season was one of transition for the Rossoneri. The three Dutchmen who had been so pivotal to their success had all departed, Gullit heading to Sampdoria, Frank Rijkaard returning to Ajax and Marco Van Basten taking a sabbatical to (ultimately unsuccessfully) try to overcome a severe ankle injury. New signings included the Romanian striker Florin Raducioiu and Brian Laudrup. Yet while the high-profile departures gave the previous season’s arrivals more opportunities to get on the pitch, Capello’s preference for graft over creativity intensified and the free-scoring Milan of previous seasons was replaced by a much more conservative beast. They won the title again, but managed just 36 goals in 34 games.

Capello’s methods were the source of some discontent, not least among the attacking talent at his disposal. “If Capello’s system looks boring from the stands, it’s even worse to play in,” snorted Papin. Savicevic, always a fiery character, fell out with the stern Italian almost immediately. Having been a major architect of Red Star’s shock European Cup win in 1991 and finished runner-up in the Ballon D’or voting that year, big things were expected from him, and he quickly became a favourite of Berlusconi. Capello took some convincing though, largely because, as he would later describe: ”he played the Yugoslavian style: he was the star and the others had to run for him.” It was a philosophy very much at odds with his own.

In his first season in Milan, 1992/93, he started just 10 league games, and took until January to score his first goal. When Milan travelled to Munich to face Marseilles in that famous final, he was not even named among the substitutes.

The following season saw tensions between Savicevic and Capello intensify as the former Red Star man again found his chances limited. This exploded into open warfare on more than one occasion, most notably when he refused to be a substitute for a Champions League group match against Anderlecht, and again when he was dropped for the World Club Cup final in Tokyo – having previously been told he was playing.  As long as Capello reigned at the San Siro, it seemed Savicevic’s days there were numbered.

Then came Athens. Injuries and suspensions had well and truly scrambled Capello’s ‘Plan A’. Franco Baresi and Alessandro Costacurta, his first choice centre back pairing, had both picked up cards in the semi-final against Monaco (Costacurta being dismissed following an embarrassing piece of simulation from Jurgen Klinsmann). Lentini was still recovering from a serious car crash that initially left him in a coma. The manager’s favourite workhorse, Demetrio Albertini, was also out through injury. So Capello’s hand was forced; he went with an inexperienced back line featuring youngsters Paolo Maldini and Stefan Panucci, and ageing reserve Daniele Massaro in attack. Most eye-catching of all though, was the midfield in Capello’s 4-1-4-1, in which the supremely skilful but decidedly lightweight duo of Savicevic and Boban were protected by Marcel Desailly, sitting in front of the back four. It shouldn’t have worked.

Yet it did – and that owed a lot to Savicevic, who had the game of his life. It was his cleverly weighted chip that created the opening goal after 22 minutes as Milan came out all guns blazing, Massaro firing into an empty net. They continued to dominate, adding a second on the stroke of half time through a brilliant 16-pass move that was again finished off by Massaro.

It was soon time for the Montenegrin’s crowning moment. Just after half time, Savicevic raced down the right to close down Miguel Angel Nadal. Dispossessing the Spanish international defender, he then noticed Andoni Zubizarreta off his line and, from just outside the box, clipped an incredibly audacious, sky-high lob that was perfectly weighted to float over Zubizaretta before dropping into the net. It was one of the great European Cup goals.

The Rossoneri weren’t finished there, Desailly storming forward to complete Barca’s humiliation with number four. In the aftermath, Capello was full of praise for both his players, each of whom he awarded a mark of ten, and particularly for Savicevic, the man of the match, describing him as the only player capable of such “an unthinkable play of brilliance…it is the way of Savicevic“.  As is his wont, however, Savicevic did himself no favours with his response, dedicating his goal to Berlusconi.

Capello talked of the game being “perfect”, but couldn’t bring himself to stick with the same set-up, soon reverting to the conservative style he’d used in the league. It would not have the same success at Milan again however. Juve took the Scudetto from them in 1994/95, and though they again reached the Champions’ League final, they looked a shadow of the previous year’s team, proving negative and toothless. Savicevic saw more action in Serie A but could still not make himself a regular. He scored the two goals in the Champions’ League semis against PSG that took Milan through, but again did not even make the bench for the final itself.

Capello left for Real Madrid in the summer of 1996 after one last Scudetto with Milan, while Savicevic stayed for another two seasons until 1998. His career winding down, he made a brief, ill-fated return to Red Star before spending a very happy couple of years at Rapid Vienna, where he was given pretty much a free role to float around and cause havoc. He retired in 2001, and later that year, despite a lack of experience, embarked on a disastrous tenure as coach of Serbia & Montenegro, failing to get a strong side to qualify for World Cup 2002 or Euro 2004, falling out with star striker Mateja Kezman, and even managing to draw at home and then lose away to lowly Azerbaijan.

Savicevic has found, by his standards, a degree of consistency and stability as head of the Montenegrin FA, a post he’s held since 2009 and was recently re-elected to serve another four years. He’s been helped in the role by his enormous popularity as both the ‘Michael Jordan’ of Montenegro and as literally a poster boy of Montenegrin independence, which was finally earned in 2006. It’s difficult to agree, however, with Henry Winter’s assertion that the upper echelons of English football administration ‘needs a Dejan Savicevic’ – the former Milan star could start an argument in (and possibly with) an empty room, managing to fall out with everyone from Serbian newspapers to his own second in command in his four years in the job to date, while also sacking a successful manager (Zlatko ‘father of Niko’ Krancjar) for no apparent reason –  amid whispers he was stealing Dejan’s limelight.

Nevertheless, Savicevic’s legacy on the pitch is that of one of the talents of 90s football, and at his best there were few more exciting players to watch. The former Yugoslavia produced many great creative talents who flourished during the decade – Boban, Prosinecki, Stoichkovic – but only one ‘genius’.

Serie A

Bologna 0-1 Juventus

Juventus’ 2-0 win at Bologna’s Stadio Renato Dall’Ara on Saturday night leaves them with the champagne virtually on ice – nine points clear, they are, like most of the table toppers in Europe’s major leagues, virtually home and hosed. When they visited the Rossoblu with seven games remaining in April 1997, however, their lead at the top was far less comfortable, and with Parma breathing down their necks as they chased a first-ever scudetto, this weekend would prove a significant one in the title race.

Some made better choices than others…

In the summer of 1996, Juve, the reigning European champions, took a huge gamble in giving their squad a major overhaul as they sought to wrest back the Scudetto from Milan. Out went a number of the players who’d been pivotal in securing that second European crown, like Gianluca Vialli, Fabrizio Ravanelli, Paulo Sousa and 37-year-old Pietro Vierchowod. In their place came Christian Vieri, Zinedine Zidane, Paolo Montero and, in a £5m deal from Lazio, Alen Boksic. The Bianconeri headed the table from an early stage of the season, despite some of the new arrivals taking time to adjust to coach Marcello Lippi’s 4-3-3 formation. When they clicked, they produced some absolutely scintillating football, most notably in the 6-1 destruction of the champions at the San Siro, and as Zidane’s influence grew over the course of the season, they got steadily better and better. Yet while they rarely lost, Juve were drawing too many games, and Carlo Ancelotti’s Parma put together a terrific run as they began to close in.

Lippi’s men went to Bologna just a week after Udinese had handed them their third defeat of the campaign, dishing out a shock 3-0 humbling at the Stadio delle Alpi. That weekend, Parma beat Roma in the Olimpico to cut the Old Lady’s lead to just three points.  Juventus risked losing momentum at a crucial stage of the season, and the Rossoblu would be no pushovers. Renzo Ulivieri had guided them from Serie C1A to Serie A in just two years, and had assembled a talented squad in the process. Powered by the potent strike force of Kennet Andersson and Igor Kolyvanov, the eccentric Ulivieri (a former member of the Italian Communist Party) had established them as genuine contenders for a European place.

Striker!

In the event, a cagey encounter was settled by a solitary goal – this week’s featured strike – from Boksic. The original ‘big man with a great touch’, the powerful Croatian picked up the ball around 40 yards out and accelerated towards goal, easing past two defenders as he moved into the area before casually slotting into the bottom corner to round off a solo goal of the highest quality. 24 hours later, Parma were beaten 2-0 at home by Juve’s conquerers the previous week, Udinese, and the Bianconeri’s six- point cushion at the top was restored.

The game that ultimately decided the title came with just three rounds left to play, as the top two met in Turin. It was not without controversy. At half-time, Parma led through a Zidane own goal and were set to close the gap once again. Then however, came a very dodgy penalty that Nicola Amoruso converted successfully. 1-1 was the final score, ensuring Juve’s lead at the top could not be overturned and essentially handing them the title by dint of their vastly superior goal difference (they’d go on to claim the Scudetto by two points). Parma’s French midfielder Daniel Bravo claimed last year that the two sides had agreed to play out a draw – although this has been refuted by both sides.

As for Boksic, his season at the Stadio delle Alpi was not, despite the title success, a particularly happy one. He spent much of the season either injured or suspended, and found his opportunities further limited by the abundance of striking talent the Old Lady possessed in the form of Vieri, Alessandro Del Piero and Amoruso, as well as surprise package Michele Padovano.  He managed just three goals in 22 starts for Juve in the league, and though he was the team’s leading scorer in the Champions’ League as they again reached the final, there was heartbreak in store in Munich, as Paulo Sousa returned to haunt his old team, pulling the strings for Borussia Dortmund as they triumphed 3-1.

Juve would double their money on Boksic at the end of the season as the player returned to Lazio, where ‘the alien’ was a big favourite of President Sergio Cragnotti. Never as prolific in Italy as he’d been at Marseilles, where he’d effortlessly stepped into Jean Pierre-Papin’s boots, his combination of strength, technical finesse and creativity nevertheless made him the perfect foil for strike partners like Beppe Signori, and one of Serie A’s top attackers in his own right.

Cragnotti: Surfing with ‘the alien’

The Croatian star constantly battled injury throughout his second stint in Rome, even missing his country’s surprise run to the world cup semi-finals at France ’98, as well as the last-ever Cup Winners’ Cup final in 1999. He did though, manage to get his hands on another Scudetto in 2000, before making the surprise decision the next season to join Premier Leagues strugglers Middlesbrough, with a reported weekly wage of £63,000 (then a king’s ransom) surely playing a big part in his decision. Scoring twice on his debut against Coventry, Boksic made himself an instant hero on Teesside. He managed 12 goals in his first season, and was voted the club’s player of the year as Terry Venables arrived mid-season to haul the team out of the mire to safety.

Boksic’s Middlesbrough spell gave birth to some absolutely terrific rumours. Always a volatile character (James Richardson cited him as the most irksome guest he ever interviewed on Football Italia; the end of his first stint at Lazio was hastened when he substituted himself in a UEFA Cup game in Dortmund, simply walking off the pitch), he basically trained and played for Boro when he felt like it. Harry Pearson recalled in The Guardian that a friend of his who lived in the same street as the big Croatian always had the inside scoop as to whether he’d be playing that weekend or not, based purely on how early he put his bins out. If they were out more than three days early, he wouldn’t be playing – chiefly because he’d taken himself away on holiday. Then there’s the story of Boksic allegedly being so unimpressed at being stuck with Noel Whelan as a strike partner that he strode into the club’s HR department with his chequebook, demanding to pay up Whelan’s contract. Club captain Gareth Southgate was infuriated by the striker’s behaviour, describing him in his (excellent) co-autobiography with Andy Woodman as ‘tall, aloof, unconcerned’ and painting a picture of an inscrutable character who lived in a small village near Darlington, didn’t socialise with his team mates, and left the club without a word to anyone. ‘There were two sets of rules at Boro’ he claimed. ‘Rules for Alen and rules for the rest’. His lack of respect for some of his team mates was also a problem, as Southgate confirms: ‘there were lots of players he didn’t rate and when some of the lads had the ball, he wouldn’t bother making a run  because he didn’t think they’d be able to make the pass. He was no chaser of lost causes.’

£63,000 a week will buy you a f**kton of parmos

Yet he could still turn it on when he felt like it. It was as a Boro player that he finally made his world cup debut at the age of 32 in 2002. That same year, he hammered a significant nail into the coffin of Manchester United’s title challenge in a 3-1 Middlesbrough victory on Boxing Day. It would be his last goal for the club, as injuries finally caught up with him and he retired two months later in February 2003. This week’s goal of the week displays his greatest attributes – and why yacht crashing, Zeman-bashing, Southgate-annoying Alen Boksic was one of the greatest strikers of the 1990s.

He could also fit his whole fist into his mouth

Ayew was a number 10 with breathtaking skills, who remains the greatest player that Ghana – and some would argue Africa – has produced. He is his nation’s most capped footballer and all-time top scorer, and holds the record for the most appearances in Cup of Nations finals, featuring in five since winning the tournament as a 17-year-old in 1982.Abedi played for a number of European clubs after pitching up at FC Zurich in 1983, but he would he would hit his peak in the early 90s as part of Marseilles’ ‘magic triangle’ with Chris Waddle and Jean Pierre Papin. While he possessed the strength and physical attributes that have become the trademark/stereotype of African footballers over the years, Abedi was also blessed with incredible technique and dribbling skills, and was more likely to dance through defences than outmuscle them. Between 1991 and 1993, his boundless creativity and havoc-causing runs would help l’OM to two European Cup finals and his country to their first Cup of Nations final in a decade.

The only trophy Ghana would take home in ’92

Simply put, the 1992 Cup of Nations was Abedi Pele’s tournament. The Black Stars might have come up short in their quest for the trophy, but they were hauled to the final by their talisman, and there were no other contenders for the Golden Ball, so dominant were his performances from start to (almost) finish. It was he who set them on their way, getting the only goal of the game in their opening win against Zambia, while a late Tony Yeboah goal against Egypt sealed Ghana’s passage to the quarter finals.

It’s both sad and a testament to his enduring legacy that it’s far easier to find an Abedi Pele wonder goal scored by somebody on one of the FIFA games than it is to find the genuine article (which, incidentally, is why this blog isn’t a Goal of the Week). For it was in the last eight in ’92 that Abedi scored one of the great AFCON goals. With Ghana and Congo level at 1-1, Pele picked up the ball in his own half around the hour mark and beat one player. Then another. Then another. Still on the charge, he waltzed between two more defenders before causally slotting the ball past the goalkeeper. It was a dazzling solo effort reminiscent of Maradona’s best, and would end the contest in the Black Stars’ favour. It is still talked about in hushed tones today.

In the semis against Nigeria, Abedi turned in perhaps his most inspirational performance yet, scoring again to cancel out Adepoju’s opener and exhausting the Super Eagles with his bottomless bag of tricks, the winner coming from Prince Polley. Abedi would not be joining his team mates in the final against Ivory Coast however – a second yellow card of the competition meant he would miss out through suspension.His absence rocked the Black Stars, who didn’t look anywhere near as assured without him. Côte D’Ivoire had got to the final largely by virtue of a formidable defence. Three of their four games en route had been goalless after 90 minutes, with Zambia beaten by a single goal in extra time in the quarters and Cameroon defeated on penalties in the following round. In the final they again looked to frustrate their opponents. Ghana were heavy favourites, but with no Abedi to unpick that sturdy Ivorian backline they too were held to a stalemate, precipitating a frankly interminable penalty shoot-out in which every outfield player on the pitch was required to participate. With the scores at 10-10, and only one player missing their spot kick on each side, defender Anthony Baffoe (a trailblazer in Ghanaian football as the first expatriate to play for Black Stars) was called on to take his second penalty of the shoot-out. He’d scored his first, but this time he missed, handing Ivory Coast their first ever Cup of Nations.

In truth, that Ghana generation was a talented side and by no means a one-man team, but their status as African football’s nearly-men throughout the decade owed much to their inability to function as a unit. They were a collection of skilful yet fractious individuals and it seemed that dressing-room unrest prevented them from fulfilling their potential. There were long-standing rumours of a feud between Abedi and Yeboah (supposedly over the captaincy), that apparently raged long after both players had retired from international football and saw players and coaches alike take sides, with the team suffering as a result.  Ayew however, has denied this.

Anyone who can confuse Paolo Maldini into a Morcambe and Wise impression must be a force to be reckoned with

Shrugging off Ghana’s defeat, Abedi went on to enjoy perhaps the finest season of his career in 1992-93 and was a pivotal figure as Marseilles won the inaugural Champions’ League. AC Milan had no answer to his charging runs, tricks and vision, and he scooped man of the match honours in the final, providing the corner from which Basile Boli headed the game’s only goal.That would mark the pinnacle of the Ghanaian’s career and it would be mainly downhill from there. The Bernard Tapie match-fixing scandal that would tarnish Marseilles’ finest hour led to a mass exodus of the club’s crown jewels that summer as the club were demoted as punishment. Abedi reportedly had a clause inserted into his contract by l’OM preventing him from directly joining an Italian club, which might explain why he headed to Lyon – then nothing like the juggernaut that would dominate Ligue Un during the following decade. The signing was seen as a real coup for l’OL, but the move soon soured. Abedi’s performances were way below par and he managed just three goals in 29 appearances. Lyon felt he was doing little more than killing time until he could jump to Serie A. For his part, Abedi claimed that the quality of training at Lyon was the worst he had experienced.

Ayew would get his move to Italy, enjoying a fruitful couple of years at Torino that included being voted Serie A’s top foreign player in 1995-96. At the end of his second season, now heading towards the twilight of his career at 31, he sought a new challenge in the Bundesliga with 1860 Munich. There, he helped to kick-start the club’s last real golden age alongside the likes of Daniel Borimirov and a young Jens Jeremies.

Throughout that time, Abedi continued to captain Ghana, featuring in three more AFCON tournaments. He scored three goals as the Black Stars finished fourth in 1996, and retired after the 1998 competition. At club level, he enjoyed a successful, lucrative swansong in the Gulf at UAE side Al-Ain, finally retiring aged 37 in 2000.

Father, son, and a frankly terrifying-looking trophy

Between the Yeboah feud gossip, Marseilles’ downfall and the Lyon transfer imbroglio, controversy has never seemed far away from Abedi Pele, and it has followed him in retirement as well – not least when he was found guilty of match-fixing when the team he owns, Nania FC, won a second division Ghanaian league game by the rather suspicious scoreline of 31-0 in 2007. Though the resultant fine and ban was overturned on appeal, the whole affair has left a nasty taste in the mouth of Ghanaian football.Abedi remains, however, a living legend in the country and his talent appears to have been passed on to his sons, Andre and Jordan, who have followed in his footsteps to play for Marseilles. In particular, Andrè ‘Dèdè’ Ayew has inherited a number of Abedi’s dazzling trademarks – raw pace, power, deftness of touch – which have made him one of the hottest properties in world football. He also appears similarly headstrong off the pitch, as evidenced by clashes with national coach (and Abedi’s former team mate) James Kwesi Appiah that sae him omitted from Ghana’s 2013 Cup of Nations squad, despite being the team’s star performer.

21 years on from damaging defeat in Dakar, Ghana again found themselves among the favourites to claim the Cup of Nations, and once again, the absence of a talismanic Ayew and a penalty shoot out defeat to unfancied opposition have seen them leave the AFCON empty-handed. It’s 31 years since the teenage Abedi got his hands on the trophy. Are the Ayews – and the Black Stars – cursed never to lift it again?

Africa Cup of Nations Quarter Finals

Nigeria 2-0 Zaire

It was the simplest of finishes. The ball was played across the face of goal and all the centre forward had to do was knock it in. But the celebration showed what an important goal it was. After Rashidi Yekini opened the scoring for Nigeria against Bulgaria at USA ’94 – the country’s first ever goal at a world cup finals in their first ever game at a world cup finals – he carried on into the goal, reached his arms through the netting and pumped his fists, bellowing with pride. It would become one of the tournament’s most iconic images. The Super Eagles had landed.

You can often tell how revered a player is by the number of nicknames bestowed upon him, and Yekini had more than Apollo Creed in Rocky IV – ‘the Bull of Kaduna’, ‘Ye-king’, ‘King of Goals’ and ‘The Goalsfather’ were all monikers that the striker acquired over the course of a 23-year career. The Nigeria side of the mid-90s is indisputably their greatest ever, but the subtle creative talents of players like Jay Jay Okocha, Finidi George and Sunday Oliseh would have counted for little had they not had someone to stick away the chances they fashioned, and at his peak the barrel-chested Yekini was the best in the business. That was certainly Oliseh’s view, anyway, declaring him “the greatest Nigerian striker I ever played with:  He was always asking for the ball and always easy to find. All you had to do was drop the ball between the lines of defence and he didn’t pose. He just struck. And usually high quality strikes.” His scoring record for club and country backs that up – Yekini notched a staggering 110 in 122 games at Vitoria Setubal, becoming only the fourth African to top the Portuguese scoring charts, while he is the Super Eagles’ all-time record goalscorer with 37 goals.

As well remembered as that goal and celebration against Bulgaria in Dallas are, the real showcase for Yekini’s talents came earlier that year at the Africa Cup of Nations in Tunisia. At the very height of his powers, he was Nigeria’s – and indeed Africa’s - main man in that tournament. The African Player of the Year, he hauled his country to the finals with eight goals in a very tight qualifying campaign, and didn’t stop scoring once the they got there, hitting two in the Super Eagles’ opener against Gabon and then destroying Zaire in the quarter finals with the brace featured here. His first was perhaps his best of the competition, outpacing his marker to collect a crossfield pass beautifully with one touch before casually stabbing the ball into the roof of the net. The semis saw him net a vital equaliser against the Ivory Coast and then score the winning penalty in the climactic shoot out. It was only in the final itself when his heroics finally ceased, as team mate Emmanuel Amunike scored both goals to claim Nigeria’s first ACON title with victory over Zambia, who’d shocked everyone by making it all the way to the final just months after the tragic plane crash that wiped out the vast majority of their squad. Yekini became the first reigning African Player of the Year to win the Cup of Nations and finished as the tournament’s top scorer with five goals.

At the world cup, the newly crowned African champions topped their group and were unlucky to lose to 10-man Italy in the last 16 – although, as Ian Hawkey notes in Feet of the Chameleon, his superlative history of African football, by then tensions between Yekini and other team mates and coach Clemens Westerhof had surfaced. These were magnified after cautious substitutions contributed to the Italy defeat: “This coach has never liked me,” Yekini would protest in the aftermath.

After the finals, many of that terrific Nigeria side departed for top European sides. Amunike would head first to Sporting Lisbon and then Barcelona; Daniel Amokachi helped Everton to the FA Cup in 1995 (the same year that Finidi’s Ajax won the Champions’ League). However, the move from Portugal to Greece that Yekini’s performances in the US earned would prove the beginning of the end for him, career-wise. Leaving behind Setubal, where he was adored, Yekini’s stint at Olympiakos was a nightmare almost from the very beginning. His arrival in Athens was delayed after he contracted a condition with malaria-like symptoms, and once there he soon came into conflict with team mates and coaches alike, bemoaning that “Olympiakos is not a family club”. By Christmas 1994 the Greek champions were actively looking to get rid of him. Farmed out to La Liga with Sporting Gijon, he would never again hit the heights he did in Portugal, and not even a brief return to Setubal on loan could get him back on track.

He did rediscover his scoring touch at FC Zurich, with 14 goals in 28 starts for the Swiss side, and his form earned him a last hurrah with Nigeria at France ’98, at the age of 35. There he was used mainly as an impact sub, most notably in the Super Eagles’ thrilling defeat of Spain, when his entrance with 20 minutes remaining helped turn the game in their favour. 2-1 down when he came on, Nigeria profited from Yekini’s power and the space his movement opened up, Garba Lawal equalising from a Yekini pass before Oliseh’s famous piledriver won it. Yekini retired from international football following Nigeria’s second round exit at the hands of Denmark.

It wasn’t until 2002 that Yekini returned to Nigeria, to play for Julius Berger FC, and even at the age of 39 he led the country’s scoring charts. Yet again he managed to fall out with another coach, quitting Berger just a week before their African Cup Winners’ Cup final in 2003. He retired at the end of that season, but made a comeback at the age of 41 with another Nigerian side, Gateway, at the age of 41, declaring: “football is my life”.

Unfortunately, that seems to be where Yekini’s problems started. After retiring again, this time for good, he lived a lonely existence, struggling without the game he loved, and went into a steep decline. Financial problems mounted, and the last years of his life were beset by a long battle with mental illness. His death last year, aged just 48, shocked African football, and raised serious questions about how the Nigerian Football Federation treats its heroes. His passing was mourned across the continent.

Yekini left a hell of a legacy. He was the first Nigerian to be named African Player of the Year, opening the gates for his countrymen to dominate the award during the 90s. Amunike claimed the accolade the next season. Nwankwo Kanu (twice) and Victor Ikpeba would follow suit before the end of the decade.

It’s perhaps surprising that he never got the chance to play for a ‘big’ club in a top European league. Maybe, at 30/31 when he hit his peak and really came to the football world’s attention, he was just slightly too old for a Premier League club to take a punt on him, but his swashbuckling, turbo-John Hartson act was surely tailor-made for English football.

The Super Eagles have never quite hit the heights of their ACON and Olympic Gold winning mid-90s heyday. Their 2013 campaign is off to a less than auspicious start – but there’s still time for another ‘goalsfather’ to make his mark – and do the Bull of Kaduna proud.

FA Cup Third Round

West Brom 2-4 Woking

I love the FA Cup. It’s lost so much of its gloss since the riches of both the Premier League and the Champions League came to the fore, treated as an irrelevance by big clubs and relegation scrappers alike. In recent times the likes of perpetual misery Dave Kitson have shone a light on the near-contempt in which many players and managers seem to hold the world’s oldest cup competition, while some feel that it never quite recovered from Manchester United not defending the trophy in 2000 in favour of participating in the World Club Championship.

For me though, the quest for old big ears remains everything cup football should be. Only there can teams from every layer of English football’s pyramid compete in the same tournament, from the Premier League champions to the runners and riders of the Evo-Stik leagues and below. In a depressing age of seeding and various bodies moving heaven and earth to ensure a safe passage for the big boys, the FA Cup allows only the tiniest concession in allowing clubs from the top two divisions to enter in the third round proper. Anyone can play anyone. Now in its 141^st year, it puts The Mousetrap to shame as a long running drama - one in which the underdog can and does have its day, when superstars can add another chapter to their legend and unknowns can claim immortality with a single leap.

My earliest memories of the cup are from 1990-91, and the various storylines running through the rounds captured my imagination: Gazza hauling Spurs to the final, dancing through the defences of lower league sides like Oxford and Notts County before that first Wembley semi and that free kick against Arsenal; Brian Clough’s mission to win the one domestic trophy that had eluded him; the thrilling fifth round Merseyside derby that ended 4-4 and proved to be Kenny Dalglish’s last game in charge of Liverpool (for a while).

That season’s competition also produced one of the greatest cup shocks of them all. The goliath toppled wasn’t an especially mighty team, nor did David’s moment of glory arrive in spectacular fashion, a la Ronnie Radford. Yet that doesn’t make second-tier West Bromwich Albion’s home humbling at the hands of Diadora League Woking – plying their trade one division below the Conference – any less memorable. Seldom is a side so far up the pyramid taken apart on their own patch by a team so far below them. And rarely is an experienced defence utterly ripped to shreds by a 29-year-old estate agent…

Woking had already claimed two ‘scalps’ en route to the third round, conquering Conference outfits Kidderminster and Merthyr Tydfil. West Brom were struggling in the old Second Division, yet The Cardinals found their hosts overconfident on arriving at The Hawthorns on that frosty January afternoon. Manager Geoff Chapple recalled seeing the home side’s players lazing around, casually reading newspapers, while midfielder Dereck Brown remembered feeling disrespected by Baggies boss Brian Talbot’s pre-match declaration that he had no particular strategy in mind for taking on the non-leaguers. Striker Tim Buzaglo – who’d been so nervous he’d thrown up in the dressing room before the game – asked a ball boy what he thought the final score would be. “5-0 to Albion” was the youngster’s prediction.

That scoreline did not seem entirely out of the question at half time. West Brom dominated the opening period and went in at the break a goal ahead thanks to Colin West’s header from a corner. However, both Buzaglo and Chapple had taken note of the lack of pace of the Baggies’ centre half pairing – Gary Strodder and former Spurs and England star Graham Roberts (enduring whatever the opposite of an Indian summer is during a horrendous stint at Albion), and the Woking pair suspected that if Buzaglo could get the chance to turn on the afterburners, he could really do some damage.

When the game resumed, Woking ripped into their opponents from the off. A brilliant through ball from Brown totally bisected the Albion defence and Buzaglo timed his run to perfection before sweeping the ball past the late Mel Rees.

Now it became clear why West Brom were struggling in the league. Missing their star striker Don Goodman through injury, their brittle confidence and lack of heart led to a total collapse. It wasn’t long before Buzaglo struck again, as a flick on from a big punt upfield from the goalkeeper saw him nip ahead of Gary ‘brother of Bryan’ Robson and leave the defender trailing in his wake. His touch was heavy, but he just managed to get to the ball before Rees, and when the ball cannoned off the luckless keeper and looped into the air, Buzaglo followed up to head it into the net.

The hat trick-clincher was perhaps the pick of the bunch. A fine team goal, Woking built quickly from the back after stopping Darren Bradley in his tracks, as defender Mark Biggins was set away down the right with bags of space to put a low ball into the box. Sweeper Adie Cowler, who’d started the move, had continued his run, and helped the ball on to Buzaglo, lurking on the left of the six yard box. The little forward took a touch before rifling the ball into the far corner and setting off to milk the applause of his disbelieving team mates and the travelling support.

With West Brom’s defence having all but given up, sub Terry Worsfold added a fourth with a fine looping header before Bradley added a consolation to the sound of crickets chirping. At the final whistle came bizarre scenes as the home team’s supporters invaded the pitch, partly to protest at West Brom’s downward spiral but also to congratulate the victors. Albion fans chaired Buzaglo around the pitch and later Woking’s coach would be cheered by a throng of Baggies fans as it headed home. It’s worth taking the time to appreciate that this was 1991, not 1951 – it’s hard to believe such goodwill still existed in the game at that time.

The immediate aftermath saw West Brom sack manager Talbot (and his assistant Sam Allardyce), but Albion’s nightmarish season was far from over. Bobby Gould replaced Talbot but they would only win four more games before the end of the campaign, and relegation to the third tier for the first time in their history was confirmed on the final day with a draw against Bristol Rovers.

Woking’s reward was a fourth round home tie against Everton. Switching the tie to Goodison Park, The Cardinals turned in another creditable display, going down 1-0 to a Kevin Sheedy goal. Buzaglo gave Kevin Ratcliffe an almighty headache all match however and very nearly scored himself with a great chance he put just the wrong side of the post, as can be seen around the 12 minute mark here.

The cup run Chapple’s men enjoyed in 1990-91 proved the catalyst for something of a golden age for the Surrey side. The following season they stormed to promotion to the conference, finishing top by an 18 point margin. There were three successful trips to Wembley, the team bringing home the FA Trophy in 1994, 1995 and 1997, and while they could never quite clinch that all-important promotion to the football league, they posted five top five conference finishes, and were runners-up in 1994-95 and 1995-96.

Football would not treat Buzaglo as kindly. Weeks after the Everton clash, he suffered a severe cruciate ligament injury that would keep him out of the game for 18 months and end his time at Woking. Resurfacing at another Diadora League side, Marlow, in 1993, he was given the chance to claim another scalp when The Blues battled their way to a first round date with Plymouth. There was no fairytale this time however as The Pilgrims eased to a 2-0 win. Leaving for Wealdstone, he set an Icis League record by scoring in 13 consecutive games, but further leg and foot injuries robbed him of the pace that was such a big part of his game, and by the mid-1990s he felt unable to perform to a decent semi-pro standard.

However, football was not Buzaglo’s only sporting love. A man just as at home scoring runs as scoring goals, dual nationality gave him the chance to play cricket for Gibraltar at international level, and he has done so for years, turning out in the ICC Trophy between 1982 and 2001.

Buzaglo is now profoundly sick of talking about his West Brom hat trick. Bored though he might be of reliving his 15 minutes, however, the modest all-rounder is arguably one of the last great heroes from a time when ‘the romance of the cup’ wasn’t talked about in the past tense.

English First Division

Manchester Utd 1-4 Queens Park Rangers

Sometimes, an individual performance leaves such an indelible mark on a football match that the player who delivers it is immortalised, his name forever intertwined with the occasion. So mesmerising was Stanley Matthews’ performance in finally winning the FA Cup, at the age of 38 no less, that the 1953 final is forever known as the Matthews Final (presumably much to the chagrin of Stan Mortensen, who remains the only man ever to score a cup final hat trick). Jim Montgomery’s heroics in the same competition 20 years later are vividly recalled far beyond Wearside. And handball be damned, Diego Maradona’s display against the English in the 1986 world cup quarter final was as sensational a one-man show as the game has produced.

The star of this week’s goal of the week isn’t quite held in the same esteem as those gentlemen, but try reading the sports pages in the build-up to a clash between Manchester United and QPR and see how long it is before Dennis Bailey’s name crops up.

Since that famous New Year’s Day in 1992, when mid-table QPR ended league leaders Manchester United’s unbeaten home run with a 4-1 demolition job, the only man to match Bailey’s feat of notching a hat trick for the away side at Old Trafford is Brazilian superstar Ronaldo. ITV’s cameras were in Manchester (in the last season when top-tier English football could be seen on terrestrial television), for a game in which the home side was expected to reopen the gap at the top that Leeds had closed earlier in the day with their 3-1 defeat of West Ham.

Yet Gerry Francis’ Rangers side arrived in good form themselves. Unbeaten in six, the savvy Francis presided over a team of battling yet talented professionals, with bright young prospect Darren Peacock al0ngisde grizzled warrior and captain Alan McDonald (now sadly no longer with us) in the heart of defence and exciting attacking full back David Bardsley pushing forward, while Ray Wilkins, still a class act in the middle, was afforded protection by the dilligent, underrated likes of Simon Barker and Ian Holloway to make the bullets for exciting attacking talents like Roy Wegerle and Andy Sinton.

Bailey had signed over the summer, a modest £375,000 capture from Birmingham, having impressed Francis in a loan spell during his time as Bristol Rovers manager. He made an instant impact, scoring on his debut against champions Arsenal on the opening day, but while the step up from the Third Divison was proving a big one, he nevertheless plundered six league goals before arriving at Old Trafford determined to impress.

The Rs started ferociously, and a shell-shocked United found themselves two goals down inside five minutes, amid some alarmingly static defending from a previously formidable, reliable back line that included the fearsome Bruce/Pallister centre-back partnership and former Ranger Paul Parker. First, Bardsley robbed Clayton Blackmore on the right and played the ball into the box, where Barker casually flicked it into the path of England new boy Sinton, who causally stroked the ball home as United defenders stood and watched. Moments later, the ball was clipped over the top for the powerful Bailey to latch onto, Blackmore practically bouncing off him as he went through and lofted an effort that Schmeichel could only help into the net. Boos were already ringing out around Old Trafford while cameras revealed Alex Ferguson, who’d celebrated his 50^th birthday the day before, staring ahead in wide-eyed fury.

The home side had been thoroughly unnerved by Rangers’ opening salvo and their defence continued to look brittle. Francis was a wily old fox with more tricks up his sleeve than his Showaddywaddy hairdo suggested, and his well-balanced team had arrived with a gameplan: to try and pick off United on the break through the skillful attacking play of Sinton and Wegerle and the power and pure predatory skills of Bailey. The first half ended with Ferguson’s men failing to muster a shot on target, while The R’s might have had another two or three.

The introduction of First Division Young Player of the Month Ryan Giggs from the bench briefly woke up the Red Devils, but Francis’ side were soon back on the offensive, and on the hour mark Bailey was again put through and effortlessly brushed Bruce aside before confidently sidefooting past the onrushing Schmeichel. It was the pick of his goals that afternoon. With just under 10 minutes remaining, Brian McClair’s instinctive finish should have set up a breathless finale, but instead QPR’s superior counter attacking would again punish United; just two minutes later, more shockingly careless play from the table toppers led to another driving run from the excellent Sinton, who screwed a low shot just past Schmeichel onto the post, leaving a lurking Bailey with the simplest of tap-ins to complete his treble and the rout.

Afterwards, there was only one man the nation’s media wanted to talk to. Ferguson recalls in his autobiography that Bailey rather ill-advisedly bounced into the home dressing room after the game to ask United’s stars to sign the match ball. After a couple of minute’s awkward silence, and looking at the bowed heads surrounding him, Bailey realised he’d interrupted the hairdryer in full flow: “He was obviously behind the door when I opened it but I didn’t see him. It was a  bit naive of me and a very bad time to be  asking for the ball to be signed,” he told The Daily Mail earlier this year.

There’s an argument that the result set off a wobble that would see The Red Devils, seeking their first title for a quarter of a century, blow what had seemed a comfortable lead at the top let to Leeds in. The Yorkshiremen were eventually crowned champions with a four point cushion over their rivals from across the penines – ironically, the same number of points that Rangers took off United that season. The Loftus Road outfit also enjoyed a respectable campaign, Francis guiding them to 11^th and enjoying some more fine results along the way (including a similar 4-1 thrashing of Leeds) Yet both teams would hint in 1991/92 at at what they were capable of and would deliver the following season. Ferguson pinched Eric Cantona from the champions in November 1992, and the Frenchman would provide that extra ’je ne sais quoi’ to power the Mancunians over the finish line and kick-start a decade of dominance. Rangers meanwhile, would finish 5^th in that first ever Premier League season – as London’s top side, above Spurs, Arsenal and Chelsea (and Wimbledon and Crystal Palace).

Bailey’s career however, would never again scale the heights of New Year’s Day 1992. In fact, that hat trick (the only one of his career) would provide his last goals of the campaign – just weeks later he suffered an injury that effectively ended his season, and by the time he returned his place had been taken by another powerful, devastating young striker by the name of Les Ferdinand. Drifting back down the leagues, Bailey became something of a journeyman gun for hire, but one who still made a considerable impact at most clubs he stopped off at, those predatory talents being put to good use. He scored some crucial goals on loan at Watford in 1994 to help preserve the second-tier status of Glenn Roeder’s team, including a late one in a seven goal thriller at Peterborough that brought the house down. Catching the eye of Tony Pulis – a man who deals almost exclusively in behemoth strikers – his £50,000 move to Gillingham saw him again play a crucial role as his goals helped the Gills storm to promotion from the basement to the third tier.

One of football’s good guys, Bailey’s longtime devotion to Christianity informs his work and his life in general (the assists for his Old Trafford hat trick, he said, should be awarded to God). He now spends his time coaching (and playing for) his church team in Birmingham’s West Midlands Christian League, and trying to help people who have lost their way and reach out to him – leading, somewhat bizarrely, to him answering a cry for help from renowned hellraiser and Rs fan Pete Doherty, who said of Bailey: “I’ve admired him so much from afar. He’s one of the  people who’s life I could romanticise and perceived certain things and think,  ‘Well, if they did it, it must be all right.”

“Dennis Bailey, hallelujah, hallelujah” was a song often sung at Loftus Road in the early 90s. Bailey might not have been at any one club for too long, but the impact he made at most of them has made him almost universally fondly remembered. And he’ll always have New Year’s Day, 1992 – even if Steve Bruce wouldn’t sign his match ball.

As Manchester United finally started to look like a force again in English football at the start of the 1990s, there was something of a rush among pundits to crown a ‘new George Best’ from the crop of wingers within the ‘fledglings’ that Alex Ferguson had begun to bring through. Russel Beardsmore (!), Lee Sharpe, and Ryan Giggs all found themselves lumbered with this lazy tag at one time or another – yet Sharpe, ironically, is perhaps the man with the career trajectory that most closely mirrors that of the Belfast boy.

He’d been blooded gradually by Ferguson since his arrival at Old Trafford in 1988, debuting at left back after his £300,000 move from Torquay (a record for a youth player at the time), for whom he’d made just six appearances when Fergie came calling. However, things changed in November 1990 when United travelled to champions-to-be Arsenal in the Rumbelows Cup. Sharpe’s famous hat trick from the left wing in that incredible 6-2 win launched him as the next big thing, and his league winner against Everton that weekend – followed by the introduction of the ridiculous ‘Sharpie shuffle’ celebration – confirmed the birth of a new star. A quicksilver wide player, it seemed that Sharpe just couldn’t fail to steam past his marker and deliver precision cross after precision cross for the likes of Mark Hughes. He loved getting his own name on the scoresheet as well, and registered some stunning strikes in his time at United, often steaming in from the left to leather one into the far corner or going for the audacious volley before anyone else had figured out where the ball was going to drop. Sharpe would emerge as the wild card in United’s season, playing a crucial part in their run to two cup finals in 1990-91.

Cup Winners’ Cup…winner

Football itself was still recovering from years as a pariah sport, basking in the warm afterglow of Italia ’90, and trendy young ‘star’ footballers were still relatively rare. Sharpe seemed set to take the Rome-bound Paul Gascoigne’s mantle as the English game’s hottest property – a teen hearththrob, the cheeky chappy who was as hedonistic on the pitch as he was off it. His love of the game was evident in those early days every time he played, infectious grin permanently etched on his face as he left much more experienced defenders trailing in his wake. He would come up with all manner of ludicrous celebrations that would be imitated on playgrounds across the country the following Monday, from the lambada to the corner flag Elvis impersonation. Outside of football, he was something of a proto-Beckham, lifestyle-wise, developing a reputation for enjoying Manchester’s ‘busy’ nightlife – although tabloid rumours that he was taking drugs proved to be malicious and untrue.He would play in all of United’s big games that season, walking off with the PFA Young Player of the Year award. World domination, it seemed, was only a matter of time.

However, 1990-91 was as good as it really got for Sharpe. Although the following season would see him become the youngest Manchester United footballer to win an England cap since Duncan Edwards, it would also mark the start of the injury jinx that would blight his career, as he succumbed to first a groin problem and then, frighteningly, viral meningitis. When he returned, towards the end of the campaign, he didn’t seem quite the same player, and to compound matters, his golden-boy status had been usurped by Giggs, a truly special talent. The arrival of Andrei Kanchelskis provided yet another rival for a spot on the flanks as well. Frustratingly, the flashes of sheer quality returned every now and then as he would embark on a purple patch, but they never stuck around long enough.

The on-pitch elastic toothbrush was one footballing innovation that Umbro just couldn’t market

Meanwhile, his relationship with Ferguson would suffer as a result of his nocturnal activities. The craggy old-stager from Govan, not for the last time, struggled to understand the lifestyle choices of the 1990s metrosexual male. Sharpe’s penchant for flash cars, daft haircuts, girls and nightclubs saw him repeatedly feel his manager’s wrath, culminating in the notorious occasion when a fuming Ferguson stormed round to break up a house party at the winger’s house, and tear a strip off a petrified Sharpe and Giggs.Sharpe seemed to feel the effects of the dreaded ‘hairdryer’ more than most. In his autobiography, engagingly ghostwritten by David Conn, he suggests that Ferguson felt that his extracurricular interests were making him lose focus and stray from the manager’s control. But the bollockings did more harm than good. The player himself highlights the effect that the foul-mouthed, brutal rants could have on a more sensitive player’s confidence, and that he first began to feel them in the days after his famous Highbury hat trick and winner days later against Everton (for giving a newspaper interview and a daft celebration respectively) suggests the seeds of his Old Trafford exit were sewn almost before his career there had  properly got off the ground.

Confidence, perhaps surprisingly, seems to have been an issue almost since the beginning. In ‘My Idea of Fun’, he talks of his insecurity having not received the incredible technical training that his peers had from the legendary Eric Harrison – the man who oversaw the development of the likes of Giggs, Scholes and Beckham. Instead, he had arrived from the fourth division and was thrown in at the deep end. Sharpe was concerned that his game relied too heavily on pace – knocking the ball down the line and sprinting past his marker – and felt that he would have benefited from a proper critique from his manager instead of being told he was “fuckin’ rubbish and playing like a fuckin’ schoolboy”.

Ferguson’s party pooping marked, Sharpe believes, the beginning of the end of his time as a Manchester United player. Ferguson seemed to lose faith in him, no longer picking him for the big games. He became more of a utility man, popping up at left back, on either flank or even in central midfield. Beyond a memorable Champions League backheel against Barcelona, his contribution at the club rarely came close to his electric impact in 1990/91, and when he didn’t even make the bench as United clinched the title in 1996, he decided he wanted to leave. Unlike many others to head for the exit, this was all Sharpe’s decision – Ferguson tried to get him to reconsider. His mind was made up however. He  was crossing the pennines.

The Bobby Davro look was surprisingly in vogue in the mid 90s

A club-record £4.5m move to Leeds should have been the making of Sharpe. Instead however, it proved the catalyst for a decline that saw him talked of as less the new George Best than the new Frank Spencer. Misfortune befell him at every turn. First, the manager who signed him, Howard Wilkinson, was sacked early into the season, to be replaced by George Graham, whose distrust of flair players meant that Sharpe faced an uphill struggle to establish himself. When it finally did seem as if he was winning Graham over, he snapped his cruciate and was out for the best part of a year. When he returned, David O’Leary was in charge, and it all it took was one disastrous UEFA Cup showing against Roma and he was axed, the Irishman telling him “you’re not getting up and down the wing like you used to”. A loan spell at Sampdoria started promisingly but Sharpe was again the victim of circumstance, the controversy surrounding head coach David Platt’s lack of qualifications seeming him again stranded as the manager who brought him in fell by the wayside. He moved to Bradford in 1998 and helped them to promotion to the Premier League, only to discover that the Bantams were a basket case of a club that would lurch from crisis to crisis as owner Geoffrey Richmond’s antics created a toxic atmosphere that threatened to engulf the club. His experiences there, he claims, killed his passion for the game once and for all.

By the time he was 32, he was struggling in the Icelandic league at Grindavik– unable to motivate himself to last the four month season without having a drink (which was a club rule) and high-tailing it back to England just weeks into his contract. They didn’t win a game while he was there. They won seven in a row as soon as he’d departed. After a brief stint as Simon Clifford’s latest publicity stunt at Garforth Town, he retired in 2004, a mere footnote in the annals of Manchester United history, where his old boozing pals Giggs and Keane went on to write their own chapters.

So what went wrong? Certainly, the injury jinx played its part in a very stop-start career – he even managed to crock himself in his post-football career as Z-list celebrity for hire, cracking a rib on Celebrity Wrestling and injuring his knee on Dancing on Ice. However, despite his autobiography’s attempts to blame pretty much everyone and everything but himself, it’s hard to shake the feeling that the common perception of a man who threw it all away is on the money.

Three parts Flash Gordon to one part John Virgo

Sharpe can’t fathom why every manager he played for ended up dropping him. He suggests, dubiously, it was because he played with “a smile on his face” and everyone in football was so serious. But for a man supposedly concerned about his game being one dimensional, he didn’t seem to work at it much. By his own admission he was reliant on pace, but when that faded, he couldn’t/wouldn’t adjust. While Beckham would famously stay behind after training and practice his crossing, Sharpe was presenting Junior Gladiators and The Making of An Audience with The Spice Girls. Indeed, in his book he mocks the players at United who would put the extra hours in rather than go out on the lash:

“…watching videos of our own performances, reading statistics on the West Ham right back and going to bed with liniment on may well have been how Phil Neville coped with the situation, but I’m not him.”

 “Practicing long throws, Gary Neville’s idea of fun”.

For all his protestations, it suggests much that he eulogises his time on Celebrity Love Island: a gig that brought fame for doing little more than lounging around a pool with scantily clad TV presenters: “It was great to have whole days with nothing to do but laze and banter the time away…for better or worse, everything that happened in football brought me to this.”

There isn’t anything wrong with that of course, and the man himself says he regrets nothing. It’s just a shame, for fans like your correspondent, who pretended to be him in the playground (my first ever pair of shinpads were Sharpe-endorsed Sondicos), and recall him being the most exciting English footballer around (however briefly) that football turned out not to be Lee Sharpe’s idea of fun.

]]> https://90sfootballparty.wordpress.com/2012/11/26/the-new-best-or-best-forgotten-the-rise-and-fall-of-lee-sharpe/feed/ 1 chiefdelilah Lee Sharpe cwc Corner Elvis Davro Flash https://90sfootballparty.wordpress.com/2012/10/24/90s-goals-of-the-week-ronny-rosenthal-vs-southampton-1995/ https://90sfootballparty.wordpress.com/2012/10/24/90s-goals-of-the-week-ronny-rosenthal-vs-southampton-1995/#comments Wed, 24 Oct 2012 22:44:42 +0000 chiefdelilah http://90sfootballparty.wordpress.com/?p=144 ]]> 1st March 1995

FA Cup 5th Round Replay

Southampton 2-6 Tottenham

His first touch was almost perfect. Latching onto a decidedly un-Liverpool big boot from the keeper (this was the Souness era), ‘Rocket’ Ronny Rosenthal calmly and skilfully took the ball round Nigel Spink in the Aston Villa goal and, with nobody near him, was tasked with slotting the ball into an empty net from four yards. Jan Molby turned away to celebrate with the away fans at Villa Park. But the cheer never came. You know what happened. That inexplicable miss, with the Israeli striker smacking the bar when faced with the entirety of an open goal to aim at, has become the most famous of its kind, certainly in English football. It is the one moment that everyone recalls when Rosenthal’s name is invoked. Not the perfect hat trick he scored on his full debut for Liverpool. Not the last minute winner in front of the Kop in the Merseyside derby in 1993. Not the solo effort after running from his own penalty area, voted Israel’s “goal of the millennium”, against Azerbaijan in 1996. Not even the goal he scored that seismic afternoon in Birmingham.

In some ways, it’s fitting that that one moment of tragicomedy is Rosenthal’s calling card. If David Luiz is a “Playstation player”, Rosenthal’s style was pure ACME – in full flight he resembled the Road Runner, dashing at incredible pace with his head down, seemingly oblivious to anything that was actually going on around him, occasionally throwing in the occasional Wile E. Coyote-esque pratfall for good measure. Dashing around with the spring heels of a gazelle, yet looking like your history teacher, Rosenthal, would enjoy some small degree of  redemption; it would take three years however, and require a change of scenery…

Arriving at Ossie Ardiles’ Tottenham in 1994, it must have been slightly galling for the striker to learn that his transfer fee was a paltry £200,000 – just four years after Kenny Dalglish had made him the first million pound overseas player in the history of English football in turning his loan move from Standard Liege into a permanent one. Even then, it seemed like a bargain; when he was first borrowed from Belgium (snatched from under the noses of Luton, who had him on trial), the ‘Hebrew Hitman’ was a sensation – after that astonishing debut hat trick, against Charlton, he added a further four crucial goals (seven in the final eight games of the season in all) to almost single-handedly haul a creaking, wobbling Liverpool side over the line to claim what remains their last league title to date. “Ronnie gave us momentum,” Kenny Dalglish would recall. “He had five starts, three appearances as sub and seven goals. That was a very good return which helped us to win the championship.” Once he officially became a Liverpool player however, he was never quite the same, having to settle predominantly for a super-sub role. In truth, his stay on Merseyside had started to fizzle some time before that fateful miss in 1992, and his reputation had taken quite a hit by the time he made it to White Hart Lane.

Despite a 20-yard header (!) on his league debut, Rosenthal struggled to establish himself as a first team player at Tottenham, and he seemed to fairly quickly acquire a very different kind of cult hero status in North London compared to the adulation he’d received in those early days at Liverpool. The Guardian’s David Lacey described him during this time as ‘a rogue rocket, waiting to be aborted by mission control’. His prospects weren’t helped when, the following season, Spurs added world cup stars Jurgen Klinsmann and Illie Dumitrescu to the likes of Anderton, Sheringham and Barmby to create a formidable pool of attacking talent. Yet when Tottenham found themselves 2-0 down at The Dell in an FA Cup fifth round replay, they turned to the ‘rogue rocket’ himself…

Originally, Spurs weren’t even supposed to be competing in the 1994/95 FA Cup. The previous summer, the FA had meted out one of their most severe punishments ever after finding Spurs guilty of making illegal payments to players, fining them £600,000, banning them from the cup and handing them a 12-point deduction in the league. Spurs appealed, but it would be December 1994 – two months after the competition proper had started – that the ban would be quashed (with the points deduction erased as well). With Klinsmann banging them in, and Gerry Francis replacing Ardiles, Altrincham and Sunderland were disposed of in rounds three and four before Southampton managed to grab a draw at WHL in round five. Alan Ball’s Saints raced into the lead in the replay, and when 90sfootballparty favourite Matthew Le Tissier made it 2-0 five minutes before half time it was no more than the home side deserved. During the interval a desperate Francis hauled off defender Stuart Nethercott (don’t ask) and threw on Rosenthal.

What followed was the most dazzling of one man shows as Rosenthal – the focal point of a Tottenham attack that threw everything at Southampton – tore the Saints to shreds. What was notable about the hat trick he plundered that night was the sheer quality of all three goals. For the first, Sheringham’s brilliant backheel found Barmby, who whipped a low ball across the box for a charging Rosenthal to meet at the near post and loop beyond his old mate Bruce Grobbelaar at frightening pace. For the second, he collected a hopeful ball in the right hand channel, evaded a couple of challenges as he cut inside, and then just cracked in a shot from 25 yards that again  fizzed past Grobbelaar before he’d even seen it. That took the game to extra time, and it wasn’t long before Rosenthal picked the ball up on the left, hared towards the box, and  hit another 25 yarder that swerved deliciously away from the Zimbabwean custodian at the last and flew into the top left hand corner. Utterly shell-shocked, Saints shipped another three in extra time to Sheringham, Anderton and Barmby.”I have never seen such an emphatic hat trick” declared Gerry Francis afterwards.

Spurs saw off Liverpool in the last eight before coming unstuck against a Daniel Amokachi-powered Everton in the semis – (you could argue their big mistake was not giving Rosenthal enough time to repeat his heroics – he only got six minutes in that game at Elland Road). They would finish 7^th in the league that season, largely due to Klinsmann’s goals. Rosenthal’s overall impact at the club could kindly be described as ‘modest’, managing just 11 goals in 100 appearances for the club. In 1997 he joined Graham Taylor’s Watford, and, looking far too good for the third tier, helped them to promotion that season. Retiring shortly afterwards at the age of 35, he continues to live in England, working in the disconcertingly vague role of ‘football consultant’, and a few years ago, he somewhat bizarrely emerged as a potential buyer for QPR, which could have been fun.

Invariably wheeled out these days when anyone misses a sitter, Rosenthal looks back on that day at Villa Park with philosophical good humour: “If you asked me if I’d want to do it again I’d say yes, because it put me on the map.”

Meanwhile, this weekend, Spurs visit Southampton, and with both involved in high-scoring games this season, it wouldn’t be too surprising to see a repeat of that result from 1995. It just won’t be the same without Rocket Ronny though.

1992 European Championship Qualifying Group 7

Poland 1-1 England

For whatever reason, the mystic footballing illuminati seem to enjoy lumping England and Poland together in qualifying groups for international tournaments. Since Jan Tomaszewski’s finest hour in 1973, the Poles have presented a roadblock in England’s path to major tournament finals on a further six occasions. Graham Taylor in particular must have been sick of the sight of Poland, facing them in four crunch qualifiers in his doom-laden three-year spell at Lancaster Gate. England needed just a point in Poznan in November 1991 to seal their passage to the European Championships in Sweden the following year, despite a fairly unimpressive campaign that had seen them win just three games – the least of any of the qualifying nations. Lineker’s goal was only England’s seventh in their group – Yugoslavia’s Darko Pancev managed 10 by himself.

Looking back, it was a decidedly odd England team that travelled to Poland on that wintery November evening. Gary Mabbutt won only his second cap since 1987. David Rocastle was recalled out of the blue for the first time in 18 months. Geoff Thomas made a rare start. And Taylor saw fit, in such a high stakes game, to hand debuts to QPR’s Andy Sinton and one Andy Gray – Thomas’ team mate at Crystal Palace, who never played for England again.

England fell behind, against the run of play, just after the half hour mark, Roman Szewczyk belting a free kick from miles out that struck the unfortunate Mabbutt – no stranger to a cruel deflection – and deceived Chris Woods in goal. Suddenly in danger of having their place in Sweden usurped by the home side, England lay siege to the Polish goal.  Thomas’ bouncing header went just wide, while Mabbutt looped another header onto the roof of the net with the goalkeeper stranded. Things nearly got worse when Woods spilled a shot and then seemed to upend Piotr Czachowski as he followed up the rebound. The referee failed to award a penalty however, and England proceeded to do what they usually did around that time – wait for Gary Lineker to bail them out.

Sure enough, with 13 minutes remaining, Mabbutt headed a Rocastle corner towards the far post, and there was Lineker, characteristically hovering in the six yard box to unleash a decidedly uncharacteristic acrobatic volley into the roof of the net. The point was saved, and – thanks to their captain – the three lions would be on show in Scandanavia. However, he wouldn’t be the team’s crutch for much longer. That very month, the 31-year-old announced that he would be retiring from international football after the tournament, with his future at club level very much uncertain too amid rumours of interest from the embryonic Japanese J-League.

Nevertheless, the stage was set for him to go out in a blaze of glory. The emphatic volley in Poznan was his 46^th international goal. He now had six friendlies and at least three games in Sweden to break Bobby Charlton’s record of 49.

However, all was not well. There were rumours that his relationship with Taylor had grown fractious. Even at his best as a pure predator, some had suggested that he was not the hardest working of forwards (no less an authority than Alex Ferguson once bemoaned the fact that Lineker wouldn’t have a kick for 90 minutes and somehow end up with two goals by the end), and industry was perhaps the quality that Taylor prized above all (Exhibit A: Carlton Palmer’s 18 caps). After Lineker publicly started the countdown on his international career, Taylor – who had already binned the likes of Bryan Robson and Chris Waddle – began to look at other options in attack. Lineker had to come off the bench to score his 47^th international goal against France in a February friendly at Wembley as Alan Shearer and David Hirst started the game. Nigel Clough and Mark Hateley were the chosen strike pairing in the following month’s encounter with the Czech Republic.

Lineker had been reinstated to the starting line up by the time England travelled to Moscow for another friendly against the CIS. However, though he scored goal number 48 in that game, he failed to hit the target in any of the three friendlies that followed. Worse, against Brazil in a 1-1 draw at Wembley, he missed the chance to draw level with Charlton when he embarrassingly fluffed a Panenka-style penalty. His form was deserting him as the tournament loomed, and Taylor was reportedly distinctly unimpressed after the Brazil game, huffing: “When somebody’s almost a national institution, it’s almost as if you can’t
touch them…You could argue that we played with 10 men, but you’re not allowed to.”

When Euro ’92 got underway, England played out two drab goalless draws with Denmark and France, with their captain utterly anonymous. However, he had pulled them out of many a hole in the past, and the final group game, against the hosts in Solna, provided another opportunity to do so. A win would see England through to the semi-finals, and David Platt’s early bobbler was the perfect start. However, Lineker was rarely in the game, apart from missing the chance to make it 2-0, and as Sweden’s influence grew with half an hour remaining, Taylor made a momentous decision. Up went Lineker’s number.

The England manager had felt that Lineker was too isolated and that his team were getting overrun in midfield. Alan Smith was more of a target man who could hold the ball up better. Lineker however, was furious – storming off and refusing to acknowledge the bench. While you could see Taylor’s thinking, Lineker had shown – even as recently as the previous November, in Poznan – that he was a man for the big occasion, who only needed half a chance to score a vital goal. When Taylor’s gamble failed to pay off – a 2-1 defeat to the Swedes saw England eliminated – it was the beginning of the end for him. By the following morning, the press had turned him into a turnip.

Still, in November 1991, that all lay ahead, and there was scant sign that the international career of England’s top marksman would end in such disappointing, bitter fashion. It might have been from typically close range, but the athleticism, power, and technique involved – married to that trademark opportunism – made Gary Lineker’s last competitive international goal one of his best.

1994 World Cup Qualifying Group 2

England 6-0 San Marino

As England prepare to get reacquainted with San Marino on Friday night, there has been, predictably, much coverage centred on the eventful night of November 17^th 1993 in Bologna, where Davide Gualtieri scored only the third goal in the tiny republic’s history – and the fastest world cup goal ever.

Yet the previous meeting between the nations, which took place nine months earlier, also boasted an unlikely scorer. It was hardly a critical goal, with England already 3-0 up at Wembley, but it was the pick of the bunch. Les Ferdinand glided into the box on the right and whipped over a quick, low ball, and flying in like superman at the far post was Carlton Palmer with a fine diving header to notch his first and only England strike. As heard here on the video, a bemused and amused Graham Taylor seemed only to want to know what Palmer was doing popping up in the box when he’d been asked to hold the middle. Against San Marino. At home.

The match took place just a week before Bobby Moore succumbed to cancer, and Moore would make his last public appearance at the game, commentating alongside Jonathan Pearce. Captain David Platt would deliver a leader’s performance worthy of his most illustrious of predecessors, scoring four of England’s six goals (and missing a penalty to boot). Yet frustration was never far beneath the surface in the stands; perhaps because with 70 minutes played England were only 2-0 up, the atmosphere was curiously unhappy, with John Barnes being openly booed by the home crowd by the end. Debutant Les Ferdinand completed the rout.

This was a rare ray of light in what was a disastrous qualification campaign for Taylor’s England, although they were still undefeated in Group 2 at that point, with the calamities of Oslo and Rotterdam lying in wait for them. Palmer has come to be seen as the defining player of Taylor’s scattergun selection policy that saw him cap 59 players in his three year reign. The gangly midfielder has become a punchline, a certainty to be cited whenever an all-time worst England XI is discussed, a symbol of 46 years of hurt.

This is, in the view of your correspondent, a shade harsh. Carlton Palmer wasn’t Paul Gascoigne, but he wasn’t supposed to be. In what was a decidedly shallow talent pool at that time, who else was there to play as the tenacious midfield engine/spoiler? Paul Ince, obviously, was a far superior option, but who else? Palmer wasn’t especially gifted on the ball but the energy and drive he brought to the excellent Sheffield Wednesday side of the early 1990s saw them build the team around him – it was his all action displays that allowed the likes of Waddle, Hirst and Sheridan the freedom to play, and he’s still revered at Hillsborough to this day. “He might not be the greatest player in the world’” said Taylor, “but he can stop those who think they are”.

Palmer won 18 caps for England in all, and featured in all three games of his country’s poor Euro ’92 showing (he was the BBC’s man of the match in the goalless draw with France, playing as sweeper) as well as all but one of their ill-starred qualifying matches for USA ’94.

After a £2.6m move to Leeds saw him add a third cup runners up medal to his collection, the League Cup defeat to Aston Villa following losing League Cup and FA Cup efforts with Wednesday, he then became something of a journeyman, and perhaps the reasons he is not fondly remembered become clearer. He remains the only man to be sent off for five different Premier League clubs, and even the compliments paid to him by his managers seem to be of the backhanded variety: “He covers every blade of grass , but that’s just because his first touch is so crap”, said his Southampton boss, Dave Jones. “He can trap a ball further than I can kick it”, said Ron Atkinson (fondly) of the big man from the Black Country. Palmer’s last dalliance with the big time came as part of Atkinson’s doomed Nottingham Forest in 1999, memorable only for the City Ground faithful’s ditty “six foot tall, his head’s too small, walking in a Palmer wonderland”.

An unlikely move into management followed, with Palmer having big ambitions as he took the reigns at Stockport: “Who’s to say I won’t be managing the England team in 10 years?” he asked in on being appointed in 2002. There’s time yet, of course, but then again, although he had difficult circumstances to contend with at Edgeley Park  (the club was all but relegated from the Championship when he took over and in massive debt, while Palmer was tasked with playing the kids as he battled a second successive relegation), his record of 50 defeats in 92 games before being sacked isn’t exactly a calling card. A second failure at another crisis club, Mansfield, in 2005 – where he’d only got involved as a favour to his friend, the grossly unpopular chairman/owner Keith Haslam – was immediately regretted, and would be his last direct involvement in football.

After roaring success with his seafood menu on Come Dine With Me, Palmer now works as a football pundit in Dubai. It’s fair to say he continues to divide opinion, just as he did as a player.

So was Palmer really the embodiment of England’s international failures, the defining example of a football culture that favours graft over craft? Or was he an early victim of ‘Crouch syndrome’, done a disservice because, like the Steve Buscemi character in Fargo, he’s “kinda funny lookin’”? The truth is probably a little of both. Be nice about him though. You never know where he might turn up…