Tico Time: Costa Rica’s Astonishing Italia ’90

No World Cup is complete without its underdog story, and Italia ‘90’s was Cameroon. Theirs was a tale with everything; from their shocking (and hilarious) opening game near-literal scalp of the world champions, to the iconic wiggling of their 38-year-old star turn, Roger Milla, to their history-making feat of becoming the first African side to reach the quarter finals.

The tournament’s other fairytale however, was arguably even more remarkable. Costa Rica might not have gone as far as the Indomitable Lions, but in many ways their road had been longer.

From Russia with Shrugs: The Unholy Union of Millwall and Sergei Yuran

Picture the scene: Paulo Dybala and Claudio Marchisio stride into the Juventus dressing room. Life is sweet in Turin. They’re top of Serie A. They’ve breezed through their Champions League group. Yet the duo are here to say their goodbyes. Arrivederci, Gigi. Adios, Gonzalo. For they have heard the clarion call of the English Championship. And those play-offs won’t win themselves…

Home Too Soon? Hodgson at Blackburn

Exotic. Mysterious. Sexy. Not words you’d readily associate with Roy Hodgson. Indeed, that’s been a big part of Mr Roy’s appeal in recent times. He is English football’s equivalent of a pair of oven gloves or a trip to the garden centre. Familiar. Unremarkable. Safe.

Franck Sauzée: The Last King of Scotland

Tasked with returning Hibernian to the Scottish Premier League in 1998, Alex McCleish apparently thumbed through some early 90s sticker books. He was in search of a statement signing, an experienced yet flashy name to send the message that Easter Road was the place to be, even when hosting Clydebank.

Thrashing Santa, fearing the reaper: Crystal Palace’s Millennium Bug

“Forget about the money and everything else. If we go up, we’ll face 10 months of misery”

Steve Coppell, 1997

 

How did you ring in the Millennium? Did you have a quiet one in with your loved ones, watching the fireworks smug in the knowledge that the end of a century was indeed nothing special? Did you raise a dignified glass to the next 1000 years? Or did you go hell for leather, embarking on a path of debauchery so depraved as to make the video for Smack My Bitch Up look like a Richard Curtis production?

Divided Passions: How Blatter’s road to power was paved by his enemies

5^th June 2015: it was football’s equivalent of the Saddam statue toppling, or the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man exploding in a flurry of crossed streams and gooey confectionary. Just a week after being re-elected for a fifth term as FIFA president, Joseph S. Blatter suddenly announced his resignation, with the FBI net closing around his cronies, and the widespread corruption many had assumed was endemic apparently set to finally be exposed.

10 Things Everyone Remembers from USA ’94

 

Despite – or possibly because of – the absence of all four home nations for the first time since 1938, the 15^th world cup finals delivered goals, shocks, controversy, tantrums, scandals and milestones in abundance.

Leeds 4-3 Liverpool, Charity Shield 1992

Charity Shield, Wembley, 8th August 1992

 

Life should have been good for the two teams who strode out at Wembley in August 1992 to bring the curtain up on the glitzy new world of the Premier League.

Un Chien Andalou: Maradona’s Dog Days at Sevilla

The year before The Queen experienced her annus horriblis, Diego Armando Maradona was in the grip of one of his own, during what would be a particularly grim decade for The Greatest Footballer of All Time.

Lalas land: England’s US Cup Nightmare, 1993

It’s 20 years since the headline ‘YANKS 2 PLANKS 0’ belched from the mind of one of The Sun’s ever-culturally sensitive subeditors, summing up depressingly neatly the events of the previous evening in Foxboro, Massachusetts, where England had been beaten by the USA for the first time since Belo Horizonte.