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Search: ' Berti Vogts'

Stories

Episode 38: Much Adu about nothing and winning the second half

In this exclusive WSC Supporters’ Club edition of the podcast, magazine deputy editor Tom Hocking, writer Harry Pearson and host Daniel Gray talk hype and anti-climax, from Freddy Adu to Berti Vogts’ Scotland via Lee Trundle. The trio also discuss strange situations in which conversations about football have cropped up, and make a come and get me plea to Henderson’s Relish. Record Breakers takes us to Munich, Frankfurt and Stockholm.

The only way to hear this episode is to sign up for the WSC Supporters’ Club for as little as £2 per month. There are great rewards, including bonus episodes, extended editions, badges, T-shirts and photo prints.

The Anatomy Of Liverpool

325 LiverpoolA history in ten matches
by Jonathan Wilson with Scott Murray
Orion, £18.99
Reviewed by Rob Hughes
From WSC 325 March 2014

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As author of Inverting The Pyramid and The Anatomy Of England, both of which cast a clinical eye over the cultural shifts in football tactics over the past century, Jonathan Wilson is well placed to take the same approach to Liverpool. This insightful, highly readable book attempts to map the evolution of the club through ten specific matches. The idea, he points out, is to choose games that aren’t necessarily the most memorable. Instead they’re the ones that “lie on the faultlines of history, marking the end of one era or the beginning of the next”.

Thus, we have the European Cup second round defeat to Red Star Belgrade in November 1973. Already trailing 2-1 from the first leg, a similar reverse at Anfield becomes the catalyst for a change in Bill Shankly’s philosophy. The realisation hits that traditional English attributes such as pace and power are no longer enough when it comes to playing continental teams with superior technical know-how. Shankly began refining his pass-and-move principles as a direct result of being booted out of Europe that year, resulting in a style that placed greater emphasis on patient build-up play and possession.

It was a method that paid dividends in the 3-1 defeat of Borussia Mönchengladbach in the 1977 final, by which time Bob Paisley was in charge. He is often painted as a more avuncular version of hardman Shankly, but Wilson posits the idea that both men were actually the exact opposite of their public personas. There’s little sentiment with Paisley, even banning Shankly from the Melwood training ground. If Shankly’s brand of football was an extension of his socialist principles, Paisley was far more prosaic. All that mattered was winning football matches.

Elsewhere, Kenny Dalglish’s sudden abdication after the 4-4 draw with Everton in February 1991 is seen as especially pivotal. Entertaining as it may have been to the neutral, the manner of the opposition goals exposed the cracks in a rapidly ageing Liverpool team whose last signing was the spectacularly ordinary Jimmy Carter. Dalglish had simply drained himself of all energy. With no readymade successor in the wings, Wilson makes a valid claim that this game (and the manager’s decision to resign straight after) “was a blow from which Liverpool have arguably never recovered”.

There’s also room, predictably, for the Champions League final in Istanbul. Much has been made of the Liverpool fans’ stirring rendition of You’ll Never Walk Alone as the pep for their side’s improbable second-half comeback. But Wilson instead points at key moments on the field of play as the triggers, not least Sami Hyypia somehow escaping a red card after hauling down Kaká when the Brazilian was clean through to make it 4-0 just after the break.

Above all, The Anatomy Of Liverpool is an engrossing account of a sporting institution forging its identity through the post-war years. Some of the detail is priceless too (Shankly playing his Desert Island Discs show on the coach to the 1965 Cup final; Berti Vogts seeking out Kevin Keegan to buy him a drink in recognition of the Liverpool man giving him the complete runaround). Highly recommended.

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Extra Time

My autobiography
by David Weir
Hodder & Stoughton, £20.00
Reviewed by Craig McCracken
From WSC 303 May 2012

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David Weir's autobiography Extra Time is well timed, coinciding as it does with the apparent winding down of his playing career at the ripe old age of 41. Weir is a player who feels as if he belongs in an older, simpler era of the game – a proud professional more interested in captaining club and country than money and material possessions.

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New beginnings

Following the departure of George Burley, the Scottish FA appointed Craig Levein as the latest in a long line of Scotland managers, just as Neil Forsyth predicted

Not that they really need one, but Scotland have got a new manager. Eight months from a competitive fixture the SFA acted with surprising swiftness in nicking Craig Levein away from Dundee Utd and appointing him as George Burley’s successor. In WSC 273 I said that the SFA would still be reluctant on a foreign manager after the horror of the Bertie Vogts experiment and that Levein was the standout Scottish candidate. That shows no prescience on my part, rather a depressing lack of qualified candidates who would actually want the job. David Moyes has a more attractive role at Everton, Gordon Strachan had just committed to Middlesbrough, Graeme Souness ruled himself out and Walter Smith made the worthy point that he’d walked out on Scotland for a Rangers return and it would be somewhat cheeky to go back.

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End of the road

Scotland's 2010 World Cup qualifying campaign was a painful experience both on and off the pitch. But Neil Forsyth refuses to be downhearted

Onwards Scotland march. Another major tournament without involvement, despite being in arguably the easiest qualifying group, with senior players picking up a sine die ban for an all-night bender, a manager still trying to convince the public of his suitability and an SFA leadership who increasingly resemble the committee of a provincial bowling club.

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