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Stories
Simon Tyers watches ITV and Sky attempt to outdo each other in the calamity stakes as television football coverage slowly becomes a parody of itself
The comedic songwriter Tom Lehrer once said that satire died on the day that Henry Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize. Seeing Neil Ruddock cast as an expert on a show entitled England’s Worst Ever Football Team, I knew exactly how he felt. At the other end of the scale, ITV’s commentary is the satirical equivalent of shooting fish in a barrel.
The Autobiography
by Dominic Matteo
Great Northern, £16.99
Reviewed by Simon Creasey
From WSC 300 February 2012
He may have made fewer than 150 appearances, scoring a measly four goals in the process, but at Elland Road Dominic Matteo's name ranks right up there with other legendary figures from Leeds' halcyon days. Whether home or away, Matteo's name is sung every week by Leeds supporters to commemorate the "fucking great goal" he scored against AC Milan in a Champions League tie at the San Siro.
Developing local young talent used to be the way forward for Millwall, but they can no longer see the point. Paul Casella takes up the sorry tale
After a close-season tribunal judged that teenage starlet John Bostock’s sale to Tottenham Hotspur was worth just £700,000 to Crystal Palace, their owner Simon Jordan decided it was time to look for a buyer for his club. And he wasn’t the only south London chairman to question the point of developing homegrown talent this summer. Last season Millwall lost youth hopes David Amoo to Liverpool, Sam Walker to Chelsea and Tom Kilby to Portsmouth for combined fees of £400,000. They were all products of a youth set-up that an ailing third-tier club could barely afford to run. The club’s American chairman, John Berylson, was so enraged by the size of the fees that he closed the Millwall academy.
Jon Spurling braces himself for a festive football hangover
Along with communal baths, a crafty drag on a cigarette in the toilets, and swigging a bottle of brown ale with the lads, Christmas parties are entwined in the fabric of English football. “The players have talked of little else for weeks,” confided Ian Rush – dressed in Beefeater garb for Liverpool’s bash – to a BBC reporter in 1992. “All the lads have made the effort to dress up,” added Rushie, as Bruce “The Joker” Grobbelaar and John “Dick Turpin” Barnes staggered past clutching empty Grolsch bottles. Despite the cameraman’s best efforts, viewers also saw David Burrows – clad as an SS officer – flicking sieg heil salutes, at a time when Israel striker Ronnie Rosenthal was with the club. The whole interview encapsulated perfectly many of the idiosyncrasies of English football: heavy boozing and distasteful pranks were acceptable if they helped forge team spirit.