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Search: ' Seth Johnson'

Stories

Just be yourself

Thom Gibbs on footballers’ love affair with video games

On Manchester United’s impeccably marketed, sickeningly luxurious and unimaginably profitable summer tour of the US the squad were kept busy. Rafael da Silva caught salmon at Seattle’s Pike Place fish market, Patrice Evra and Park Ji-sung were taught how to make deep dish pizza in Chicago and the squad visited the floor of a glass-blowing factory, with Alex Ferguson the only visitor who looked remotely interested in being there.

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Hype And Glory

The Decline and Fall of the England Football Team
by Gavin Newsham
Atlantic Books, £20
Reviewed by Pete Green
From WSC 280 June 2010

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Reading this book is like watching Seth Johnson against Paolo Maldini. It's a steady and accurate retelling of England's years of hurt, with details of each international tournament and some glimpses behind the scenes. But only the most passive of supporters and readers are content merely to know – the rest want to know why. To have any real value, a book of this sort needs the wisdom and guile to advance further, analysing and accounting for England's failure. And this is where Hype and Glory comes up short.

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Crewe Alexandra 1 Aldershot Town 2

The hosts are coming to terms with new realities of the bottom division, financial hardship and predatory bigger clubs, while the visitors are happy to be playing their second season in the League. Charles Morris reports

I first went to Crewe Alexandra’s ground in early, wide-eyed childhood. Ever since it has been a place capable of conjuring up some much-needed magic amid the industrial surroundings of Coronation Street-style houses to the west and the town’s railway station and sidings to the east.

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Super Dario

There's only one manager Fergie hasn't seen the back of, even if he got the better of him in the League Cup in October. Charles Morris looks at the remarkable Dario Gradi of Crewe

This autumn has witnessed a celebration of that rare phenomenon in English football – longevity among managers. The press went misty-eyed over Arsène Wenger’s ten years at Arsenal and the Carling Cup tie between Crewe Alexandra and Manchester United provided an opportunity to wax lyrical about their respective 65-year-old managers, Dario Gradi and Sir Alex Ferguson. The game preceded Ferguson’s 20th anniversary at Old Trafford, while Gradi, with 23 years at Gresty Road, is the Scot’s only counterpart in the English professional game to have been in situ at one club for longer.

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Past masters

Football’s history remains largely untouched by the marketeers – but FIFA are determined to do something about that. Barney Ronay ponders Pelé’s official hot 100 selection

History is written by the winners. Pelé, twice a World Cup winner and the highest-earning 20-years-re­tired sportsman on the planet, is in the process of taking this process to a ludicrous extreme. As part of FIFA’s centennial celebrations the great man has been commissioned to draw up – possibly in biro on the back of an envelope – the “FIFA 100” list of the greatest living players, due to be unveiled this month after a mildly snowballing web-centred publicity campaign. As FIFA-run web­site The-100.com explains: “For the 100 years of FIFA, Pelé has chosen a living footballer that represents the best, most outstanding, crea­tive, play­ers of their generation.”

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