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Search: 'Andy Townsend'

Stories

It’s time to ditch the clone army of commentators and hear something new

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With John Motson soon to retire, the age of distinctive commentators’ voices has ended. In their place are a group of estate agentesque safe choices

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Gossy: The autobiography

336 Gossby Jeremy Goss with 
Edward Couzens-Lake
Amberley Publlishing, £12.79
Reviewed by Paul Buller
From WSC 336 February 2015

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Jeremy Goss is not a player who can claim to have had a long and illustrious career. He did, however, light up English football in Europe after its very darkest days and brought myself and other Norwich City fans two seasons of sheer pleasure, the like of which we’ll probably never experience again.

Best known for his UEFA Cup goals in 1993 that helped Norwich become the only English side ever to beat Bayern Munich at their Olympic stadium, the midfielder briefly became a household name. His rise to fame, however, was as much a surprise to him as it was to those of us in the stands at Carrow Road who’d watched him endlessly trudge up and down the sidelines hoping to get a game.

Goss’s story charts his time in the wilderness very personably and it’s hard not to feel for him. Stuck in the reserves at Norwich for ten years, to this day he holds the record for most consecutive picks as first-team substitute (18). He doesn’t drink, he rarely goes out with the lads and he trains harder than anyone at the club. He’s sick of hearing managers tell him “Your time will come, son”. Yet every time he tries to move clubs, Norwich give him a new contract.

Perversely then, things work out for him just at the point he’s decided he doesn’t care anymore. He has become so sick of Andy Townsend getting picked ahead of him that he decides to go off the rails and enjoy a few pints, get a bit lippy around the training ground and nastier on the pitch. Enter the new manager, Mike Walker, who tells Gossy he’s going to build the team around him. And he does. Goss becomes an integral part of a Norwich team who start the season by beating Arsenal 4-2 at Highbury, are eight points clear at the top of the inaugural Premier League in December and finish in third place having qualified for the UEFA Cup.

On top of this he starts scoring spectacular goals – namely 20-yard volleys that win him goal of the month on Match of the Day, an honour he is almost childishly (and touchingly) proud of. A season in Europe ensues and Goss plays his huge part in creating history. He and the team believe they’re going to win the UEFA Cup and only Inter put a stop to it in the third round. And then his career crumbles as suddenly as it rose. Walker leaves for Everton, players are sold, Goss is back in the reserves.

Tales of banter are refreshingly scarce; this is a story of how hard work, dedication and an incredible belief gave Goss and his team their just rewards at a time when football was still more about competition than money. Gossy is a proper story and an interesting insight into what a footballer is actually paid to do – train, work hard, play and win. And he enjoys it. At the end of the book, whether you’re a Norwich fan or not, you can’t help but admire the man.

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Fake ID

wsc302 The rules which determine international eligibility must be looked into, argues Steve Menary

Equatorial Guinea’s run to the quarter-finals of the Africa Cup of Nations augurs badly for the credibility of future international tournaments. Only five players in the co-hosts’ squad were born in the country. Nine came from Spain, Equatorial Guinea’s former colonial rulers, but players such as Thierry Fidjeu and Narcisse Ekanga – the perpetrator of a shocking dive regularly revisited on YouTube – seemingly have no links to Equatorial Guinea at all.

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Letters, WSC 293

Dear WSC
I’m assuming the Ruud Gullit who recently defended himself working for a dictator by saying he wasn’t interested in politics (Caucasus calling, WSC 292) to be the same one who dedicated his 1987 European Player of the Year to Nelson Mandela. I realise people’s opinions can change over 20 years, but I’m just curious as to what made him decide he wasn’t bothered about injustice anymore.
John Chapman, Sheffield

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From player to pundit: Robbie Savage

Simon Tyers explores the punditry credentials of one of football’s more controversial players, Robbie Savage:

Stating that Robbie Savage is a difficult person to admire is like suggesting Jeremy Kyle could be more equitable. Like Kyle, Savage is the sort of personality who could only have risen to the top of his chosen profession at this specific moment. He’s benefited from the disappearance of the traditional hard man, the short-haired, beefy full-back or defensive midfielder whose raison d’être was to see how many reducers a creative winger could stand, the “that type of player” that no player who lunges in two-footed on an opponent’s shin these days apparently is.

Seen off by clampdowns on reckless tackling, the standard bearer for the player who goes in hard and covers a lot of ground is now a bellicose Scrappy Doo who was once fined for using the referee’s lavatory. Where most retired hatchet-men proudly state their lack of regret for their actions, Savage seems continually flummoxed as to what he’s ever done that people might be expecting him to regret.

Somewhere along the line Savage lost the admiration of fans of the team he played for, which was pretty much all that was keeping him afloat for years. But like most players who seem reasonably approachable and have a certain back-page profile, he was compensated by being invited into the media. Like Stan Collymore before him, Savage proceeded to surprise radio listeners with the breadth of his tactical knowledge and so producers swooped to put him on everything. Like Collymore, the wider exposure has only served to expose his limitations.

In essence, these are threefold. One, he’s still professional footballer Robbie Savage. Two, his natural range is the shrill half-shout. Most importantly, he can’t control his overexuberance when miked up. His comments are usually anodyne but they’ll be delivered as if he’s just been told the oxygen is about to be sucked out of the room. If he can fit a joke in on the end, or just an over the top laugh, he’ll consider it a bonus.

Anyone who saw the ESPN coverage of Man City’s home Europa League game against Dynamo Kiev will be well aware of the deadening touch Savage can bring to any moment. Watching the Premier League’s most singular footballer Mario Balotelli struggle with a training bib, Savage progressed in under a minute from confusion to a lame joke – “I think I’m going to change his name to [expectant pause] Mario Bibotelli!” – which not even Ray Stubbs dignified with a reaction. Having gone for the funny far too early, he progressed quickly to an outraged tone rarely heard outside late night phone-ins on Radio 5 Live. “Is this tonight? Is this now? It’s gotta be a wind-up, this,” he thundered, as if some training ground footage had been accidentally slipped in.

Football Focus, a programme which never met an anodyne footballer it didn’t like, has been using Savage as a reporter for a few months. And so it was that he turned up with pitchside tactical analysis at Everton v Birmingham filmed from an unedifying position adjacent to the cameraman crouching down next to him. This piece was introduced by Dan Walker as “keeping an eye on their tactics – no truck required, though”. It’s always fun to grind Andy Townsend’s reputation back into the dirt at any given opportunity, but the Tactics Truck was a three-minute feature that ran for roughly two months nearly ten years ago. Children the length and breadth of the country must have been seeking explanations from their parents.

Savage then turned up as token Welshman outside the Millennium Stadium ahead of England’s visit, in a production that dealt in national cliches to an extent not seen since the last World Cup game involving an African side – Manic Street Preachers music, helicopter shots of unfurling valleys and a cameo by Miss Wales. Savage was first required to interview Gary Speed, whom he greeted with a Yoda-like fragment of a sentence, “Premier League legend – you are!”, where most people would have used a question.

Afterwards he gave his verdict on Wales’s chances, which was that: “We need the keeper to play like Neville Southall, the defence to play like Kevin Ratcliffe and the strikers to score goals.” Why Ian Rush was overlooked was unclear. No wonder Dan Walker and the pundits had been placed against the backdrop of a local brass band and some chanting children. Clearly someone felt that alternate entertainment might be required.

From WSC 291 May 2011

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