by Simon Hughes
Bantam, £18.99
Reviewed by Rob Hughes
From WSC 362, April 2017
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Stories
My love affair with Liverpool
by Dietmar Hamann
Headline, £16.99
Reviewed by Rob Hughes
From WSC 303 May 2012
For a man whose diligently effective playing style did little to dispel that old cliche about cold German efficiency, Dietmar Hamann is a burning romantic at heart. At least when it comes to the institution he served so well for seven seasons. In this hugely engaging memoir, written with Malcolm McClean, he likens his "magnificent romance" with Liverpool to "a passionate, flaming and enduring love affair" with both club and city.
John Williams was down and his team were out in Istanbul. What happened next hasn’t solved all Liverpool’s problems, but certainly eased the pain
Six minutes. Think about it. What, exactly, can you do in six minutes? Run a bath, perhaps. Take that welcome half-time pee break – or, if you’re watching at home, make a nice cuppa. Or else cruise eBay for that oh-so-difficult-to-find special gift? It will probably take about six minutes for you to read this article – though you might consider doing it just a little more carefully than that. Six short minutes. They can easily disappear, even while you think. Or else while you dream.
He might have been the answer to one of Liverpool's perennial problems, but the call never came. Ben Lyttleton goes in search of Anfield's wasted winger
The reception area at Nîmes stadium was heaving before France’s 1998 World Cup winners took on Marseille in a charity match in aid of flood victims in early November. The France coach Aimé Jacquet was getting stressed out at the late arrival of Christophe Dugarry, muttering: “It’s worse than at the World Cup, because with Stéphane [Guivarc’h] injured, we haven’t even got one forward.” Didier Deschamps was trying to get Marcel Desailly to speed through the traffic by promising the game would earn him a senior cap, while Frank Leboeuf was causing hilarity with his Scottish hunting get-up. And then the Liverpool winger Bernard Diomède walked in. He went to register his arrival with the receptionist, who was heard saying: “You’re a player? And where do you say you play? At Liver-what?”
Thanks to the influx of foreign players, British football now attracts an increasing number of journalists from countries which previously paid it scant attention. We cornered three of them – Ronnie Reng from Germany, Marie-Jose Kleef from the Netherlands and Italian Filippo Ricci – to find out what impression it had made on them
When you first came to England, what was the one thing that most surprised you about football here?
Ronnie Reng That it’s still conducted in a childish manner – and I mean that in a positive way. Both in the way they play and how the supporters watch the game. One of the first matches I saw here was when Dortmund were playing at Man Utd. About half an hour before kick-off I thought I had the wrong day because there was nobody there. The fans didn’t show up until five minutes before kick off. I think that’s a good thing – they clap if they like something or they boo and then they go home. So it’s still pure entertainment. And it’s also played in a childish way. Players want to attack all the time, they don’t want to stop and think, and the supporters clap if somebody really hoofs it forward or if someone makes a great tackle, even if it would have been more sensible to look up and pass.
Marie-José Kleef The amount of tackles in a game is unbelievable. This season I was at Leicester v Aston Villa and the only thing happening was people tackling each other. There weren’t two passes in a row. The players were never waiting for the right moment, just pushing all the time.
Filippo Ricci For me it was Chelsea v Liverpool and to find that the away fans were just one row away from the press box. When people stood up, the journalists were asking if they could sit down – and people did. Having no fences in the stadiums and having opposing fans in the best position to see the game was very strange. In Italy they would be stuck in some corner surrounded by police with the worst views of the game.