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Search: 'Steve Harper'

Stories

Game Changers

357 GameChangersInside English football
by Alan Curbishley
Harper Sport, £20
Reviewed by Jon Matthias
From WSC 357 November 2016

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It’s tempting to see this as a cash-in. Alan Curbishley has gone through his contacts book, made a couple of calls and set up some interviews with a mix of big names and people you and I probably won’t have heard of. How many of the interviews he’s done and how many are by his collaborator, freelancer Kevin Brennan, is hard to tell. The bits that are meant to be Curbishley introducing topics are full of cliches such as “in and around” and long run-on sentences that last for paragraphs. So they feel genuine.

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The quiet life

Some retired footballers go into management, but for many lazing on the cosy pundits' sofa is irresistible. Harry Pearson observes

Back in the 1960s, commentators such as Kenneth Wolstenholme and Huw Johns effectively spent 90 minutes on Saturday afternoon talking to themselves: “Now I wonder what United can come up with in response to that?” They would probe, before replying, after a brief pause: “This boy Brown looks like he may have half an idea!”

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Neil Lennon

Man and Bhoy
by Neil Lennon with Martin Hannon
Harper Sport, £17.99
Reviewed by Robbie Meredith
From WSC 241 March 2007 

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Irish footballers have been among the most prominent exponents of the mea culpa sports autobiography in recent years. Tony Cascarino and Paul McGrath have produced open and apologetic works detailing personal failure, far in tone from the bland self-justification inherent in most of the genre.

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Carlisle Utd 1 Newcastle Utd 1

It’s 23 years since the “Hadrian’s Wall derby” was played in league or cup, but luckily hostilities can be renewed in a pre-season friendly staged in high summer – at least that’s what the calendar claims. Pete Green writes

It’s the odd-numbered summers that get to you. The close seasons unrelieved by World Cups or European Championships. As much as we feel sick at the corruption of our game; as much as we feel jaded and excluded by the Premier League’s closed shop – and the impenetrable play-within-a-play that is the top four – we still need football like we need air. We believe the game can overcome the choreography of balance sheets, can still depart from the script. This is why we still feel itchy and restless in these alternate summers, when the grandest international tournaments aren’t ­available to tide us through. This is why 12,346 people have left dry and comfortable homes to watch Carlisle and Newcastle play out a tame and inconsequential draw on the wettest and dankest of summer days.

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World Cup 2006 TV diary – Group stages

Friday June 9
Possibly because Barry Davies, the last man who could take these things seriously, is missing, the BBC only show highlights of the opening ceremony. It includes lots of men in lederhosen, some ringing large cowbells attached to the waistbands of their shorts in a vigorous and vaguely pornographic manner. There’s a parade of former World Cup-winning stars, including what Jonathan Pearce describes as “The legend that is Italy”. “Ricky Villa – still tall,” gurgles Pearce later. Pelé arrives with the trophy, but brandishes it like he’s just won it, followed by Claudia Schiffer with Sepp Blatter in tow, sporting luxuriant sideburns that give him the look of Ben Cartwright from Bonanza.

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