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17 October 2008 ~
You would have thought that the days were gone when clubs signed players on the basis of a couple of good performances in international matches. But now it looks like some of our major teams are interested in a hitherto obscure 30-year-old called Emile. In January Liverpool and Villa are expected to lead the race for the sturdy frontman who is currently playing for a club called Wigan.
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 Badge of the week
Pogon Szczecin (pronounced Pog-on Szc-zec-in) are a Polish club whose talisman appears to be some kind of sea serpent, or possibly a feisty llama. The trouble with the final image is that, while it is clearly supposed to represent a monarch, a beast at the very top of his species’ line management structure, it actually suggests a grumpy sea-serpent on Christmas Day, forced into a paper hat and made to try his party blower by high-pitched wheedling nephews. Grumpy and well fed is not a combination guaranteed to strike fear into the opponent’s heart and Pogon’s crest designers, if they are to meet again soon, may want to consider adjusting the eyebrow to a crueller angle and losing the holiday feast ambiguity. Cameron Carter
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We all know at least one mad Gooner and now, finally, there's an ideal present for them! Note the opening sentence which seems to have been constructed from several different slogans.
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Long Players The Glorious History Of Football’s Full Length Recordings  Scotland Scotland The Scotland 1974 World Cup Squad
With “friends” Lulu, Rod Stewart, Gallagher & Lyle and the Bay City Rollers on board, what could possibly go wrong? This LP is even listed on a Bay City Rollers’ rarity site because it features a “completely new remix” of Remember (Sha La La La), and that might explain why an idiot like myself ended up having to bid for this tatty product on Ebay and paying a price I’m too ashamed to confess to in a publicly distributed newsletter.
The record suffers an identity crisis, unsure whether to appeal to football fans or teenage girls. There’s a version of the England team’s 1970 hit Back Home, apparently identical except that the squad pronounce “home” as “hame”. If it was intended to mock England’s absence from Germany 74, it was a poor effort. Among the squad anthems (such as the hubristic Easy, Easy – “Yabba dabba do/We support the boys in blue/It’s easy” – 34 years later I can confidently respond to that with: No, it really isn’t) there are random pop songs thrown in with vague connections to football, like Lulu’s cover of Shout (it’s what fans do, you know) and Lend A Helpin’ Hand, with the lyrics “Everybody’s got to lend a helping hand/Or we’ll never see the promised land”. Memo to team: defend from the front.
“This’ll never sell a million, especially with me on it,” quips Denis Law prophetically to Rod Stewart in the middle of a tortuous duet, Jimi Hendrix’s Angel. A Scottish reel, fortuitously titled Ormond’s favourite World Cup Reel, is careful not to overstay its overtly Scottish welcome, while Bremner’s Volunteers rouses the lads towards the coming first round exit with the statutory empty promise “We will fight to win/We have never give in”. They deserve to be named and shamed: the disc was released by Polydor Records. Ian Plenderleith
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Wikipedia vandalism
It's been a decade since Bill Archer was involved with running Brighton but he hasn't been forgotten.
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You will know not to trust the views of any football reporter who habitually refers to “Stevie G” or “JT”. But even good writers are occasionally susceptible to an attack of overt mateyness. C Birkett spotted this tortuous opening paragraph in a Sunday Times article by the normally reliable Jonathan Northcroft: “Martin Jol is waiting at the main door of the Nordbank Arena. I know what is coming. ‘Heeey, ma maaan!’ is his greeting, best Tony Van Soprano style. It's good to see the big guy. English football misses a friend.” Catch ya later.
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WSC Trivia ~ No 37
WSC’s TV debut was on an edition of Saint & Greavsie in February 1989 when reporter Peter Brackley visited our tiny, litter-strewn room in an office belonging to Islington council. When they cut back to the studio, Ian St John said something like “That’s the lads there” and moved quickly on to the next item. This was recorded but we can’t find the video and, unsurprisingly, it hasn’t made its way on to YouTube. If you were in the habit of taping Saint & Greavsie in that era, you really shouldn’t have done. But if you did, let us know.
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Stickipedia
A mine of information constructed from sticker cards
 Dan Coe, Antwerp Panini Belgium 1972-73 and Lutz Eigendorf, Kaiserslautern Panini Fussball 82
Full-back Dan Coe was one of several Romanian internationals permitted to move abroad in the early 1970s. He spent two years with Antwerp in Belgium before returning home, but then defected back to the West in 1975. He settled in Germany where he worked for the Romanian language service of the Munich-based station Radio Free Europe. In 1980 he was found hanging in his apartment in Cologne. It was subsequently claimed that he was killed at the behest of the Romanian government but this has never been proved.
Lutz Eigendorf won six international caps for the GDR as a midfielder with Dynamo Berlin, the state-favoured team who won a European record ten successive league titles. He defected in 1979 and, after serving a one-year suspension, played in the Bundesliga for Kaiserslautern and Eintracht Braunschweig. On March 5, 1983 Eigendorf was involved in a car accident and died of his injuries two days later. Stasi files examined after German reunification in 1989 revealed that he had been murdered for having criticised the East German regime after his defection.
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