The Archive

Mark Brophy questions club influence when so many players are caught bending the rules of the game

A lucky viewer watching Sky’s Goals on Sunday show a few weeks ago will have seen the star pairing, Ian Wright and Jermain Defoe, being quizzed on that weekend’s horror tackle furore. Have you, the question went, ever witnessed a manager telling his players to hurt the opposition deliberately? Jermain and Ian agreed that would never happen, though Wright then offered the caveat that no one needed to tell some of his ex-team-mates to do that – they were naturals at it.

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With the Soviet national team causing huge disappointment at the 1952 Olympics, Sasha Goryunov explains how the fallout had huge ramifications for the Soviet league

The long-term significance
This was a year of upheaval for Soviet football. After a hiatus of 17 years the national side took to the field again and participated in its first ever official international tournament, the 1952 Olympics. In losing to Tito’s Yugoslavia in the first round, the team failed in both sporting and political terms with grave consequences for the reigning champions, CDSA. The famous “Lieutenants’ Team” had dominated post-war USSR football, with five titles in seven years, but was held responsible for what happened in Helsinki and disbanded. This opened the door for Spartak Moscow, who went on to dominate the domestic scene for the next dozen years.

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With players going down easier, Matt Nation believes football is fast becoming a contactless sport

Watch an Over-55s game on my local pitch and you’ll rarely see a foul. The players may regale whoever will listen with stories of how a match wasn’t a match unless they’d broken their jaw at least once and then barged the opposing goalkeeper so hard that the game had to be stopped so that people could go and look for him, but they’re remarkably mild-mannered on the pitch. They have to be. Tackling is frowned upon or, if the referee is getting on a bit himself, banned outright.

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Dear WSC
I would like to ask my fellow readers if their clubs have something called “The Nardiello Factor”. The Nardiello Factor is a phenomenon where a striker’s popularity is based in a large part on the exotic nature of his name. At Barnsley we have seen no finer example of this than in recent months with the arrival of Jerónimo Morales Neumann. My fellow Tykes have been beside themselves at the thought of this player, and have wondered how Mark Robins can possibly limit him to just warming the bench. This opinion seems based on nothing more than the fact that he has a name that would be good to shout out when (if) he scores. Our Jerónimo accordingly scores a Nardiello Factor rating of nine (the maximum score is ten). Contrast this with Chris Woods, our loanee from West Brom. He scores a paltry NarFac rating of four. Were he to slightly change his name to Christiano Woodaldo he would up his NarFac rating to eight but, alas, this is not to my knowledge due for consideration. As a consequence the support from the terraces has been a little limited to date. Liam Dickinson scores a NarFac rating of one, though I am willing to concede that, even if he changed his name to Galileo Figaro Magnifico, he’d do well to register a NarFac rating of five. His yellow boots have had a negative impact.
Ian Marsden, Belper

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Al Needham gets nostalgic over a clash of two sides still hoping to return to a time of former glories

I don’t mean to bang on about the past, but this fixture really brings it out in me. Forest v Ipswich was the first game I ever went to, on October 4, 1977. I stood as a nine-year-old in the Trent End with Ian Marriott and his dad, gasping at the sight of the blues and reds merging with the green, floodlit pitch – just like the picture on the Subbuteo box that I’d just got from him in exchange for an Action Man (in one of those undersized tanks, where his arms hung over the side) – my head fizzing as Kenny Burns, Peter Shilton and Viv Anderson ran about in front of me just like they did on the telly.

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