Search: ' Gianluca Vialli'

Damian Hall wonders why Stephen Hughes slipped away after a promising start to his career at Arsenal

People got pretty excited about young Stephen Hughes. For a youth system that manufactured almost an entire double-winning team in the late 1960s and the likes of Liam Brady, David O’Leary and Tony Adams in its wake, the 1990s were an embarrassing barren spell for Arsenal. While rivals were carefully hatching out the likes of David Beckham, Michael Owen and Rio Ferdinand, the Arsenal footballer factory was fine-tuning Ian Selley – a Toploader to your U2, if you like.

Read more…

Barney Ronay examines why average players often make good bosses while star names struggle

It is a footballing axiom that great players rarely make great managers. No swag-bag of playing honours, no bulging armoury of international caps can prepare a middle-aged footballing man for the vertiginous leap into management. In fact, the most successful man­agers in English football currently – Sir Alex Ferguson, Arsène Wenger and Gérard Houllier – all eked out relatively mediocre play­ing careers.

Read more…

Kasper Steenbach recounts Brian Laudrup's short and unhappy spell at Chelsea in 1998

Overall, Brian Laudrup is today a happy man – he lives with his family at an exclusive address on the coast north of Copenhagen and turns out as a striker for the local amateur team. The chief executive of FC Copenhagen, Flemming Østergaard, is also happy. He heads virtually the only European club that is presently in­creasing in value on the stock market. Since he took over in 1997, the club has been turned into a big name in the entertainment business, having hosted the Eur­ovision Song Contest and a Mike Tyson fight. And, above all, he runs a club that has succeeded in attracting the support of most football fans in Copenhagen for the first time in recent history.

Read more…

David Harrison explains why Watford decided to sell their stadium again after they had just bought it. It wasn't because they didn't like the colour

The trouble with detailing recent boardroom activity at Watford is that the goalposts keep mov­ing – on­­ly metaphorically to date, but confidence is dwin­dling that that is how it will stay. In February 2001, the club confirmed, to widespread local rejoicing, that re­location plans had finally and irrevocably proved fruitless. Three months later they announced they would pay a six-figure sum to buy the ground from the existing freeholders, Punch Taverns, thus “securing their fut­ure at Vicarage Road in perpetuity”. Hankies out.

Read more…

Saturday 1 Mick McCarthy is delighted with Ireland’s comeback against Cameroon: “There’s been a lot talked about the spirit and camaraderie and I think that has been shown today.” Niall Quinn claims he tried to get Roy Keane to return but couldn’t persuade him to phone McCarthy: “I’ll never understand why Roy didn’t make even a lukewarm attempt.”

Read more…