Search: ' Ruud Gullit'

Having a famous dad can be good for your job prospects but sometimes a name is simply that. Caroline Bailey looks at the stuttering career of a stubborn footballer

When it comes to pushy parents, Kenny Dalglish may not be up there with Joan Crawford, but his son Paul’s privileged career in football has become something of a byword for nepotism. Despite not being able to get into the first XI at college, Dalglish Junior signed schoolboy forms for Blackburn while his father was the manager. He went on to serve his apprenticeship at Kenny’s old club Celtic, spent two barren years at Liverpool where Kenny had won three European Cups, and was then signed for Newcastle by – well, you can guess the rest.

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Diego Maradona's Napoli were strong favourites but it was Milan who won the title, writes Daniele Meloni

The long-term significance
Silvio Berlusconi – the media tycoon who took over AC Milan in 1986 – first noticed the inexperienced Arrigo Sacchi when his Parma side won at Milan in the 1986-87 Coppa Italia. Berlusconi duly hired Sacchi. With his belief in zonal marking and total football, Sacchi was a revolutionary who changed the mentality of the Italian game, especially when his Milan side won back-to-back European Cups in 1989 and 1990. 

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December 16’s match-ups of the “Big Four” sent Sky’s publicity machine into overdrive. After six hours of Keys, Gray and Redknapp, the only thing Barney Ronay wanted to slam anywhere was the remote control

Like many other irresistible global happenings, it all started with something very small. The tectonic tremor that would eventually lead to the towering tsunami of Grand Slam Sunday was the announcement of the Premier League fixture list in June. As in 2006-07, the supposedly random computer selection had presented us with two weekends when the top tier’s “Big Four” would play each other. Clearly, this has started happening rather more often than it should. Not surprising, then, that despite the boundless advertising budget, the limitless man-hours developed to styling, tweaking and generally buffing-up, the most recent edition of this gala televised soccer extravaganza should end up looking a lot like the last time we all did this.

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A Footballer Apart
by Graeme Le Saux

Harper Sport, £8.99
Reviewed by Mike Ticher
From WSC 251 January 2008 

Buy this book

Graeme Le Saux is not a particularly remarkable man, and this is not a particularly remarkable book, but it throws up intriguing issues about football culture over the past 20 years. The contrast between his ordinariness and the extraordinary treatment he received tells us a lot about what a closed and vicious world football can be.

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Johan Cruyff’s title-winning final season, putting one over Ajax. By Ernst Bouwes

The long-term significance
This was Johan Cruyff’s final season as a player. Ajax, whom he rejoined in 1981 after eight years in Spain and the United States, declined to extend his contract for another year because they doubted his crowd-pulling abilities at the age of 36. So, out of spite, Cruyff went to bitterest rivals Feyenoord. Incredibly he was to take them to their only title between 1974 and 1993, but their fans never really knew what to make of the move – Cruyff grabbed all the headlines and it seemed more his title than Feyenoord’s. Most of their away games were sold out, but home attendances went up by only a couple of thousand per match.

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