Michael Palin tells WSC about his favourite players, being an England fan and his love for both halves of Sheffield

Who was your favourite player when you were growing up?
Jimmy Hagan, who was an inside forward with Sheffield United, was one. I’ve kept a scrapbook from when I was nine or ten with cuttings about him and other players. Before television you’d keep in touch with football mostly over the radio so it was important to keep pictures of the players. I had a great soft spot for Newcastle at the time, the Robledos and Jackie Milburn in their Cup sides, and Matthews and Mortensen at Blackpool. It was always players from the northern teams though, because I identified with them more. 

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Jan Age Fjortoft talks to Mike Ticher about his own adjustment to English football and the effect foreign players have had on the game

When I arrived in English football I found you could walk into the dressing-room and be completely accepted. I was taken into the group straight away at Swindon, although it probably helped that it was a small club. I’ve never had a problem at any club, but I think that’s a bit to do with my personality as well. And of course I already spoke English. But the English mentality is that in principle you are valued as part of the team. There’s lots of selling and buying in English football and so you get used to having new faces in the dressing-room. I don’t think that affects foreigners in any different way from anyone else.

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Foreign players were effectively banned before 1978 but, as Matthew Taylor discovers, there were ways for a select few to ply their trade

Before the arrival of Ossie Ardiles and Ricardo Villa at Tottenham in 1978, foreign players were rarely seen on British football pitches. A mixture of xenophobia and sheer arrogance convinced the authorities that there was little need or desire to import players from abroad. The British – mainly the English – clung to an assumed role as footballing masters who had nothing to learn from their continental pupils, especially on home soil. Even so, the British game was never com­pletely insulated from the outside. The place of for­eigners in our domestic football did not suddenly emerge as an issue in the wake of the Bosman judg­ment, or even in 1978. There had, in fact, been a trickle of foreign footballers into this country for almost a century before the present flood.

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Jan Molby talks to Huw Richards and tells him about cultural changes in his time in England and the transition from player to manager

As a youngster, how conscious were you of British football?
Very aware of it. In my part of Denmark, the interest was in English and German football – in other parts it’s only in the English game. The Danish game then was still amateur. My first team was Arsenal. It was the year they won the double and while I didn’t know what the double was, you get interested in teams you see a lot on television. That interest in British football is still there in Denmark. There was a period when you had stars like the Laudrup brothers playing in Spain and Italy when they got the similar coverage, but nowadays all the kids want to play for Manches­ter United, who have incredible support in Den­mark, the same way Liverpool do in Nor­­way. I remember when we played Ros­enberg, there were about 10,000 people to greet us at the airport and in a stadium hold­ing 24,000 there were 21,000 supporting Liverpool.

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Relieved to see the end of Peter Johnson's reign at Everton, Neil Wolstenholme hopes for better times at Goodison Park

Given the many false dawns over the past year I will only believe that Bill Kenwright has bought Everton when Peter Johnson’s shares are safely transferred. As Kenwright is a current director of the club, the process of due diligence, allowing for the books to be examined before the deal is a concluded, should not be a problem. A bigger concern for many fans lies in the identity of the new owner’s possible backers, rum­oured to include marketing moguls the Barclay brothers and the corporate raider Philip Green, recently lin­k­­ed to an attempted takeover of Marks and Spencer. It is to be hoped Kenwright will identify his partners as soon as possible.

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