Rob Chapman looks back to a time when admitting to being a keen football fan was just about the most uncool thing you could do
Much has been made of the fact that during the Rolling Stones’ Wembley concert of July 1990, many fans appeared to be paying more attention to the England v Germany World Cup semi- final commentary on the radio than they were to Mick and Keef’s rock and roll posturing.
Marcelle van Hoof's international top ten of awful football songs include examples of the crooning footballer, the hideous cover version by a team, the good cause song and the (unintentionally) funny interview
1. JOHAN CRUYFF: Oei Oei Oei (Dat Was Me Weer Een Loei) (1969, Polydor) When recording this single, Cruyff’s singing voice turned out to be even more out of tune than the studio personnel had expected. They didn’t know what to do. A friend who accompanied Cruyff to the studio suggested they give him a drink. Cruyff, who never drinks, accepted. After a while, when the atmosphere was more ‘relaxed’, they put Cruyff in front of the microphone again and his tipsy singing proved good enough to use. However, a couple of days later he was invited to sing his song (which roughly translates as ‘oh, oh, oh, yet another blow’ and is not about football, but about a friend of Cruyff being beaten up at a boxing match, then during a visit to a pub and then by his wife…) live on national television. Unfortunately he was sober again and only shyly mumbled the words he could remember, while staring at the ground. Cruyff has a reputation for being a know-all. No matter what subject (the weather, politics, cooking), he has a strong opinion about it. This must have been the only time in his life that he was lost for words.
As part of WSC's tenth anniversary, Richard Newson rummaged through the connections between football and music
As a Sounds writer in the ’80s I met lots of rock artists. Many of them, like me, had been born in the early or mid 1960s. Very often, after a long hard interview, we’d end up talking football. Again and again these musicians told me how, for them, the game became less important when punk arrived in 1976-77 and made pop exciting again.
Neil McCarthy explains why French football fans may be tempted to stay at home on matchdays from the start of next season
As from September, every single French First Division match will be shown live on television. A new interactive satellite channel will allow viewers to choose from one of nine matches played simultaneously – there is even the possibility of watching them one after the other, or all at once.
Nothing unusual about a teenage player keeping a record of progress, except when he is a future European Footballer of the Year. In an extract from a feature first published in the Dutch magazine Hard Gras, Hugo Borst describes the contents of Marco van Basten's diary
Joop van Basten now lives alone in the house in Utrecht where he raised his family. His sons Marco and Stanley (named after Stanley Matthews) have moved out. Several times a day Mr Van Basten visits his wife in a mental home – a stroke depriving her of her mind in 1985 – and in Marco’s old room, he maintains a shrine to his son’s career.