We asked some of our regular contributors if they could remember anything about 2001. Surprisingly, quite a few of them could
Harry Pearson
Best • Seeing different faces in the home dugout at the Riverside. Finally getting a radio that allowed me to listen to Alistair Brownlee’s delirious, deranged commentaries on Century FM. His pronunciation of Marinelli alone is worth the price of the batteries. Oliver Kahn’s expression at the end of the game in Munich.
Apparent misfits in the Premiership, more than a few imports have gone on to have perplexingly good careers elsewhere. We tracked down three of them, Craig McCracken looking at Marc-Vivien Foé
Marc-Vivien Foé was an early developer. A first team regular for Cameroon’s top club Canon Yaoundé at 17, an international at 18, a World Cup player at 19, he won his first transfer to Europe when he signed a contract shortly after his 20th birthday to join Lens.
Apparent misfits in the Premiership, more than a few imports have gone on to have perplexingly good careers elsewhere. We tracked down three of them, Gabriele Marcotti looking at Darko Kovacevic
If he hadn’t been run out of town after making just eight starts for Sheffield Wednesday, perhaps Darko Kovacevic might have earned himself a funky nickname in Yorkshire. Certainly, English fans tend to be a little more imaginative than their Spanish counterparts (“Golacevic”was the best Real Sociedad supporters could come up with). Perhaps he might have entered Sheffield lore as the “Darko Destroyer” – after all, he was Nigel Benn’s contemporary.
Apparent misfits in the Premiership, more than a few imports have gone on to have perplexingly good careers elsewhere. We tracked down three of them, Ernst Bouwes looking at Jon Dahl Tomasson
In the spring of 1997 his fellow players voted him Talent of the Year in the Dutch league, with Giovanni van Bronckhorst and Arnold Bruggink second and third. A couple of days after accepting the trophy, he scored a hat-trick against Vitesse Arnhem to go top of the goalscorers list, leaving quality players like Luc Nilis, Roy Makaay and Patrick Kluivert (and Gerald Sibon) behind him. While his goals took modest Heerenveen to their first Dutch Cup final, about 20 clubs were rumoured to be interested in signing him, with Ajax, Atlético Madrid and Barcelona the most persistent. A transfer fee of about £2 million seemed a laughably small amount for a 21-year-old who had just made his international debut for Denmark. Yes, we’re talking about Jon Dahl Tomasson.
It's the season of goodwill and all that kind of cobblers, so Ian Plenderleith finds some reasons to be cheerful on the internet
In the spirit of transient positivity that is unique to either the start of the new football season or the beginning of a fresh year, WSC hereby presents its Web Awards for the best five independent club-based fan sites, and for the best five general sites. The judge has scrupulously retained his penchant for wang-eyed subjectivity and has failed to cast off irrational prejudices, but would like to emphasise that originality, wit and the quality of writing played a considerable part in his selection of the following webzines, which appear in no particular order.