Match of the Day – Missing Editions

As you know, Match of the Day started in August 1964, and ITV’s answer, The Big Match, in 1968 (running until 1992). It’s usually the case with long-running television series that some, at least, of the footage is lost or destroyed along the way. I’ve often thought what an excellent digitial TV channel could be…

Eleven Roaring Lions

“Eleven Roaring Lions” was a phrase used by a recent commentator here to describe the England team he saw as having been let down by Sven Goran Eriksson. Of course, it makes them sound more like WWF wrestlers than footballers, but there you are: that’s exactly the kind of thinking that British football is stuck…

Developing Young British Footballers

You’ve heard it said that packing the Premiership with foreign players is harming the England national team by preventing our own boys getting the experience they need. Sam Allardyce takes a different view: ‘This is not a football problem, this is a country problem and a massive one,’ Allardyce said. ‘We cannot get the curriculum…

England v Spain Part 3

I’ve been complaining here for months that ex-players are inadequate in the role of summarizers. I had one exception: Jimmy Armfield, the former Blackpool player who captained England and managed Leeds United to the 1975 European Cup Final (an achievement he himself plays down and attributes solely to his players). I listened to England’s friendly…

The Greatest Sports TV Pundit Lineup Ever

Match of the Day viewers who are bored with Shearer and co. can envy their fellow fans in the United States. During the 1970s, an edition of “Monday Night Football” featured California Governor Ronald Reagan. Reagan talked his ill-informed guest through the ins and outs of gridiron. His guest – a Liverpudlian musician called John…

England v Spain: A Hollowed-Out Feeling

Those round shortbread biscuits with a hole in the middle always frustrated me when I was a boy. I just couldn’t see the point. Where was the missing bit? Sitting in a huge pile of other missing bits, in some Scottish factory? I’m aware of the same kind of feeling now in the aftermath of…

Passion and Commitment vs Skill and Composure

I never meant it to be a central theme at this site. You can blame the press that it has been. It was their myth after all – that the kind of feelings fans experience watching football are the same feelings that the team needs to have on the pitch in order to win. It’s…

England v Spain Part Two

It’s time to ask what we ought to want from this game. I want England to do well. But I want them to do well in a way that shows that we know what we are doing and that we know where we are going. At the moment, I don’t think we do and I…