James Hamilton on Sport History and Psychology
No one sends me these things anymore, so I’ve purloined a book one and turned its head towards football to fill the time before the transfer deadline passes: 1. One book that changed your life – It was a late ’50s paperback, published at roughly the same moment that George’s parents were fleeing Hungary. Called…
Thank heavens for West Ham. From absolutely nowhere, this has become the most interesting week in the transfer market since Ardiles and Villa joined Spurs. I don’t really have to say here that the arrival of Teves and Mascherano at Upton Park comes as a surprise. I was as shocked as anyone else. Pleased for…
A little 6-0-6 of our own on the Victoria-Sutton train after Chelsea’s home game. My wife and I were sitting a few seats away from a group of Chelsea fans, four men in late middle age. Blue shirts, blue scarves. (Why would anyone – even a fan – consider a replica shirt fit clothing for…
Steve McClaren’s first competitive match against one of the three real remaining “minnows” in European football (the others being the Faroe Islands and Liechenstein) will be revealing in terms of how far he’s prepared to depart from his predecessor. Expectations and necessity are high and serious respectively: McClaren has to bring about a thrashing of…
It was kind of Radio 4 and the “PM” programme to ask me about Roy Keane and Sunderland, and quite typical of life at the moment that I came across their email a couple of hours after the programme had gone out on air. But they got me thinking again, and there are some things…
What on earth’s happened to Ruud van Nistelrooy? And can Keane make it as a manager? Can these two be discussed without a charge through the tall grass of cliche? (No, to the last at least). These are days when a move to Real Madrid can tell a tale of retreat and defeat. Ruud’s there…
Although Herbert Chapman is still the only manager to have won a hat trick of titles at two different clubs, along with FA Cups, he was not a man who stayed anywhere very long. No Busby, Shankly, Stein or Ferguson he; his stint at Town lasted barely six years, and at the time of his…
August is allegedly a dead month for hypnotherapists. Not for this one, and I haven’t had five minutes since – I can’t remember when – and tomorrow morning to Cambridge, so no time then. The new look, if it deserves the title, is in response to readers’ emails: apparently the old theme was cutting sentences…
Corinthian attitudes and coaching greatness don’t run together: all of the great managers seem to have an exhaust trail of money, questionable money. For Revie it was undenied allegations of bribery in the early 1960s, then the undercover contract from the Arabian peninsular that took him from the England job. For Venables, it was his…
This preview, like all the other previews you are reading, has nothing to say about the League Cup. Or the FA Cup for that matter.. oh, alright then. It’s over a century since we last had a winner from outside the Football League or Premiership. Non-league football is undergoing something of a renaissance at present….