James Hamilton on Sport History and Psychology
Into the Wembley changing rooms with Pathe News for Everton v Sheffield Wednesday. Wednesday’s manager was Alan Brown, Brian Clough’s mentor at Sunderland four years earlier. So much of this kind of broadcasting seemed aimed at the non-footballing public. The degree of knowledge and involvement assumed on the part of the viewer is almost nil….
Herbert Chapman’s teams won six League Championships and two FA Cups in the days when that was all that a team could win. Yet he went into print to say that he felt league-style competition was ruining the game. The pressure on a team to win, he argued, militated against the team’s ability to entertain…
Peter Shilton played just one FA Cup Final in his long career – and lost, 1-0 to Manchester City. City were on their best run for many years, and here David Colman interviews Mercer, Malcolm Allison and players at the Cup Victory Banquet: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cksnFMeWaK0] A year earlier, they’d gone what might be considered one better,…
A couple of minutes’ worth of Brooking brilliance. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7bk9BasbjE]
I’d gone to Blackwells – the old Broad Street one, using the original narrow entrance in preference to the wider swing doors – to get something second-hand from their top-floor department. It was mildly annoying to have to shoulder my way in – blast these tourists, coming in to gawp – and slightly more annoying…
Hope and damnation side by side in the People’s Game. The first film is of a Wartime International between England and Scotland, won handsomely by the team in white in front of the Royal Family at Wembley. Stanley Matthews and Matt Busby are just two players of the many ’40s talents on show here. Poor…
It was all about goals – about setting Italy an impossible target in their final World Cup Qualifier which would come against Luxembourg in Rome. Six goals for England was surely out of the question, but any number would help. If they got two, Italy would only need to win 1-0 in Rome; three would…
There’s a definite urge – don’t you have it? to say that English football managers just aren’t as intelligent as their foreign counterparts. In a comment left on an earlier post, John Sinnott said “I’ve done lots of interviews with overseas players and managers and invariably they were always smarter and brighter and more analytical…
In 2003, Martin Johnson lifted the Rugby World Cup. His England were, without argument, the best prepared team in the tournament, a group who had spent 3-4 years working towards this ultimate goal. England lost their visionary coach and inspirational captain shortly after the World Cup, and have spent the subsequent years in the rugby…
Only in England can you be a prophet in your own country whilst still coming from abroad. It’s been a bad eighteen months for the people I’d call prophets. Martin Amis is being dragged backwards from the broadsheet pickup truck because of one 2-year-old line which contradicts a dozen others of his before and since….