More Than Mind Games

Without clicking through, see if you can identify the two teams involved here, and hazard a guess at the date. There are enough clues for most of you to “get it” before it finishes, but see how long it takes you. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2b6cwubeSjw]

We’re not creative enough: we’re not positive enough. Sir Trevor Brooking, in the opening moments of this video: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96-zW2c8H2o] Perhaps the only good football song ever written that’s just about football. It says only good things about the Germans that they adopted it for themselves – but neglected to translate it in the process. Of…

More egregious copyright theft from Football Commentator. But it’s a good example of the huge quantity of high-quality footage to be seen on Freemantle Media’s superb multi-DVD production, The History of Football. Amazon list it for just under £18.00, which, for 7 DVDs of this sort of thing accompanied by intelligent commentary and interviews (e.g….

In today’s Telegraph, Jim White talks about the boredom of primary school children denied the joys of competition by their overly politicized headmistress. But too much emphasis on competition at too young an age, on promoting “winning” above all, can be just as bad. Mathew Annis of The Sixth Day Is For Football takes up…

In the old days, it was simple: you didn’t trust anyone who wore a tweed hat or a beard. But Jimmy Hill muddied at least the more saline of those waters. And you just don’t see tweed hats anymore, except in Norfolk. There’s nothing to rely upon anymore. Except that anyone who says Americans don’t…

My little white Sony digicube was new when I listened to this match on it in 1988. It was all Holland, and the commentator’s shock at Robson’s goal insulted me. I spent that glorious summer at the head of a long table of roll-up smokers and bored retirees trying to make sense of footballers’ pensions….

Care of 101 Great Goals, the Youtubing in six parts of a 1987 documentary about George Best. More Best clips than you ever knew survived. A documentary on George Best from 1987, titled “Best intentions” and including some rare footage, has been uploaded onto YouTube. It can be seen in six parts here, here, here,…

Courtesy of Youtube’s “Beaten Generation,” here are poor Revie’s Leeds being conned out of a variety of cups and titles. The old rule that one refereeing decision against you is balanced by another in your favour never seemed to apply to the team in yellow. 1967: FA Cup Semi-Final vs Chelsea [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmLMb1su5Lg] 1971: Ray Tinkler…

With a title like that, you might not be expecting an article about football, let alone one as rushed as this is going to have to be. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the simple obstinacy of much of English football; wondering how often it can be offered a short-cut into the future by…

For most of its life, football in England as a mass sport has been industrial, and it has been Northern. It shows in the voices. So many North-Easterners: so many Scots. And the others from north of Birmingham. Shankly, Busby, the Charlton brothers, Lawton, Milburn, Finney, Matthews, Paisley, Law. And the great Irish players: Best,…