Category Archives: FWA Spotlight

FWA review – our new show

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FWA Chairman Patrick Barclay and Carrie Brown review the big stories of the week. You can see the video on Facebook or our YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/bR6hBHciAlA

The FWA review highlights and signposts you to a selection of articles here:

Jeremy Wilson,  Daily Telegraph: FA told of dementia links 22 years ago:  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2017/10/07/exclusive-fa-told-dementia-links-22-years-ago/

David Hytner  The Guardian: Former Liverpool, Wigan and England goalkeeper Chris Kirkland speaks honestly on depression bringing an end to his career: https://www.theguardian.com/football/2017/oct/11/chris-kirkland-depression-interview

Guillem Balague / Mauricio Pochettino reveals how he turned Kane into a warrior and his desire to manage England: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-4981082/Tottenham-boss-Pochettino-Kane-warrior.html?ito=email_share_article-top

Andy Dunn  The Mirror: Manchester City should forget Messi: http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/manchester-city-should-forget-lionel-11345212

Martin Lipton   The Sun: Sir Alex Ferguson agreed to managerTottenham: https://www.google.co.uk/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=martin+lipton+alex+ferguson+tottenham&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&gfe_rd=cr&dcr=0&ei=NsHkWaDlK9Tc8AeGnarwDg

Gerry Cox   Daily Telegraph: Troy Deeney says Arsenal lack ‘cojones’:  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2…

Not a vintage season but United’s goal power could surprise Europe

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As the Barclays Premier League reaches the halfway stage footballwriters.co.uk asked the Daily Mirror’s Chief Football Writer MARTIN LIPTON for his views on the season so far.

As the Barclays Premier League season reaches the halfway mark, how would you assess 2012/13 so far?
It’s been quite entertaining and enjoyable, but I also think the standard of the top teams is a long way behind what it was in 2008 and 2009 which for me was the high watermark in English football for the quality of players available. We still have some fantastic footballers, though, it’s been a pleasure to watch Juan Mata grow as a player at Chelsea this season, we’ve seen some terrific performances by Luis Suarez who’s as good as anyone in the world as an out-and-out striker and Robin van Persie’s been great for Manchester United. There’s some outstanding home-grown talent, too. Gareth Bale is brilliant on the ball, really exciting, but generally the overall standard has dropped.

Five years ago England was the dominant force in the Champions League…
Yes, the only teams who could beat the English teams were the English teams. Liverpool beat Arsenal, Chelsea beat Liverpool, United beat Chelsea…we don’t have that standard at the moment.

Do you see an English club winning the Champions League this season?
I didn’t see one winning it last season. You would never discount it because football can be a strange beast, but I think there are five or six teams better than Arsenal or United though United will always have a chance because they can score goals. In Rooney, particularly van Persie, Hernandez and Welkbeck they have lot of goals. I don’t think they are as good as Barcelona, Real Madrid or Bayern Munich and maybe not as good as Juventus or Shakhtar Donetsk. But if Vidic returns properly fit, if Jones and Smalling can add something…plus if Carrick continues to play as he is at the moment then United will have a chance against anyone.

Chelsea won the Champions League last season playing in a way that would be alien to United…
United aren’t built that way, they play a different style of football. However, if they beat Real in the last 16, the confidence boost it would give them will be huge and then teams can develop a momentum of their own. At half-time during the tie against Napoli [last February when the score was 1-1 with Napoli winning the first leg of the last 16 tie 3-1] there is no way you would have predicted Chelsea would even be in the final. They were lucky not to lose by five or six in Naples.

At the start of the season most people would probably have said the title would be a three horse race involving the two Manchester clubs and Chelsea, but Chelsea’s defeat by Queens Park Rangers makes it very difficult for them now…
To be fair, I thought it was a two horse race, just a question of which Manchester club came out top. That’s still the case. Chelsea would have to win probably 16 of their remaining 18 games, lose one and draw the other [to get 87 points]. In those games they’d have to beat United and City away which is unlikely. United have a massive advantage because they can afford to lose three [more] matches and still win the title. The unusual thing about United is they have drawn only one game.

So it’s United to win the Barclays Premier League title then…
I still think City could win it. They don’t have the distraction of the Champions League, they have a very strong squad with the capacity to spend silly money if they choose to over the next few weeks.

Who’s been your surprise package?
West Bromwich Albion have been my team of the season so far. Steve Clarke has done exceptionally well. Claudio Yacob’s been an excellent signing, I like Youssouf Mulumbu, Romelu Lukaku, on loan from Chelsea, has flourished this season and looks like a mini-Drogba. Shane Long does an outstanding job, James Morrison and Chris Brunt are playing well and Jonas Olsson’s been terrific.

Ben Foster’s been as good as any goalkeeper…
I know Roy Hodgson is desperate to persuade him to come back into England contention because after Joe Hart, Foster is, without question, the best English goalkeeper. We really need him to be available to play for England again.

England’s start to the 2014 World Cup qualifiers has been solid – wins in Moldova and at home to San Marino, a draw in Poland and at home to Ukraine…
The theory that we have only about 20 players has been disproved because Roy has used 44 and that doesn’t include Chris Smalling who would certainly be among the top 30 players. I think Jack Wilshere, now he’s fully fit, will make a difference, the development of Theo Walcott has been a positive, Danny Welbeck scores more goals for England than he does for United and has looked really good in an England shirt…arguably England’s Player of the Year for 2012. We’re not a top four team and haven’t been for a long time. Realistically we’re a top eight side as we showed at Euro 2012 where we were unbeaten. Given the circumstances England did better than par for the course.

Can England qualify automatically? The nine group winners go through to Brazil with the eight best runners-up playing off for the remaining four places…
The game in Montenegro in March is key. If England win in Podgorica then they will be set up because three of the last four games are at Wembley where you’d expect them to win – then the other match in Ukraine (in September) wouldn’t matter. If we lose in Montenegro then it may mean going through the playoffs. I’d be surprised if England’s weren’t in the top two and I think they’ll probably win the group. They haven’t lost yet which is a positive.

Team England seems to have a spirit that was possibly been missing in one or two finals before Euro 2012…
It is clear we have a set of England players who want to play with each other, which has not always been the case, they want to play for the manager, which has not always been the case, and are keen to play for the shirt which has not always been the case. That gives you a decent starting position.

Can Robin van Persie be voted the Footballer of the Year for the second successive time?
There will be a huge lobby for van Persie and rightly so. There will be strong support for Luis Suarez despite what you might think of him occasionally. He’s behaved himself pretty well this season, more sinned against than a sinner as has another candidate, Gareth Bale. Both he and Suarez have been cautioned [for diving] on reputation which is unfortunate.

There has been much discussion about referees and the Respect programme…
I wish it actually meant something. I think a lot of referees across the country were let down by Mike Dean [with the Sir Alex Ferguson controversy]. Dean probably thought he handled it properly, he may have even convinced himself there was no rage from Ferguson but it sure didn’t look that way. The fact Ferguson then took it out on an assistant referee and the fourth official said it all. The bottom line was, to allow Jonny Evans’ own-goal was a correct decision.

Referees will inevitably be singled out for blame, usually by the losing manager…
It’s easy to criticise them, but there are a couple of referees who are no longer fit for purpose in the Barclays Premier League.

Who are?
Mark Halsey and Chris Foy. They should be given their pension books at the end of the season. Both are past their sell-by date. Referees will always make mistakes, but when they keep on making bad mistakes…

Do you think the forensic examination of match officials by television is unfair?
It’s ridiculous. We shouldn’t slaughter assistant referees for being two inches wrong and most of the times they are correct. But if a player is obviously offside, like Lukaku was when he scored [for West Bromwich] against Fulham it’s different. He was almost on his own inside the six-yard box.

Major hopes for 2013?
I’d love the title race to go to the wire again though we can’ t expect it to be decided by the last kick in the last game like last season. I’d like to go into the last month of the season with nothing settled at both ends of the table. Probably more than anything, I’d like to be writing about football rather than issues within the game that overshadowed the game so much in 2012.

GIROUD HAS A GRACE AND HUMILITY JOEY BARTON CAN ONLY PLAGIARISE

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Montpellier make their debut in the Champions League on September 18 against Arsenal who bought the French club’s top scorer Olivier Giroud this summer. As LAURE JAMES reports, while the rugby-loving city is not a hotbed of football the France striker is a class act.

MONTPELLIER’S success is impossible to overestimate. Indeed, it cannot be justified in terms of figures. For once, established parallels between big budgets and silverware do not apply.

The club had never won the domestic title before, with a third-place finish in 1988 their previous best effort. Their average attendance is eighth highest in a league of 20 and their propensity to spend is even less favourable. They have only the 14th highest budget in the French League.

Millionaire (or richer) consortiums are a relatively new phenomenon in France but welcomed by LFP, the league’s governing body who long to see the country once again challenging at the top level, namely the Champions League.

What they had never bargained for was a small, provincial club devoid of any point to prove racing to the top of the division. And staying there. Suddenly Montpellier could cling to a real achievement: a league title, a place in the Champions League, a revenue stream, a star on their chest and a buoyant future.

Montpellier is not a football city. It never has been. Culturally aware, spiced with a greater number of theatre and concert venues per capita than anywhere else in France, the fastest-growing metropolis in the Languedoc region is also home to a young, liberally-minded well-educated population. So, given the magnitude of the rugby team, are Rene Girard’s men criminally under-supported because 98 per cent are egg chasers? No. From experience of the city’s magnificently varied make-up, a little more than half follow rugby while a third are either profiting from their art-house cinema membership or fiercely parading Moroccan flags in areas of deprivation. The rest may be heard, albeit louder than ever before, to be crying “allez, allez!” from Avenue de Heidelberg.

The next, already festering question is whether rising to become champions of France will also prove to be a kiss of death. Will the squad, following more exits of note than acquisitions during the transfer window, be cannon-fodder on the Champions League stage?

Losing top scorer Olivier Giroud, destined to emerge as a household name after signing a significant four-year deal with Arsenal, represents more than the sacrifice of 21 goals in a trophy-winning season. Erudite and charming, youthful and an epicurean, Giroud rebuffs football stereotypes and instead exemplifies the city of Montpellier’s popularity – and population. Crediting his father for developing both his superlative taste in wines and interest in buying up Pic St Loup vineyards, the striker embraces life’s finery. He illustrates why Joe Cole became a Francophile and achieves, with perfect grace and humility, what Joey Barton [on loan to Olympique Marseille] can only plagiarise.

We must also consider manager Rene Girard’s future. Is he likely to be prised away given the job he’s done? Or will he remain at the head of a club’s coaching pyramid which also boasts academy success and a strong scouting network which has the ability to spot a bargain?

Discussions on whether the future will bring minor disintegration rather than sustained prowess are unlikely to trouble Montpellier fans. The championship has brought with it a recognition, at least throughout Europe, upon which it is impossible to place a value. It feels like a distant acquaintance remembering your name. It sparks a sense of pride and validates your obsession, your adoration – not as if it were needed, of course.

Fanaticism, like true love, can wilt as quickly as it deepens or fold as inconspicuously as it cements. But it never really disappears. And now, from afar, my team are champions.

From LIFE’S A PITCH – The Passions Of The Press Box edited by Michael Calvin (Integr8 Books, £10.99). The book is dedicated to the memory of Danny Fulbrook, chief football writer of the Daily Star and a member of the FWA’s national committee. Laure James, who is based in Belfast, is tri-lingual, having both English and French heritage. She contributes regularly to the Daily Mail, Sky Sports and talkSPORT.

TV’s Original Panel was Loud, Brash, Insulting but Hugely Watchable

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By the summer of 1970, Derek Dougan was among the highest profile footballers in Britain, scoring goals for Wolves and Northern Ireland and soon to be elected chairman of the PFA. As DAVID TOSSELL reveals, he was also about to become part of a revolution in televised football along with Malcolm Allison, Pat Crerand and Bob McNab:

IT WAS 1970 when ITV supposedly showed the way forward by presenting football analysis in the style of four blokes enjoying a pint at the local. The ‘World Cup panel’, which added studio-base vibrancy to a tournament already made unthinkingly exotic by colour television and the wonderful Brazilians, is acknowledged as having revolutionised television punditry. It is true to the extent that the panel format henceforward became the standard for televised football, but watching the presenting team on the latest Sky Sports Super Sunday bears little resemblance to the chaos over which Brian Moore attempted to preside in the summer of ’70. It was more Tiswas than Match of the Day.

The man responsible was John Bromley, then head of ITV sport, who asked Moore to stay at home, teaming him as usual with Jimmy Hill. What followed was an inspired piece of alchemy as Derek Dougan, Manchester City coach Malcolm Allison, Manchester United midfielder Pat Crerand and Arsenal and England full-back Bob McNab were thrown into the mix, wearing colours so bright and collars so wide that Moore looked like the John Alderton character, Hedges, trying to control his rowdy and fashion-conscious Class 5c in Please, Sir!. The result was a month of television that was loud, brash, often controversial, sometimes downright insulting and always hugely watchable. For the first time in the broadcasting of sports events, ITV’s figures regularly matched the BBC, which managed to look safe and staid even with Brian Clough as part of its team.

Allison, evolving into ‘Big Mal’, was the star, irreverent and dashing but with the mind of a brilliant coach to add substance to his style. Dougan played the role of his nemesis, sitting to his right, often choking on the fumes from Allison’s Cuban cigar, and mixing Irish charm and humour with a hard critical edge. Scotland international Crerand, in the manner of his play, was abrasive and energetic, while McNab offered the insight of a player who had been in the England squad until a few days earlier.

‘We need some people who can actually talk lucidly about football,’ had been the guiding principle of Bromley, who changed his mind about using his panellists individually and opted instead to throw them all on screen at once. ‘Crerand and Allison were the baddies,’ he added, ‘and the charming Dougan with the lovely McNab were the goodies. They became folk heroes in four weeks.’

Moore recalled that ‘they gave football punditry a fresh intoxicating sparkle’, while Dougan, looking back years later, said, ‘We were the first four people ever invited on television to actually speak about our sport. The chemistry was right and we used to spark off each other. Not once did we have a rehearsal. Malcolm was the only guy that I have ever worked with who could drink an excess of champagne and not slur his words.’

McNab remembers, ‘People had never seen anything like it although I am not sure we all realised it was ground-breaking at the time. Jimmy tried to control it, but Malcolm would take the piss out of him unmercifully. Actually, we all ended up taking the piss out each other. Without disrespect to Derek, he didn’t have the intellectual football ideas of Malcolm. We noticed that he would start repeating some of the stuff Malcolm said off-camera so sometimes Mal would set him up and say the opposite of what he thought. It was all great fun and we all had a lot of respect and affection for each other.’

McNab also remembers the group whiling away the afternoons at the Hendon Hall hotel before their evening broadcasts. ‘We used to play head tennis and nobody wanted to play on Derek’s team because all you had to do was hit it to his right foot and you would win the point.’

This group of articulate, stylishly dressed men were enthralling viewers who followed football every day of their lives and making the sport easily accessible to those whose interest barely extended to the FA Cup final, the one club game televised live each season. Fan letters and autograph hunters became an even bigger part of their lives. McNab even recalls the group eating in a restaurant one night and being joined by Michael Caine who wanted to ‘have a drink with the lads’.

In Sunshine or In Shadow: A Journey Through The Life of Derek Dougan by David Tossell, published by Pitch Publishing, is available as hardback or eBook at amazon.co.uk.

FWA Spotlight: Busby’s other ‘Babes’ did Britain proud

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MATT BUSBY stroked his chin, took a puff of his trademark pipe and delivered his verdict. “Most of the players were strangers to each other,” he said. “My first task was to shake hands all round and try to remember some of the names. I wondered what I’d taken on. I realised right from the start that many hectic weeks of hard graft lay ahead.”

Ten years later the Scot was to build the Manchester United side nicknamed the Busby Babes who were set to dominate Europe before the Munich Air Disaster saw eight members of the squad perish in the plane crash.

Busby will forever be linked with United but in 1948 he accepted the job of managing the Great Britain football team at the London Olympics. Instead of players who had become household names in Britain, Busby had David Kelleher, a Northern Irishman whose daring getaway from a PoW camp near Bremen influenced the movie The Great Escape; Eric Fright, who overcame infant paralysis to play with leading amateur side Bromley; and an 18-year-old Scottish goalkeeper called Ronnie Simpson who had made his Queens Park debut against Clyde at Hampden Park aged 14 years and eight months.

As was the tradition in those days, Busby did not select the squad which was recruited by a committee who had forgotten about Cyril Martin, a nippy winger who had helped Olympique Marseille win that season’s French League title.

While Stuart Pearce’s Team GB squad have the best training and hotel facilities as they prepared for London 2012, things were more spartan in 1948. The Great Britain training base was a country mansion near Sunningdale golf course where the players found some racquets and started to play tennis. They then kicked a ball over the net, having to make the most of what was there. With rationing still in force special rations, including tinned fruit from New Zealand, were brought in to build the players up. This provided some compensation for missing work – all the players were left out of pocket as they had to take their annual holiday entitlement to coincide with the Olympics.

“I handled them as I would professionals,” said Busby. “I worked them like slaves and not once did I hear a word of complaint. It was a pleasure to work with such men.”

Three warm-up games had been arranged. The first was a defeat by Holland in Amsterdam, next stop was Basel where the players were amazed by the goods available in Swiss shops. One player, Angus Carmichael, said: “There was nothing in our shops like the watches they had there. When I got engaged I couldn’t even get my wife Anne an engagement ring.”

After the match the squad were offered watches at knock-down prices, some players buying a dozen. When the squad ambled into the entrance hall at the airport, Busby took the customs guard to one side and explained that as his charges were poor footballers they had nothing to declare. No questions were asked.

The last game was, according to Football Association records, a 2-1 win for GB. Busby recalled the match finishing as a draw while newspaper reports suggest a 3-2 win for GB.

And so to the opening ceremony on July 29 at Wembley stadium, Busby’s gentlemen leading the entire GB squad out. The war was over three years ago but danger from the skies remained, albeit of a milder kind. “There was this American, not an athlete, walking around the ceremony with a trilby asking all the athletes for a dollar,” said Carmichael. “He said ‘whoever was hit by the most pigeon shit gets what’s in the hat.'”

Great Britain started with a 4-3 extra-time win over Holland when Bromley’s Tommy Hopper, his face covered in blood after an over-pyhsical challenge from a Dutch opponent, carried on regardless. It was later discovered he had played almost the entire match with a fractured cheek-bone.

France were next after they had beaten India who arrived with only two pairs of boots; the other nine players had to do with bandages and plasters on their feet, a 2-1 loss respectable under the circumstances. The French were not much better organised, forgetting to bring a ball which made training interesting. A Bob Hardisty goal at Craven Cottage saw GB reach the semi-final at Wembley where 40,000 fans watched Yugoslavia triumph 3-1.

GB lost the bronze medal play-off 5-3 to Denmark but Busby was full of praise for his squad’s efforts. “As manager of the British team I did a job of work which I shall always regard as one of my best,” he said. “Steering Manchester United to the championship of the Football League first division was child’s play beside the problems of sorting out a winning team from 26 spare-time footballers drawn from four different countries.”

When Busby’s players had left their Uxbridge headquarters the manager told them to keep their official track-suits. Shortly afterwards the Football Association wrote to all the Olympians, who had give up a month without pay, asking them to stump up £5 or return their track-suits.

Adapted from GB United? by Styeve Menary (Pitch Publishing £15.99)

FWA Spotlight: Tahiti – It’s a family affair as minnows prepare to take on world’s elite

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THEY WILL be the ultimate minnows, the Tom Thumb of international football, David v Goliath to a new dimension but next summer Tahiti will be rubbing shoulders with football’s elite in the Confederations Cup in Brazil.

Yes Tahiti, the deluxe honeymoon destination comprising 118 islands eight and a half hours from Los Angeles. Tahiti, the locale for Mutiny on the Bounty, originally starring Errol Flynn with Marlon Brando heading the cast for a remake. Whatever your image of Tahiti, a hotbed of football is unlikely.

With 146 clubs and 11,201 registered players, football is the most popular sport among the 245,405 inhabitants. Marama Vahirua is Tahiti’s most famous footballer having made a name for himself in France with Nantes but thanks to the goal by Steevy Chong Hue as the Iron Warriors defeated New Caledonia, Eddy Etaeta’s side became the first team other than Australia (no longer part of OFC) and New Zealand to be crowned Oceania champions.

The win saw Tahiti rise 41 places to 138th in the latest FIFA rankings but they are not so much a national team as a family side. Lorenzo, Alvin, Teaonui and Jonathon Tehua are regulars for Tahiti, which is believed to be a world record. The Tehuas scored nine of Tahiti’s goals in the 10-1 win over Samoa in the opening tie of the OFC finals with eldest brother Jonathon, 24, scoring a double, twins Lorenzo and Alvin netting four and two respectively, and their 19-year-old cousin Teaonui one.

The Tehua boys chose football over taekwando because of the proximity of AS Tefana – it was the closest sports facility to their home and school. Alvin said: “I’m very proud to play in the national team with my family. We are a unit within the national team. I think it helps the side as a whole.” Lorenzo added: “I’m happy we play together – it’s taken a long time for us to come together in one team.”

International football anoraks will have noted that the rise and rise of Tahiti started three years ago when their Under-20 team broke the country’s qualifying duck by reaching the World Youth Championship in Egypt.

But with Australia now in the Asian Confederation, any Oceania tournament should provide New Zealand with what amounts to a free pass to the finals. Yet the All Whites drew with Solomon Islands before losing to New Caledonia, opening the way for the mother of all underdogs to qualify for Brazil 2013.

Team Tehua will no doubt make alternative headlines next summer and while the days of double-digit scorelines are virtually extinct at major finals, the 2013 Confederations Cup will surely see the elite of world football using the Tahitian upstarts as a football punch-bag.

Etaeta, understandably, took a positive approach and said: “We may play against the likes of Brazil and Spain which will be amazing for our country. We will enjoy this moment for now and then start planning towards the future. We’re happy with what we have achieved but we are in the semi-finals of the 2014 World Cup Oceania qualifying stage three. That was our main objective, our main goal. Everything else from here is a bonus for Tahiti.”

Football Writers’ Association members who travel to Brazil for the Confederations Cup may also be reporting on Tahiti when the most successful country in football stages the 2014 World Cup finals. The top four teams in the OFC Nations Cup – Tahiti, New Caledonia, New Zealand and Solomon Islands – move on to a home and away series with the team winning the most points going through to a play-off against the fourth-placed team in CONCACAF (the North, Central American and Caribbean Association) for a berth in Brazil.

While this may not raise too many eyebrows around the world, New Zealand, with their comparative wealth of professional experience, will be given a run for their money by the amateur teams of the smaller Pacific Islands nations.

Tahiti at the World Cup finals sounds unlikely but then so did Tahiti taking part in the Confederations Cup.