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A WORKAHOLIC BESET BY A SENSE OF NEVER BEING QUITE GOOD ENOUGH

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Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona were the greatest team many have ever seen, but Guillem Balagué reveals in his new book the former Barca coach is a workaholic beset by a sense of never being quite good enough.

By CHRISTOPHER DAVIES

THE SPECULATION will intensify as the season progresses, there will be exclusives about his next destination with “sources” confirming it will be Chelsea, Manchester City, Inter Milan or whoever, but right now even Pep Guardiola does not know where he will be working next season.

The man who coached the Barcelona team that most (outside of Madrid) rate as the best they have ever seen will end his self-enforced sabbatical next summer and return to football. Guardiola will not be tempted by the highest bidder because, as Guillem Balagué explains in a superbly researched and highly readable biography Pep Guardiola – Another Way Of Winning, the Catalan will choose a club that seduces him with football rather than finance.

“Pep only moved once in his career for money, when he went to Qatar,” Balagué told footballwriters.co.uk. A 33-year-old Guardiola joined Al-Ahli on a two-year contract worth US$4 million, but as Balagué explains in his book: “After playing 18 games and spending most of his time lounging by the pool in his complex…he went for a trial at Manchester City, spending 10 days under Stuart Pearce’s eye in 2005. Eventually Pep turned down a six-month contract in Manchester, wanting a longer deal that the City manager was not prepared to offer…and joined Mexican side Dorados de Sinaloa.”

Balagué, a lifelong Espanyol fan and a familiar figure in English football because of his regular appearances on Sky Sports’ coverage of Spanish football, admires Guardiola, a complex character who invested so much into his first experience as a manager he needed pills to help him sleep.

In the biography, Balagué outlines Guardiola’s self-imposed work-load: “Despite having 24 assistants he worked longer hours than most of them. His players will tell you he is a coach whose care for the smallest detail improves them, who can see and communicate the secrets of the game. They see a complex man with so much on his mind, always mulling things over, excessively so sometimes. Players say they are sure he would like to spend more time with his wife and kids but he can’t, because he dedicates the vast majority of his time to winning games. He lives for that, but sometimes even they wonder: does he overdo it?

“He would go for walks with his partner and their children to help him find some sort of emotion balance.

“‘A manager’s work is never done,’ Pep was often heard saying. One morning, the enthusiastic Pep seen the previous day had made way for a silent Pep whose words said one thing but his sunken eyes another. ‘What’s wrong?’ one of his colleagues asked him. ‘Yesterday I should have gone to see my daughter in a ballet and I couldn’t go.’ ‘Why not?’ his friend asked, surprised. ‘Because I was watching videos of our opponents.’”

So would being a slave to the cause, which contributed to him taking a year off, not remain with Guardiola when he returns? Balagué said: “Many people in this day and age overwork, we do too much. It can reach a point where you stop loving what you are doing and he lost that.

“When you are the sort of person who has to give absolutely everything, you take that with you everywhere. You go to the next club and you still have to do 120 per cent. Pep will not just want to keep learning about the game, he will want to know about the club’s history and the culture of the place where he lives. So he will immerse himself again with work, trying to gather information because that’s how he does it. The hope for him and his family is that he can balance it more so he can last a little longer.”

Balagué writes in the book: “Pep sets impossibly high standards and is beset by a sense of never quite being good enough. Guardiola might look strong and capable of carrying a club and nation on his shoulders but he is very sensitive about the reaction of the team and about disappointing the fans by not meeting their expectations. Or his own.”

He said: “At his next club he cannot fail. To him he would be failing himself, failing a nation, failing the club, failing his family…so he’d have to work even more to achieve this.”

Having reached footballing utopia at the Nou Camp, there will inevitably be the belief that the Guardiola magic can be transferred elsewhere and he can create Barca II. “It is impossible,” said Balagué. “I’m not sure how he will approach this or what message he will give the people at his new club. He will produce good football and he believes in a way of playing football. He will take that with him, he will maximise what he has at his disposal, he will improve the players, look at every detail to beat the other team…that kind of thing.”

In 2008 Guardiola took over a successful team put together by Frank Rijkaard, albeit one with signs of ill-discipline which was soon sorted, starting with the departure of Ronaldinho. Balagué said: “He took some significant decisions which not everyone was in favour of but as a manager from the first minute Guardiola did the right things, then as a coach he took the team to a completely new level. He combined the lessons he had learned from everyone…from Johan Cruyff, from his close friend Juanma Lillo who was his coach in Mexico, from people in Italy [where he played for Roma and Brescia] and applied all this to his own football philosophies.

“I have never seen a better team than the one Guardiola produced. He took a side that was maybe 7/10 to the limit at a time when everyone knows everything about each other, about the players, the tactics and still took them above everybody else in the world.”

His four years as coach saw Guardiola win 14 major honours. At Barcelona, the motto is “more than a club” and Guardiola, a key member of Cruyff’s Dream Team of the Nineties, is a symbol not just of Barca, but Catalonia. Balagué understands Guardiola’s decision to leave a team with players such as Lionel Messi, Andres Iniesta and Xavi (you could name the entire squad) but “I don’t completely agree with it.”

In the book Balagué writes: “By the end of his tenure he was no longer the youthful, eager, enthusiastic manager Sir Alex Ferguson met that night in Rome [in 2009]. On the day he announced he was leaving his boyhood club you could see the toll it had taken, it was discernible in his eyes and in his receding hairline, now flecked with grey.

“When he took the job he was a youthful looking 37-year-old. Eager, ambitions, enthusiastic. Now look at him four years later, he doesn’t look 41, does he? To be a coach at Barcelona requires a lot of energy and after four years, now that he no longer enjoyed the European nights, now that Real Madrid had made La Liga an exhausting challenge on and off the field, Guardiola felt it was time to depart from the all-consuming entity he had served – with a break of only six years – since he was 13. And when he returns – because he will return – isn’t it best to do so having left on a high?”

Balague said: “I remember something Luis Aragonés said to me. He is one of the wise men and said: ‘I don’t believe Pep when he says he is tired.’

“I don’t believe it entirely, either. When Pep was a player at Barcelona he left the club too late. Cruyff always told him he, himself, should have left two years earlier. Guardiola always had the idea, from minute one, that he wasn’t going to last long. So I think there’s a bit of a strategy behind all this. It was a combination of many things, including the fact there were a lot of very hard decisions that had to be taken. He built this team from love as well as from tactics and everything else. Try telling your kids ‘sorry I don’t want you any more’ or ‘you’re not playing in the team.’ That demanded an emotional investment he was not prepared to do.”

Balagué is adamant the world’s most sought after out-of-work manager will not return to work until next summer. His advisors are constantly in touch with Europe’s leading clubs and Balagué said: “The only thing they are trying to convince him of at the moment is to say ‘yes’ to a club and start working in the shadows.

“Everyone likes money, but Guardiola will be saying ‘show me this club can be taken to the top, show me it can be done in the way that I like.’ There is no point in him going to a club that prefers to play long balls or does not have a squad that is ready to keep the ball.”

The smart money would be on Guardiola’s next stop being England, Germany or Italy. In the book, Sir Alex Ferguson writes in the foreword: “I missed out on signing Pep Guardiola as a player back at the time that his future no longer lay at Barcelona. Maybe the timing I chose was wrong. It would have been interesting: he was the kind of player that Paul Scholes developed into. Sometimes you look back at a really top player and you say to yourself: ‘I wonder what it would have been like if he’d come to United?’ That was the case with Pep Guardiola.”

The longest-serving manager in British football makes no secret of his admiration for man who ticks just about every box needed for his successor.

Ferguson wrote: “One thing I have noticed about Guardiola – crucial to his immense success as a manager – is that he has been very humble. He has never tried to gloat, he has been very respectful and that is very important. As a coach he is very disciplined in terms of how his team plays, whether they win or lose he is always the unpretentious individual. And to be honest, I think it is good to have someone like that in this profession.”

Would Guardiola’s pending availability persuade Ferguson to step down? “I am pretty sure Ferguson and the club have discussed the possibility of that,” said Balagué. “It doesn’t mean it will happen because we all know Sir Alex wants to be there for at least another year or two. He lost the opportunity of getting Guardiola as a player, but would he retire to bring him in to take over? No.

“Pep has not told anyone he wants to go to this club or that club in England. From what I know of him, at 10 in the morning he’ll have made a decision, at 11 he’ll think ‘well, actually…’ and at one he’ll be thinking about another club. By the evening he’ll have ruled them all out. It will take him months to decide to take his family to another country and for him to join another club.

“I think it’s clear Chelsea are doing all they can to convince him, they have probably been the most consistent ones.”

Wherever Guardiola’s next port of call may be, Balagué is sure he will one day return to Barcelona.

“He’s going back, no doubt about it.” As coach? “We’ll see. It’s the kind of thing he has not decided, but I am 100 per cent sure he will go back at some point.”

How Barcelona developed under Guardiola.

The team that Rijkaard left in 2008 was: Valdes – Zambrotta, Milito, Puyol, Abidal – Yaya Toure – Xavi, Iniesta – Messi, Eto’o, Henry.

The starting XI for the 2009 Champions League final against Manchester United was: Valdes – Puyol, Toure, Pique, Sylvinho – Busquets – Iniesta, Xavi – Messi, Eto’o, Henry.

By 2010 it was: Valdes – Alves, Pique, Puyol, Abidal – Busquets – Xavi, Iniesta – Messi, Ibrahimovic, Pedro.

In 2011: Valdes – Alves, Pique, Mascherano, Abidal – Busquets – Iniesta, Xavi – Pedro, Messi, Villa.

Guardiola’s last season: Valdes – Alves, Pique, Mascherano, Puyol – Busquets – Xavi, Fabregas – Alexis, Messi, Iniesta.

*Pep Guardiola – Another Way of Winning: The Biography by Guillem Balagué (Orion £20).

 

WHEN THIERRY BECAME HENRY

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PHILIPPE AUCLAIR thinks Thierry Henry has a right to be considered France’s greatest footballer but in a ‘love letter’ he explains the character of the player changed…

By CHRISTOPHER DAVIES

IT IS sad that a player who gave Arsenal, English and French football such joy, so many moments of incredible skill, scoring breathtaking goals after a 60-yard lung-bursting run should be remembered as much for a handball (pedants will argue two handballs) as the pleasure he served up.

Thierry Henry remains the only three-time winner of the Footballer of the Year award, a distinction likely to remain for a long time unless double-winner Cristiano Ronaldo returns to the Barclays Premier League or Lionel Messi fancies giving up el clasico for Chelsea v Arsenal or the Manchester derby.

The Hand Of Gaul is a tattoo for life and what Henry did in the 103rd minute of the 2010 World Cup play-off second leg between France and the Republic of Ireland on November 18, 2009 was as surprising as it was unacceptable. It was so out of character – a word Philippe Auclair uses frequently when talking about Henry in a fascinating, absorbing biography Lonely At The Top.

Auclair, France Football’s London-based correspondent for over a decade, believes Henry has a right to be considered an even greater player than Zinedine Zidane whose glorious career ended ignominiously and violently in the 2006 World Cup final. Admiring Henry is one thing; liking him is another. And the more Auclair spoke to people about Henry for the book the more uncomfortable he became about France’s finest.

“You have to make the distinction between the person and the persona,” said Auclair. “I do not know the person well enough to have the right to place any judgment on him. It’s a very important distinction. But I am like many people in France in that I am ambivalent towards Henry, which is why the book proved quite difficult to write. I would come across people who were telling me things about Thierry that I didn’t particularly want to hear and was reminded of the very strong feelings some have about him, not all positive.”

In his book Cantona: The Rebel Who Would Be King, it was clear that Auclair, perhaps reluctantly, was won over by the player Manchester United supporters still call King Eric.

Auclair said: “There were many flaws in Cantona, we know what they are, but there is a certain generosity of spirit in him and a sparkling wit that, for me, was impossible to resist. The more I worked on the Cantona book the more I became drawn to the character, but the more I worked on the book about Thierry the more difficult it became to retain the very warm feeling I had towards him when I began writing it, but which I thankfully recaptured after his return to Arsenal and that beautiful night at the Emirates, when he scored against Leeds. It was something I found hard to deal with at times, however.

“I tried not to pass judgment which is up to the reader, especially whether I’ve been fair or not. I have tried to be fair with Thierry as I tried to be fair with Cantona.

“But my admiration for the Thierry the player is absolute and I do not think he is revered or admired as much as he should be. The handball in Paris tarnished his image and the strength of reaction to that incident was because such a so-called crime against football was so out of character. “

Auclair writes in the book: “When the British papers tried to find ‘previous’ in Thierry’s career, and tried they did, they failed to do so. Henry’s increasingly aloof demeanour may have grated with some, indeed with many, but he had never been labelled a ‘cheat’ before. He didn’t dive or wave imaginary yellow cards when he had been fouled, and heaven knows he was fouled more than most, when defenders could get to him, that is.”

The stage, with a place at the 2010 World Cup finals up for grabs, inevitably exaggerated the consequences of the handball, but Auclair said: “The image of Thierry sitting on the grass with Richard Dunne after the game as the celebrations went on really hurt a great number of people. I’ve tried [in the book] to express the disarray in French football after that.”

Another paradox of Henry was the lack of emotion he often showed after scoring the sort of stunning goal that lit up English football. “I wouldn’t say he was incapable of enjoying the moment,” said Auclair. “It’s more that he used to transport himself out of the game while being in it. He’s a reserved sort of guy, his own harshest critic, with incredible powers of self-analysis on the field, not someone who jumps up and down. He finds it hard to express this side of himself, he seems to be on his guard permanently, always thinking ahead.”

Auclair has closely followed Henry’s career from his early days at Monaco, where Arsene Wenger was his coach, to his glory days at Arsenal.

In the book he writes: “It was hard to reconcile the sweet, generous Thierry who had stood talking to us at Highbury, barely protected from the rain by an umbrella-wielding press officer, with the increasingly aloof Henry I had to deal with on a weekly basis later in his career.”

Auclair said: “His status changed. Thierry became Henry. He was very aware of his status which saw the progress from ambition to its realisation. For that you need to be focused to such an extent that I think you can lose touch…lose contact with your environment in such a way that you will appear distant, haughty not scornful though not very far from it.”

While it is common for players and managers to claim they never read the papers – yet they always seem aware of criticism, if not praise – Henry not only made a point of seeing what had been written about him, but contacting any journalist whose comments he felt unfair.

In the book, Auclair writes: “Oliver Holt of the Daily Mirror has told how – on the eve of the 2006 Champions League final – Thierry spent 20 minutes chastising him for having mistaken the council estate he grew up in with another in a preview piece. An amateur psyschologist would perhaps explain this hypersensitivity as a direct consequence of the willingness of his father to simultaneously praise (in public) and chastise (mostly in private) his son for his performances, which ultimately he found unbearable. What is certain is that at the heart of this superb player lay a feeling of insecurity that he often found impossible to disguise and which he tried to assuage by trying to exercise an ever-growing measure of control over what he said and what was said about him.”

Auclair said: “He set himself extraordinarily high targets. If you look in terms of the honours he won and how he won them, he’s achieved almost as much as anyone in modern football yet somehow still does not belong to that extra special group of players who dominate an era.I feel this is an injustice, which I hoped to set right.

“If you asked me which was the greater player, Henry or Zidane…in terms of achievements in his career I’d be tempted to say Thierry, even though Zidane scored two goals in a World Cup final and the winning goal in a Champions League final. In this respect I’d place Thierry on a par with Zidane, perhaps even above him, despite the fact that Zidane, in absolute terms, thinking of his vision and technique, was superior to him – and to everybody else, for that matter.

“But going back to the persona of Thierry, everybody who had to work with him noticed the changes between the player between 1999 and 2004 to the player of his last few years at Arsenal and then Barcelona. He became more and more remote. Maybe that’s the consequence of fame or success. Most people who experience such an ascent within their profession, whatever it may be, have to build mechanisms of self-preservation. Thierry had to, in order to survive, from the very beginning. It only got tougher. This is a guy who has been driven to become a great footballer almost since he was born and has been under tremendous pressure.”

The distance clubs place between players and the press these days makes it increasingly difficult to build up a close relationship with the people those who cover football write about. In the book Auclair is dismissive of those writers “willing to concur with Henry being able, with some luck and provided they wrote for a publication that carried enough clout, to join the inner circle.”

He writes: “Each paper has at least a couple of these privileged reporters on its staff; some of them are groomed from a very young age, sent out to follow youth teams in the hope they’ll sympathise with players whom it’ll be indispensible to develop a close working relationship with later in their careers. The first time I engaged in small talk with one of them I felt like a concert-goer who had crossed the path of a record company executive wearing an invisible ‘access all areas’ badge around his neck.

“Likewise, some of those who, much to their chagrin and despite their best efforts, were not asked to sit at the master’s table or who were told to leave it, contributed much to darken the player’s reputation out of sheer spite and resentment, with scant regard for their target’s outstanding achievements.”

Auclair, who makes no secret that his favourite French player and the one he considers the most charming is Robert Pires, said: “Thierry didn’t exploit that as many other players have, but if that was unusual, it wasn’t to have a select group of journalists who he used as PRs, so to speak. When you surround yourself with people who will not criticise you it is not the best recipe for having as open a view of the world as possible.”

When Henry reads Auclair’s book what does the author believe the subject will think about his efforts?

“There are elements in it that might not please him, reminders of difficult moments in his career, not just the Ireland episode but his early days when things almost went pear-shaped at Monaco. He made some mistakes which he paid for. But I hope he will feel that this book is also, in the end, a love letter to a magnificent player, whose greatness is not always recognised as it should”.

THIERRY HENRY Lonely At The Top: A Biography by Philippe Auclair (Macmillan, £17.99) is out on November 8.

 

Giving Alan Ball a piggy-back after the 1966 World Cup win…drinks with Ronnie Biggs…and praying for the phone to ring

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As Fleet Street legend STEVE CURRY celebrates his 70th birthday he looks back on a successful and eventful career.

By CHRISTOPHER DAVIES

IT WAS Cassius Clay who was the springboard for Steve Curry’s career as a football writer.

And when a young, innocent lad from Lancashire came to London his life literally went to pot.

Curry forged a reputation as one of Fleet Street’s leading football news reporters, working hard and playing hard in an era when journalists were able to eat, drink and be merry with managers and players. And Ronnie Biggs.

These days, much of his time is spent helping his wife Carol at Morts wine bar/restaurant in Walton-on-Thames. “She does all the cooking,” said Curry who is a meeter and greeter to customers at the former Ruby’s.

A far cry from his first job on the weekly Blackburn Times where he began covering weddings, council meetings and law courts, reporting on Rovers at the weekend. He then moved to the Preston-based evening newspaper Lancashire Evening Post before being transferred to their offices in London in 1964 when he joined the Football Writers’ Association, making him one of the longest-serving members.

“Though basically a sub, I was allowed to write a Saturday column,” said Curry. “I did a piece on Cassius Clay, as he was still called then, which caught the eye of the editor. This earned me my transfer to London which was when I started to specialise in sport, principally football.”

Curry moved into a flat in Fawley Road, Hampstead with five girls who worked for United Newspapers. Upstairs were some guys who played in a jazz band and Curry said: “I was pretty naive and when I walked into the flat I sniffed the air and thought how peculiar it smelt. I asked one of the girls what it was and it turned out the entire block was smoking pot. Needless to say I didn’t get involved in that.”

In 1966, Curry covered England’s World Cup final win over West Germany which remains the highlight of his career. Clive Toye had left the Daily Express which created a vacancy for a football writer and with Toye’s recommendation, Curry got the nod ahead of Peter Corrigan who went on to serve the Observer so well.

A Fleet Street rookie, Curry was initially helped by the Daily Express football correspondent Desmond Hackett, who wore a trademark brown bowler in press boxes, and Geoffrey Green of The Times. “They were the doyens of the football writing circuit and were fantastic to me. They also taught me how to drink…”

At the Daily Express, Curry and the late Joe Melling were an outstanding news team, regularly leading the way with transfers and managerial appointments. “Joe was a great scuffler and had really good contacts in the game which rightly won him awards.”

After 30 years with the Daily Express “almost to the day” Curry left for the Sunday Telegraph where, in the mid to late Nineties, the sports desk enjoyed a golden era under sports editor Colin Gibson, now head of media and communications for the International Cricket Council.

The paper had a series of exclusives in 1998 including the breakaway European League and the demolition of the Wembley twin towers.

“We cleaned up the awards,” said Curry. “I was named sports news reporter of the year, Colin was sports journalist of the year, golf writer Derek Lawrenson won the sports correspondent of the year…it was almost a clean sweep.

“I’d say Colin and David Emery, my sports editor at the Daily Express, have been the two biggest influences in my career. Both were former writers, which is a help when you become sports editor and why I think Matt Lawton will do a good job in his new role on the Daily Mail sports desk.”

A 10-month spell at the Sunday Times was followed by a move to the Daily Mail which he left in 2006. Curry still does “bits and pieces for the Daily Mail” and the occasional newspaper review for Sky but most of all he is thankful he was able to experience reporting during the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties when football writers and players mixed freely, an impossible dream for the current generation.

He said: “Access was so much easier. We used to stroll into training grounds, stand on the touchline, shout at the players and have fun. It was all one happy family. Now, of course, you almost have to make an appointment to visit a training ground. They’re like Fort Knox.

“With England, we’d watch the training at the Bank of England sports ground at Roehampton, wait in a lounge in armchairs, Alf would come in booted and suited with his suitcase and the eight or 10 reporters present would chat to him. No cameras…it was far more relaxed than it is now.

“We made friends with footballers. After England won the World Cup I remember giving Alan Ball a piggy-back round the reception of the Royal Garden hotel in Kensington late in the night.”

Forty six years later the only contact football writers have with England players is in the mixed zone after internationals.

Curry continued: “My contacts book was full of home numbers – there were no mobiles then.”

No mobiles and no lap-tops which made filing reports far more challenging from the present era of pressing “send” and within seconds a story is with the sports desk. “In those days you had to have a phone installed in a press box. Not just that, you couldn’t ring out, you had to wait for the office to ring you. We’d sit there with our copy ready waiting and praying it would ring.

“There were occasions when only one paper could get a line out and after the reporter had put his report over to the copy taker, his switchboard would somehow transfer to another paper.”

The job has moved on in many ways and the current generation of football writers operate under far more pressure than those of yesteryear where working conditions were more free and easy.

Curry said: “I remember being in the Bernabeu in 1965 when Sir Alf Ramsey first played without wingers against Spain. It was a bitterly cold night and a chap was a walking round with some fiery liquid. By the time the match finished Geoffrey Green must have drunk almost a gallon of this stuff and was a little the worse for wear. Yet as always the next morning his report read like prose.”

England’s visit to South America in 1984, when John Barnes scored his supergoal against Brazil in the Maracana, was a particularly memorable trip for Curry. He said: “Jeff Powell of the Daily Mail and I went to a beef restaurant in Rio he knew and inside were Bob Driscoll [Daily Star] and Alex Montgomery [Sun] talking to this English chap about life in Brazil.

“They had no idea who he was, but I recognised him. It was Ronnie Biggs who was delighted to chat to us while we bought him drinks.”

The flight back from South America was delayed and Team Curry found themselves in a hotel in Montevideo where the foursome decided to try the Uruguayan Bloody Mary. They were soon joined by other football writers who also found the cocktail the perfect companion for killing time.

“After a while the waiter, dressed in a dicky bow, said as he put down the final round of drinks ‘Congratulations, you have now drunk 100 Bloody Mary’s.”

A bar tab, Curry maintains with a hint of pride, he has never given to anyone at Mort’s.

NORTHERN MANAGERS AWARDED

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The 30th Northern Managers Award Dinner took place at the Radisson Blu Edwardian Hotel in Manchester last night.

There were plenty of managers and coaches in attendance along with press and media from up and down the country to celebrate the award winners.

Nine awards were given out on the night and the managers who received the accolades are listed below.

Roberto Mancini was the last manager to be honoured on the night and it will please Manchester City fans that he is determined to win the award next year too, which will only happen if City win the league again of course.

It was somewhat appropriate that the event took place in Manchester after last season’s thrilling finale to the Barclays Premier League and chairman of the FWA Steve Bates took great pleasure in welcoming the managers to the evening.

“It’s often said that players take the glory while managers get the grief so we are delighted tonight to honour our award winners for their success last season,” said Bates.

Comedian Vince Miller was the Master of Ceremonies and was pleased to introduce special guest Graham Poll, who addressed the audience of whom many will have once used to write about his performance on a Saturday afternoon.

The nine award winning managers are as follows:

1 ROBERTO MANCINI (Manchester City) Barclays PL Champions.

2 KENNY DALGLISH (Liverpool) Carling League Cup Winners.

3 DAVE JONES (Sheffield Wednesday) npower Lge 1 runners-up.

4 SIMON GRAYSON (Huddersfield Town) npower Lge 1 p/off winners.

5 STEVE DAVIS (Crewe Alexandra) npower Lge 2 p/off winners.

6 JOHN SHERIDAN (Chesterfield) Johnstones Paint Trophy winners.

SPECIAL AWARDS:

7 GARY MILLS (York City) FA Carlsberg Trophy winners and Blue Square Bet Premier play-off winners.

8 MICKY MELLON (Fleetwood Town) Blue Square Conference champions).

9 BILLY IRWIN (Dunston UTS) FA Carlsberg Vase winners.

GERRARD NAMED AS FWA TRIBUTE HONOUREE

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Steven Gerrard has been named as the honouree at the FWA Tribute Award this year, which takes place at the Savoy hotel in London.

The accolade is given out to someone who has made an outstanding contribution to the national game and will be presented at the gala dinner on January 20.

The award was won by Paul Scholes and Gary Neville last year; the first time in which the award was won by two players.

Gerrard won the FWA footballer of the year award in 2009 after leading Liverpool to a second place finish in the Premier League in the 2008/09 season.

The England midfielder scored 24 goals for his club that season including seven in the UEFA Champions League before the Reds were knocked out by Chelsea in the quarter-finals.

After spending his whole career at Anfield the only domestic honour to evade Gerrard is a Premier League title.

Liverpool’s captain has three League Cup winners’ medals, two FA Cups and two Community Shields to his name along with one UEFA Cup.

Arguably his greatest honour as a club player came in Istanbul in 2005 where he led Liverpool to Champions League glory after a penalty shootout against AC Milan, despite being 3-0 down at half-time.

The 32-year-old has made 411 league appearances for Liverpool, while representing his country on 98 occasions and captaining England 23 times.

Brian Woolnough funeral

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The funeral of Daily Star Chief Sports Writer Brian Woolnough will take place at Christ Church, Esher, on Thursday, October 4, at 2pm followed by a celebration of Brian’s life at Sandown Park Racecourse. All are welcome.

The family request no flowers, but donations can be sent to the Bobby Moore Fund for Cancer Research UK, or the Sam Beare Hospice in Weybridge, Surrey.

BRIAN WOOLNOUGH 1948 – 2012

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A giant of our profession who became part of our Sunday mornings

By CHRISTOPHER DAVIES

Brian Woolnough, possibly the most famous face in football writing, died today aged 63.

Wooly, as he was known, started on the Esher News, moving to the Evening Post in Hemel Hempstead before starting a 27-year career with The Sun where he became chief football writer. In 2001 he moved to the Daily Star as a sports columnist but became well known to the football world through talkSPORT and Sky Sports where he initially hosted Hold The Back Page in 1994 and, more recently, the Sunday Supplement.

As a football writer Woolnough became one of the first “scufflers”, digging for news and some would say no one has done it better. Popular among colleagues even on rival newspapers, he would greet us with his trademark: “My dear old thing…” At some ungodly hour in the morning at an airport, Woolnough would somehow be in a good mood, unique among Fleet Street’s bleary eyed finest. A long-standing member of the Football Writers’ Association, Wooly seemed incapable of not smiling.

His appearance could be deceptive and Martin Lipton, the Daily Mirror’s football correspondent, said: “When I first met Brian which was 20-odd years ago, I couldn’t believe that this elegant, well-spoken man was actually the chief football writer of The Sun. As I got to know Brian I realised he was a terrific journalist, a fantastic bloke and a wonderful friend for many years.

“We spent a lot of time together in a lot of places. Nobody loved cricket more than Brian, which was his passion. He was so excited when England won the Ashes. He had a great love of life and sport.

“He was a trialblazer in many ways. Apart from being one of the first scufflers, he became the master of the back page story. Then he made the move from the written media to broadcasting where he became such a familiar face all over the country. He became part of our Sunday mornings.

“People looked up to him, he was a proper sports journalist and a proper bloke. He was the life and soul of trips.”

Daily Express football correspondent Mick Dennis, who worked alongside Woolnough at The Sun for a spell, said: “At The Sun Brian was a story-getter and those in the business realise that is the hardest skill. When he developed his second career in broadcasting he made it look very easy.

“What impressed me was that the Sunday Supplement, which he hosted initially with Jimmy Hill…he made sure the show was never all about him. He facilitated football conversations and the programme became a must-watch for fans across the country. He mastered two branches of our profession like nobody else has done.”

Daily Telegraph football correspondent Henry Winter remembers Woolnough the family man as much as Woolnough the football writer. Winter said: “Brian was a big family man. We’d be walking through the dark streets in some far flung place and he’d be talking with such pride about what his sons and how they were doing at university. That’s my abiding memory of Brian. He’d ask how my kids were doing, he was very selfless like that. We’d be at Heathrow at six in the morning clutching all the first editions and the first thing he’d ask is: ‘How the family?’

“He was a high-class scuffler. What I particularly liked about Brian the journalist is that he really cared about the game. He understood how much it meant to people and he’d never belittle it. At the same time he was never so in awe of football people that he wouldn’t ask the hardest question, but he’d do it in such a caring way. That’s why, in his later years, he proved such a great presenter on Sky Sports. He was a natural scuffler and a natural broadcaster.

“He knew exactly what he wanted to say and despite having a producer screaming in his ear, he was always so relaxed. I’d put him up with the top broadcasters that football television has seen.”

Neil Ashton, the football news correspondent of the Daily Mail, spoke of the passion Woolnough had for his job. Ashton said: “He was proud to be in the position he had and rightly so. Brian had enormous pride in whatever he did and had an incredible passion for the job. When I started out he was a very authoritative figure in the industry, his presence almost statesman-like whether he was in the press box, a media conference or a bar. As a young journalist I knew that Brian was more old school and I wasn’t just going to walk in and stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Brian Woolnough. Respect had to be earned.”

Ashton has been hosting the Sunday Supplement in recent weeks and said: “Whenever I was on the show with Brian, I watched it back to learn. He always kept the three guests involved in the chat, no one was ever isolated. While I was asked to fill in on the short term, whoever does the job permanently is following someone with immense dignity.”

Mark Irwin, football correspondent of The Sun, recalls that when he was with the Daily Mirror, the football writer he was most likely to receive a late night call about when the first editions dropped was Woolnough. “If he had a story, you knew there was something in it,” said Irwin.

“When I joined The Sun he was chief football writer and everyone looked up to him. He was such a nice fellow, not the Big I Am. To survive for 27 years at The Sun tells you something about Brian. When he got a story, people took note.

“He was also the first of the new TV generation and opened the door for the rest of us, enabling others to cross over from print to broadcasting.”

Patrick Barclay, columnist for the Independent on Sunday and Evening Standard, said: “As a journalist I think he was a giant in our profession. He was our answer to Robin Day or Jeremy Paxman. He would ask the question that other journalists hoped someone else would ask. It is not easy to ask hard questions of our heroes and Brian never shirked it. This had much to do with his genuine love of the England team.

“While professionally he never suffered fools, as a person he was much softer, very kind and considerate. On Sunday Supplement he would, if necessary, gently guide guests away from blunders as much has he could, though it never stopped him from ridiculing me if he thought I’d gone too far and I loved him for that.

“I got to know Brian during the 1984 European Championship, the summer when John Barnes scored his famous goal in Brazil. The leading sports commentators were still in South America as Euro 84 got under way. Brian and I plus a couple of others constituted the English press corps, that’s how much things have changed. At one stage the entire press pack was travelling around in one car armed with a Michelin guide and a piece of paper on which to write our daily 300-word report.

“Brian then went on to master the art of television, becoming a national figure in the football community. He became probably as good a broadcaster as he was journalist, which is saying something.

“Most importantly, he was a good man and a great family man. It is sad he has been denied what would have been a long and happy retirement with his family.”

Daily Star sports editor Howard Wheatcroft said: “Brian was the doyen of his generation of sports journalists and had been the senior figure in football journalism for a long, long time. To my mind he also paved the way for journalists being called upon as pundits.

“When the era of rolling sports news began, such was his standing that he was in demand from virtually day one – and up until the end he was still the best of the lot.

He was a big man in many ways, but he was never arrogant and had an incredible appetite for hard work.”

It is only three months since the death of the Daily Star’s chief football writer Danny Fullbrook at the age of 40, also from cancer, while former FWA chairman Dennis Signy died earlier this year.

30th Northern Managers Awards Dinner 2012

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30th NORTHERN MANAGERS AWARDS DINNER 2012 in conjunction with BARCLAYS
Sunday October 21st, Radisson Blu Edwardian Hotel
Peter Street, Manchester M2 5GP (formerly The Free Trade Hall)
Reception 6.45pm for 7.30pm. Dress code: LOUNGE SUITS

Master of Ceremonies: VINCE MILLER
Guest speaker: GRAHAM POLL (Former World Cup Referee).

Tickets: £60 (FWA members), £65 (Non members/guests)
Available on a first-come-first-served basis for either tables of 10/11, smaller groups or individuals. Cheques should be made payable to ‘FWA NORTH’ and forwarded to the Secretary ahead of the function.

If you want to stay over you need to contact us for more information.

Cheques and ticket applications to:
Richard Bott (secretary FWA North)
4 Brentwood Close, Smithy Bridge, Littleborough, Lancs. OL15 0ND.

This year there are NINE AWARD-WINNING MANAGERS, as follows:

1 ROBERTO MANCINI (Manchester City) Barclays PL Champions.

2 KENNY DALGLISH (Liverpool) Carling League Cup Winners

3 DAVE JONES (Sheffield Wednesday) npower Lge 1 runners-up

4 SIMON GRAYSON (Huddersfield Town) npower Lge 1 p/off winners

5 STEVE DAVIS (Crewe Alexandra) npower Lge 2 p/off winners

6 JOHN SHERIDAN (Chesterfield) Johnstones Paint Trophy winners

SPECIAL AWARDS:

7 GARY MILLS (York City) FA Carlsberg Trophy winners and Blue Square Bet Premier play-off winners.

8 MICKY MELLON (Fleetwood Town) Blue Square Conference champions).

9 BILLY IRWIN (Dunston UTS) FA Carlsberg Vase winners.

MENU:

Minted lamb neck croquettes with ratatouille vinaigrette micro salad.

(Vegetarian option: Mille fuille of parmesan crisp sunblush tomato and rocket pesto)
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Roasted vine tomato and sweet pepper soup
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Fillet of Cheshire beef with wasabi creamed potato, carrot and parsnip, baby onion tart.

(Vegetarian option: Roast vegetable and pesto cannelloni)
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Wild berry cheesecake with Grey Goose vodka

*******

Coffee and petit fours

Vauxhall bring Home Nations managers together for World Cup preview

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VAUXHALL MOTORS will create a piece of footballing history when they bring together the four Home Nations managers to preview the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.

Roy Hodgson (England), Michael O’Neill (Northern Ireland), Craig Levein (Scotland) and Chris Coleman (Wales) will join forces for a special Road to Brazil event in London hosted by Vauxhall, proud lead sponsors of all four Home Nations.

More than 100 media are expected to attend the event, at the Honourable Artillery Company HQ at Armoury House on Friday August 24th.

The four managers will take part in a panel discussion about the 2014 World Cup and answer questions from assembled media.

Duncan Aldred, Chairman and Managing Director of Vauxhall Motors, said; “The Road to Brazil event is a historic moment in our sponsorship of Home Nations football.

“We are incredibly proud to be the first organisation to be the lead partner of England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales at the same time.

“This is a truly momentous occasion and offers a unique opportunity for the four managers to meet and give an insight and preview ahead of the 2014 World Cup.

“We are extremely grateful to all four of the governing bodies for helping to make such a special event possible.”

The World Cup qualification campaigns kick off next week with England in Group H alongside Moldova, Ukraine, San Marino, Poland and Montenegro.

Wales and Scotland are paired together in Group A and will face Belgium, Serbia, Macedonia and Croatia.

Whilst Northern Ireland find themselves in Group F against Russia, Luxembourg, Portugal, Azerbaijan and Israel.

As part of their fan engagement programme Vauxhall has been running a series of country specific competitions offering fans the chance to win tickets to every home game of the qualifying campaign and join their team on the Road to Brazil.

For more information on www.vauxhallfootball.co.uk

Graham Nickless fit and well

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Graham Nickless is fit and well again after making a remarkable recovery from a brain hemorrhage which he suffered in the United States on May 13.

Graham told footballwriters.co.uk: “I had a brain bleed which nearly killed me yet the burst blood vessel healed itself and the cause was never found. I was in the right place at the right time in that I enjoyed first class US treatment and care.

“I know that quite a few of the England reporters heard about my plight during Euro 2012 and I would like to let them, and others around the country, know that I am nearly back to full fitness apart from a bit of tiredness and weak and aching muscles.

“I would also like to thank all those colleagues who sent me good wishes during my seven-week enforced stay in Naples, Florida.”

We look forward to seeing Nico at Barclays Premier League matches in the near future.