Danny Baker - Classic Football Debates Settled Once and for All

Table of Contents

CLASSIC
FOOTBALL
DEBATES

CLASSIC
FOOTBALL
DEBATES SETTLED ONCE AND FOR ALL
VOLUME 1 DANNY BAKER
& DANNY KELLY

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1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2Published in 2009 by Ebury Press, an imprint of Ebury Publishing
A Random House Group CompanyCopyright Danny Baker and Danny Kelly 2009Danny Baker and Danny Kelly have asserted their right to be identified as the authors of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988This electronic book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaserThe Random House Group Limited Reg. No. 954009Addresses for companies within the Random House Group can be found at www.randomhouse.co.ukA CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British LibraryISBN: 9781407027746Version 1.0To buy books by your favourite authors and register for offers visit www.rbooks.co.uk

Why not us?
An introductionHello. Nobody is more aware than Danny and I that the last thing the world needs is another book about football. It is a sombre fact that since the very first publications using movable type were introduced to Britain in 1510 there have been no fewer than 40 different books worrying themselves over this simple peasant pastime.Even before that there were six separate illuminated soccer manuscripts being painstakingly worked on by monks in monasteries as disparate as York and Tintagel. Incredibly none of these monks was aware of the toils of their brethren and yet frustratingly they were all simultaneously turning out histories of Bolton Wanderers. (Only one of the works was actually authorised and was finally published in 1987 to universally poor reviews.)So why do we need another one now? Has football changed that much? Can we, a pair of straw-chewing yokels, add anything to that vast 40-book pyramid of prattle about what is, essentially, an old ladies' fascination?Well we think we can.The sad truth is that football once a game that enthralled kings and maharajas, dustmen and charladies alike is dying. It is an oft-repeated fact that though there were 69,000 souls inside the Olympia-stadion Berlin for the 2006 World Cup final, barely half that number bothered to watch it on TV throughout the world. And yet how many people realise that 'barely half' of 69,000 is 34,498 a figure that, in the 1980s, Chester City could have comfortably expected to turn up on a wet Monday morning just to watch them train?This is football in the twenty-first century. Something must be done. Has to be done. And we, a pair of chuckling fat old boys, are here to do it.Over the next six volumes and 20,000-plus pages Danny and I hope to not only put football into its proper historical perspective but to get among its modern-day guts, wriggle around in its teeming matter, yank out gristle and teeth and say, 'Here. Here, world. Here's your football.'By putting it in context and reminding both everyday and 'big-pot' people of what it was that folk once found so fascinating about this game of two halves, we believe we can not only cause a surge in worldwide attendances but revive the moribund attitude towards the sport of radio, television and the hundreds of people who use the Internet.A long time ago it was said that football was bigger than life or death. I think it was death. Danny and I believe that through this book we can get it back to that state of importance, renew our vows with this estranged muddy wife of ours, and collectively make the sequel the whole world really wants to see, yet has forgotten not only that it wants to see it but even where the cinema is situated and what way you face the screen if, and when, you did remember its location. It really is as bad as that.So welcome home, football. Through oral history, remarkable tales, stunning graphics and big-budget fireworks may this book herald your return. We may not be able to work any magic for the next World Cup but the one after that... Is a global television figure of one million reawakened soccer fans merely a dream?It would be our pleasure.Danny, 2009

Can any other sport
seriously match up
to football? Anyone for Kabbadi?In the introduction to his famous book The Great American Novel (it's about baseball and communism) Philip Roth devotes the first seventy-five pages to slagging off rival books that might aspire to the title of The Great American Novel. Thus Moby Dick, The Last of the Mohicans, The Great Gatsby and all the rest of those A-level staples get the most terrific kicking. Baker & Kelly are fairer than that, and think that you might like to know, before reading a book of this size and complexity, that other sports are available. What follows, then, is an expert assessment of the other major sports, recreations and pastimes worldwide, and how they compare to soccer. Football first, obviously... Association Football What's it like? In its mixture of individual skill and team effort, in its pattern of striving but only very occasional attainment, in its ability to inspire, distress, engage and enthral, football is a grass-bound version of everything that makes life worth living. It lacks only the sexy bits. Even that isn't true if you count the incident in 2001 when Jos Antonio Reyes (once of Arsenal, but at that time a kid with Sevilla) scored a brilliant goal. In the resultant celebratory pile-up, one of his teammates, Francisco Gallardo, pulled Reyes' shorts to one side and gave him a little kiss on his most private part. Reyes was mildly perplexed. 'I felt a little nip,' he said, 'but I didn't realise what Paco was doing.' The main Spanish sports paper Marca took a rather less relaxed view, running a gigantic headline on its front page: INTOLERABLE! Yeah, football is great. Who plays it? Everyone. The United Nations has 192 members. The International Olympic Committee has 205. FIFA has 208. Who likes it? Everybody. Except Americans. And lunatics. In truth, football has captured the globe. In 1998 a group of American scientists infiltrated the murkiest depths of the Amazon jungle to film a remote tribe that had only ever had the most fleeting interaction with the outside world. When they finally made contact, they were greeted by the tribal elder emerging from the dense forest in just a loincloth, and a Barcelona baseball cap. Famous fans. Just a smattering, English clubs only. Prince Harry, Osama bin Laden (Arsenal), Martin Shaw, Prince William (Aston Villa), Michael Parkinson, Dickie Bird (Barnsley), Jasper Carrott, Vernon Kay (Birmingham), Fat Boy Slim (Brighton), Alistair Campbell (Burnley), Melvyn Bragg (Carlisle), Dame Kelly Holmes (Charlton), Richard Attenborough, Michael Caine (Chelsea), Eddie Izzard, Ronnie Corbett (Crystal Palace), Ridley Scott (Hartlepool), the Kaiser Chiefs (Leeds), Englebert Humperdinck (Leicester), Roger Whittaker (Hereford), Daniel Craig, Jimmy Tarbuck (Liverpool), Monty Panesar (Luton), Rick Wakeman, the Gallagher brothers (Manchester City), Jennifer Saunders, Thom Yorke (Manchester United), Frank Maloney (Millwall), Ant 'n' Dec, Tony Blair, Sting (Newcastle), David Frost, Stephen Fry (Norwich), Michael Foot, Dawn French (Plymouth), Pete Doherty, Michael Nyman, Mick Jones out of The Clash (QPR), the Chuckle Brothers (Rotherham), Kenneth Branagh, Salman Rushdie (Spurs), Glenda Jackson, Patricia Routledge (Tranmere), Frank Bruno, John Cleese, Keira Knightley, Ray Winstone (West Ham). Weird. As this book is busy proving, virtually everything about football is pretty odd. But if we have to pick one thing, try this. There will be a poor-quality prize for the person who can help B&K understand why it is that Londoners are never successful managers outside the capital. Craggy Scots, blunt Yorkshiremen, down-to-earth Lancastrians and a host of other regional stereotypes successfully manage clubs all over the shop Nicholson, Revie, Clough, Busby, Shankly, Robson, Paisley, Ferguson, Moyes, even George Graham yet nobody born within the old North/ South Circular ring road has ever done the remotest good away from London. What, exactly, is that about? Wonderful. When, in 1950, Uruguay won the World Cup for the second time, half of the nation's population came to the capital, Montevideo, to see the team and the trophy arrive. The nation's president, Toms Berreta, did not mess about. 'Other countries have their history,' he declaimed, 'we have our football!' Suggested improvements. More games. Cancel the close season. And take up Danny Baker's sister's idea of snazzing up kits with brightly coloured capes. Baker & Kelly Rating [points out of 100]: 98. Most wonderful game ever invented. Two points docked because of baleful influence of sharktoothed American tycoons, skulking Russian oligarchs, oil-rich despots and faceless Icelandic financial institutions who've bought the actual clubs. Family silver sold to rag-and-bone men for gin money.