White - A Matter of Life and Death

www.headofzeus.com

For my mum

I KICKING OFF
13141916

The Mayor of London bans football, 1314

The First Law of Association Football, 1863

The Scotsman on the first official England v. Scotland match, 1872

The Pall Mall Gazette on the 1883 Cup final

Herbert Kilpin marks the tenth anniversary of AC Milan, 1909

The last words of Private William Jonas, July 1916

II EARLY DOORS
192358

Terry Hickey on the White Horse final, 1923

Advertisement in The Athletic News , 1925

J. B. Priestley, 1934

Advertisement for FC Flakelf v. FC Start, Kiev, 1942

Albert Camus, 1948

The Daily Express on Tom Finney, 1949

Headline in O Mundo before the 1950 World Cup final

Joe Smith on Stan Matthews, 1953

Geoffrey Green on Billy Wright, 1953

Herbert Zimmermann on the 1954 World Cup final

Harold Hardman on the Munich disaster, 1958

Luiz Mendes on Brazils Garrincha at the 1958 World Cup

Nat Lofthouse, 1950s

III INTO THE FIRST HALF
196189

A reporter quizzes Denis Law, 1961

Len Shackleton, 1964

Kenneth Wolstenholme on the 1966 World Cup final

Celtic manager Jock Stein on the 1967 European Cup final

Bill Shankly, 1968

George Best, 1969

Jock Stein on Bobby Moore, 1969

Hugh McIlvanney on the 1970 FA Cup final

Hunter Davies, 1972

Brian Clough on Polands Jan Tomaszewski, 1973

Pel, 1974

Brian Clough, Elland Road, July 1974

Bob Paisley after the 1977 European Cup final in Rome

Scotland manager Ally MacLeod, 1978

New York Cosmos executive on Franz Beckenbauer, 1979

Bjrge Lillelien on Englands defeat by Norway, Oslo, 1981

Bill Buford, 1984

Tommy Docherty, 1985

Lquipe on the Heysel disaster, 30 May 1985

Diego Maradona, 1986

Ken Bolam, 1987

John Motson on the 1988 FA Cup final

Dutch banner at the European Championship semi-final v West Germany, 1988

Ian Rush, 1988

Brian Moore on Arsenal v. Liverpool, 26 May 1989

Banner unfurled at Old Trafford, December 1989

IV AFTER THE INTERVAL
199099

Gary Lineker after Englands 1990 World Cup semi-final defeat by West Germany

BSkyB advertising slogan for the new Premier League, 1992

Alan Sugar, 1993

Headline in The Sun after Graham Taylor resigned as England manager, 1993

Diego Maradona, 1994

Ryan Giggs, 1994

Eric Cantona, 1995

Neil Warnock, 1995

Alan Hansen, 1995.

Tommy Burns, 1995

Kevin Keegan, 1996

Adidas spokesman on Paul Gascoigne, 1996

Barbara Southgate, 1996

Evening Standard , 1996

Ray Parlour, 1998

Emmanuel Petit, 1998

Celtic fans chant, 1999

John Gregory on Stan Collymore, 1999

V THE SECOND HALF UNFOLDS
19992012

Alex Ferguson on the 1999 European Cup final

Scottish Sun headline, February 2000

George Reynolds, 2000

Roy Keane, 2000

National Criminal Intelligence Service report, March 2001

Attitude magazine on David Beckham, 2002

Roy Keane on Mick McCarthy, 2002

Gareth Southgate on Sven-G ran Eriksson, 2002

El Hadji Diouf, 2002

Ian Holloway, 2003

Ron Atkinson, 2004

Jos Mourinho, 2004

Delia Smith, 2005

Jamie Carragher, 2005

Zinedine Zidane on Marco Materazzi after the 2006 World Cup final

Joey Barton, 2006

Tim Lovejoy questions Peter Crouch, 2007

Zlatan Ibrahimovi on the art of dummying, 2008

Banner waved at Goodison Park during a Merseyside derby, 2008

Joe Kinnear, 2008

Harry Redknapp, 2008

Dave Woods of Channel 5, 2008

Ellie Penfold, fiance of Jermaine Jenas, 2009

Terry Eagleton, 2011

Richard Keys on Sky TV, 2011

Gary Neville on the Chelsea Barcelona Champions League semi-final, 2012

Martin Tyler on Agero's Premier League-winning goal, May 2012.

VI EXTRA TIME AND PENALTIES
201314

Banner unveiled at Old Trafford, August 2013

Keith Gillespie on his gambling habit, 2013

Sir Alex Ferguson on Roy Keane, 2013

Jack Wilshere, 2013

Jrgen Klopp, 2013

Nicolas Anelka, 2013

Jos Mourinho on Arsne Wenger, 2014

Mohamed Al-Fayed on the removal of his Michael Jackson statue, 2014

Daily Mail headline after Luis Surez bit Italys Giorgio Chellini, 2014

Slogan painted on the Brazil team bus before the 2014 World Cup semi-final

Alan Hansen was lost for words. It was the evening of 8 July 2014 and the whistle for half-time had just sounded in the World Cup semi-final between Brazil and Germany when a BBC camera panned onto the face of the corporations leading football pundit. It revealed a brow creased in perplexity. What he had just seen had rendered Hansen flummoxed, flabbergasted, floundering. A man who had developed a sizeable reputation for the rigour of his analysis and the speed of his verbal dissection of footballs defensive arts was temporarily rendered mute by the shambles he had just witnessed.

What made his reaction all the more astonishing was that this was the Brazilian football team he was reporting on. Custodians of the most vaunted international tradition in sporting history, these were the representatives of a nation which had won the World Cup on no fewer than five previous occasions, the five stars atop the crest on their chest testament to the glories achieved by former national sides. And here they were, in the space of just ten first-half minutes, conceding four goals to a rampant Germany. By half-time they were trailing 50 in the semi-final of their own World Cup in front of their own supporters. A competition many thought they were predestined to win was rapidly turning to dust.

But it wasnt the manner of German superiority that momentarily muted Hansen. Joachim Lows team was good very good and would rightly ultimately triumph in the competition, the first European side to lift the World Cup in the Americas. But they were not sufficiently stellar to stop the eloquent Scotsman in his chat-tracks. Besides, excellence generally encourages words, rather than preventing them from emerging. It was the Brazilian haplessness that he found so hard to explain. How had a side that had been ruthless in its demolition of Chile and Colombia in the earlier knock-out rounds apparently transformed into jelly at the point where it really mattered? How had players at the very pinnacle of their profession, who had sung the national anthem before kick-off with a passion rarely before demonstrated on a football pitch, played with such a spineless lack of resolve, resembling in their organisation a particularly shambolic Sunday morning gathering of under-nines? This was embarrassing. This was enough to tie even the most eloquent tongue.

When Hansen finally composed himself and in truth his silence was but a fleeting thing he did not hold back. His assessment was as withering as it was heartfelt. In forty years in the game I have never seen anything like it, he announced.

Looking back on that excruciating 71 defeat in Belo Horizonte, a night on which as the German goals flew in the mood among the watching Brazilians switched from open-mouthed astonishment through anger and humiliation to a kind of self-mocking laughter, it is hard to better Hansens response. The teams capitulation really was extraordinary, a landmark moment in the games history, a unique instance of incompetence. His words succinctly encapsulated its significance.