Day 3a Of The 30 Day Football Challenge – Matches That Make Me Happy

AFC Wimbledon 2-3 Bristol Rovers – 06/08/2011 – Favourite for ‘Stoking the Fires’

A new entry here, obviously, and not one that would probably be on the list in 10 years’ time, but I thoroughly enjoyed every last second of this second game of the Football League season last weekend. From the minute the Sky people appeared, trying to big up Wimbledon’s return but being completely drowned out by Rovers fans singing Goodnight Irene, to the wonderfully ebbing and flowing game, to the ‘not quite working out how you’d have hoped’, it epitomised everything that is good about football in the lower leagues, right down to the Butcher, Baker, Candlestick-Maker feel that Wimbledon’s team brought to the proceedings by containing the gloriously monikered Jolley and Wellard. Truly a shame one team had to lose this one. Truly lit my fire for the season to come.

 

Leeds Utd 1-3 Southend – 24/10/2006 – Favourite for ‘Opening a New Possibility’

I said to myself that I wouldn’t do this; wouldn’t just have Leeds getting beaten as my favourite non-Town things I enjoyed, but this is a little bit different. I was at another match this night, I think it may have been in Liverpool, for some reason, and we’d got back into the car and were travelling back and heard on Five Live first the result, which was nice, and then the fact that it left Leeds 23^rd in the Championship – their lowest position ever we were told. This was pleasant enough, but then – and this is why this match is in here – a Leeds fan phoned up to correct the presenter that Leeds had actually spent about a day that low before, sometime in 1962 or some such. That Leeds fan who phoned up served only one purpose to me. He indicated that,  not only could Leeds get relegated, but they were scared it was going to happen, too. I knew, there and then, that come May, they were more than likely going down to League One. Apologies to any Leeds fans who’ve stumbled across this posting, but that’ll be your last unfavourable mention in this post.

 

France 3-0 Brazil – 14/07/1998 -Favourite for  ‘Crowning a Hero’

I love Zinedine Zidane. Everything about him, from his playing ability to his reticence to speak when co-commentating on Marseille games. He is, of course, one of the greatest players of the modern era – so great that PES added one of his personal tricks. Adidas use him as a football ‘guru’. This game, though, was what put him on that pedestal. Let’s not forget that he’d not had the most ‘special’ of World Cups – remember the stamp on the Saudi that saw him banned? That was this one. It was just that this game everything came together beautifully; for Zidane, for France and for football in a way it had spectacularly failed to do four years hence for my favourite of the footballers. This was Zidane’s day, and he shone as brightly as on any day of his career.

 

Any FA Cup First/Second Round Game -Favourite For ‘Guaranteed Enjoyment’

If ever you need to keep me in one place for a long time, just find a collection of FA Cup First Round Match of the Days, tie me to a chair, and leave me there. I love them. Ever since I first realised that it was there that the real minnows against bigboys affairs happen (think about it – come the third round, it’s the Conference at the lowest, and that’s not the same as watching Faversham Town travelling to Sheffield Wednesday). It’s the round you get the most lopsided scores – Colchester have a 7-1 win to their name, Orient have an 8-2 (extra time) win and Norwich won 7-0 in the last few years alone. The second round is much the same, just on a smaller scale. But yes, FA Cup First Round Day is MY day. Should Town be promoted to the Championship, we will lose my favourite game of the season, every season. It’s a small trade off for not being in the JPT, but I’ll miss it immensely.

 

Liverpool 0-2 Arsenal – 26/05/1989 – Favourite For ‘Catchphrases’; ‘Delightful Drama’

This game, more than any other game, distilled a league campaign into 90 minutes of football. I’m too young to remember it fully, but I know how it all fitted together, I know enough. Liverpool just had to draw. Then, later on, Liverpool just had to keep it 0-1. Then, for a moment there, it was up for grabs. And then it was grabbed. And that goal, that commentary and that moment came to signify exactly that. The moment that something was either won or lost and then, decisively, won. You don’t get many of those in football, and this was the most dramatic and the ‘first’. Those moments, I guess, unless you lose it all, are wonderful, and each one makes me happy.

Day 2a Of The 30 Day Football Challenge – My Least Favourite Non-Town Games

Again, these are split into 5 Town and 5 Non-Town. I’ve (also again) tried to stick with games I saw ‘live’, either in person, or on the telly-ma-vision, so the friendly Il Grande Torino played against Benfica doesn’t feature, although that game was disastrous for obvious reasons.

Bury 1 – 1 Oxford Utd – 21st Mar 2006– Least Favourite For ‘Matchday Experience’.

No surprise this is in here; anyone who was there would attest how bad it was. Ice-cold February night, £18 to get in (to Bury!), and absolutely no football played at all except for a 3 minute spell during which Bury scored a penalty and Oxford, as if offended by the two teams appearing at different levels of appalling, equalised immediately, before both reverted to doing absolutely nothing for the remainder of the game. It was meant to be the return of Jim Smith to Oxford (which was one of the reasons I was there) but that wasn’t announced until the following day, which meant the already tenuous reason for being there was rendered moot. Utterly, utterly awful, and a fine example of why, sometimes, lower league football fails.

England 0 – 0 Algeria – 18th Jun 2010 – Least Favourite For ‘Football Going Bad’

Its Saturday evening. It’s the World Cup. Its England’s best chance for a generation. Its against one of the worst teams in the tournament. So, Algeria set out to frustrate England, but barely have to do anything worthy of the name, as England put in a performance so insipid that they not only get booed off the field, but a bird landing on a goal-post was the highlight of the game. International football is only exciting if people set out to make it exciting – that’s not in Fabio Capello’s nature, and against a team who were trying to remain compact, instead of watching the tide wash over a beach, it was more like watching two stagnant pools rippling next to each other.

Arsenal 2 – 3 Tottenham H – 20th Nov 2010 – Least Favourite For ‘Teams Who Stopped Trying To Win The Game’

This game was exciting. Arsenal led 2-0 at half time, but Spurs gradually reeled them in and could have nicked it late on. That’s a fair assessment of the 90 minutes. However, Arsenal could, and probably, should have led five or six nil at half time had they not stopped playing when they’d got two, as if they’d declared – I vividly remember Marouane Chamakh receiving the ball in the Spurs’ area a few minutes before half-time, controlling it, and then just giving it to the Spurs defence as if he couldn’t be bothered to actually do anything with it. I was annoyed by this. So it was good to see Spurs start coming back in – but then when they’d got their goals, they stopped trying to get more; running the ball into the corners, wasting time, and generally negating their good work. I was livid at this. Its started my mental campaign of ‘all teams trying to win every game by as higher score as they can’.

Italy 0 – 0p Brazil – July 17th 1994 – Least Favourite For ‘Fallen Heroes’

I love Roberto Baggio. I make no bones about that. I could watch him play football for hours on end, and have done. Never have I seen anyone play the game quite like he did. 1994 was his finest hour. Even after being removed against Ireland, and largely being injured throughout the tournament, he was good enough to guide Italy to the final, wherein, really, the football stopped. It was, again, an appalling game of football – both teams were shot from the demands of the tournament and neither looked like winning it. Then the inevitable penalties made their heroes and villains and I was on the wrong side. Franco Baresi – a hero; disaster. Roberto Baggio – the hero; disaster. So we ended where we started – the biggest star on the field missing a penalty. Gutted.

Wycombe 3 – 0 Gillingham – 8th May 2010 – Least Favourite For ‘Depressing People That I Like’

I’m not a Gillingham fan, despite geography, and I haven’t yet connected with them the way I did Norwich – but that’s by the by. Last season for the Gills wasn’t a particularly good one; there was highs (they beat a lot of big teams…. Huddersfield, Southampton…) but far more lows (they lost to some minnows…. Huddersfield, Southampton….) so it all came down to the last game of the season, a visit to already relegated Wycombe, having won no games away from home all season. As such, the defeat wasn’t a surprise, but such a capitulation was pretty crushing, and, in football terms, it took the Gillingham fans a pretty long time to get over it – maybe until Christmas time this season. Truly depressing stuff it was, though it didn’t help that Town lost at Exeter at the same time to make the inevitable inevitable.

Day 1a Of The 30 Day Football Challenge – My Favourite Non-Town Games

Arsenal 1-3 Tottenham – 14^th April 1991 – Favourite for ‘Performance Of My Hero’.

I was a massive Paul Gascoigne fan as a boy, and we seemed to see a lot of this cup run. I remember Spurs beating Notts County; I remember Gazza scoring against Portsmouth, and then we got to the semi-final – Arsenal. I was concerned for Spurs, because I knew Arsenal were a good team. That concern dissipated pretty quickly. Spurs got off to a flyer, and then that goal… that beautiful beautiful goal. Whenever I see Paul Gascoigne now, I think back to that goal, to that freekick, and to that celebration sprinting towards the Spurs fans. I don’t he’ll ever have been happier in his life than in that exact moment – everything came together and he was… he was the star of the show. My main memory of the match – as so many times since – is that Spurs had raced into a lead, and I spent the rest of the game panicking that Arsenal might pull it back, which they came close to, but never did. Had the 9 year old me enthralled. I didn’t watch the final, and the beginning of the end for Gazza, I went to Jodrell Bank instead.

Barcelona 5-0 Real Madrid – 29^th November 2010 – Favourite For ‘Quality of Football Played’

I’d seen Barcelona a few times in the build-up to this, and knew how well they were playing – but I didn’t see this coming. I can barely remember a Real player touching the ball, though I know there were some hairy moments for Barca before they went ahead. It was quite thrilling to see not just a team playing well, but every component part excelling – truly we saw the best of Xavi, of Iniesta, of Villa, of Messi and any watching must have put in mind of Pele’s ‘beautiful game’ statement; football at its very, very best. As I recall, I was gasping at various things (the ball that released David Villa for the second goal, for certain) like I was watching theatre. The flip side of this was how anonymous a certain Cristiano Ronaldo was, which was a delight to see, also.

Argentina 0-1 Cameroon – June 8^th 1990 – Favourite For ‘Not Quite Changing Of The World Order’

The game that started my love affair with African football. This Cameroon team played with such freedom, such joy and such disregard for what people expected they should do. They had two men sent off in this game – including Benjamin Massing for a foul on Claudio Caniggia so bad that its given a certain type of foul his name. Admittedly, Omam Biyik’s goal was as a result of a goalkeeping error, but that only added to the drama (and Argentina benefited, fielding Goycochea in goal for the rest of the tournament) and Argentina were world champions at the time, let’s not forget. This tore the rule book of international football up – anyone could beat anyone. I loved it.

Marseille 3-1 Rennes – 5^th May 2010 – Favourite for ‘Silent Jubilation’

I stayed up for this. In the kitchen. Listening. On headphones. To the radio. On a laptop. That’s how much this meant. I didn’t know it was going to until the evening started unfolding, and Lyon won at Auxerre, in a shocking ‘Doing what I wanted them to do’ moment that OL seem to have a distinct aversion to. Which just meant listening to 90 minutes that felt like 900, even at 3-1 up, before OM finally reclaimed the Ligue 1 trophy that had been absent from the Velodrome since the early 90s. I bit my fingers to shreds that night. I couldn’t move far, being as I was stuck with headphones a maximum of two feet away from the computer. I couldn’t do anything else. Kept the videprinter up. Kept refreshing Livescore – anything to get hold of information before the radio put it through. It was simply amazing, that night, but it was all… on my own. Happy days. Sad days.

England 1-1p Germany – 26^th June 1996 – Favourite For ‘Unceasing Breathless Drama’

This game, despite the fact England lost it, gave those of us who were too young, a view at what it might have been like had England won the World Cup. It wasn’t just the Wembley crowd who were gasping and sighing, and burying heads in hands as goals were disallowed, and Gazza failed to stretch quite far enough, and we ticked, almost inevitably, towards a penalty shoot-out, it was every man-jack of the country – you could feel the intakes of breath, you could hear the yelps of the dogs being kicked as the deflated nation came down to earth with a bump. You could feel all those people together in disappointment and you could sort of realise how it would be if they came together in triumph.