Innholdsfortegnelse for November 2024 i FourFourTwo UK

“MADRID HADN’T BEEN EUROPEAN CHAMPIONS FOR SOME TIME – I’LL ALWAYS REMEMBER THAT NIGHT” Uniao Sao Joao 1-0 Coritiba March 25, 1992 Brazilian Serie B “A month earlier, I’d made my senior debut for Brazil against the United States. I was only 18, but my whole life had been like this – things moved very fast. To achieve this while playing for Uniao Sao Joao, a small side from Sao Paulo’s state countryside, really was something. I had been with Uniao since I was 13 years old, so to then take them back to Brazil’s Serie A in my farewell season meant a lot to me. Perhaps it wouldn’t have been possible if it wasn’t for the goal I scored against Coritiba on this day. It was hot as hell,…

What was the first game that you ever attended? I went to see Brentford vs Walsall in the early 1980s. Back then, if anyone had asked me I would have said I was a Liverpool fan, but my cousin worked for Brentford and got me tickets for my birthday. My dad’s family were from Isleworth and Brentford, and they were Brentford fans. It was freezing cold and we were in the family and friends section of the Braemar Road Stand at Griffin Park – I remember it felt huge. Most of my friends at school would have been Tottenham and Arsenal fans, but this would have been the first match that any of us had been to, so it was a big moment for us all. Who was your childhood…

Hi Gareth. Wikipedia claims you once wrote a poem for children’s book series Roary & Friends. Can this be true? Hi there. I’m afraid it’s not. It was ridiculous, actually, because the company threatened to sue me about the ‘claim’. The person who wrote the books said, “You never contributed anything.” I’d never said I did. Very odd. Your alleged contribution went as follows: “Always keep away from crime, it only leads to badness, crime destroys society, spreading pain and sadness.” I wish I could declare that I had written such an honourable thing. There’s some strange stuff on the internet, isn’t there? I like reading articles on coaching, but if you start looking into things about yourself, you get depressed. Roary is rubbish anyway. We’d much rather watch Rastamouse.…

When Arsenal manager Herbert Chapman proudly declared that his revolutionary new WM formation was how all football should be played, he had no idea of the events he’d set into motion. Football, this game sprung from a medieval tradition of just pelting a bladder around, before evolving into a mob activity for an unlimited number of lunatics to loudly ‘wheeeey’ across their cobbled, scat-speckled streets… was now on its way to being an art form. He’d turned carnage into chemistry. Brutality into ballet. Frenzy into the Football Manager series. But it wouldn’t really be until the 1990s that the science behind formations would reach the mainstream. The great innovators of the game had reinvented countless times over by then, but you go and ask your grandad how many pub arguments…

FFT chats to the three Boy’s A Bit Special stars of Issue 1: first, a humble hotshot on rejecting Arsenal and being ‘Nuddy’ Did you know you were one of our very first ‘Boy’s a Bit Special’ subjects, back in 1994? I still have the magazine at home, some 30 years later! It was special to be one of the up-and-coming players featured. I recall that good things were said about me at the time, but I’ll have to dust off the magazine and re-read it to remind myself of exactly what was written. When I joined Coventry, Terry [Butcher] said, “OK, you’re one of the guys we can’t coach.” Taken aback, I said, “We’re a team – what do you mean, you can’t coach me?” The manager said that…

SPZL FC PARKA £300 adidas.co.uk You don’t lose it. Staring into the middle distance like an irritable Premier League gaffer? Jurgen Klopp mastered the art. The German has ditched the technical area and is now a male model: shot by famed Manchester rock photographer Kevin Cummings, he’s sporting a fantastic parka that is part of a new capsule collection of shoes and tees called ‘SPZL FC’ (Adidas missed a trick by not getting ‘the spezial one’, Jose Mourinho, in on this stunt). As you’d expect, the collection is as pricy as it is limited. MITRE DELTA X SUBBUTEO BALL £45 mitre.com The nostalgia hits like leather on an exposed thigh during first-period PE. Mitre brought back their iconic Delta for the 2024 Subbuteo World Cup, as official ball sponsors, before…

Newcastle defender John Bailey said in the late ’80s that Paul Gascoigne, his young team-mate, was “either going to be one of the greats or finish up at 40, bitter about wasting such talent”. Both ended up being true. ‘Gazza’ was the most gifted player of his generation, becoming a household name thanks to his performances – and tears – at the 1990 World Cup, but there is a strong sense of tragedy and unfulfilment about his life and career. When FFT sat down with him in 2005, Gazza was almost unrecognisable from the chubby youth who wept into his England shirt in Turin 15 years earlier. Still in his thirties then, he seemed frail, spoke slowly and shook slightly as he sipped coffee and puffed on a cigarette –…

A lot has changed in football over the past 30 years. The names and incarnations of leagues and cups, the way we used to get results on Teletext, and the now endless streaming on smartphones. There have been changes to the laws and (say it quietly) the arrival of VAR, plus everything else in between. But no matter how much the game and everything around it evolves, one thing will never change – fans always dare to dream. As a supporter, you never know what’s around the corner, and that’s why we all keep coming back for more. It’s the tales of glory and heartbreak that unfold in every campaign that keep us all hanging on. In the first season after FourFourTwo launched, Brighton & Hove Albion were in the…

Zinedine Zidane still had a full head of hair as he emerged from the bench in Bordeaux for his France debut in 1994. Within minutes, the 22-year-old had picked up the ball midway into the opposition half, bamboozled one Czech Republic player with a stepover, sidestepped another, then hammered a left-foot shot into the top corner from 25 yards. Two minutes later, he rescued a 2-2 draw by heading home a corner, foreshadowing his famous brace in the 1998 World Cup Final. Zizou had arrived, and he wasn’t alone in shooting to prominence that day. Just hours earlier, on the other side of the English Channel, the very first issue of FourFourTwo magazine had launched with a similar mission to entertain. Granted, we’re yet to win a World Cup and…

For reasons entirely unclear, the May 1998 issue of FFT featured us trying to predict how some of the game’s biggest names might appear in 2020. It was decidedly tongue in cheek: Paul Gascoigne was portrayed as one half of Laurel and Hardy, just weeks before everyone expected him to line up for England at France 98. “Looking back, it was the World Cup that broke Gazza,” we penned. Many a true word is spoken in jest, it turned out. “The lad played a blinder, dribbling like a madman and laying into anyone within five yards of him with a crunching slide-tackle. Sadly he was at home alongside Ally McCoist at the time, after oversleeping and missing the plane. Today he performs a tawdry 1920s-style cabaret with similarly hard-up pal…

Ask any brand and they’ll tell you the same thing: you haven’t really made it until you’re on the front of a football shirt. And so in 2008, as the world’s biggest football magazine already, 14 years after its foundation, FourFourTwo finally hit the big time – by sponsoring League One outfit Swindon Town. The three-year deal saw FFT emblazoned across the Robins’ various home, away and third strips until the end of the 2010-11 campaign. Swindon fans snapped them up like hotcakes. After all, in a league where other teams were wearing the logos of Party Bets and Topps Tiles, who wouldn’t want their club sponsored by a beloved football magazine? Yet it could just have easily been the supporters of two different clubs queuing around the block for…

RENE HIGUITA “Yeah, he did tricks, but he was a top keeper. I loved his energy, his excitement, his desire to take risks. He made mistakes, but he had a spirit for the game. The ‘scorpion kick’ was at Wembley, right? Keeping the ball out is all that matters. I want entertainers in my side.” JUNIOR “A strong player; a real man. He played a big role in that Brazil team from the 1982 World Cup – some say the greatest side never to lift the trophy. He could defend, but was good at attacking as well. He enjoyed his football and I liked how he expressed himself.” FRANZ BECKENBAUER “A leader of men; a dominant presence who brought the ball out with grace and skill. He broke my heart,…

NO ED MCCAMBRIDGE STAFF WRITER @edmccambridge John Moncur tells a magnificent story about the time he and his Swindon team-mates – 15 games without a win and rock-bottom of the fledgling Premier League – curtailed a cross-country training run to sit in a pub all afternoon with manager John Gorman and drink double brandies instead. Starstruck locals came over for a chat, the players got frustrations off their chests and, two days later, they beat QPR 1-0 at the County Ground. That the Robins were later relegated with a then-record 100 goals conceded is neither here nor there… The point is that, three decades ago, footballers felt like normal people. Top-flight stars would be seen down the pub, opening a local butcher’s or turning on the town’s Christmas lights. Even…

30 APRIL 2010 “Right Robbie, would you mind dropping your shorts for the cover shot?” That was definitely one of the weirder requests I’ve made while directing a FFT photoshoot, but Savage, then the skipper of Derby, was happy to be a good sport for our Football League Top 50 edition. 29 FEBRUARY 2024 This came to fruition thanks to a fab portrait image of Sir Alex Ferguson, which captured the Scot as we headed into 2024 – the 25th anniversary year of Manchester United’s epic Treble in 1999. Pointing at his watch, it meant we could play on his ‘Fergie Time’ trademark. 28 SEPTEMBER 2016 For this Season Preview we got Stanley Chow to illustrate all 20 top-flight managers – Steve Bruce’s nose proved a tough nut to nail…

Paul Ince adopts a boxing pose for an imaginary bout that never became a reality. Julio Arca studiously leans towards the camera. Lee Trundle crouches and points confidently, like he’s some sort of Football League version of the Fonz. That was how the first release of FourFourTwo’s annual Football League top 50 players list launched back in 2005, with highly-rated Reading midfielder Steve Sidwell leading the way despite the Royals ultimately finishing outside the Championship play-offs, before a record-breaking 106-point promotion campaign a season later. Wigan’s Nathan Ellington was second, Darren Bent (Ipswich) third and a nearly 39-year-old Teddy Sheringham (West Ham) fourth. Arca (Sunderland) came eighth, with Ince (Wolves) down in 30th, fully 17 berths behind Trundle of League Two Swansea. Everyone loves a showboat king, after all. The…

The Geordie recalls King Kev’s rant, shares his love for Ossie Ardiles and reveals what it’s like to cross the Tyne-Wear divide You were one of FourFourTwo’s very first ‘Boy’s A Bit Special’ subjects, in 1994. Did you know about it at the time? Yes, and I still have the magazine with the feature in it. That was back in the days when there were loads of magazines, so I used to read them – all the sports and music titles. It was really special to actually be included in one. FourFourTwo is iconic and I’m honoured to have been a small part of the journey. As a born-and-bred Geordie, is playing for Newcastle the stuff dreams are made of? Absolutely. I lived every Geordie’s dream. It’s funny how it…