Goals, Goals, Goals

Tucking it away, slotting home, ‘back of the net’; football’s all about goals, isn’t it?

It doesn’t matter how they go in. Dodgy deflections or thirty yard thunderbolts, goalie gaffes or goalmouth scrambles, they all count.

When conjuring up my own brightest memories of goals over the years, I think they basically split into three different categories: late winners/Cup clinchers, life-affirming stunners and the ones which make me smile in recognition of their sheer impudence or originality.

The famous end-of-season last-gasp efforts by Sergio Aguero (2012) and Michael Thomas (1989) wouldn’t make a YouTube montage of Greatest Ever Goals ('pleaz like and subscribe') but for significance they can’t be beaten. Similarly, many goals which decided Cup finals at home or abroad linger long in my memory, from Charlie George’s strike for Arsenal in ’71 to Lawrie Sanchez’s flick header for Wimbledon in ’88 or Iniesta’s pounce to claim Spain’s World Cup triumph in 2010.

Whirling curling shots from distance are ten-a-penny these days. Every goal in very match played is captured for posterity, a far cry from the old Match of the Day era of two games a week. Nevertheless, Dad and I would religiously select our own 1-2-3 Goals of the Month from the meagre list, culminating in the Goal of the Season around the time of the Cup Final. Some of those early winners are ingrained in my brain, such as Mickey Walsh's strike for Blackpool in 1975, Justin Fashanu’s flick, twist and thump for Norwich five years later and, of course, Ronnie Radford’s Motson-maker in the 1971-72 FA Cup.

The onset of the Premier League, the exponential expansion of camera angles and balls aerodynamically designed to prance and pirouette to the striker’s tune brought an even greater number of mouth-watering goals to my TV screen. In the mid-Nineties, Leeds’ Tony Yeboah and Southampton’s Matt leTissier were forever scoring individual masterpieces while, for Arsenal, Thierry Henry and Dennis Bergkamp would re-define the art of finishing, later finessed by the incomparable Lionel Messi.

We all love an acrobatic volley, of course. Anyone with any experience of playing football knows how insanely difficult an overhead ‘bicycle’ kick is to pull off successfully, so when I see one perfectly executed, I have to stand and applaud. Gareth Bale even did it in the 2018 Champions League Final. However, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, never one to shrink from the toughest challenge, produced one of the very best and most ambitious for Sweden against England in 2012. But when an ‘overhead’ is delivered by a player from my own club, it’s even more special. Thank you, Trevor Sinclair!

Free-kicks have never been more important to teams. With the defensive wall still expected to line up ten yards from the ball, it is much easier these days to loft it up and over. The hard bit, of course, is to get the ball to dip under the bar. Some have avoided this dilemma by mischievously taken advantage of leaping defenders to fire home under the wall, and I won’t forget a few brilliant Brazilians’ success with bending it around the barrier. Rivelino was an early exponent but I doubt even he could have executed a banana kick as well as Roberto Carlos did in ’97. Phenomenal.

It’s not all about the boot, of course. Crosses, corners and free-kicks often seek out someone’s head to apply the final touch in the box. In my younger days, forwards would struggle to power in a header from further then the penalty spot but modern plastic balls are much lighter. One of the first goals off the bonce to stick in my mind was Uwe Seeler’s back-header against England in the 1970 World Cup. Malcolm Macdonald made the art look easy, scoring four headers against Cyprus five years later and in the 2014 World Cup Robin Van Persie’s winged flier for Holland showed that the head can be just as exciting a weapon as the foot. Occasionally a conventional-looking header becomes legendary when delivered by a master. Cristiano Ronaldo’s exemplary leap, hang and power was such a moment, breaking Welsh hearts in the 2016 Euros. How could anyone defend against that?

Solo goals often make me gasp but team moves can be more satisfying just as a delicious main course is ultimately more edifying than the instant appeal of a post-match burger and chips. In recent years, Spain and Barcelona have delivered many, of which this Iniesta-completed work of art is a perfect example. Wenger-era Arsenal were also often criticised for trying to walk the ball into the net when a more direct approach may have been more effective. However, when they had an end product, they could be beautiful.

Novelty value also makes some goals particularly memorable. One of my favourites is Ernie Hunt’s free-kick from Willie Carr’s two-footed back flick for Coventry in 1971. We certainly tried to copy that one for days on end! Mercifully it was not disallowed but it was kinda sad that the double-foot free-kick was subsequently outlawed. There’s nothing wrong with penalty-takers opting for a gentle dink instead of firing at the top corner. The ‘Panenka’ can go horribly wrong if the ‘keeper stands his ground but, when star players choose a chip in a high-pressure game, I doff my cap, as in this Zidane instance during the 2006 World Cup final.

One of the most famously audacious goals in the 1990s pretty much launched the career of one of England’s most celebrated football icons. Who can forget watching on MOTD when David Beckham lobbed Wimbledon’s Neil Sullivan from the halfway line in 1996?

Individual brilliance comes in many forms but two of my favourite goals were straight from the ‘out of nothing’ manual. George Best’s incredible acceleration and swivelled finish for Man U in ’71 was breathtaking but I will never forget watching England’s live game against Chile in ’98 when Marcelo Salas’ control and volley almost literally took my breath away. I must have screamed “What a goal!” on countless occasions but this deserved all the hyperbole. They may all count but some are definitely better than others. 

Foreign invaders

English football isn’t terribly English any more. No, this isn’t some xenophobic UKIP rant but a statistical fact. Apparently, only about one in three Premier League players were born in England, and two in five in the UK. The balance is probably not a great deal different in the lower leagues. Watching Everton v West Ham the other week, I noted that the away team’s starting XI featured eleven different nationalities! The familiar debate concerns the question: is this a Good Thing?

On the whole I’d say yes. While the talent pool from which England draw their international squad has inevitably shrunk, those that emerge from the system are probably better players for training and mixing with the 60% who hail from all corners of the globe.

Once upon a time, when this Essex boy first immersed himself in the sport, a foreign import probably originated in Glasgow, Cardiff or Belfast. Familiar faces from the Republic of Ireland, such as Johnny Giles, Don Givens or Eamonn Dunphy, were positively exotic. The first genuine foreigner I recall seeing on Match of the Day was West Ham’s Clyde Best. It seemed ironic that a club with such a racist (or ‘racialist’, as it was then) following could embrace a black player in their team alongside Moore, Hurst and Peters, but the Bermudan overcame initial hostility to become a firm favourite in an eight-year stint at the Boleyn Ground. A teenage Nigerian Ade Coker joined him in 1971 and these trailblazers helped attract not only English black youngsters but also those from overseas.

By the end of the Seventies, imported players were still rare, largely restricted to a handful of Argentine World Cup stars like Ossie Ardiles and Ricky Villa at Spurs and the classy Dutch midfield pair of Arnold Muhren and Frans Thijssen at Ipswich. In the Eighties, after Italy won the World Cup, Serie A was the centre of European football. There were more top Brits heading to the likes of Milan, Inter and Juventus than Italians heading in the opposite direction. The UEFA ban on English clubs after years of hooliganism culminated in the Heysel disaster of ’85 didn’t help. However, a two-way flow was beginning to take shape.

Liverpool’s all-powerful squad included the entertaining Zimbabwean ‘keeper Bruce Grobbelaar, Danish midfielder Jan Molby and Aussie Craig Johnston, and Nottingham Forest fielded the Dutch pair of goalie Hans van Breukelen and centre-back-cum-free-kick expert Jonny Metgod. Jesper Olsen was a welcome sight on the wing for Man United, too. However, perhaps the greatest foreign import arrived in early 1992: Eric Cantona. He’d pissed off just about every club in France so Leeds picked him up for £900,000, an absolute bargain as he was the catalyst for winning the last League championship before the Premier League era. Of course, King Eric became one of Man U’s most colourful and celebrated characters, stroking the ball, scoring goals and polishing his ego. Oh, and kung-fu kicking barracking fans at Selhurst Park which actually made him more, not less endearing to real footie fans. I’m sure I’m not the only adult either to have found it amusing to turn up a shirt collar in homage to the idiosyncratic and eccentric Frenchman. Surely not. Am I?!

The arrival of foreign managers accelerated the imports. Chelsea’s sequence of coaches from Gullit and Vialli to Ranieri and Mourinho, backed by the bottomless pockets of Ken Bates then Roman Abramovich, brought in a galaxy of stars such as Roberto di Matteo, French defenders Marcel Desailly, Frank Leboeuf and William Gallas, Romanian wing-back Dan Petrescu, Portuguese pair Ricardo Carvalho and Paolo Ferreira, and Ivorian striker Didier Drogba. With Arsenal signing the delightful Dennis Bergkamp from Inter Milan in 1995 and Arsene Wenger further introducing the PL to his fellow countrymen Thierry Henry, Robert Pires and Patrick Vieira, London began to steal some Nineties limelight from Manchester and Liverpool.

Boxing Day 1999 was a significant date in the history of footballing migration. It was the first instance of an all-foreign starting eleven in England (Chelsea). This was surpassed on 14^th February 2005, when Arsenal fielded not only a starting XI but also a full subs bench of non-UK players. The future looked bleak for home-grown youngsters; how could they ever break through when the top clubs buy abroad and abandon the traditional route of developing talent via schools and youth systems?

Some of the traditional footballing enclaves up north also cast their nets wider. In particular, Bryan Robson somehow convinced the young Brazilian Juninho and silver-haired Fabrizio Ravanelli to join Middlesbrough in 1994 and for a season or two they and Emerson looked irresistible but it didn’t last. In the past twenty-five years, so many overseas players have sprinkled their stardust on the Premier League for huge fees and salaries, making a massive impact before moving swiftly on. Deco, Jurgen Klinsmann and Didier Deschamps spring to mind.

Others have lingered longer to become as legendary as many homegrown predecessors. Claus Lundekvam (Southampton), Sami Hyypia (Liverpool), Angel Rangel (Swansea), Tim Cahill (Everton), Branislav Ivanovic (Chelsea), Denis Irwin (Man Utd), Lucas Radebe (Leeds) and Vincent Kompany (Man City) have all left a lasting legacy with their clubs. In contrast, hired guns like Louis Saha, Nicolas Anelka and Robbie Keane ploughed a furrow crisscrossing the country over a number of years, accumulating a fortune in signing-on fees in the process.

As ever, it’s strikers like those two who tend to grab the headlines. For fourteen consecutive years, sandwiched between Kevin Phillips and Harry Kane, overseas players topped the Premier League scoring charts. Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink, Ruud van Nistelrooy and Robin van Persie flew the Dutch flag but Arsenal’s Thierry Henry was particularly prolific, taking the Golden Boot four times in five seasons. Much as I would detest the Gunners, few strikers can have made such a permanent impression as the va-va-voom Frenchman.

It used to be said that England had the best goalkeepers in the world but that’s definitely a boast long since consigned to the bench. They may have killed the art of catching the ball but, from the unbreachable Peter Schmeichel to David de Gea, Brad Friedel to Petr Cech, our own ‘keepers have had to play catch-up with middle-ranking clubs.

Top class defenders have become part and parcel of the English game, too. It’s not just the World Cup winners who formed a solid wall for the Arsenal and Chelsea champions, but also classy centre-backs like Man Utd’s Nemanja Midic, Newcastle’s Phillippe Albert, Olof Mellberg (Villa), Stephane Henchoz (Blackburn), Josef Yobo (Everton), Jan Vertonghen (Spurs) and Southampton’s Ken Monkou, all of which I liked watching.

We’ve imported some of the finest midfielders, too. It’s not all about the goal-scoring ‘number tens’ like Hazard, Payet and Coutinho, either. Sometimes it’s easy to forget the seasons in which Michael Ballack (Chelsea), Santi Cazorla (Arsenal), Luca Modric (Spurs) and even Ivan Campo (Bolton) graced the league. And when it comes to helping others put the ball in the net, few have surpassed the Spanish assist wizards Cesc Fabregas, Juan Mata and David Silva.

I can’t deny there have been some marvellous entertainers amongst the influx. For ball control, few could surpass the little Georgian genius Georgi Kinkladze, who wowed the Maine Road crowds in 1996/97 or Bolton’s Jay-Jay Okocha a few years later. Paolo di Canio delighted and exasperated in equal measure, in the colours of Sheffield Wednesday or West Ham. Adel Taarabt practically promoted QPR to the PL single-handed in 2010-11, for which we Hoops supporters are eternally grateful.  But for me one of the greatest signings from foreign shores was Gianfranco Zola. I always love sportsmen and women who play with a smile on their faces. Forget the rock star poses, the tattoos, the well-rehearsed goal celebrations; the humble Sardinian shone even amongst the Chelsea superstars in the late Nineties and early Noughties, scoring one of the cheekiest goals ever in 2002.

Some have been more memorable for their snigger-friendly names. Who can forget Messrs Shittu, Arca, Bong, Rat and Fish? And then there are the stereotypes: rangy African midfielders, steadfast Czech and American goalies, flying Irish full-backs, twinkle-toed Iberian playmakers, and East European strikers who never quite live up to their hype. For all their strengths and shortcomings, the insurgents have been key figures in the rich tapestry of English football for five decades.

Football's Boom Boom Boom!

The last few decades have witnessed extraordinary sums of money cascading into football. Admittedly an awful lot cascaded out again into the grubby mitts of agents and chief executives, but much of that has been invested in the game itself – or at least the tip of the mighty pyramid which supports the global sport.

It’s not just about the billions thrown at Premier league football by Sky, BT and now Amazon; it’s the rest of the world. The Manchester clubs, Liverpool and Chelsea can afford to splash out £50 million for players all bar the true cognoscenti will not have heard of. However, even Real Madrid, the club which made its modern reputation from hiring top-gun galacticos for vast sums (Sanchez, Figo, Ronaldo, Bale et al) is being left behind by Qatar-bankrolled Paris St Germain. I’d become used to world records being raised by a few million Euros at a time, but when PSG blew the transfer market apart with their 222 million Euro acquisition of cry-baby Neymar, followed by a 180 million option on the teenage Mbappe, my hands were thrown high in horror.

Things have got seriously out of hand. Like London house prices, hyperinflation at the top has an impact on every layer below. I write this after a summer transfer window awash with laughable sums being vaunted for unknown Portuguese or young defenders from our own League One who will probably end up being loaned out again. Has the whole world gone stark staring mad? Newly-promoted Fulham shelled out well over £100m on new stock just to give themselves a fighting chance of staying up.

Of course, I and most other football fans have been making similar exclamations all our lives. Even I am too young to remember the first six-figure transfer between British clubs (Alan Ball in post-World Cup 1966) but I do vividly recall the revelation of, I think, the first £100,000 teenager.

When I read about Arsenal spending such a huge sum on Peter Marinello from Hibs in January 1970, I probably almost choked on my Alphabetti Spaghetti. I presume his value was inflated by a vague physical resemblance to George Best but sadly his talent proved nowhere near as similar. Without a phalanx of psychologists and welfare coaches, the wee boy from Edinburgh never really justified the attention he received in the media. Although he scored on his debut – never a bad thing – injury and the celebrity lifestyle thrust upon his unsuspecting shoulders reduced his contribution to a mere three goals in three seasons before returning to Scotland.

A few months after the Marinello deal came our first £200,000 footballer, Martin Peters. However, I remember the most surprise at the time was not concerning the headline figure but the fact that the West Ham stalwart was heading to Spurs while the 30 year-old White Hart Lane legend Jimmy Greaves was the makeweight in the opposite direction. In the end, Spurs proved to reap the greater benefit because the alcoholic Greavesie retired the following year after only 38 appearances to spend more time in the pub.

With no mid- or close season windows in which to funnel all attention and pointless airtime-filling speculation, transfers were a year-round feature, as much part and parcel of football as they are now. It’s just that there was no internet, YouTube footage or ‘super-agents’ to whip up expectations. David Nish’s £225,000 move from Leicester to Brian Clough’s League-winning Derby side in 1972 raised eyebrows as he was ‘only’ a defender, then centre-forward Bob Latchford’s £350,000 fee in 1975 shelled out by Everton to Birmingham shattered the record. With consumer prices increasing by 25% a year at the time, perhaps we were accustomed to such inflation, and football transfers were merely symptomatic of mid-Seventies economics. Good for Bob, though!

In 1979, Clough's Nottingham Forest made Trevor Francis the first domestic million-pound footballer, doubling the previous record. Things went a bit berserk that September when Manchester City, way before their current excesses, found over £1.4 million to bring midfielder Steve Daley from Wolves. He was a decent player but hardly in that class. He even signed a ten-year contract – but left after two. Until the days of Robinho (Man City again) and Veron (Man Utd), Daley was considered the biggest waste of money in English football history.

During the Eighties, the financial clout of Serie A and La Liga constantly raised the bar, as the likes of Ray Wilkins (Milan), Mark Hughes (Barcelona) and Ian Rush (Juventus) went abroad in exchange for several million quid and head-turning signing–on fees and continental salaries. When Dennis Bergkamp came the other way for £7.5 million in 1995 - making even Arsenal worth watching for a change! – the dye was cast for a new international market in which Premier League clubs were leading buyers and sellers. However, the biggest leap occurred in July 1996 when Newcastle swooped for Blackburn’s Alan Shearer, England captain and goal scorer supreme, at a cost of £15 million. The floodgates opened….

The same has happened with wage bills, too. My heart bleeds for the poor dears who have to live on a basic £5 million plus bonuses and commercial extras in return for a few hours a week kicking a ball. Yet there is a vast disparity in salaries evident in English football. That has always been the case; it’s just that there are far more noughts and commas involved in the numbers these days.

If there is a salaries Grand Canyon between the Premier League and League Two, it’s probably even wider across the England-Scotland border. In 2018, Aberdeen’s star striker Adam Rooney headed south for a pay rise. He had been lured not by a club in the EP, nor even the Championship. No, he will be playing for non-league FC Salford! Inevitably the headline-grabbing contracts dished out to the Hazards and Pogbas of this world distort the overall PL average. In 2016-7, Man Utd’s annual wage bill was £264m, compared with newly-promoted Brighton’s £11million. No doubt Albion’s players earned a Premier League premium but nevertheless it’s hardly surprising that there is a widening chasm between the top six and the rest. It wasn’t always so but, unless more Middle East kingdoms get involved I can’t see the rest being allowed to catch up.

Another negative aspect of football as big business is the modern obsession with measuring players by salaries and, increasingly, transfer fees. The bigger the fee, the better the player, right? Is some non-entity plucked from the Turkish league for £12 million superior to an international star whose last club move came five years ago for half that amount? And where does that leave the one-club players - the Brookings, Gerrards and Scholeses – whose loyalty is considered so quaint and old-fashioned? They didn’t even take the lucrative pre-retirement bundle of dollars offered once by the USA and now China and Japan. No, you can’t value everything in terms of numbers. Football is better than that.

World Cup Memories - 1998 and 2002

Two years after football ‘came home’ for Euro 96, the World Cup was hosted just across the Channel in France. Buoyed by the fun and euphoria from the previous tournament, England fans expected great things from Glenn Hoddle’s squad after missing 1994 altogether. Baddiel and Skinner updated their lyrics to the Lightning Seeds’ stirring anthem ‘Three Lions’ and pipped ‘Vindaloo’ to the number one spot. The comedians’ daily live BBC2 show “World Cup Fantasy Football” was required viewing in our household, too. And everyone wanted to see how David Beckham, Alan Shearer and 17 year-old boy wonder Michael Owen would fare on the greatest stage.

Expanding to include 32 countries, this World Cup would be bigger and brighter than ever and, with many matches scheduled for peak time viewing over here, interest and audience figures were high. I particularly enjoyed the spectacle of colourful walls of fans, from the vivid orange of the Dutch to the red-and-white chequerboards from Croatia. Nigeria (green/white) and Cameroon (green/yellow) were typically exuberant and it was great to see Jamaica’s ‘Reggae Boyz’ represented for the first time. They didn’t get very far but nobody seemed to care very much; everything was irie, man.

There were shades of 2018 in that England faced both Tunisia and Colombia but as usual, we bowed out to one of our two wartime nemeses, Argentina, this time in the first knockout round. The commuter trains home that Tuesday evening were full of blokes anticipating the clash determined not to miss the kickoff from St Etienne and it was certainly a classic. Two dodgy penalties inside the first ten minutes ignited the blue touch paper on a footballing firecracker. It wasn’t always pretty but young Owen’s carefree gallop into the area to fire England 2-1 ahead in the sixteenth minute really got the nation buzzing. However it was even-stevens again by half-time. Afterwards came one of the most infamous incidents in England’s World Cup history, although I was on the phone when it happened! A floored Beckham flicked a petulant kick at Diego Simeone under the very nose of ref Kim Nielsen. Up thrust the red card, Gabriel Batistuta nodded his approval and the floppy-haired Man U winger trudged off to a summer of ridicule and castigation. Still, it didn’t exactly wreck his career, did it?

Down to ten men, England reverted to the much over-rated Dunkirk spirit and battled away admirably in a ten-man defence to survive extra time, after which penalties awaited. The nation uttered a collective groan the players could probably hear in the middle of France. Ince and Batty duly missed theirs and we were out.

The tournament didn’t end, of course. There were some strong sides and outstanding individuals on show that year. Chile had Ivan Zamorano and Marcelo Salas up front, JJ Okocha (Nigeria) and Denilson (Brazil) performed some breathtaking tricks and flicks, Denmark boasted Peter Schmeichel in goal and the Laudrup brothers, while Rekdal and Tore-Andre Flo combined well for Norway to beat Brazil 2-1 in the group stage. My diary also lauded Norway’s opening draw with Morocco (“That’s what football‘s about”) and Iran’s “exciting” 2-1 revenge on USA.

European champions Germany only squeezed into the quarters thanks to a late brace by Klinsmann and Bierhoff before being taken apart 3-0 by Croatia, for whom Davor Suker was excellent up front. They went out in a niggly semi-final to France but deserved their eventual third place. Meanwhile a fine Dutch side was also progressing to the last four. Unfortunately they succumbed to Brazil in a shootout but there will always be this fabulous winner against Argentina converted by Dennis Bergkamp. I think the commentator liked it, too!

And so it all came down to a Final between the host nation and perennial favourites Brazil at the Stade de France on 12^th July. After all the pre-kick-off hoo-hah over whether Ronaldo would actually play – more ins and outs than the hokey-cokey – it wasn’t only the star striker who looked lacklustre and mentally out of sorts. France dominated the scoreline thanks to Zinedine Zadane’s two headers and Petit’s coup-de-grace but for me the over-riding memory was of right-back Lilian Thuram thwarting every attack that came his way. For all Rivaldo’s eye-popping stepover sequences, the defender gave a masterclass on how concentration on the ball can frustrate the fanciest of fancy-dans. Hours after Didier Deschamps lifted the trophy, I wrote “I still have an inane smile on my face”.

Four years later, when the World Cup was shared by Japan and South Korea, France flopped miserably. I didn’t see much of the early games as I was on a Mediterranean cruise holiday. However, I do recall buying ice cream in a small Sorrento café where the owner was diverted by a TV in the back office. I heard some tinny cheering so asked him who had scored. It was Senegal, taking the lead over the champs in the opening fixture. Things didn’t improve and they finished bottom of Group A, goalless!

For a change, England found themselves in the ‘group of death’. However, against the odds, they survived. They even gained revenge by beating Argentina. I’d already taken the whole week off so, with Billericay bedecked in flags of St George in place of the recent Jubilee bunting, I was able to watch it on the telly. Typically I missed the only goal, David Beckham’s 44^th minute spot-kick.

Because of the eight-hour time difference, most matches took place in the morning or early afternoon. When England met Brazil in the quarter-finals, I had the game on whilst preparing for the Friday commute. Michael Owen pounced early on but Rivaldo equalised whilst I was donning my shoes. The rail journey into London was already affected by football fever. The newsagents were closed and trains had been extended earlier in the morning to cater for those intending to watch in the office. Approaching my Broadcasting House destination I recall strolling up Regent Street and hearing cheers from an open window. Surely England hadn’t won? No, they hadn’t. Ronaldinho’s audacious free-kick over Seaman’s helpless ponytail had settled the match despite the flamboyant Brazilian’s red card with half an hour remaining. I noted that evening: “Now I can enjoy the World Cup without the interminable hype”.

There were other moments to savour: for example, Senegal’s stunning counter-attacking goal against Denmark. Robbie Keane’s late goals also carried Ireland into the last sixteen before Spain sent them packing on penalties. However, the tournament will be remembered more for some disgraceful bent refereeing and players’ play-acting. In particular, South Korea’s progress to the semis was eased considerably by an easy group and appalling decisions against Italy and Spain in the knockouts. A shame because they had a decent side and brought out several saves from Buffon in the Italy game. As we had witnessed at the Seoul Olympics, the US satellite nation were notoriously prone to corruption to gain sporting advantage.

I also remember my incredulity at Rivaldo’s disgusting histrionics against Turkey. Obviously a boyhood influence on Neymar, the Brazilian’s reaction to a ball kicked against a thigh (rolling around clutching his face) would have been laughable had it not resulted in Hakan Unsal’s straight red. In the end, the two best sides, Brazil and Germany, met in the final, with Ronaldo’s finishing against Oliver Kahn proving decisive. And let’s not forget the referee: the peerless Pierluigi Collina, surely the most famous official in football. Respect to his bald head, alien eyes and good humour. He was often more watchable than the football!