“I guess it must be Dennis Bergkamp. He may have never won any of football’s major prizes – there were three UEFA Cups, but no Champions League, no European Championship, no World Cup – but who cares? Playing football should never be just about winning trophies, Johan Cruyff’s ‘best to be remembered by the style’ approach was one to be admitted, and Bergkamp was all about style – poise, control, use of space, thought and action.” (The Equaliser), (The Equaliser)

“Good evening. If you’re reading this in Internet Explorer 7 (or the beta version of IE9, as it goes), there’s a good chance that everything looks a little bit wonky on the site this evening. It’s being sorted, and should be back to normal in the next couple of days or so. Please bear with us while we get it sorted out. Shouldn’t be long. In the mean-time, it’s time for this week’s Video Of The Week, and another peer back into the BBC’s magnificent football archive with the first of six episodes of “Match Of The 80s”, a bit of pre-season filler from the mid-1990s, starting with the 1980/81 season.” (twohundredpercent)

Ferenc Puskas
“Let’s go back to 1956. Hungary had, arguably, the best football team that had ever lived, the ‘Mighty Magyars’. They lost narrowly in the World Cup final 3-2 to West Germany two years earlier after leading 2-0 inside the first 10 minutes, won the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki and famously beat England 6-3 at Wembley in 1953, to strike fear into countries around the World. The Hungarian club sides weren’t bad either, Honvéd, made up mostly of the Hungarian national team, were one of the best teams in Europe, losing narrowly on two occasions to the English champions Wolves in a competitive friendly before the European Cup had been introduced, and two years later to Atlético Bilbao in the 2nd ever European Cup. However, October 1956 changed everything.” (In Bed with Maradona)

“Twenty one years ago, Arsenal won the League title in the most unbelievable way by scoring an injury-time goal at Anfield. Arsenal was leading 1-0, but if the score had remained the same, Liverpool would have won the 1988-89 League title. Instead, the ball fell to Arsenal’s Michael Thomas who knocked the ball past Bruce Grobbelaar to win the match 2-0 to the Gunners and to crown Arsenal champions based on the same goal difference, but the Gunners scored one more goal than Liverpool.” (EPL Talk)

Umuchu Lagos, 1989 Christmas tournament. The author stands in the rear, third from right.
“Editor’s note: Obi Nwakanma in a Vanguard essay in 2008 notes the achievement of Chinua Achebe‘s Things Fall Apart. Achebe, according to Nwakanma, a Nigerian poet born in 1966—eight years after publication of a novel since translated into 50 languages—helped a continent claim its memories and helped restore a people. Achebe’s father was an early agent of the Church Missionary Society, founded in London in 1799. He was, in Nwakanma’s words, a ‘native informer’.” (The Global Game)

“Continuing on the political theme that we started last week with ‘Football & Fascism’, this week’s Video Of The Week continues on the same wavelength with another terrific BBC documentary, ‘The Game Of Their Lives’. This film, which is not to be confused with the atrocious American film of the same name about the 1950 World Cup finals, tells the story of the North Korean team of the 1966 World Cup finals, their brief love affair with the supporters of Middlesbrough Football Club and what happened to the team afterwards. Filmed on 2002 by Daniel Gordon, it goes beyond merely telling the story of their surprise elimination of Italy from the tournament from the point of view of the players and into the country of North Korea itself.” (twohundredpercent)

“At least since the fifth century BC, when Pindar entreated his heart to sing the splendor of the Olympian in his victory odes, poets have found in sport a worthy subject. And soccer—as we know it, a game of relatively recent advent, despite a lineage that can be traced back thousands of years—has inspired many to write in praise of its glory and in lamentation of the heartache it can yield. As ‘the world’s game,’ perhaps no other sport has been written about by amateur and professional poets of so many nations. A commercial for the Museum of Soccer in São Paulo declares that ‘if soccer were a literary genre, it would be poetry,’ and, unsurprisingly, several of Brazil’s greatest poets—including Carlos Drummond de Andrade and João Cabral de Melo Neto—have taken inspiration from futebol.” (Poetry Foundation)

“Watching repeats of old football matches can be an unsettling experience at times. Watch any match over around thirty years old and everything looks and feels different. The levels of technical expertise and fitness may be lower than they used to be, and the look and feel of the spectacle of the match is strangely other-worldly. At what point, however, did this change? When did what we could describe as the modernisation of football begin? I was reminded of this the other evening whilst watching the semi-final match in the 1984 European Championship between France & Portugal.” (twohundredpercent)

Zinedine Zidane
“Hamit Altintop’s thunderously crisp volley against Kazakhstan earlier this week was one of the finest strikes seen for quite some time and, with a nod to The Guardian’s “Joy of Six“ feature, got me thinking about some of the game’s greatest volleys. So, without further ado, here is a selection of some of the cleanest strikes ever witnessed. If you’ve got any more suggestions then please add them in the comments at the bottom of the page.” (The Equaliser)

“One of the greatest blights of modern football is that it looks the same wherever in the world you go. Teams from Addis Ababa to Zurich play with equipment made by the same handful of manufacturers and, with this, we have lost something. The global game has become homogenised and stripped of a couple of the layers of its colour and panache, and perhaps the most visual aspect of this on the pitch are the goalposts and netting themselves. Almost all clubs and countries now avail themselves of the now ubiquitous free-standing box net style of goal, with two poles holding the nets up and out of harm’s way.” (twohundredpercent)

“Glossy, shiny wonderful thing, sat on the newsagents shelf, ready to be plucked and digested. More sales than ever you say? but are you ok? really? IBWM editor Jeff Livingstone worries for a favourite publication. I was a little concerned to read recently that publishers IPC are looking to offload/sell World Soccer magazine.” (In Bed with Maradona)

“From Mr Fallrueckzieher to Roger Boli, via Mark Hughes, here are half a dozen of the best acrobatic belters ever” (Guardian)

Pozzo is held aloft as Italy claim the 1934 World Cup
“A name that has unfortunately faded into obscurity in recent years, Vittorio Pozzo is undoubtedly one of the greatest managers of all time. One of the most relentlessly successful international coaches the game has ever seen, Pozzo led Italy to two World Cup triumphs and Olympic gold during his twenty years in charge of the Azzurri in three spells between 1912 and 1948.” (The Equaliser)

“As well as upping weekend revenue for DIY stores everywhere, the international break produced two hat-tricks — one each for Jermain Defoe (England) and Klaas-Jan Huntelaar (Netherlands). Variety, technique, a dollop of selfishness, they all go into the mix to score a treble at this level, and competitive international hat tricks are getting harder to come by — the last three World Cups have produced about a quarter of the total produced by the first three. Argentina striker Gonzalo Higuain bagged one this summer with the same cool exterior as his predecessor Gabriel Batistuta, but an international hat trick of tournament-changing magnitude, of tear-jerking quality or just of eyebrow-raising novelty is a rare thing indeed. Here’s a list of memorable ones…” (SI)

“Some teams play to win trophies, but there are others who play for the sake of entertaining the fans. These teams rarely win titles, but they are often remembered more fondly than champions. We take a look at five such ‘fun’ teams.” (TheHardTackle)

“Brazilian Roberto Carlos’s 1997 free-kick against France curved so sharply that it left goalkeeper Fabian Barthez standing still and looking puzzled. Now, a study published in the New Journal of Physics suggests that the long-held assumption that the goal was a fantastic fluke is wrong. A French team of scientists discovered the trajectory of the goal and developed an equation to describe it.” (BBC)

“I’m thinking about David Foster Wallace’s essay on Roger Federer, the famous one that ran in the New York Times’s now-defunct sports magazine, Play, in 2006. If you don’t remember it for the argument, you might remember it for the title, ‘Roger Federer as Religious Experience,’ which even back in ’06 felt like a strange combination of terms. It’s a little hard to remember this now, with Federer’s career having settled into its gentle downward glide, but at that point Roger Federer was annihilating sports.” (Run of Play)

“At his peak Rui Costa had the complete attacking game – he could dribble, shoot and pass brilliantly – defenders simply didn’t know how to deal with him. Add to that a tremendous footballing brain and his tendency to drift around the pitch and make things happen rather than waiting for the ball to come to him, and he was almost impossible to nullify. He was the archetypal playmaker because he was very much a team player, always looking for a pass rather than personal glory; he had an amazing ability to utterly dominate a game without finding himself in the headlines.” (FourFourTwo)

“The football World Cup today lost one of its final links with its origins, when Francisco Varallo, the former Boca Juniors forward, died in the early hours in La Plata, aged 100 years and six months. He had been the last living player to take part in the final of the inaugural tournament in Montevideo, Uruguay in 1930, when Argentina lost to the host nation 4-2. When Martín Palermo finally, in 2008, became Boca Juniors’ highest goalscorer of the professional era, it was Varallo’s record he’d surpassed.” (Hasta El Gol Siempre)

“A month after the end of the World Cup, I think it is about time I close a few tabs on my browser that have been holding particularly memorable reflections on that delirious month in the early summer. Here are a few quotes. I like this from the English novelist Tim Parks, in the New York Review of Books. First, a nice observation about FIFA’s attitude to cheating…” (This Sporting Life)

“Lately, I find I do not have much to say. In June and July I watched all but two World Cup matches, read enormous amounts of football journalism, and contributed to the genre in my own way via this blog and daily podcasts for The People’s Game. I loved this – especially the podcasts which gave me a chance to talk with bloggers I’ve been reading, who define my ‘imagined community.’ But by the end, I found that I had less and less to say.” (From A Left Wing)

“In 1929, the crowd are more specifically spectators, and less participants, than they are today, at least at Wembley. Wembley was strange turf – an away ground for everyone present, of course, and it would be interesting to have e.g. a ‘talking picture’ from Stamford Bridge, Burnden Park or Maine Road to contrast the 1929 Final with.” (More Than Mind Games)

“The Premier League season starts in about six minutes, so you’re probably expecting this site to revert back to blanket coverage of the tiny crinkle above Arsène Wenger’s nose. (‘It’s looking world-weary, Jim.’) But first, we’re going to make room for something else, because I keep thinking about the last post, and I’m convinced that this sad neglect of Pelé has to end.” (Run of Play)

“A footballing nomad and a wandering tactical evangelical, the hot-tempered Bela Guttmann has come to be regarded as one of the most astute coaches to emerge from the sporting intellectual set that arose in Eastern Europe during the 1930s. An adventurous centre-half by trade, Guttmann’s playing career saw him undertake spells in his native Hungary, Austria and New York before he joined Hakoah Vienna in 1933 to embark on what would become a marvellously successful, if fragmented, coaching career.” (The Equaliser)

“Ask your average football fan the one thing they would like to see changed about the game, and the majority will reply with the word ‘technology’. There is no doubt that following the infamous Frank Lampard goal that never was in World Cup 2010 that something needs to be done to avoid such injustices occurring again, and that’s something we absolutely need to work on.” (Goal)

“FIFA player of the century Pele is widely regarded as the greatest footballer of all-time. He is the all-time leading scorer of the Brazilian national football team and the only footballer to be a part of three World Cup-winning squads. In 1957 just 3 months short of his 17th birthday he made his international debut and scored. That goal making him the youngest player to score in a full international match. A year later he took the world by storm.” (Footysphere)

“Jeff and Michael Zimbalist’s documentary The Two Escobars brings us a tale of a nation gripped by crime, drugs and a passion for soccer. At the time (circa 1994), Colombia was seen as one of the world’s most reviled narco-states and one of the world’s best soccer nations, at one point ranked 4th in the FIFA rankings. During this period, many Colombians were hoping that victory at the 1994 World Cup would help rebuild the country’s tattered image.” (Nutmeg Radio)

Zinedine Zidane
“The race between Spain’s David Villa and Wesley Sneijder of the Netherlands to finish as leading scorer of the 2010 World Cup could be the decisive factor in Sunday’s final. It could also establish which of these players, each with five goals apiece, comes to define this tournament and joins the ranks of the World Cup’s greatest players. It would be difficult to dispute that either player deserves such recognition, but in whose exalted company would they stand?” (WSJ)

“Many of the official World Cup films are well-known and widely available, such as the classic 1966 movie Goal! and the Michael Caine narrated Hero from 1986. The official FIFA Films page lists 15 World Cup films from 1930 to 2006, all available on DVD. The first World Cup in 1930 has retroactively been given an official film recently made from archive footage, but there is nothing listed for 1934, 1938 or 1950, so we presume the first official World Cup film was commissioned in 1954.” (Pitch Invasion)

(WSC)

“It is the dream of Joe Gaetjens’ surviving family that U.S. striker Jozy Altidore score against England with a diving header. Poetry of this measure would live forever. A Haitian soccer player and later a political victim of former Haitian president Francois Duvalier, Gaetjens scored the winning goal for the United States in a 1-0 victory against England in the 1950 World Cup.” (mlive)

Italy, Gennaro Gattuso; Germany, Arne Friedrich
“The other week, we brought you the 1970 World Cup semi-final between Brazil and Uruguay in its entirety, and this week it’s time for the other semi-final from that tournament between Italy and West Germany. Italy had started the 1970 World Cup finals slowly. They won their group, but only managed one win, by a solitary goal against Sweden, and two goalless draws, against Uruguay and Israel, to make the quarter-finals of the competition. It was at this stage that they finally sparked into life, beating the host nation Mexico by four goals to one in Toluca after having gone a goal down early on in the match.” (twohundredpercent)

Homeless people in Cape Town
“The 2010 World Cup will undoubtedly inspire a good deal of comment – some of it outstanding, some of it appalling – in the media. Here at Twohundredpercent, we’re not going to make any bold claims about the quality of what we’re putting up, only that we will do what we can to provide a build-up to and coverage of the tournament that follows the basic guideline that we always try to apply – to offer an alternative to the World Cup coverage elsewhere on the internet.” (twohundredpercent)

World Cup Tales: Eleven Goals In Strasbourg, 1938
“As the entrants lined up for the 1938 World Cup finals in France, storm clouds were building up the horizon, and the tournament itself wasn’t exempt from such global concerns. Three months prior to the start of it, German tanks had marched into Austria, annexing the country through the Anschlüss agreement. Within a couple of months, the Austrian national football team, which had got to the semi-finals of the previous tournament in Italy and was one of the favourites for this one, was no more.” (twohundredpercent)

“It is one of the curious anomalies of our game that when we close our eyes and think of a football we tend to think of a specific type of football and, moreover, that the type of football that we are likely to think of is a specific type of ball which hasn’t been widely used in major tournaments for over thirty years. To geometrists, it would be known as spherical polyhedron, but we would be more likely to know it as a 32-panel football, a Buckminster ball or a ‘bucky ball’, it made its international debut at the 1970 World Cup finals in Mexico, and it is a perfect example of the application of science to commercial design.” (twohundredpercent)