Innehållsförteckning för May 2020 från FourFourTwo UK

Records are there to be broken, and Cristiano Ronaldo certainly knows a thing or two about breaking them. Having scooped honours in England, Spain and Italy, as well as leading Portugal to Euro 2016 glory, he’s now on the brink of smashing the international scoring record. Ronaldo is just shy of Ali Daei’s milestone of 109 goals and will overtake it soon. In this issue, we chart Cristiano’s rise from promising prospect to monstrous idol, chatting to the friends (and odd foe) who have shared his unique journey. Elsewhere, we present FourFourTwo’s annual look at the 50 best players in the Football League – voted for by you. As a Fulham fan not old enough to have seen the likes of Johnny Haynes or Gordon Davies, I wondered if I…

Had it not been for a pandemic, Real Madrid may still be known as Madrid Football Club. That was the club’s name when they were formed in 1902 – and indeed, they went on to win the Copa del Rey five times as Madrid FC. Then the world was hit by a deadly strain of influenza in 1918, just as the First World War drew to a close. In two years, 500 million people were infected – around 27 per cent of the global population. Reports estimated the death toll at anywhere between 17 and 100 million. Unlike most flu strains, young adults were the age group most affected. The most high-profile case was King Alfonso XIII, in his early-30s. Spain were not involved in the war so the media…

Given the recent lack of football action, a match lasting two days seems like some sort of nirvana. That’s exactly what happened in the Derbyshire town of Ashbourne, where thousands gather annually for the weirdest football fixture on the planet. The Royal Shrovetide Football Match has taken place on Shrove Tuesday and Ash Wednesday every year for centuries, using medieval rules: no limit on the number of people who can take part, and no need for VAR jurisdictions on handball – players are allowed to kick, carry or throw the ball. There’s no pitch, either: the field of play consists of the entire town centre – dodging various houses and lamp posts – and two goals, three miles apart. To add further confusion, each goal is in the middle of…

BREN AND GONE It’s been a little over a year since Brendan Rodgers departed Celtic for a return to the bright lights and bulging piggy-banks of the Premier League. While his exit is still a sore point, dividing opinion at Parkhead, both Rodgers and Celtic are happy – and perhaps even better off? We – Celtic – topped our Europa League group, remain on track for an historic 10-in-a-row and fought off Rangers with 10 men to win the League Cup. Meanwhile, Rodgers’ Leicester are flying in the Premier League with one of the division’s most exciting teams, and appear a safe bet to end up in a Champions League spot. Maybe it’s time to let the ill feelings go now? Milton Lockyer, via email IT’S A FIX I’ve just…

It has been said that if Cristiano Ronaldo was made of chocolate, he’d probably eat himself. Now that could be put to the test. The CR7 Museum opened in Madeira back in 2013 and has since become one of the island’s most successful tourist attractions, featuring a host of trophies and memorabilia from the Portuguese star’s incredible career. Now, a new item is on display: a lifesize Ronaldo statue, made entirely of chocolate. Created by Switzerland-based confectionary guru Jorge Cardoso over the course of 200 painstaking hours, it stands at 6ft 2in tall and weighs 120kg. Will the statue somehow eat itself? Or perhaps the real Ronaldo will turn up and tuck in? Stay tuned to find out.…

COLBY BISHOP ACCRINGTON STANLEY FORWARD AGE 23 John Coleman recruited Bishop from sixth-tier Leamington – and the local primary school, where he was teaching – and Bishop gratefully bagged 12 goals before Christmas. What a find. DARYL MURPHY BOLTON WANDERERS FORWARD AGE 37 The veteran gave Bolton’s tormented season a rare the autumn with goals in five straight league games, featuring three consecutive victories. DYLAN CONNOLLY BRADFORD CITY MIDFIELDER AGE 24 The rapid Wimbledon winger has impressed everyone out on loan, or nearly everyone. His role in a win over Plymouth, and superb strike, riled Argyle into filing a bitter rant as a match report. JONSON CLARKE-HARRIS BRISTOL ROVERS FORWARD AGE 25 Clarke-Harris scored 23 goals in 2019, though a managerial change has made for a tougher 2020. The frontman…

Portugal has been hit hard by a financial crisis over the past decade. Emigration has soared as a result, with in excess of two million citizens currently living abroad. For five years, Jose Fernandes formed part of these statistics. Unemployed and struggling to provide for his family, he chose to leave home for Switzerland in search of a job. At first, the idea was to take his wife and three children with him, but a problem soon emerged: Bruno, his middle son, refused to go. Worse, he threatened to run away if they insisted on moving ahead with their plan. Playing in the Boavista youth ranks at the time, a fledgling Bruno Fernandes was not willing to quit his local team. “In Switzerland, they don’t know how to play football,”…

1 A NIGHT TO REMEMBER When Paris Saint-Germain fans were told they wouldn’t be allowed into the Parc des Princes for their Champions League last-16 second leg with Borussia Dortmund, they had an alternative idea: turn up for a big party outside the stadium instead. It rather defeated the point of the decision to play the game behind closed doors – to prevent gatherings, because of the coronavirus – but those who did show up experienced an evening they’re unlikely to forget. PSG won to overturn a first-leg deficit and reach the quarter-finals for the first time in four years, sparking celebrations both inside and outside the ground. First, the players gathered together to do ‘zen’ poses on the pitch, mocking teenage striker Erling Haaland’s goal celebration in the first…

XI BEST: Goram, Stevens, Butcher, Gough, Numan, Laudrup, Souness, Gascoigne, Cooper, Hateley, McCoist. WORST: Simonsen, Argyriou, Cribari, Mohsni, Vanoli, Rothen, Black, Bernard, K. Hutton, Jeffers, Kyle. PLAYER B: Have you ever seen , I have, and his name is Brian Laudrup [right]. Not so much a footballer as a walking sonnet, he glided beyond defenders on mudheaps without a hair out of place on his lovely head. W: Frannie Jeffers. He cost Arsene Wenger £10m once, so he must be good... right? Instead, we got 21 games without him touching the ball. Must be George Weah’s cousin. MOMENT B: Helicopter Sunday, May 2005. Nacho Novo’s UEFA Cup semi-final penalty is a contender, but to go from despair to ecstasy in such a short space of time – and win the…

Sometimes, it’s the little details that tell you a club is going about their business in the right way. Often, it’s quite hard to put your finger on it – a certain buzz around the ground, a witty comment from the guy on the turnstile, a fanzine that you actually read… or it could be their matchday posters. You’d be hard pushed to find a club across the world that puts out ones as consistently good – week in, week out, home and away, men’s and women’s teams – as Lewes FC in East Sussex. Always guaranteed to raise a smile, their witty, irreverent approach to matchday advertisements – usually based on questionable pop cultural references, or a pun on the opposing team’s name – are matched by the quality…

01 Who joined Michel Platini, Luis Fernandez and Alain Giresse to form France’s ‘Magic Square’ at the 1984 European Championship? 02 Borussia Dortmund’s rising wonderkid Giovanni Reyna was born in which English city? 03 Before their 3-0 loss to Watford in February, which was the last non-‘Big Six’ outfit to defeat Liverpool in a Premier League game? 04 Which island nation does Bristol City striker Nahki Wells play his international football for? 05 Inter Miami have the son of an ex-Premier League manager as their assistant coach. Who is it? 06 Aston Villa’s Mbwana Samatta is the first Premier League player from which country? 07 Diego Simeone has managed Atletico Madrid since 2011 – but who was he bossing before that? 08 Who was appointed Sunderland manager in October 2019…

50 CALLUM O’HARE COVENTRY CITY POSITION MIDFIELDER AGE 21 An Aston Villa playmaker, kicked by opposing defenders – remind you of anyone? Coventry loanee O’Hare is more of a traditional No.10 than Jack Grealish but he receives the same treatment. In February, the 21-year-old played on despite a ghastly gash to his forehead as the Sky Blues nicked a last-gasp win over Bolton. On his day, he is a game-changer. 49 DANNY MAYOR PLYMOUTH ARGYLE POSITION MIDFIELDER AGE 29 Most anticipated that Mayor would step up to League One last summer, rather than rejoin his former Bury boss, Ryan Lowe, at Plymouth. Mayor hasn’t hit the same heights for Argyle playing centrally, though his dribbling is unrivalled. His role in a fine run of form since October may earn him…

Triumph sows the seeds of tragedy. The definition of a career high is that it can never be recaptured; what follows can move only downwards, either quickly or slowly, gradually or decisively. But, oh, what a high. To score the crucial goal in a major final for your country, to win their first trophy, and to do it with what a significant slice of the commentariat still regard as the greatest goal ever scored in a final. It may be all downhill from there, but what a view from the top. Footballers these days look like sprinters: mesomorphic body type, upper-body weight work and a six-pack you could grate cheese with. In contrast, players in the pre-Premier League era were more six-packs of lager and grated-cheese sandwiches. That isn’t to…

Is it true you briefly played under the name ‘Kevin Dalglish’? [Laughs] It is! A mate was at university and there were two divisions. In the top division, you got picked up by a coach, dropped off at the match and had showers. In the second division, players had to make their own way there and had no showers, so he wanted to win promotion. I was playing for Stockport at the time, but he said, “Could you play a game or two?” He put me down as ‘Kevin Dalglish’ and I was scoring about nine goals a game. There was a buzz going round the university – “Who’s this Kevin Dalglish?” – so I had to dip out of it. Luckily Stockport didn’t find out! At Portsmouth, you were…

Tranmere 0 Scunthorpe 1 November 30, 1970 FA Cup First Round “This was the night that Bill Shankly’s scouting staff from Liverpool came to watch me play for Scunthorpe, which genuinely changed my life forever. They’d been putting together a dossier on me that I never knew about, and that night I played well enough for them to sign me. I’d been getting impatient at Scunthorpe and was desperate for a team from a higher division to come in for me. Eventually, someone did. At 20, it was an absolute dream.” Liverpool 3 Nottingham Forest 1 August 14, 1971 First Division “This was my debut for Liverpool, and although they’d spent £33,000 on me in the summer, no one really knew who I was. It was very rare for a…

Peter Crouch endured a long wait for his first Champions League goal – but the drought was halted emphatically against Galatasaray. The 6ft 7in striker was unable to score in six games across his debut Champions League season, after joining holders Liverpool in the summer of 2005. But his second campaign in the competition started rather better: just nine minutes into the clash with Galatasaray, he finally broke his duck with a side-footed finish. Early in the second half, Crouch followed up with arguably the most memorable goal of his career: a stunning overhead kick that arrowed past Colombian goalkeeper Faryd Mondragon. “It has to be my favourite,” the 39-year-old tells FourFourTwo. “I scored one at Man City to get Spurs into the Champions League, and there was another at…

Dark had fallen on a late summer’s evening in the far north of Portugal, just a few miles from the Spanish border. Only 8,000 people were inside the Estadio Municipal Engenheiro Manuel Branco Teixeira in Chaves. They were about to witness the beginning of greatness. In one of Portuguese football’s least celebrated outposts, the national team were labouring badly in a friendly at home to Kazakhstan. A year earlier, their 2002 World Cup campaign had ended in disgrace with an exit in the group stage via defeat to co-hosts South Korea, a match that Portugal finished with nine men. The forward, Joao Pinto, had even punched the referee. Afterwards, the would-be Euro 2004 hosts kicked off a series of meaningless friendlies in front of ever-dwindling attendances. Kazakhstan were the latest…

Otto Rehhagel’s first match as the manager of Greece was in 2001. The game was against Finland in Helsinki, and we lost 5-1. He had only been working with us for three days, but I remember what happened when he sat down with us after the match. ‘I came here because I want to change the way that you work, the mentality of this squad,’ he told us. ‘I need players who play for the group, who play for the Greek national team, not for themselves. Sadly, I have this to say to many of you: it doesn’t matter if you’re good players individually – you need to leave.’ For years before that, it was very difficult for us. Some of our players played for Olympiakos, and some of them…

Helmuth Duckadam welcomes FourFourTwo into his home beyond the western fringes of Bucharest, and we sit in the sunshine by a football and pair of goalkeeper gloves bearing his initials, next to the number 86. That was the year the now 61-year-old saved four penalties in the European Cup final, as Steaua Bucharest beat the Barcelona of Terry Venables, Bernd Schuster and Steve Archibald in Seville. He’s so engaging that the Romanian snapper with us can’t believe he’s so chatty. He normally cuts a far more cautious figure during his regular television appearances. “The Chernobyl disaster had happened a few weeks before the final, which meant the Romanian league was suspended,” says the former stopper (top left). “Only Steaua were allowed to train and the military measured radioactivity levels on…

The 800 Paris Saint-Germain fans who have travelled to Sochaux on this tense Saturday evening have stopped singing. It’s May 17, 2008, and France’s capital club – Ligue 1 ever-presents since 1975, UEFA Cup Winners’ Cup victors in 1996, two-time champions up to this point – are playing their final game of the season. Sochaux have levelled the scoring thanks to a header from midfielder Guirane N’Daw. With 15 minutes to go, PSG are one goal away from relegation. Paul Le Guen’s men had started the night in 16th place, but they’re 17th as things stand because relegation rivals Toulouse are beating Valenciennes. More than ever, the risk of seeing PSG sink into the second tier is very real. If Lens – currently 18th and drawing with Bordeaux – find…

Your nickname is ‘Schillo’. Why? It was after the 1990 World Cup – Salvatore Schillaci played very well [winning the Golden Boot] and I always told my friends I wanted to be like him. So when I began to make it as a footballer, that’s what most people started calling me: ‘Schillo’. You played with Zlatan Ibrahimovic at Ajax – what was that like? Zlatan was a huge character in the dressing room, and he was a really nice guy. We both arrived at Ajax at the same time: we quickly became good friends and were neighbours. We also shared a room whenever we were at training camps, and Zlatan always wanted to control the TV remote! Sometimes I wanted to watch a movie, but he wanted to play on…