Innehållsförteckning för July 2022 från FourFourTwo UK

1 KING OF THE JUNGLE At any normal club, the final few weeks of the season are a time to conserve energy, apart from the odd player of the year do. At PSG, they send their players to Rwanda to stare down gorillas. Sergio Ramos didn’t exactly have the finest debut campaign in France, rarely playing because of injury, then being part of a defence that conceded three in an end-of-season draw at Strasbourg. PSG’s solution was the sort of idea that Priti Patel would no doubt approve of: they got him as far away from Paris as possible, packing him off to Africa with team-mates Keylor Navas, Julian Draxler and Thilo Kehrer – although three of the quartet were back in the squad for the next game against Troyes.…

01 Jurgen Klopp recently extended his Liverpool contract to 2026 – who was his first Reds signing? 02 Aleksandar Mitrovic dominated the Championship scoring chart this season with 43 goals. Who finished second, 14 behind? 03 New Manchester United gaffer Erik ten Hag began his dugout career with which Dutch outfit? 04 Bologna’s Aaron Hickey has hit five Serie A goals in 2021-22 – he’s the first Scot to reach that figure in Italy since who in 1984-85? 05 Which nation did England face in their 2002 World Cup opener, scrapping out a 1-1 draw? 06 Ukraine’s most-capped player was slammed for not speaking out against the Russian invasion, alongside his job at Zenit. Who is he? 07 Which doomed club became the first former Premier League side to plummet…

Sometimes, the simplest of things can trigger a childhood memory. For Harry Kane on this midweek afternoon, it’s just a single red stripe. The 28-year-old is standing in front of FourFourTwo, surveying the collection of retro England shirts we’ve brought along for today’s photoshoot, when one particular jersey leaps out to him. “That one,” he says, instantly linking it with a moment he’s never forgotten. “From when we beat Germany 5-1.” Back then, Kane was an impressionable young pupil at Larkswood Primary Academy in Chingford, when he perched in front of the television one September evening and witnessed a match that inspired him for years to come. “It was an incredible game,” he says. “What was that, 2001? I was eight years old and you just remember something that stands…

1982 AWAY England ran out in this red number for their first game of the 1982 World Cup – Bryan Robson needed 27 seconds to open the scoring in a 3-1 victory over France in Bilbao. 1982 HOME Arguably the most stylish home shirt in England history, though Kevin Keegan doesn’t have fond memories of it – his miss against Spain sealed the Three Lions’ World Cup exit. 1990 HOME Gary Lineker struck four goals sporting this jersey at Italia 90 – one against Ireland in the group stage, then two against Cameroon and another in the semis against West Germany. 1990 THIRD England didn’t actually need the third kit at the 1990 World Cup, but it was iconic all the same – New Order’s Bernard Sumner wore it in…

Many people enjoy harking back to a golden period in their lives; a time when the birds seemed to sing a little sweeter. But few would be as precise as Klaus Toppmoller. For the 70-year-old, April 27, 2002 would be the moment that his DeLorean landed. “We were so close to achieving something that nobody thought was possible,” Bayer Leverkusen’s former manager tells FFT, two decades on. “We could almost touch it.” With just five games to go of an incredible season, Toppmoller awoke with his team two points clear at the top of the Bundesliga and facing the prospect of competing in not one but two major cup finals. A club that had previously won only one UEFA Cup and one DFB-Pokal in its entire history had a dizzying…

Ups and downs. Highs and lows. Joy and despair. Few in football have felt every jolt of the managerial ride quite like Steve Bruce. Sunday, October 17, 2021 marked a major milestone in his career, as the 61-year-old joined grandees including Sir Alex Ferguson, Arsene Wenger, Sir Bobby Robson, Harry Redknapp and Roy Hodgson in taking charge of 1,000 matches in club football. He marked the achievement in front of a sell-out crowd at St James’ Park too, managing Newcastle United, the team he’d grown up supporting as a kid. But if ever a day encapsulated the career of Bruce the boss, this was it. Pride, satisfaction and momentary euphoria preceded ultimate heartache, grief and anguish. He’d spent the hours before kick-off going through a flood of congratulatory messages from…

Forgive me for getting excited here – I’m still trying to get over what happened to Bristol Rovers on an unbelievable final day where they beat Northampton to automatic promotion with a five-goal swing. I’ve never seen anything quite like it. We needed seven goals in the end… and got seven. I mean, how many times does that actually happen? I remember talking about the Gas and Joey Barton at the start of the season. Rovers had gone down, he was about to start his first full year and I remember saying, ‘Whatever you do, give him a chance to settle in’. And at first, it wasn’t working… not that I was surprised. When you take over a heavily changed club, like I did at Leicester, it can be a…

Utrecht 4-1 Feyenoord June 1, 2003 KNVB Cup final “A few weeks earlier it had been announced that I’d be joining Feyenoord, so there was a lot of pressure on me. I wanted to give everything to win this game and sign off in a positive way. Not only did that happen by winning the cup with Utrecht – the first trophy of my career – but I also scored the final goal which sealed it for us. Of course, I celebrated with the Utrecht fans, but at a certain point I wanted to thank both sets of supporters. So I turned to Feyenoord’s and received a hearty round of applause, despite them having just lost 4-1. That was a unique moment for me, because I immediately got the feeling…

If you think Norwich City’s Premier League record hasn’t been the best in recent times, they’ve got some way to go before surpassing Pescara’s top-flight woes. True, the Canaries have been relegated in each of their last four campaigns at the highest level, but they had the luxury of three successive seasons in the Premier League at the start of the 2010s, and larged it up at the top of the table in the early ’90s. No such success for Pescara: during their long history, they’ve spent seven seasons in Serie A… and six of them have ended in the drop. The club’s full name is Delfino Pescara 1936 – Dolphin Pescara 1936, because of their location on Italy’s east coast – and their first two forays into the top…

BILL NICHOLSON Before he became Tottenham’s greatest manager of all time, Nicholson scored 19 seconds after kick-off on his England debut against Portugal in 1951. Alas, injury problems meant it proved his one and only outing on the international stage. JOHN COCK No sniggering, please. The first Cornishman to play for England bagged his first goal within half a minute, against Ireland in 1919. Like Nicholson, his Three Lions career didn’t last very long – he played once more, scored once more, then that was that.…

We’re not saying England’s fortunes have been dodgy over the past 56 years, but it says a fair bit that their solitary international tournament triumph outside Britain has essentially been condensed to 47 seconds on YouTube. Oh, and it doesn’t even feature any England players in it. “Why not?” chuckles Andy Gray on co-commentary. “A 30-yard free-kick with a 20-yard run-up…” It was just a bit of fun really, as Roberto Carlos set his thunderous thighs whirring off towards Fabien Barthez’s goal. On the bench, France’s Frank Leboeuf asked team-mate Patrice Loko whether he had ever seen the Brazilian strike a ball. He hadn’t. “Just watch,” said Leboeuf. What came next was genuinely mind-bending; a stunning act of force and skill that has since been analysed by physicians and replayed…

The intersection between music and footballers has mainly been vacant since the synthesised sensations of Hoddle and Waddle cheerily mimed Diamond Lights on Top of the Pops – and given the dodgy distinction between those who can genuinely hold a tune and kick a ball, it makes Tyler Dodds all the more intriguing. By night, she plays professionally for last term’s Scottish Women’s Premier League champions Glasgow City. By other nights, she performs as tribute act ‘Tyler Swift’, boasting a red lipstick, blonde wig and back catalogue that scales the breadth of her namesake’s chart-friendly hits. “It was much easier when I wasn’t a pro footballer,” the 26-year-old tells FFT. “I’d work Fridays and Saturdays, and if I had a game on Sunday I’d go to that and sometimes do a gig later in the evening.”…

When millionaire Glenn Tamplin first got into club ownership, he promised that the only way was up. But after his former clubs Billericay Town and Romford both suffered relegation this season, his legacy is looking decidedly less skywards. Although the owner-cum-manager has been away from football for over a year since leaving Romford in the middle of 2021 to move abroad, his exes have floundered in his absence. Billericay lost their Conference South status with defeat to Ebbsfleet on the penultimate day of the season, while Romford conceded an eye-watering 139 goals in 38 matches en route to finishing bottom of the Isthmian League North with only 13 points. It’s not exactly how Tamplin had dreamt his barmy non-league life. The steel tycoon shot to fame in 2016 when he…

Before making your West Ham debut, you were loaned to rivals Millwall during the 2002-03 campaign. Did you receive a frosty reception at The Den? Everyone knows Millwall fans’ reputation, and going there from West Ham is a big move for a youngster. But when you’re that age, you’re fearless. I was confident about what I could do, and I had friends there at the time, so it was an easy decision. Luckily I played well so Millwall’s fans grew to love me, though there were a couple of difficult games at the start. After returning to West Ham that season, you were part of their side relegated from the top flight with 42 points. A campaign of mixed emotions… It certainly was. From the age of about 10 I’d…

Imagine the scenario: the World Cup is just a month away, but Qatar aren’t answering Gianni Infantino’s emails and no one’s sure whether they’re still willing to host it. Admittedly, that’s unlikely to happen after billions of pounds spent on shiny new things, but it’s been a very real problem before June’s scheduled CONIFA Euro 2022 – allegedly, the grand return of football’s oddest competition. CONIFA brings together a rag-tag collection of teams representing territories and minority groups not recognised by FIFA – a World Cup has been running every two years since 2014, won by County of Nice, Georgia’s breakaway region of Abkhazia, then Karpatalja in 2018. The latter tournament was officially hosted by the ‘national’ team of Barawa, a Somali diaspora in England, and took place around London…

As career paths go, Charlie Pomroy’s has been an unusual one. Once a comic in sleepy Hertfordshire, he’s now in Siem Reap at the age of 37, coaching and owning a club in Cambodia’s second division. In his youth, Pomroy was a promising player who worked his way up to Dunstable Town, but quit at 21 to look at coaching. “I was a decent defender and people said I’d be the next Colin Hendry,” he tells FFT with a chuckle. “But I felt my strength was in reading the game, so I was drawn to coaching.” Pomroy (whose actual name is Darren, confusingly) became the football development officer at local club Stevenage but still felt something was missing, so took the obvious next step: building a budding career as a…

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WILLIAM KENYON-SLANEY 2 GOALS The Three Lions’ first ever international finished goalless against Scotland – Kenyon-Slaney bagged a brace in the return fixture in 1873. Later, the former Eton student was elected as a Conservative MP. CHARLES BAMBRIDGE 11 GOALS The son of Queen Victoria’s snapper, Bambridge reached six goals after netting in a 13-0 victory over Ireland in 1882, only for Aston Villa’s Howard Vaughton to level with him. Bambridge then hit five more to regain the outright record. TINSLEY LINDLEY 14 GOALS An amateur who wore walking shoes instead of boots as he felt they made him faster, the Nottingham Forest forward was in a tie for the accolade when he and Fred Dewhurst matched Bambridge’s tally, then claimed it all for himself. STEVE BLOOMER 28 GOALS Only…

The Picture of Dorian Gray attracted such controversy in the early 1890s that Oscar Wilde wrote a preface to defend his only novel’s reputation. That prologue has come to be as famous as the work it precedes as a manifesto for art for art’s sake, praising something utterly useless as long as its beauty can be admired intently. Take a look at Zinedine Zidane’s list of club honours and your first reaction is probably disappointment. In the modern era of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, three league titles, one Champions League, one Ballon d’Or and a goal every five-and-a-bit games is meagre. Sure, France’s 1998 World Cup and Euro 2000 victories are impossible without Zidane, but at club level, the bare figures are far from earth-shattering. Yet Zidane exists in…

XI BEST: Boaz Myhill, Sam Ricketts, Andy Dawson, Michael Turner, Curtis Davies, Ian Ashbee, Garreth Roberts, Nick Barmby, Geovanni, Abel Hernandez, Dean Windass. WORST: Lee Bracey, Ibrahima Sonko, Mark Lynch, Neil Whitworth, Shaun Smith, Steve Melton, Jon French, Simon Walton, David Jones, Dele Adebola, Rowan Vine. PLAYER B: Nick Barmby [right] is the greatest footballer ever to come out of Hull. Returned home in League One for what looked like a farewell tour, but went on to win at Wembley, then played (and scored) in the top flight again. Also netted the fastest goal in our history, after seven seconds against Walsall in November 2004. W: David Jones – an alleged frontman who couldn’t control his legs, let alone a football. Was allergic to headers and slower than a milk…

You were born in Switzerland to Spanish parents from Madrid. Who did you support, Real or Atletico? I’m the youngest of five kids and the only one born in Switzerland. The Franco regime they lived under in Spain was a brutal dictatorship and they managed to escape. My parents left everything behind. My father was raised next to the Bernabeu stadium, so he was fanatical about Real Madrid – which meant I was too. In the 1970s and ’80s, the only time I could see them was when Swiss television showed the European Cup games. Under Roy Hodgson, Switzerland qualified for Euro 96 and you played in the opening match against England, a 1-1 draw. What do you remember about that day? Roy put Swiss football on the map –…