For the Love of Football by Johnny Morgan

Author:Johnny Morgan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Summersdale Publishers Ltd
Published: 2017-04-01T00:00:00+00:00

6.8

Manchester City bought John Stones from Everton for £47.5 million in August 2016, making him the world’s second most expensive defender. The transfer triggered a sell-on fee for the England player’s first club, Barnsley, which received £6.8 million as a result of the Blues’ ambition. The sum received by the Yorkshire club was almost £2 million more than it made in the whole of the previous year.

GAMES THAT ROCKED THE WORLD

“ He can’t kick with his left foot, he can’t head a ball, he can’t tackle and he doesn’t score many goals. Apart from that, he’s all right. ”

GEORGE BEST ON DAVID BECKHAM

Football is full of drama – big upsets, big victories, big bust ups – but there are games that stand out even from these moments. These are the where-were-you-when matches, the ones whose results touched the lives of those outside the frenzied fiefdom of fandom. These are 90 minutes that have rocked the world.

BRAZIL V GERMANY, 2014 WORLD CUP SEMI-FINAL

Germany didn’t beat a Brazil team that embodied the beautiful game on 8 July 2014 (which was what Paolo Rossi’s Italy had done in 1982) – but still, this Teutonic victory at the World Cup was a hammer blow that sent shockwaves through the footballing world.

Brazil were the hosts and had scraped their way to a last-four match against a strong German side. Luiz Felipe Scolari’s men were expecting a tough game and they got one. As wake-up calls go, it was a 100-decibel primal scream. Looking back the signs were there. Brazil were under pressure from the start to perform in their own backyard, painfully aware of the misery suffered by the nation at the last World Cup in Brazil in 1950, when they had lost in the final in front of 200,000 people. Nevertheless, the team had advanced, thanks to a mixture of old-fashioned luck, generous refereeing and the stand-out skill of a couple of players. And for the big game against Germany those stars were missing: leading scorer Neymar, injured from the quarter-final against Colombia, where a tackle had broken a bone in his back, and the team’s defensive lynchpin Thiago Silva, suspended after picking up his second yellow card of the tournament in the same game. Their absence would be telling. Very telling.

The semi-final was all over after 30 minutes. Germany blew away their opponents, reshaping the footballing universe as they coolly slotted home goal after goal. The Germans were as ruthless and efficient as the Brazilians were disorganised and delirious. In an astonishing six minutes, the Brazilian keeper picked the ball out of his net four times. And one of the Germans to put the ball there was Miroslav Klose, who in doing so scored his 16th World Cup goal, breaking the record held by Brazilian hero Ronaldo. Every strike was a heartless, brutal puncturing of Brazil’s footballing ego.

The Brazilians were utterly shambolic. As the first half drew to an end and the scoreboard lasered 5–0 brightly into the Rio night, it was hard to tell which set of players was more astonished.

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