Search: 'Stanley Matthews'

Everyone's got an opinion about how England should play in Euro '96. Not wanting to feel left out, we've chipped in too

A dilemma for all English managers but particularly for Terry Venables, as he’s the only one at work over the next few weeks. Should they heed the advice of those who believe that England can only succeed by playing to their strengths – running and gung ho spirit and lots of headers – or should they be encouraging their teams to play a more patient passing game, with defenders carrying the ball from one area to the other, and then back again if the mood takes them?

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The media's double standards are plain to see in the build-up to Euro '96

So, let’s see if we’ve got this right. Geoff Hurst scored a hat trick in the 1966 World Cup Final (though some spoilsports still mutter darkly, in German, about his second goal). After the match the ball was spirited away to Germany by Helmut Haller, who had scored the opening goal. Geoff himself doesn’t seem to have been unduly bothered about getting his ball back until roughly a month ago when he endorsed rescue missions by the Sun and the Mirror, the latter able to make the Hallers the best offer (all money to charity, of course) after receiving help from Eurostar and the ubiquitous Richard Branson.

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The recent death of Cissie Charlton drew attention to the mysteries that still surround England's most famous footballing dynasty, as Harry Pearson reveals

The names of football’s great and good are routinely prefixed with the word ‘legendary’, as if it is the most natural thing in the world for the media to suggest that, say, Sir Stanley Matthews is a partly fictional creation. The press coverage of Cissie Charlton’s death on March 26th followed this familiar pattern. In some ways this was fitting since the most well-known aspect of Cissie’s life, the hours spent patiently teaching her second son Bobby the skills of the game, was entirely the product of overheated journalistic imaginations.

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Nothing unusual about a teenage player keeping a record of progress, except when he is a future European Footballer of the Year. In an extract from a feature first published in the Dutch magazine Hard Gras, Hugo Borst describes the contents of Marco van Basten's diary

Joop van Basten now lives alone in the house in Utrecht where he raised his family. His sons Marco and Stanley (named after Stanley Matthews) have moved out. Several times a day Mr Van Basten visits his wife in a mental home – a stroke depriving her of her mind in 1985 – and in Marco’s old room, he maintains a shrine to his son’s career.

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