Friday 1 Manchester United are fined £1.6 million by the Office of Fair Trading for price-fixing replica shirts. One of the other ten businesses to be charged are… the FA who will have to pay £158,000 for selling overpriced England shirts on the internet in 2000-01. Tangled web-weaver John Fashanu says he has resigned as chairman of Barry Town, though there is some doubt whether he ever really held such a position. Jody Craddock leaves Sunderland for Wolves, who are also to sign Senegalese striker Henri Camara and Spurs’ Steffen Iversen.
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Stories
Kevin Keegan’s managerial excesses and successes have meant we have forgotten how, during his playing career, KK blazed a trail away from the pitch, believes Barney Ronay
In October 1995, with his Newcastle United team creating a stir at the top of the Premiership, Kevin Keegan travelled south to Brighton beach to meet Tony Blair MP, Leader of the Opposition. Dressed in shirtsleeves, with only a TV crew and a twitching mass of photographers for company, the two men stood and exchanged 27 consecutive headers. A bizarre tableau, perhaps, but far from unprecedented in the extraordinary public life of Keegan. Ron Greenwood once described him as “the most modern of all modern footballers”. In fact he was the first post-modern player: the first British footballer to exploit the commercial nexus between sport, celebrity and pop culture; to create out of himself a branded corporate persona; and the first reigning European Footballer of the Year to have a solo hit record – Head over Heels (B-side: Move on down) reached number 31 in the summer of 1979.
Stop this farce and have a little respect
FIFA have missed an opportunity once again. In new rules introduced for the season, players are forbidden to wear sleeveless jerseys and there are to be no slogans or advertising on undershirts. The latter stipulation at least means that a seemingly very partial God will no longer be thanked by an evangelical Brazilian striker on scoring his side’s fifth against Venezuela. But once again, players who kiss their badge after scoring have escaped censure.
Has any recent transfer been as fateful as Leeds United selling Eric Cantona to Manchester United? Duncan Young recalls the Frenchman’s spell in Yorkshire
It’s difficult to imagine now, but in November 1992 selling Eric Cantona to Manchester United didn’t seem like such a crazy idea. Six months previously he had been the talisman of Leeds’s first championship success since 1974 and the near-mythical reign of Don Revie. The funny thing is, he didn’t actually play that much.
Dear WSC
I’m glad Brian Gibbs can gain pleasure from hearing Ray Wilkins (Letters, WSC 192). Us QPR supporters can’t help remembering Ray Wilkins presiding over the start of the long decline we’ve had to endure at Loftus Road. Ned Zelic is the “versatile as an egg” player referred to. Wilkins wasted a big chunk of the money QPR got for Les Ferdinand on buying him. What was Wilkins thinking of? Ferdinand was approaching his peak, you could guarantee 25 goals (and probably more) from him in a season. He was incredibly popular with QPR fans, even when he scored for Newcastle at Loftus Road a couple of months later in what turned out to be the first of the relegations QPR would suffer all too quickly. Zelic turned out to be a very bad egg, not versatile at all. We could forgive him for not being any use. It was the fact that he didn’t even try that annoyed us.
Pete Harris, via email