Search: 'John Barnes'

Irving Scholar was just one of the strange heroes of The Men Who Changed Football. The BBC documentary gave only a partial account of the past two decades, says Nick Varley

I was one of the men who changed football. Well, actually, I was one of those in The Men Who Changed Football, BBC2’s three-part documentary on how the game was transformed from “national disgrace to big business”. Granted, it was a fleeting appearance, lurk­ing behind Tony Banks and David Mellor, the Laurel and Hardy of west London, after they completed an ill-advised football-playing photocall before the launch of the Task Force. The press conference which followed the slapstick routine was, you won’t be surprised to hear, a lot less entertaining.

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Dear WSC
After hearing for the umpteenth time that 2001 is Tottenham’s year for the Cup (based on the well known logic that they always net the trophy when the year ends in “one”), it occurred to me that it is now ten years since Nottingham Forest let Brian Clough down royally in an inept Cup final display. If Tottenham fans think they’ve had a rough time in the ten years since, they should spare a thought for the eternally depressed Forest faithful who have seen their team slump from being a regular top-ten inhabitant in the top division, to being a penniless First Division club with nothing to look forward to apart from the semi-realistic possibility of Derby County joining us in the First. Sadly, the Nottingham public have no great passion for football and one can’t help wondering if the current situation would be different if we had the kind of committed support that the likes of Newcastle, Sunderland and Manchester City can claim.
Marcus Hesketh, via email

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Foreigners both obscure and notorious are flooding into Scotland. Gary Oliver suggests some clubs may have bought better than others

If Jim McLean is proved to have cut the lip of BBC reporter John Barnes, it will be a rare instance of a Dundee United man hitting the target this season. The team, like the former manager and chairman, has become a parody of its former self. At Tannadice there no longer appears to be a quality control department, and the club is recruiting increasingly obscure foreign players of dubious ability.

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Jim McLean severed his links with Dundee United in spectacular style. Ken Gall reflects on the fall of a hero who became an embarrassment

In a recent poll, the Great British Public selected the Apollo moon landing as television’s greatest mo­ment, with the funeral of the Princess of Wales, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the release from prison of Nelson Mandela listed among other cherished mem­ories of our time.

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Dear WSC
Why is Juninho (and any other Brazilian for that matter) referred to as a “samba star”? We don’t call Spanish players “tango stars” or Italians “tarantella stars”. Dennis Bergkamp has never been a “clog dance star” and I haven’t heard Everton fans heralding Joe-Max Moore as their new “hoedown star”. I wonder what foreign journalists call English players. “Morris dance stars” perhaps?
Nigel Ball, Middlesbrough

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