Search: 'Brazil'

David Bartram gets a sense of perspective on outlandish claims about a country competing in their first World Cup for 44 years

It’s July 11, 2010, and they’re celebrating on the streets of Pyongyang. North Korea have just won the World Cup. Well, not quite, but at least the people celebrating think they did. In reality, government officials have spent days tinkering with footage, editing out anything that reflects badly on the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). The 6-0 drubbing of the US in the final was particularly tricky, given that both sides crashed out in the group stages.

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Dear WSC
So, following Man Utd’s exit from the Champions League at the hands of Bayern Munich, Sir Alex Ferguson saw fit to make the following comment regarding players influencing a referee, in particular to getting an opponent dismissed: “They got him sent off – everyone ran towards the referee. Typical Germans”. I couldn’t help but think back to Derby v Man Utd at Pride Park in the late 1990s and an incident I witnessed just yards from where I was sitting. I distinctly remember Gary Neville instructing the referee, Mike Reed, to send off Derby’s German defender Stefan Schnoor for a foul he had committed shortly after having already received a yellow card. Reed had walked away and wasn’t going to take further action until United’s players forced him to change his mind. To double check my memory I found the following match report on the Independent’s website for the match on November 20, 1999: “Stefan Schnoor, admittedly, invited his own dismissal, ploughing through Dwight Yorke in the 40th minute after being cautioned for dissent moments earlier. What enraged Derby was that when it seemed Mike Reed was undecided about a second yellow card, and the automatic red, David Beckham and Gary Neville ran over in an apparent attempt to pressure the referee into banishing the defender". It’s a bit of an irony, isn’t it, Man Utd’s English players talking a referee into sending off a German. Perhaps, if this behaviour is “typically German” in 2010, they are just emulating the behaviour of English players in an English team, Manchester United, who have been practising it for over ten years.
Andy Kitchen, Derby

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David Stubbs runs the rule over this summer's musical offerings and finds a distinct lack of national pride swelling in his chest. Quite the opposite

 Time was when it was possible for the relevant authorities to frogmarch the England team en masse to the studio to record the official England song, in which they would assure us, back home, that this time they were going to get it right, their stilted choral tones betraying an appropriate lack of conviction that they wouldn’t come up short around the quarter-final mark.

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Robert Shaw looks at how the serious illness of a World Cup hero has brought to light the negative impact alcohol has had on Brazilian football

Brazilian football legend Socrates left hospital on September 22 after two stays for stomach haemorrhaging and liver-related problems that could yet necessitate a transplant. Given that doctors admit that the 57-year-old’s condition was life-theatening, the relief among friends, family and the better part of 190 million football fans is tangible.

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The Frank McDougall Story
by Frank McDougall & Jeff Holmes
MacDonald Media, £9.99
Reviewed by Dianne Millen
From WSC 290 April 2011

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There are probably not many people who have punched Alex Ferguson in the face and lived to tell the tale – let alone stayed friends with the grumpy Govan genius. But Frank McDougall, the most legendary goalscorer never to be picked for Scotland, can count this among his many claims to Scottish footballing fame. It seems typical of the likeable but somewhat chaotic figure described in this likeable but somewhat chaotic book that he not only lived to tell the tale, but persuaded the great man to contribute a chapter.

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