Search: 'Brazil'

A flop at Bradford, a controversial figure at Middlesbrough – this former England skipper is seeking managerial redemption at West Brom. Matt Rickard reports

It seems perverse that Bryan Robson should find himself managing again in the Premiership so soon after an ignominious seven months in charge of Bradford City. Wasn’t this the man who couldn’t buy a job after his time at Middlesbrough that ended shortly after a chast­ening call to Terry Venables? And this despite a desperate flurry of CV writing, only matched by the deadening thud of rejection letters.

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Socrates, futebol de salão and Premiership ambitions – Steve Wilson looks at the strange case of Simon Clifford's Garforth Town

Watching Garforth Town crash out of this season’s Northern Counties League Cup on the kind of wet and windy Tuesday evening in northern England that foreigners are habitually assumed “not to fancy much”, it was difficult to imagine anywhere further from Brazil.

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While the east midlands mourns a great manager, Brian Clough's native region has lost a great player. Harry Pearson  traces a legend's goalscoring career

It was during the 1986 World Cup. England had got off to a pathetic start and in the ITV studio Mick Channon was lamenting the inability of English players to “get by people”. “The Brazilians do it,” he burbled. “The French do it. The Danes do it…” From off camera came an unmistakable whine: “Even educated fleas do it.” Brian Clough may have won titles and European Cups, but the queasy, humiliated expression that remark put on Channon’s medieval mug will likely live longer in my memory than any of them. To anyone who grew up on Teesside the tone, if not the accent (Clough’s peculiar vocal style was all his own) was unmistakable. Funny undoubtedly, but also scornful, the humorous equivalent of a slap in the face.

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For Dan Turner, a 1990 FA Cup semi-final was the first staging of a derby against Manchester United in his lifetime and a 3-3 draw still constituted nirvana

“Nick Faldo is on the verge of a second successive US Masters, yesterday we witnessed the fastest-ever Grand National, and this was the day you saw 13 goals in the FA Cup semi-finals” – I can still recall Des Lynam’s super-smooth sign-off on the video I watched as soon as I got home from Maine Road. I wasn’t much fussed about Crystal Palace’s earlier epic 4-3 victory over Liverpool, I just wanted to double-check that my eyes hadn’t been deceiving me for the previous two hours.

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There were more than one team of football winners in Athens, though there waas some squabbling over what Iraq's achievement means, reports Matthew Brown

For a nation that supposedly fell in love with the game this summer, Greece seemed strangely indifferent to the Olympic football tournament. Per­haps they simply needed a break after all that Euro 2004 euphoria, but many matches at the Olympic Games were played out in front of virtually empty stadiums. In general the crowds rose above 20,000 only when Greece were playing or if the game was held in Athens itself. In some cases, the attendances barely rose above 5,000 and in others were fewer than 1,500.

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