Intelligent fellow, Nevin, and highly articulate, so I'm not surprised it's a good read. I remember him on the front page of the NME circa 1980 due to his love of indie music. Presumably he joined your boys after his time at Everton? I suppose my abiding memory of him there was scoring the only goal of the match in the other semi-final on the same day as Hillsborough.
Yeah music is a huge part of his life, especially in his Chelsea days. We signed him on loan initially in 92 then stumped up a club record £350k for him in August that year. He was absolutely ridiculous. A joy to watch and walks into any all-time TRFC XI. Should have been playing in the top flight still when we had him I reckon. The side we had in my formative years played better football than both of our Merseyside neighbours at the time. Not to say we were a better side (though we possibly were better than Everton in 93-94 when they were lucky to stay up and we were unlucky to stay down) but under Souness and Kendall respectively they both played fairly pragmatic, ugly football as was the style for many barring Man U and Newcastle at that point. We on the other hand played attacking, passing football. King was probably too committed to the beautiful game if anything, Nevin talks in one chapter as to how the players had to talk him out of a tactic of leaving five men up when defending a corner.
I didn't know about Falco. It was unusual though. I think any footballer with A levels, never mind a degree, was usually referred to as 'Professor' by his team mates.
Alumnus of my old alma mater, as it happens.
I read this a while back too and also loved it. You're spot on about the amount of original research that went into it and how it enriches the book. I also thought the thematic structure worked much better than a straight chronology would have.
Weren't Celtic against Uruguayan opposition? Seem to remember reading about a game they played in Montevideo which ended up with multiple red cards.
From memory, the match in Montevideo was a play-off after the two-leg final was tied. I'm pretty sure that Celtic's opponents in 1967 were Argentinian.
en.wikipedia.org
I would imagine that's a pretty good read.
Yeah it was fascinating. It did make me think that as much as I whinge about international football that it's a shame there's no longer proper tours, there's generations of European footballers at this point who have never played in Argentina, which I think is a great shame as it's one of the great footballing nations.
