Best side ever to grace a football pitch? Pffff

A superb little video of Brazil’s lighter moments and to whoever put this together the music just tops it all off brilliantly.

Thanks to ‘Lincoln Fan’ for sending this over.

It’s hard to see a match-up quite like this at the World Cup. Actually, North Korea v South Korea would be pretty tasty what with them remembering they are still at war with each other following their spat last month. This is East Germany who were the only team able to beat the West German side that won the 1974 World Cup, a highly symbolic event for both sides of the nation, which remained the only meeting of both teams.

A clip from “The Beautiful Game”, a Scottish TV football documentary series. This is a clip from an episode that featured Celtic and concentrates on 1970 with interviews from David Hay, Jimmy Johnstone and Tommy Gemmell, footage from the 1970 European Cup run and a long haired Kenny Dalglish.

Packed to the brim with bicycle kicks, flying headers, volleys and Jurgen Klinsmann

One of the best Phoenix From The Flames and it’s good to see Ilunga laughing about it now. Their story is actually quite sad, Zaire were then the first sub-Saharan African team to qualify for the World Cup finals but during the tournament the players discovered they would not be paid. Beyond the  laughable incident against Brazil there was a lot of despair: according to Ilunga, in an interview with Brazilian FourFourTwo magazine, the president’s guards (who were getting the promised money) threatened the players if they lost by more than 3 goals.

In 1977 Gordon Jago, Millwall’s commercially savvy new manager invited the BBC’s documentary team down to the Den. Jago saw an opportunity to bring in the TV cameras and show the nation that Millwall’s hooligan reputation was nothing but a myth and had been blown out of all aproportion by the press.

According to Eamon Dunphy, the former Millwall player, what the BBC actually intended to do was quite the opposite and prove the theory that football hooliganism was more than just random violence, that it was organised, linked to the the National Front and deeply rooted at Millwall.

Dunphy reports that people closely linked to the club at the time claimed the story was false, a distortion of the truth and the BBC had stuck to their agenda. The full programme is below and you can read more about the fall-out here.

Danny Baker also did a more quirky report from Cold Blow Lane, which can be found here

The surgical masks never really caught on did they?

FA Cup 5th Round, 18th February 1978 at The Racecourse Ground. Blythe are 1-0 up coming into the last minute of the game had got there via the following route:

Sep 77 – 1st Rd Qualifier:

Sep 77 – 2nd Rd Qualifier: Crook Town (away)

Oct 77 – 2nd Rd Qualifier Replay: Crook Town (home)

Oct 77 – 3rd Rd Qualifier: Consett (away)

Nov 77 – 4th Rd: Bishop Auckland (away)

Nov 77 – 1st Rd: Burscough (home)

Dec 77 – 2nd Rd: Chesterfield (home)

Jan 78 – 3rd Rd: Enfield

Feb 78 – 4th Rd Stoke City (away – called off twice due to the cold)

Feb 78 – 5th Rd Wrexham (away)

Then, in the last minute, referee Alf Grey intervened. Wrexham’s Les Cartwright took a corner kick (Although the ball had clearly gone behind via a Wrexham player’s foot) after moving the flag. Blyth’s keeper, Dave Clarke, caught the ball but Grey ordered a retake. Again the ball was cleared but again the flag had fallen over. From the second retake, Wrexham cruelly levelled. 7.10 into the video

In the replay, thousands were locked out of St James’ Park as 42,000-plus saw Wrexham win 2-1 to deny Blythe a famous home tie against Arsenal in the 6th Round. More here in this great article from WSC.

Not content with being the sporting supertars of American 70s sport, Pele, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Mario Andretti also have part-time jobs testing new Atari games. The lucky fellas.

It’s the FA Cup first round tomorrow so here is a clip of Watford who were struggling in the second division beating Bill Shankley’s Liverpool in 1970. Barry Endean scored the diving header but check out the nutmeg in the build up.

Shankley was not impressed, stating that he would not have gone to watch Watford had he lived in the town and was given a free ticket. It was a pivotal game in the history of Liverpool though. The defeat here prompted Shankly to break-up his trusted 60s side, realising some of the players here, notably Lawrence, Yeats, St.John and Strong were way past their best. Within the year he’d introduced Lloyd, Toshack, Heighway and most importantly, Keegan to the side.

Ronaldo shmaldo. This is how they did things in the 70′s. Eddie Gray sets off on a a solo run and from the byline and dances his way past four Burnley players (twice each) before hammering the ball past the keeper. Magical Stuff.

Final Result: Leeds 2, Burnley 1. April 4th, 1970