Mad for it: From Blackpool to Barcelona: Football’s Greatest Rivalries. Andy Mitten
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Название: Mad for it: From Blackpool to Barcelona: Football’s Greatest Rivalries

Автор: Andy Mitten

Издательство: HarperCollins

Жанр: Спорт, фитнес

Серия:

isbn: 9780007360970

isbn:

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      Mad For It

      From Blackpool To Barcelona Football’s Greatest Rivalries

      Andy Mitten

      

HarperSport An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

      This book is dedicated to the people I met along the way and their incredible passion for a game called football. And to my dad Charlie, who lit the spark by taking me to watch him play in the Irlam v Urmston cup derby in 1984.

      ‘By the 1980s, the rivalry had become vicious, with United’s Scouse manager Ron Atkinson describing a trip to Anfield as like going into Vietnam. Big Ron’s experience fighting the Viet Cong has not been fully substantiated, but he can be forgiven for exaggerating – he had just been tear gassed.’ Liverpool v Manchester United

      ‘Ian Ramsey began supporting The Shire “to be different from my mates. I wanted to support the least fashionable club.” He didn’t have to look far…to a club that gave 32-year-old Alex Ferguson his first managerial job in 1974. There were only eight registered players when Ferguson arrived. “They were the worst senior club in the country,” Ferguson later wrote.’ Elgin City v East Stirlingshire

      ‘Tyres are set ablaze, telephone booths vandalised, windows smashed, and anti-regime chants are heard across Tehran and Iran’s other cities…in a country where boys and girls fear holding hands in case the special morality police take them in or, worse, send them to a moral correction unit, football may not be enough to contain their passions.’ Iran v Iraq

      Table of Contents

       Cover Page

       Title Page

       Dedication

       Excerpt

       More Than a Game

       The Clasico

       The Rivalry That Time Forgot

       Battle of the Bosphorus

       Unholy War

       Pride of North London

       On the Frontline

       The Coldest Derby in the World

       Love Island

       Boys from the Black Country

       Love and Hate

       Birds of a Feather

       The Colombian Connection

       Dutch Courage

       It’s Just Not Cricket

       ‘You’re Not Very Good’

       Sheep Shaggers v Donkey Lashers

       The Eternal War

       Two Languages, Two Peoples…and Two Countries?

       A Question of Ships and Coal

       Life in the Glasgow Bubble

       Acknowledgments

       The Contributors

       Copyright

       About the Publisher

       Introduction

      It was not a day too soon. When Manchester United took on Manchester City away in October 1986, I pestered my dad to take me. I was 12 years old. Dad wasn’t a lover of watching football, always preferring to play, but he finally relented and acquired three tickets for the main stand at Maine Road.

      I devoured the pre-match hype in the Evening News and knew every player of both sides. It wasn’t a golden age for Manchester football and the attendance of 32,440 was then the lowest post-war for a derby, partly because the game was the first Manchester derby to be televised ‘live’. Before we left the СКАЧАТЬ