THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. **** Wednesday, December 2, 2020 |A
Election workers, right, verified ballots as recount observers watched last month during a hand recount of votes in Milwaukee.NAM Y. HUH/ASSOCIATED PRESSballers Aging Badly.” But as it
entered its final stage, the ten-
sion was palpable.
“It’s becoming more parti-
san,” said Mr. Gallagher, who
is a television director. “Peo-
ple are really nailing their col-
ors to the mast. The further
we go into the competition,
the more tribal it gets.”
Former Helmond Sport
goalkeeper Otto Versfeld told
a radio station in the Nether-
lands it was in footballers’ na-
ture to want to win. “I always
aim for the highest,” said Mr.
Versfeld, who lost most of his
hair by 26. Mr. Versfeld went
down to Mr. Sproat.
Mr. Sproat said he didn’t
realize he was in the running
for the title until a Wall Street
Journal reporter contacted
him. He has since taken a keen
interest, and provided a pic-
ture to show how he looks
now—slimmer, and without
the former big mustache.
Excitement in the Sproat
household grew, too, as news
broke that Mr. Sproat had
reached the semifinals Friday
after defeating former Bel-
gium captain Julien Cools.
Mr. Sproat ultimately lost
his match-up when fans
judged that he looked younger
than Brazilian ace Nivaldo—
full name Nivaldo Gomes da
Silva—who went on to face a
former Scottish goalkeeper,
Ernie McGarr, in the final.
In the end, after more than
25,000 votes had been cast in
the final round, Nivaldo was
triumphant.
Mr. Sproat says he doesn’t
mind too much coming up
short. When Ayr United’s fans
voted him their all-time cult
favorite a few years ago, “I
didn’t know about that, ei-
ther,” he said.teresting than the actual foot-
ball we have currently without
fans,” he said.
Mr. Sproat, now 68, reckons
the contest harks back to a
time before club nutritionists
devised individualized diets or
specialized training regimes.
“It was more of a sport
back then, not a business like
it is today,” he said from his
home in Prestwick, on Scot-
land’s west coast. “There was
more of a connection with the
fans. We’d go out and socialize
together after the games. That
doesn’t happen now.”
Mayur Ranchordas, who
lectures on sports nu-
trition at Sheffield
Hallam University,
says soccer clubs used
to pay little heed to
what their players
ate, which might have
made them look older.
One coach made his
players eat steak and
chips when he man-
aged a club in the
1960s and ’70s. Another would
sometimes hand out beers to
players on the way to games.
Attitudes began to change
in the 1990s, but not without
some resistance. Former Arse-
nal coach Arsène Wenger once
described how his players
would chant “We want our
Mars bars!” from the back of
the team bus when he intro-
duced strict new diets.
Mr. Sproat, known in his
playing days as Shuggie, a
Scottish derivative of Hugh,
used to run up and down the
playing field when he was
bored or feeling cold. If sup-
porters sang “Shuggie, Shug-
gie, swing on the bars,” he
would happily comply. “It was
fun, just a game,” he said.
So, too, was “80s Foot-allies. “There’s been one asser-
tion that would be systemic
fraud and that would be the
claim that machines were pro-
grammed essentially to skew
the election results,” Mr. Barr
told the AP. The Justice Depart-
ment has “looked into that, and
so far, we haven’t seen any-
thing to substantiate that.”
A Justice Department
spokeswoman said later Tues-
day that the agency is continu-
ing to investigate.
Also on Tuesday, the Trumpcampaign filed fresh claims in
its so-far unsuccessful effort to
reverse the election results,
asking the Wisconsin Supreme
Court to disqualify more than
200,000 mail-in ballots and ap-
pealing a Michigan judge’s deci-
sion dismissing its legal action
there.
The new litigation follows a
string of unsuccessful lawsuits
elsewhere and comes after ev-
ery major battleground state
has certified results showing
Mr. Biden won the election,leaving Mr. Trump with no
known path to reversing the
outcome in the courts.
The Wisconsin lawsuit asks
the state Supreme Court to do
something judges elsewhere
have refused to do: Throw out
votes en masse without pre-
senting direct evidence of
fraud. Such a large-scale invali-
dation of ballots would be un-
precedented in a presidential
election.
In Wisconsin, where state
officials say Mr. Biden won byabout 20,000 votes, the presi-
dent’s legal team said in a filing
to the state Supreme Court that
the collection and counting of
absentee ballots in two popu-
lous and heavily Democratic
counties, Milwaukee and Dane,
was marred by “systemic viola-
tions” of state election laws.
The campaign’s petition says
the court should void certifica-
tion of the election and that the
improper voters should be ex-
cluded from the counties’ re-
count totals.U.S. NEWS
Rudy Giuliani, have aired con-
spiracy theories to explain Mr.
Biden’s win, saying that voting
machines were tampered with
and that collusion among
judges, election officials and
elected leaders in large cities
swung the race.
Mr. Trump’s legal advisers
rejected Mr. Barr’s conclusion.
“With all due respect to the
Attorney General, there hasn’t
been any semblance of a De-
partment of Justice investiga-
tion,” Mr. Giuliani said in a
joint statement with another
Trump legal adviser, Jenna El-
lis.
They said the Justice De-
partment hadn’t, to their
knowledge, examined the evi-
dence they said they uncov-
ered, including sworn witness
testimony.
Mr. Trump on Sunday criti-
cized the Justice Department
and the FBI for not investigat-
ing voter fraud, calling them
“missing in action.”
On Tuesday, the attorney
general dismissed allegations
made by some of Mr. Trump’sThe Justice Department
hasn’t found evidence of wide-
spread voter fraud that could
reverse President-elect Joe Bi-
den’s election victory, Attorney
General William Barr said Tues-
day, dealing a blow to President
Trump as he launched fresh le-
gal claims to contest the re-
sults.
Mr. Barr told the Associated
Press that federal prosecutors
and Federal Bureau of Investi-
gation agents have probed
complaints of voter fraud, in-
cluding allegations around vot-
ing machines skewing the re-
sults. “To date, we have not
seen fraud on a scale that could
have effected a different out-
come in the election,” he said.
With his comments, Mr.
Barr, a strong ally of the presi-
dent, directly contradicted Mr.
Trump, who has said the elec-
tion was stolen from him and
refused to concede the race.
Mr. Trump’s legal advisers,
including his personal attorney
BYSADIEGURMAN
ANDJACOBGERSHMAN
Barr Says No
Evidence of
Voter Fraud
Moscow’s interference in the
2016 election and any links be-
tween the Trump campaign
and Russia.
In a letter dated Tuesday to
Congress, Mr. Barr said he had
made the appointment on Oct.
19 but delayed notifying law-
makers, “given the proximity to
the presidential election.” He
said he wanted to give Mr. Dur-
ham and his team “the assur-
ance that they could complete
their work, without regard to
the outcome of the election.”
The move likely means
President-elect Joe Biden’sJustice Department will be left
to address Mr. Durham’s inves-
tigation. A Biden spokesman
didn’t respond to a request for
comment. A top Democratic
lawmaker criticized Mr. Barr’s
move, calling it a continuation
of “a politically motivated in-
vestigation.”
Mr. Barr tapped Mr. Durham
in May 2019 to lead a wide-
ranging inquiry into the ac-
tions of investigators, but he
had no official title other than
U.S. attorney. The special coun-
sel designation means that, un-
der Justice Department regula-tions, he isn’t subject to day-to-
day supervision by agency
officials and can be fired by the
attorney general only for mis-
conduct or a conflict of inter-
est. If the attorney general de-
cides to overrule an
investigative or prosecutorial
step a special counsel wants to
take, the attorney general has
to notify Congress.
The announcement came
shortly after Mr. Barr acknowl-
edged in an interview with the
Associated Press that the Jus-
tice Department hasn’t found
evidence of widespread voterfraud that would change the
outcome of the 2020 presiden-
tial election, contradicting
President Trump.
Mr. Durham’s probe has so
far led one FBI lawyer to plead
guilty to altering a document
used to obtain surveillance
against a former Trump cam-
paign adviser.
Mr. Barr said in the two-
page order that the “public in-
terest warrants Mr. Durham
continuing this investigation.”
The order says that Mr. Dur-
ham’s mandate includes inves-
tigating whether “any federalofficial, employee, or any other
person or entity” violated laws
in the “intelligence, counter-in-
telligence, or law-enforcement
activities” directed at the 2016
campaigns or individuals asso-
ciated with the Trump admin-
istration.
In a 2019 report, Mr. Muel-
ler confirmed that Moscow in-
terfered in the 2016 election
and detailed contacts between
the Russian operatives and
members of the Trump cam-
paign but said the evidence
didn’t establish a conspiracy or
coordination between the two.Attorney General William
Barr named Connecticut U.S.
Attorney John Durham a spe-
cial counsel, giving him protec-
tion to continue into the Biden
administration his investiga-
tion of the origins of the FBI’s
2016 Russia probe.
Mr. Barr appointed Mr. Dur-
ham special counsel in October
under the same regulation used
to name Robert Mueller in May
2017 to oversee that Russia in-
vestigation, which examined
BYSADIEGURMAN
ANDARUNAVISWANATHA
Prosecutor Named Special Counsel on Russia-Probe Origins
dren used to trade.
“I just couldn’t believe how
old some of these guys looked
for their age,” Mr. Gallagher
said. There was something he
could do with it, he thought.
The result, “80s Footballers
Aging Badly,” his feed on Twit-
ter, has become soccer’s lock-
down event of the year.
He matched up 128 pictures
of players of the 1970s and
1980s, in pairs. He gave fol-
lowers 24 hours to vote for
the oldest-looking of each pair
for his age, with the victor go-
ing on to the next round.
Standout performers in-
clude Nivaldo, a Brazilian who
lost his flowing blond locks
during a six-year period in his
20s. Others tipped Welsh de-
fender Terry Hennessy to go
on to win the whole thing for
growing out an impressive set
of mutton chops, though he
lost in the quarterfinals.
Fans worked to
figure their players’
chances. Craig
Walker from Scot-
land ran a series of
calculations to de-
termine that a bald
head equates to
home-field advan-
tage. In the early
round, all bald play-
ers won. Those with
a tuft or two had a 60% win
rate, he found.
“I’m spending about four
hours per day on it,” Mr.
Walker said.
Others used fingers to
cover players’ bald spots or
beards to focus more sharply
on their eyes and get a better
idea of how old they looked.
Bookmakers offered to take
bets on the face-offs. Star
Sports Bet, based in Brighton,
England, gave odds of 5/1 on
Vito Chimenti, an Italian
striker, before he was bundled
out of the competition.
As to why the contest
caught on, one follower, David
Campbell, figures it provides
some of the banter missing
from soccer stadiums as the
pandemic grinds on. “More in-
Continued from Page One
Oldest Shall
Be First in
One Contest
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