UPFROnT
8
“ER, THANKS?”No glamorous man of the
match prizes in Uganda, sorry. If you
have a good game, you get a loaf of
bread and a pint of milk.
One player was left holding exactly
that after a particularly stellar display- the bread was even branded with
the league’s logo and the words ‘MAN
OF THE MATCH’. What an honour.
It followed a fine tradition of weird
African man of the match winnings,
including a pair of flip-flops (Ghana),
cleaning products (Zimbabwe), 5GB
of mobile phone data (South Africa),
a chicken (Malawi) and a goat (Mali).
La Liga was clearly missing a trick
throughout the 2010s: imagine how
desperate Cristiano Ronaldo would
have been to collect more real goats
than Lionel Messi...
7
HUGHES AND CROUCH,
TOGETHER AGAINWe’ll be honest: if you’d told us four
months ago that Mark Hughes would
spend a May afternoon hanging out
with Sutton’s Jenny the Giraffe, we’d
have been a bit puzzled.
Hughes’ decision to take charge of
mid-table League Two outfit Bradford
came out of the blue, especially as the
Welshman had never managed a club
outside the Premier League before,
and he didn’t make a huge impact in
the closing months of the season – the
Bantams were 13th when he arrived,
and finished 14th.
But that didn’t stop Sparky posing
with a giraffe mascot prior to a game
at Sutton’s Gander Green Lane – even
if his face does appear to be saying,
‘I’m being held hostage, send help’.4
RECORD BREAKERRoy Hodgson looks to have
brought the curtain down on life as
a manager after 46 years, but he’s got
nothing on Pawel Sicinski.
The Pole has been recognised by the
Guinness Book of Records after playing
a single game of Football Manager for
416 years and 134 days – computer
years, not real years, otherwise he’d
have started in 1606, when even Roy
was only in nappies.
During his four centuries as a boss,
ending with Helsingborg in 2434 (OK,
we admit the picture above isn’t how
you actually play FM, but we found it
and it looked odd), Sicinski managed
22,300 matches and collected 1,
trophies. Almost as good as Sir Alex
Ferguson, then.3
POSTER BOYBayern Munich got creative
when Thomas Muller agreed a new
deal with the German giants – taking
him back to his childhood bedroom
to put pen to paper.
The lifelong Bayern supporter wore
a shirt from the mid-90s as he signed
the contract extension in a recreation
of the room he grew up in, complete
with an oversized cardboard cut-out
of Franz Beckenbauer, International
Superstar Soccer on a games console,
as well as posters of star men Jurgen
Klinsmann and Lothar Matthaus side
by side on a wall.
Ah, the innocence of youth – when
he was six, little Tommy probably had
no idea just how much his two heroes
despised each other...9
WALKING THE LINEBury FC are at last back at
Gigg Lane, and they’ve found a new
groundsman... Boris Johnson?!
No, not really: after an awful three
years in which the club were chucked
out of the EFL and left without any
football whatsoever, a fans’ group
have bought the stadium and taken
the Shakers out of administration, as
they aim to return to the pyramid.
Johnson soon turned up for a photo
op, although painting the lines might
have made more sense if the ground
hadn’t already hosted its first match
since 2019 a day earlier (a women’s
fixture against Fleetwood).
Boris also had a kickabout – OK, he
didn’t spray passes around like Paul
Scholes, but at least he avoided rugby-
tackling a child or something.5
“I DID A FULL MEDICAL
DEGREE FOR THIS”Hartlepool fans are renowned for their
end-of-season fancy dress frolics, and
this year was no different.
In past campaigns, supporters have
turned up for their last away match
of the season as penguins, crusaders,
Stormtroopers, Thunderbirds, Smurfs,
mimes, clowns and... Bob Marley – this
time, they went to Scunthorpe dressed
as doctors and nurses in full (possibly
pretend) medical gear.
Midfielder Mark Shelton missed the
game after having to go to hospital
with a cotton bud stuck in his ear (yes,
really) – if only he’d waited a couple
of days, there’d have been no shortage
of medics on hand at Glanford Park to
offer up their expertise.2
“THE NAME’S YOUNG,
GORDON YOUNG”Gordon Young may be the assistant
boss of Scottish side Cove Rangers,
but he’s also behind the best book
cover of all time.
When Young released his memoir
charting his journey from UEFA Pro
Licence to Aberdeen’s second most
illustrious club, via Kazakhstan and
Latvia, he knew exactly what he was
going to call it – Licence To Skill.
The highly tenuous James Bond
references didn’t end there, either:
a full themed cover saw him dressed
in a suit, wielding a training cone as
if it was a gun.
FFT are very much looking forward
to his inevitable follow-up, Diamond
Formations Are Forever.
6
“IT’S BEEN 38 YEARS”Trabzonspor had a long
wait to finally reclaim the Turkish
league title, and it had taken a toll
on some of their supporters.
With a general look of weariness,
38 years of misery was erased for
this fan and thousands of others
after the Black Sea Storm recently
secured their first title since 1984,
ending the perennial domination of
the Istanbul teams.
Eddie Newton previously guided
them to Turkish Cup success in 2020,
having been Roberto Di Matteo’s
assistant when Chelsea won the
Champions League. Given how that
spell finished, he likely knew what
was coming, then: yes, Trabzonspor
fired him three months later. Hard
to argue with it now, we suppose.
FourFourTwo July 2022 13