TX Bill
Player Valuation: £80m
Last night at around 10pm here in the States, Fox Soccer Channel had their "FA Archives" show on where they'll show a game from the past.
Tonights match was the England vs. Scotland match played in May of 1979 at Wembley.
Needless to say, I was fascinated by watching it only because of who was playing. I really didn't start following English football until the mid to late '90s so all of the players playing in that match, I knew as current day or former managers.
England had Latchford, Keegan, Coppell, "Nose" Thompson, Neal and a few other players I wasn't as familiar with (Mills, P. Barnes) and then Scotland was fielding Dalglish, Burnley, Souness, Wark (I only knew him from the Victory film with Stallone) and I believe I saw Strachan on the bench, red hair perm and all.
Watched 3/4 of it (tied 1-1 when I turned it off) and three things really jumped out at me:
1) Pace of the game to me was much slower than it is today.
2) The referee allowed quite a bit of contact and what would have been "fouls" today to play on.
3) The old back pass to the keeper where the keeper could pick it up. I forgot about that and the first time I saw it happen I yelled, "Hey, he can't do that..." until I remembered that back then, he could.
All in all, fun to watch and just made me wish I'd been a big fan before now. As a kid, they used to bring one game a week into the States via PBS on the old Soccer Made In England show. Usually it was Leeds on TV but I remember seeing Nottingham Forest and Liverpool as well. That was back in the mid to late 70's.
Tonights match was the England vs. Scotland match played in May of 1979 at Wembley.
Needless to say, I was fascinated by watching it only because of who was playing. I really didn't start following English football until the mid to late '90s so all of the players playing in that match, I knew as current day or former managers.
England had Latchford, Keegan, Coppell, "Nose" Thompson, Neal and a few other players I wasn't as familiar with (Mills, P. Barnes) and then Scotland was fielding Dalglish, Burnley, Souness, Wark (I only knew him from the Victory film with Stallone) and I believe I saw Strachan on the bench, red hair perm and all.
Watched 3/4 of it (tied 1-1 when I turned it off) and three things really jumped out at me:
1) Pace of the game to me was much slower than it is today.
2) The referee allowed quite a bit of contact and what would have been "fouls" today to play on.
3) The old back pass to the keeper where the keeper could pick it up. I forgot about that and the first time I saw it happen I yelled, "Hey, he can't do that..." until I remembered that back then, he could.
All in all, fun to watch and just made me wish I'd been a big fan before now. As a kid, they used to bring one game a week into the States via PBS on the old Soccer Made In England show. Usually it was Leeds on TV but I remember seeing Nottingham Forest and Liverpool as well. That was back in the mid to late 70's.
