THE SOUND OF INEVITABILITY
The beauty of youth football tournaments is that fresh-faced young sportspeople, unburdened by memories of their nations’ toils or triumphs of yesteryear and preoccupied with more juvenile concerns such as novelty handshake choreography and fidget-spinner technique, can create histories that are entirely their own. But it is becoming apparent that at least one of the teams in Poland for the European Under-21 Championship knows a little bit more than they ought to. Clearly the previous escapades of Die Grown-Up Mannschaft crop up regularly on the Realschulabschluss syllabus, for their team are turning the tournament into something of a footballing jukebox, wheeling out covers of the nation’s greatest hits.
Like at the 1998 World Cup, they won their first game 2-0 against a team in red. As in 1974 their second match was won 3-0, they got the ball rolling with a lovely goal from outside the penalty area and later scored another from a corner. But these were mere warm-ups. In their final group game both teams knew they could progress if the result happened to be precisely right and coincidentally it was, the 1-0 scoreline prompting furious protests from the nation duly eliminated.
In 1982 Germany beat Austria 1-0, a match now commonly known as the Disgrace of Gijón, knocking out a furious Algeria. In their last group game the U-21s lost by the same scoreline to Italy in a game now being called, here if nowhere else, the Curious Contempt of Krakow, allowing both teams to go through and knocking Slovakia out. Slovakian prime minister Robert Fico labelled the result a “farce” and called upon Uefa to take immediate action. “Mr President, although we operate in different social spheres, our responsibility to allow the expression of fair play is similar,” he wrote. “In this particular case, you are responsible for shaping the consciousness of young generations of sportspeople.”
Some, it seems, might have already had their consciousnesses shaped. In response Horst Hrubesch, the German FA’s sporting director, insisted it was “perfectly normal to play cautiously in the last few minutes”. Hrubesch, as the studious U-21 side will know from their textbooks, was Germany’s goalscorer in the controversial 1982 match. The Fiver would not suggest that Hrubesch is telling porkies, though we would point out that he comes from somewhere called Hamm. It’s certainly uncanny that Germany’s only goalscorer in that match is still actively involved. Because their only goalscorer in the Euro 96 semi-final against England, Stefan Kuntz, is now pulling the strings from the sidelines as U-21 manager, and the team’s next assignment is a semi-final against … England.
Can we thus expect a 1-1 draw followed by a penalty shoot-out? That, after all, is what happened at Wembley in 1996, and in Turin when the same sides met in the 1990 World Cup semis. It’s looking preordained, though sadly/happily/infuriatingly, Germany and their pre-1992 kind-of-incarnation West Germany have 18 other major tournament semi-finals to potentially replicate, and the Mini-Mannschaft could thus win 7-1, 6-1, 4-2, 3-2, 2-1, 2-0 or 1-0, lose 1-0, 2-0, 2-1, 3-1 or 4-3, or indeed draw 3-3 after extra-time, while still doffing an uncanny cap at their forebears. Kuntz, however, thinks something unusual could happen. “We are looking forward to seeing who is the best,” he blootered. “Whoever is in best shape with their performance will win. It is a 50-50 game.” It’s a novel suggestion, though if that is the scoreline Uefa might actually have to investigate.
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QUOTE OF THE DAY
24 June: “I’ve played at Windsor Park in a friendly and trained there with Aberdeen when big Roy Aitken was manager and there were red dots on us for the whole 90 minutes. It was intimidating, but we just had to keep moving” – former Dons and Queen’s Celtic player Joe Miller on his experience of playing at Windsor Park in a friendly in 1995.
27 June: “Linfield FC has no record of having played Aberdeen at Windsor Park or elsewhere in the entire decade Mr Miller refers to, whether in a friendly fixture, training game or otherwise. In fact, it appears that Linfield have never played against Aberdeen at all throughout our entire history. Given also that neither the then-RUC nor the British Army carried lasers fitted to their weapons as standard, and that in 1995 it would be some years before laser pointers became easily available and affordable to members of the public, one wonders where, exactly, these red dots may have appeared from in this match that didn’t actually happen” – ah.
RECOMMENDED LOOKING
It’s your boy, David Squires, with his latest look back at 25 years of the Premier League … and a time when Blackeye Rovers ruled the roost.
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FIVER LETTERS
“If Fifa looks into the allegation of mass doping in the Russia squad (yesterday’s Bits and Bobs), hopefully it won’t find a slightly smaller scandal nestling inside, and an even smaller controversy inside that” – Mark McFadden.
“Phil Brown (yesterday’s Fiver)? Linked to the Palace job, taking him away from my beloved Southend? Was this the same as when Sam Allardyce got the big job and the Southend Echo ran the the story about Phil Brown being linked to a role in the England set-up, only for the detail of the story to reveal that the person doing the linking was just Phil Brown?” – Sam Carpenter.
“In the linked article about one-time managers (yesterday’s Still Want More?), Kevin Dillon came up with this insight as to why he lost his job at Aldershot: ‘I think I’d moved the goalposts. I wanted to change the size of the pitch.’ Is it too late for a Stop Football Literalism campaign?” – Mo Holkar.
Send your letters to the.boss@theguardian.com. And if you’ve nothing better to do you can also tweet The Fiver. Today’s winner of our prizeless letter o’the day is … Mark McFadden.
WHERE THE STREETS HAVE NO NAME
24 June: “This is such an honour and I want to thank all Tanzanians. I promise to come back, spend more time with you and also reward your kind” – Victor Wanyama unveils Victor Wanyama Street in the Tanzanian province of Ubongo.
27 June: “All names given to streets are proposed by the Ward Development Committee and later forwarded to the director for approval. In our case, the council of councillors, Dar es Salaam City Council and the regional Consultative Committee, have to be consulted before an announcement is made” – Victor Wanyama Street is no more.
BITS AND BOBS
Salop Leisure Stand ultras are licking their lips in anticipation after Shrewsbury applied to become the first club in England to introduce a safe standing section. “We hope that by pioneering the use of rail seating, we will be playing a useful part in paving the way for other clubs in England and Wales to follow,” cheered chief suit Brian Caldwell.
Alarm bells are ringing at the dormant volcano that serves as Fifa’s lair after German newspaper Bild said it will leak the full 430-page secret report into the bidding process behind 2018 Ethics World Cup and the 2022 Human Rights World Cup that Fifa somehow managed to lose down the back of the sofa.
Chelsea’s Bertrand Traoré is now Lyon’s Bertrand Traoré after £8.8m was sent the way of Stamford Bridge beancounters.
Jürgen Klinsmann is a killjoy. “[There is] no truth on rumours [that I will be] coaching Sunderland FC in the near future,” he said on social media disgrace Twitter.
And knee-knack’s Danny Ings has created a sequel to his feelgood movie of 2016, and like all follow-ups, it’s not as good. Still, it means he’s almost fit again, which is nice for him – and Liverpool.
THE RECAP
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STILL WANT MORE?
Transfer quiz time: the signings that went very wrong, very quickly.
Paul Doyle on Northampton Town, it says here.
How the Scotland women’s team strong-armed the SFA by taking a stand on pay. By Suzanne Wrack.
Martin Laurence looks ahead to the Confederations Cup semi-finals.
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