Monthly Archives: September 2013

KS Cracovia: Beginning Life As A Member of the Pasy

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Kyle Hulme files his first foreign report for TFN from his new home in Krakow, Poland, with tension growing ahead of the city’s biggest derby…

Yesterday I sauntered along the medieval cobbles of this beautiful city, twisting and turning through the winding streets in search of some essential piece of contraband. I reached my destination, an unassuming shop in the most shaded part of the street, immediately noticing that the store I was headed towards was stocked to the brim with the paraphernalia of Polish national pride and sporting achievement.

Entering nervously, I quickly found what I came for, clumsily stuffing a package into the hidden pocket inside my jacket. I made for the exit all the while hoping nobody had seen what I’d just taken from the shelves. Don’t worry, this wasn’t theft. The package was paid for before it was secreted away within my coat, and I hadn’t bought anything illegal either. This concealed package didn’t contain drugs, weaponry or anything of the sort, but just a simple scarf, barred in the red and white: the colours of KS Cracovia.

Such is life in the City of Knives.

Continue reading →

Jack Wilshere: At Risk of Being Lost in Limbo for Arsenal and England?

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TFN debutant Phil Mann ponders whether the Arsenal and England midfielder’s uniqueness for country and versatility for his club may hamper attempts to turn his undoubted talent into irrefutable greatness…

“The problem is he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to be doing. Coming or going. Attacking or defending. Wenger and England – sometimes they just don’t know what to do with him or how best to use him.”

It takes a brave soul to argue with the insight of a towering, pissed up football fan. In fact, it is probably a hard-learnt truism that most advice received whilst standing at a urinal in a pub is best demurely agreed to.

It is the final day of the 2012-2013 season. Arsenal are about to play Newcastle at St James Park, everyone nauseous – not the effects of a dodgy lasagne – but the sinking realization that Arsene Wenger’s feat of keeping Arsenal in the Champions League for 16 consecutive years may just be about to end. Yet the player fuelling so much discussion beforehand is Arsenal prodigy, Jack Wilshere.

Whilst the final day of the season was a successful one for Arsenal, it did little to answer the growing number of questions over the state of the club. A small reason for optimism is Wilshere, who, after an unusually protracted series of injuries and layoffs, is beginning to show signs of why he had come to be regarded as England’s best young midfielder. Continue reading →

Emerson: Failed Brazilian Promise on Teesside

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Mike Brown of Bridlington Free Press profiles the final piece of Middlesbrough’s Brazilian trio of the 1990s…

Signing a Brazilian footballer is always exciting. When that signing is a Brazilian midfield powerhouse, added to a team already boasting a silky Brazilian schemer and a World Cup winning defender, things get more exciting still.

So it’s fair to say that Middlesbrough fans were fairly delirious when Emerson jetted into Teesside in 1996 to join compatriots Juninho and Branco.

The mid 90s were probably the best time to make a foreign signing. Football had undergone its gentrification in the early part of the decade, which reached its nadir post Euro 96, and gave football stadiums up and down the land a decidely more continental, or at least cosmopolitan, feel. There was enough European football on TV to whet our appetite, but not enough to saturate.

It was a time before a fanbase could call up any given player’s career statistics at the touch of a button, before one internet message board dweller reveals that he can speak fluent Portuguese then painstakingly translates every tweet said player has ever sent.

It was also long before the time when a career could be chewed up and spat out on the back of one heavily edited YouTube clip.

So while excitement was the prevailing feeling when Emerson Moisés Costa stepped out for his debut at the Riverside in Willie Maddren’s testimonial match against Inter Milan, most didn’t quite know what to expect. Continue reading →

Branco: From World Cup Winner to Middlesbrough Outcast

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Mike Brown, reporter for Bridlington Free Press, profiles World Cup ’94 winner Branco and his time on Teeside…

Football fans everywhere, imagine the scene if you can.

Before Chelsea, and Manchester City, and all those French clubs made it boring, a wildly rich and benevolent owner is bestowing millions of pounds of his own money on your club in order to gatecrash the top table, challenge for honours, and compete for the world’s top stars. Even better, this man is not a shady oil baron, but a local lad made good.

Then imagine him installing a world renowned football icon as player manager, getting promoted in your first season, then moving being the first club in decades to move to a purpose built new stadium.

Along the way you’re signing international forwards from Norway, Denmark, England, Italy and Brazil.

Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? Continue reading →

Juninho, A Brazilian Number 10 in Middlesbrough by Mike Brown

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Mike Brown, reporter for Bridlington Free Press and Middlesbrough fan, looks back on Juninho’s time in the North East…

As average becomes the byword for a club stagnating in the Championship; the sparkle that surrounded Middlesbrough as it embarked on its South American adventure seems even longer ago than the near two decades since the first and best of Boro’s Brazilians signed for the club.

It was October 1995 when Osvaldo Giraldo Junior – or simply Juninho – joined a club who had broken the £1m transfer barrier for the first time only a year earlier, and had been promoted to the Premier League and signed one of England’s hottest young internationals a matter of months before.

While times were exciting under Bryan Robson, and fans were enjoying the momentum that comes with a promotion and a number of galvanising signings; this was different.

This was Brazil’s number 10. The shirt of Pele. The shirt of Zico. Continue reading →

Jan Vertonghen and the United Federation of the Low Countries

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Elko Born looks at the impact Belgian footballers have had on the historical, cultural rivalry between Belgium and The Netherlands…

‘It still gives me a stomach ache,’ FC Twente’s chairman Joop Munsterman recently told Elf Voetbal, reminiscing about the 15th of May 2011: the day Ajax beat Twente 3-1 in a thrilling, last day of the season title decider.

How different it must have been for Ajax’s fans and players. By beating Twente 3-1, Ajax didn’t just win the title, they won their first title in seven years, a nightmare inducing low haul for Ajax’s high (and according to many, arrogant) standards. Low especially because throughout all those years, Ajax needed just one more title in order to place a long sought after ‘third star’ on their red and white jerseys.

The Ajax fans wanted that third star. They were prepared to go to war that third star. To kill for it even.

By clinching that thirtieth title (you get a star for every ten championships), Belgian international Jan Vertonghen, who had been an Ajax player since the age of 16, finally fulfilled the role everyone had long expected of him and his highly rated young teammates. If Vertonghen had a stomach ache, he would have had it before the match, not after it. Continue reading →

Arsenal, Özil and Arsene Wenger’s Nation-building

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TFN editor Hugo Greenhalgh considers the rise of Arsenal’s Germanic era following previous regimes that brought French and Spanish twists to the club…

A strange mood exists amongst Arsenal supporters at present. The signing of a genuinely world-class player in Mesut Özil seems to have not so much papered over cracks but brushed aside deficiencies. Though not the top-level striker or (with all due respect to Mathieu Flamini) defensive midfielder Arsenal were said to have needed this summer, when a player of the German’s calibre becomes available it’s simply irresponsible to say no.

Much has been written on how the German playmaker will fit into the side tactically but his signing also represents something more as a continuation of Arsene Wenger’s policy of ‘nation-building’.

The Frenchman is no stranger to tapping into the ripest international stocks of talent. His great Double-winning Arsenal sides of 1998 and 2002 coincided with a period of extraordinary success for the French National Team and Patrick Vieira, Nicholas Anelka, Emmanuel Petit, Thierry Henry, Sylvain Wiltord and Robert Pires were all key contributors towards this lucrative period for both club and country. French squad players were also added such as Remi Garde and Giles Grimandi who played their part for the club too.

Of course, it helped that France was Wenger’s homeland and the country he knew best but the French weren’t the only group of compatriots whose relationship off the pitch was beneficial to Arsenal during these eras. In his first full season at Arsenal, Wenger splashed £5.5 million on Marc Overmars, the Dutch and former Ajax teammate of Dennis Bergkamp. This pairing proved highly creative and effective in Wenger’s first Double of 1997/8. Continue reading →