The piece below was written yesterday afternoon before the signings of Aaron Ramsey and Karlan Grant were confirmed, but I’ve decided to publish it as it is. I’d like to add a couple of things though – first, these two signings are not guaranteed to succeed, but they both strike me as a step up from what we were seeing last summer and in January, it would seem that last season’s close escape has concentrated a few minds at Cardiff City stadium.
Second, like Craig Bellamy before him, Aaron Ramsey has turned down more attractive options financially to come to Cardiff City Stadium – even if his return doesn’t go as well as hoped, his Bluebird legend status is assured (if it wasn’t already).
The identity of the player Mehmet Dalman was so excited about in the press conference welcoming Erol Bulut to the club about six weeks ago has been known for a while, but, after much guesswork on social media over the past fortnight or so, we now know that Aaron Ramsey is almost certain to be joining us for the 23/24 season.
Rambo had a medical on Thursday and it would appear that all that can stop the transfer going through is if Nice, the club Ramsey spent last season with, refuse to sanction his release. By making thirty four appearances for the French club in 22/23, Ramsey played enough times to automatically trigger an extension to his contract, and, after a delay which suggested they would not take that option up, there was a statement from the club that they expected the player to turn up next week for the start of pre season training.
There was also another potential fly in the ointment when there were reports that there had been an offer for Ramsey from the moneybags Saudi Arabian league. If wages were the sole criteria behind Ramsey’s desire for a move, then it would be completely straightforward as to who he choose in a battle between City and a Saudi Arabian club, but it appears that a desire to be reunited with his family was the overriding factor behind his decision. Of course, a reported salary of £400k a week during his spell at Juventus would make it easier for a decision a few years later that is not money based to be taken (I’d also add that it’s good to see Saudi Arabia, with its very dubious human rights record, being rejected in complete contrast to what is happening with many top footballers in their thirties and younger and the way golf caved in to them).
Hardly surprisingly, the return of the Prodigal some fifteen years after he left, apart from a month here on loan in 2011, is proving to be a very popular move and it is good to see optimism and a renewed sense of enjoyment around the place.
The news of Aaron Ramsey’s return has not been universally welcomed though. There have been dissenting voices, more on a national level than a local one, arguing that this is a reunion that will not go well. I’ll admit that Ramsey’s performances for Wales over the last nine months have given me doubts as to what sort of player we’re signing – Wales look like a team in steep decline and they really could do with a performance or two from their captain which rolled back the years, but there’s been little sign that it’s going to happen.
To balance that though, Ramsey’s recent club figures suggest that, if he’s clearly not the player who was arguably the best of his kind in the 2016 Euros any more, he’s still got enough left in the tank to be someone who should be able to get by at second tier level. Playing your football for the club you wanted to be with at this stage of your career should have a positive effect on performance as well you’d have thought.
I’ve tended to ignore names mentioned in speculative stories this summer when it comes to signings, but I’ll briefly discuss two. There’s evidence that there was serious interest from City in taking on CSKA Moscow’s Nigerian international winger Chidera Ejuke for the season. Ejuke is on a long term contract with the Russian club, but, given the current isolation of teams from that country from major competitions, he was allowed to move on what was effectively a loan to Hertha Berlin last season – the German team finished at the foot of the Bundesliga and Ejuke, apparently, had a quiet time of it.
However, although you are always wary of the sort of highlights videos that can make the most mediocre player look good, Ejuke’s was genuinely impressive and there were those who thought we were going for a player of above Championship quality. Perhaps unsurprisingly then, after some positive bulletins saying an agreement was imminent, there seems to have been interest in the player from a club that will be in the Champions League this season and the trail has gone cold on this one.
Today however, there have been stories reporting that a loan deal for West Brom striker Karlan Grant is close to going through. Twenty five year old Grant started his career at Charlton and then had a good spell at Huddersfield before earning a £15 million move to the Hawthorns on a six year contract.
Although twenty two goals in ninety six league games halfway through his very long contract is not a terrible return, it’s not what the Baggies would have been expecting and, given that only three of those goals came last season, it’s not surprising that fans of his current side are hardly too upset at the thought of him having a spell away from the club.
That said, Grant was generally regarded to have developed a good partnership with Callum Robinson at West Brom during the 21/22 season and that is a good place to start from if he does come here. Clearly, with that large transfer fee and contract, Grant is a player with ability and he is I suppose typical of the sort of market we have to shop in these days – only the very best clubs can buy players that are guaranteed successes, the rest of us make signings that are gambles and we’ll have to content ourselves in the knowledge that there are always going to be as many, probably more, minuses as plusses when it comes to operating in such a market, but, with three new attackers/strikers likely to be in for the start of the season, you would hope a repeat of last season’s goalscoring woes could be avoided.
There was one of those double pre season games at Cardiff City Stadium last Tuesday afternoon as Bristol Rovers provided the opposition in a a couple of matches lasting sixty minutes each.
City broadly stuck with the team that had been looking like the seniors in the three previous matches where complete elevens had been changed at half time at first and then in subsequent encounters, the hour mark, but, here they made a terrible start against a Rovers team that forced us into errors with an aggressive press and then passed the ball well after they’d won it. Scott Sinclair gave Rovers the lead on ten minutes when the visitors got in down our left and the scorer was left with a virtual tap in from eight yards.
A very similar move. almost led to a doubling of the lead within a couple of minutes, but Rovers were not able to maintain their dominance beyond the twenty minute mark and gradually City were, first, able to match their opponents and then go on to have the better of the second half. In the end, City could, perhaps, have thought they deserved to win, but they had to settle for a draw –Robinson’s good finish from the edge of the penalty area for his third pre season goal ensuring the first match ended 1-1.
The second game could be said to be a mirror image of the first as this time it was City who were the fast starters against a Rovers team which definitely had the look of a second eleven to it.
City fielded new signings Dimitri Goutas and Ike Ugbo along with Callum O’Dowda, getting his first start after a late return to training, and Jamilu Collins in his first return from his ACL injury eleven months earlier.
It was O’Dowda who made the initial impact as he got past his marker down the left and rolled his cross back to the penalty spot area where Ollie Tanner fired in to join Robinson on three pre season goals. Just like in the first game, the beleaguered opponents worked their way back into things and when the four senior players making their first starts of the season all made way at half time, it became something akin to an under 23 game.
It was Rovers who were on top now and, as City made more changes, they spent long periods without the ball as they managed to cling on to their single goal lead. So, City remain unbeaten without having impressed too much in their first four/five games – whether they remain unbeaten after today’s behind closed doors encounter with Fulham remains to be seen (just to say that on the day following this apparent game, I’ve still not seen a single mention of a result or, indeed, whether the match was played or not!).
Finally, the under 21 team played their first pre season match yesterday evening at Barry Town United. The side included the likes of Isaak Davies, Keiron Evans, Joel Colwill and Tom Davies who had all played in senior team friendlies before then were comfortable 3-1 winners with. James Crole and a trialist putting us 2-0 up in the first half before a goal by Jamie Veale (a former City Academy player who had the skill levels to succeed in the pro game I’d have thought) reduced the deficit to make it 2-1 at the break – Evans got the only goal after the break in a game which, from the brief highlights I watched, saw our youngsters play some stylish football..
Buongiorno Paul,
I was gonna start by questioning your ‘greatest of all time?’ suggestion… but I won’t. And here is for why…
First, we must never look at the total number of caps for one’s country… the sheer number of opportunities to play in internationals nowadays bears no relation to the paucity of such games 50 plus years ago.
And don’t get me started on the absurdity of granting a cap to someone who comes on in injury time and never touches the ball.
And of course, if one goes by total caps, Chris Gunter with 109 was two and a half times the player Alf Sherwood with 41 was… which is patent nonsense, since Sherwood was regarded by many of his peers as nonpareil in these islands in his day.
In relatively recent years, Terry Yorath, Kevin Ratcliffe and Gary Speed might run Aaron Ramsey close… and go back a generation and you come to the peerless Ivor Allchurch and my third cousin the late Phil Woosnam, go back a bit more and it’s Ron Burgess who comes into the frame, and back a weeny bit more and you arrive at Bryn Jones (uncle of Cliff)… whose Arsenal career was disrupted by 6 years of war. Go back a bit more and you arrive at Fred Keenor. And of course, over all those illustrious names, one name trumps them all… viz… that of the great Il Buono Gigante. Yes, Big John may have played centre forward for Leeds and Juventus, and centre back for Wales and us Bluebirds, but some of his finest performances in Italy were when playing behind Sivori and Boniperti… i.e as an attacking and hard tackling midfielder… and he ruled the midfield. But then shrewd judges reckoned that had substitutes existed back then, and Big John was seen warming up on the touchline, every single player including the goalkeeper would have been in fear that they were going to be hauled off… such was his versatility.
You get my drift, Paul? ‘The greatest of all time’ is an impossible game to play.
What I would say about Aaron is that star player or not, he will get no preferential treatment from Erol Bulut. The more I see of our new manager, the more impressed I am with the cut of his jib. At 48, he is the perfect age to come to CCS, with a wealth of the sort of experience that few similarly aged British managers could hope to have emulated. I have a hunch that his appointment could be Vincent’s masterstroke.
Certainly I am far more confident of Bulut being a success than I am of Ramsey.
Not that I doubt that Aaron at his peak was a fine player… those goals in two Cup Finals put the seal on his Arsenal years where he scored 66 goals in 369 appearances.
But look at things in the 4+ years since… Massimiliano Allegri and Juve fans regarded him as a vastly overpaid passenger… and he has done nothing of note at Nice… just 3 goals in 34 appearances as an attacking midfielder.
And in between of course, he played for my ‘second’ team, Glasgow Rangers. Please don’t mention his name to fans who are Teddy Bears… going by their online fanzone, they seemed to have a universally poor opinion of him and seen him as a crocked mercenary who when he did play, never played for the shirt. And his lack of overt contrition at missing that vital penalty only incensed them further.
And talking of ‘mercenary’… are we REALLY sure Paul, that Aaron has received more lucrative offers from places as far afield as Saudi? I doubt it rather… as I know how the grapevine works.
Could it be ‘agent talk’… the same sort of nonsensical ‘agent talk’ as convinced NW that other clubs were interested and thus got him to vastly overpay (yet again) for a player… in that case, poor doomed Emiliano Sala?
Anyway… ’nuff said. Will sign off now for lunch. I hope Aaron is a big success, and that he proves me wrong.
TTFN,
Dai.
15 years ago Ramsey was our most exciting player – someone with so much potential – and though I don’t think a 33 year old Ramsey will be our most exciting player this year, I do think that this is the most excited I’ve been about the club since the 16th of April 2019 when we had reason to think we could stay in the Premier League. It’s such a good news story and I’m so glad his wife’s cooking (shout-out to Bywyd a Bwyd) has brought him home. It also feels like Tan is more willing to make financial sacrifices to help this club to succeed again and is putting some extra thought and money behind what we do which is exciting as well.
Regarding our wider transfer strategy, I can’t fully work out what we’re looking at doing next year. Feels like we’re moving towards a 4-2-3-1 but we’ve now got 3 CB only; 6+1 for the CM spots; 2+1 RW but 4+1 LW and 3+2 CF. Even if Tanner goes out on loan, we still have O’Dowda, Robinson and Meite who all want to play as left-sided forward, arguably Ojo too, whereas opposite flank sees Ojo on his weaker side backed up by a young Evans or Davies who might be better served by loans away. Recent history has seen teams struggle to find players to play on the left but we’re not that club!
My Barry Town source suggests one trialist in particular impressed and one Barry Town young full-back too.
Gosh it does feel a bit exciting again, and in a positive way as well rather than nervously watching other relegation threatened sides and hoping they drop sufficient number of points. Long may that feeling continue.
Thanks both for your responses. Dai, I’m with you really when it comes to greatest ever arguments, hence my use of the word “possibly”. As it turns out, there was a thread on picking the best ever Welsh team on the messageboard I use yesterday and I went for Ramsey and Joe Allen in central midfield while explaining my decision in that position was based solely on the 2016 Euros where we went further in a major tournament than any other Welsh team ad those two were in UEFA’s selection as team of the tournament – I’d also say that Ramsey’s case didn’t suffer by being suspended for the Semi Final. However, based on what I’ve seen down the years, Gary Speed, Terry Yorath and John Mahoney would have been real candidates and Ivor Allchurch from a bit before my time has to be considered.
As for the current version of Aaron Ramsey, I read an article in Wales Online on the weekend which stated that no ifs, no buts, he’ll be the best player in the Championship in the coming season. I find it impossible to support that statement having watched his recent performances for his country and seen him struggle to establish himself at Rangers – I’ll by satisfied with him staying fit enough to be considered for selection in most games and bringing some much needed poise and creativity to our midfield, I’m certainly not expecting him to take the division by storm.
As for Erol Bulut, I genuinely don’t know – he’s doing the easy part at the moment where the fans of every club in the country has a degree of optimism. He speaks pretty well and the almost total lack of hoofball so far is a definite plus as far as I’m concerned, but I’d say we’ve looked unconvincing in our first four pre season games (the only reference I’ve seen to the weekend’s game with Fulham was on one of their messageboards where someone claimed that there were two forty five minute matches with Fulham some way short of full strength, but they won them both 3-1 and 1-0). Of course, pre season results count for nothing and I’m not jumping to any conclusions yet – I’d say it’s at least a month before opinions can start to be formed as to whether his appointment has been a success or not.
DJ, Aaron Ramsey is my favourite modern day footballer, but I must admit I share some of Dai’s doubts about signing him. That said, I understand the feel good factor his arrival has generated as it has a similar vibe to it as the first signing of Craig Bellamy in 2011 – the fact must be faced though that the squad he joined was a much better one than the one Ramsey is now part of. In saying that, I’m pretty hopeful now that we’ll do better than in the last two seasons because, with the arrival of him, Grant and, to a lesser degree, Meite, I think we’ve stepped up a level from our recruitment in 21/22 and 22/23.
Bulut is thought of as a 4-2-3-1 man apparently and, for most of the time, that’s what we played in our first four pre season games with the occasional foray into playing two up front. You, correctly in my opinion, identify right sided attacker as a position in need of reinforcing and I wonder if that might be where Callum Robinson plays? My concern with that would be that, with Bulut encouraging his full backs to venture infield into central areas, it follows that the wide attackers will be expected to stay out on the touchlines a lot and I’m not sure that would represent the best use of someone who should be one of our most influential players.
Good morning, MAYA readers…
I to some extent share DJ’s excitement… if not his – and yours Paul – love of formation numbers. I will go to my grave a proud POMO man… and I resist taking the bait when you use the term ‘hoofball’… no disciple of the great Charles Hughes has ever subscribed to hoofing the ball down the field. We believe in the LONG PASS.
No, my excitement in the current close season, comes solely from the possible silver bullet (pun intentional) to be fired by Mr Bulut… who has impressed me so.
But I guess my excitement will immediately subside once I see Allsop rolling the ball out from the back and indulging in ‘Cruyff turns’ in his penalty box. Instead, Bulut should be getting in a ‘specialist long ball deliverer’ to teach Allsop to find a man like Edison. (Oh, on an unrelated subject of ‘goalkeeper selection’: if we could only get Etheridge back. He is better than both our current keepers combined.)
As for the guys newly signed… only one really excites me. Meite. He is a proper player. As for Grant… let us hope he not a repeat of an Adam Le Fondre, Eoin Doyle and
Gary Madine when they wore our shirt at CCS. I have seen him miss so many sitters since that big money transfer… by the look of him his ice is in his lemonade rather than his veins.
Changing the subject… do you reckon Ryan Giggs can now sue the WFA for ‘constructive dismissal’…? We are in a right mess as it is, having given this absurd new contract to nice guy (but tactically clueless) Robert Page.
TTFN,
Dai.
PS…apols for my ‘fanzone’ for ‘fanzine’ in my last.
Reading what I wrote this morning makes me think of Charlie Adam. Too rushed to google* as I have to hoover** my crumbs off the carpet before my Better Half comes home from work… but I wonder if he is now retired. If so, he would be the perfect man to hire to teach the LONG PASS***… he could hit the ball 70 yards and put it on a sixpence.
As Charles Hughes used to say (not verbatim)… ‘look at how much space 23 human bodies take on a football pitch, and realise if all 23 were compressed to one corner standing to attention, just how much of that green grass is free territory to explore.
Getting the ball out of your own third and into the opposition’s third as quickly as possible, is not so much about directly finding the head or the feet, as putting the ball into space for your attacking teammates to run into…
And if only Mr Bulut could arrange training sessions at The Vale where no player is allowed to pass backwards or square in his own half of the field, and was fined a tiny token sum every time he did…!! Verily I sayeth unto thee… ‘then my cup would runneth over with joy’.
Ah, but I can only dream. It assuredly ain’t gonna happen… alas, to the eternal detriment of football.
* deliberate lower case
** ditto
*** we don’t need him to coach ‘fair tackling’… who can forget his two disgraceful potentially career-ending tackles on Gareth Bale…? He clearly held some deep-seated grudge against him… for those tackles seemed a bit out of character.
A goat in any field always causes controversy especially when returning to these pastures after a long absence.
Like everyone else I am hoping that the new arrivals will produce a more successful and certainly entertaining season
And I hope Ramsey plays well too!!
Mike, compadre… good to see that like me you are still in the Land of the Living…!! Loved your use of the word ‘pastures’ to strike a harmonic note with my reference to ’empty green spaces’.
As for ‘goat’, I am less sure. My sex drive up and went a long time ago… and even I am too modest to believe that I am the Greatest Of All Time contributor to MAYA.?
TTFN,
Dai.
Just to say Dai, I wasn’t thinking of you when I said “hoofball”, it was more expressing a feeling of relief that the aimless punt by a centreback and the hooked over the shoulder ball to no one in particular by a midfielder had been almost completely absent in the first four matches under Erol Bulut. I read on the internet somewhere that it was Craig Bellamy’s birthday last week and the person pointing this out also posted a You Tube link to his winning goal against Italy twenty years ago. Now, that was the sort of front to back football I’d love to see every week, a faultless pass out from the back and then a marvellous, perfectly weighted, number ten type pass by a big lump of a striker to the speedy front man who waltzed around a great goalkeeper to plant the ball into the net – the whole thing lasted no more than five seconds before the ball hit the net, yet about seventy yards were covered, direct football at its best (Simon Davies’ goal that night wasn’t bad either)!
Regarding Charlie Adam, he’ still playing for Dundee at the age of thirty seven and I hear him occasionally used as a pundit by Radio 5 Live. He was a great, constructive midfield playmaker at Championship level and a very good one at Premier League level at his best, but his disciplinary record shows he was/is not your normal decorative, ball player – there’s more to his game than that, Soccerbase shows that he’s been cautioned 153 times going into his twentieth season as a senior player with 5 reds for good measure.
More than any other player, he was responsible for beating us in the 2010 Play Off Final and I can remember him having to play the last two or three games of the regular season that year on eggshells because, with fourteen yellow cards, he was one away from a three game ban which would have ruled him out for most, if not all, of Blackpool’s Play Off campaign. Around his peak in the early 2010s, Adam went into a phase where his number of bookings per season was regularly in double figures and in recent seasons, he’s back to those sort of levels with Dundee – I should think he’s become quite a dirty so and so as he’s slowed down.
Mike, nice to hear from you again. I see Ramsey has been joining in with the full sessions over in Portugal – maybe those of us who’ve paid £4 each to watch a stream of the Braga and Porto matches will get to see him in action in a blue short tonight!
Thankyou Paul for your appreciation of my position, and it warmed my heart that the two examples of direct attacking football you cited were cheered at the time by yourself, as much as by me.
And thinking of similar instances… (my memory may be hazy here)
… one that did not end in a goal – but in a cynical foul – was Danny Ward, seeing Dan James on the halfway line with just a lone Hungarian(?) defender for company, quickly aims the ball into a vast area of green space, knowing our boy’s speed will win the day… only for the defender to take him out… and get carded for it… (was it a red? ‘Last man’ and all that? Well if it was not, it should have been)… and it was easily the most thrilling moment in the game.
But when it comes to Charles Hughes football, the goal I can think of that best exemplifies the sheer thrill of it all, just has to be that of Ian Rush against West Germany at The Arms Park in 1991. Paul Bodin looks up and plays that superb long ball into space for the best European striker of his day to run on to … and Ian shakes off the defender and does the rest.
As for tiki-taka: I am as frustrated by ‘pass pass pass’, as Swansea fans have been this past 2 years.
Yes, I suppose it can be a thing of beauty when a long complicated passing move ends in a goal… but it is only very rarely. More often than not it is a yawn.
Take my second team, Glasgow Rangers. Last season Scott Arfield scored a goal against St Miren that was the culmination of SIXTY uninterrupted passes.
You think I jest? I wish I did… but it is there on YouTube for you to check out. It is extraordinarily sleep-inducing. And if you haven’t nodded off by say pass 55, then that’ll be because you are – like me – reaching for your Luger pistol to blow your brains out.
God help us from what I call not ‘TOTAL football’, but ANTI-football. And throw in a few Cruyff turns from goalkeepers, and criminally stupid ‘short’ back passes that led to a goal like a totally unnecessary back pass from McGuinness last season, when he should have put the ball in Row Z.
I despise the back-pass even more than I despise the square-pass between central defenders. Why? Well, because such kamikaze play causes so many staggeringly unnecessary goals.
One law change I really think benefited football, was 30 years ago when keepers were suddenly denied the right to handle a back-pass. A lot of the negativity vanished from our beloved game. But not enough.
Now please, FIFA, go the whole hog and TOTALLY outlaw goalkeepers being able to touch a deliberate back pass.
Gee… wouldn’t that change football for the good… and get players to face the right direction… viz… the opposition’s goal.
Right now alas, the success of Pep’s Harlem Globetrotters* has got every other manager worshipping at his shrine, and even National League teams are playing out from the back, despite having defenders who have not mastered the art of ball control, and thus their every second touch is a TACKLE.
Yet to get their keeper to kick long is seen by these managerial lemmings as a confession of failure. So many football brains are infested by this modish nonsense. People cannot think for themselves any more.
We live indeed in strange times.
*for whom bizarrely I have a soft spot, partly because I loved the Joe Mercer/Malcolm Allison years, and partly because I am a dyed in-the-wool ABMU man… have been ever since I saw the drunken behaviour of their glory hunter fans in their relegation year at Ninian. Oddly, they had been my second team initially after Munich (up until they got rid of Graham Moore)… and I cried like a baby when Nat Lofthouse committed GBH on Harry Gregg.
But that Man City side of the late 60s/early 70s played thrilling attacking football. I was at Maine Road in 72/73 to see them dismantle United 3-0. What a game.
[ABMU = Anyone But Man United]
It’s a testimony to how good Ian Rush was Dai that I didn’t think for one moment he was going to miss that chance against Germany. Paul Bodin had that in his game and it’s sad to think now that he is thought of as the man who stopped us going to USA 1994 when the truth, as I remember it, was that Romania outplayed us that night and were well worth their win = they led us 5-0 at half time when we played over there and were a much better team than us.
I watched James Waite, think he’s still at Newport, score for City under 21s at the end of a fifty one pass move against Watford a few years ago and I was proud that my club could score such a goal – this was at a time when the first team were barely stringing five passes together and the coaching and philosophy of the age group teams were completely at odds with what the first team were doing (it’s no wonder so few youngsters come through our Academy and into the first team).
That said, just because you score a very, very occasional goal after fifty or sixty passes, it’s no justification for the way some teams play with their endless passing going nowhere and I’ll always believe in two things when it comes to style of football. First, new managers at a club should quickly judge what is the most effective form of play for the squad they inherit and play to that style in the short to medium term at least. If they want to impose their own preference, then it should be done gradually, not imposed from day one. Second, it seems to me that you should aim for a side which can “mix things up” in that they are able to play in a way where ball retention is very important, but also able to recognise and implement when more direct methods would bear fruit – surely, the best way to play is to make it as hard as possible for your opponents to be pretty certain as to how your side is going to go about trying to beat you?
Very sound stuff from you Paul. There is much more in common in our football philosophies than there is in what separates us. (Excuse my clumsy word order… it is my 76th birthday today, and I am thesedays not the sharpest knife in the box before 2pm…)
Just to show that I am not a Stone Age primitive man, I really do like goals that result from quick incisive passing… as in the delicious Jack Wilshere goal against Norwich in 2013… which is immortalised on YouTube.
You mentioned that 1993 game against Romania… you will recall that I wrote on MAYA about 5 years ago that my old friend Alun Evans from my hometown of Porth, had sent me two tickets for the game, and they were from those returned to him as unsold by the Romanian FA.
I thus took my wife Larissa to her first ever international, and we were seated in the back row of the Romanian grouping.
After the Bodin missed penalty, and with Romania nearing the finishing tape, things got really nasty. My ‘Dai cap’ and the back of my donkey jacket were covered in spittle… our fellow citizens were very miffed at our Romanian group jumping up and down in their seats chanting ‘USA, USA’.
So much for ‘We’ll Keep A Welcome In The Hillsides’, eh? As the late John Junor used to say… ‘Pass the sickbag, Alice’.
But worse was to come. At the final whistle, as Hagi & Co all jumped up and down in an 11-man celebratory group hug, on our side of the pitch in front of us Romanian fans, two brothers seated about 25 yards to our left, criminally aimed a marine distress flare at them. It missed Hagi’s head by about 6 feet, and like all distress flares, then rapidly gained height… looking as it crossed the pitch like the flak that we were then seeing every night on our TVs from Sarajevo. We last saw the flak as it disappeared into the crowd on the other side of the pitch.
We thought no more of it… and we joined the queues of disappointed fans making our way to our cars. And an hour later we were still stuck in the gridlock in Cathedral Road.
And another hour again, as we neared home, news came on our car radio that ‘a fan has died tonight after being hit by a missile’.
We had to stop the car in absolute shock.
It turned out that the dead man was a just-retired postman from (I seem to recall) Merthyr. He had been bought his ticket as a birthday gift by his son.
Such a choker. Larissa said to me… ‘Never again. That is me finished with football’.
And she has kept her word. Thirty years later, and she has never seen another game.
But my old friend Alun Evans had his greatest moment that night. A fan had noted the seat number of the guy who fired the flare at the Romanians. He informed the police, who informed Alun.
At midnight, Alun opened up the WFA office in Westgate and checked the ticket allocations. And was quickly able to establish that a WFA member in North Wales had been allocated a batch with that ticket in it.
They quickly contacted the member, and he was able to say who had bought it… and better… he was able to say what hotel the two bothers were staying.
They were arrested in their beds at about 3am… and amazingly were not charged with murder… presumably because the Romanian footballers were their target, and not the dear gent from Merthyr.
Indeed, even worse, they got away with their explanation that the flare was not aimed at anyone, but was just released to mark their disappointment… and thus served only a short prison sentence.
Sorry… but had you been in my ‘Romanian’ seat that night, you would have known this was a travesty of the truth.
But back to happier matters…
Re that Wilshere gem… I have always figured that the best goals, are goals with the team going forward… not sideways or backwards.
Just seen the perfect Charles Hughes goal in the Women’s World Cup opener. That goal for the Kiwis would have graced any MEN’S World Cup. It was a classic example of seeing space and using it.
Will sign off now.
TTFN,
Dai.