Michael Schjonberg’s reward for scoring the deciding goal that brought German team Hannover the 1992 DFB Cup was being able to drink as much beer as he wants in the city.
There was no comfortable half-time break in a warm dressing room for Hull City’s under-performing team in December 2008. Manager Phil Brown kept them all on the field to deliver an onfield rollicking in full view of their travelling fans. Brown was furious that his side were 4-0 down at half-time in a Premier League match at Manchester City. He said: «I thought it was nice and cold and I thought I would keep the boys alive because they looked as if they were dead. I think 3,500 to 4,000 travelling fans deserved some kind of explanation for the first-half performance and it was difficult for me to do that from the confines of a changing room.» Hull salvaged some pride by scoring a secondhalf goal and restricting City to just one more in a 5-1 scoreline.
Players for English Southern League side Abingdon United in 2003 biamed the club’s new bright yellow strip for attracting wasps after players were stung.
Marco Boogers was a costly buy for West Ham United in 1995. His second game after a £1m transfer from Sparta Rotterdam earned him a red card, whereupon he disappeared, only turning up months later at a Dutch caravan park.
TV personality Ulrika Jonsson admitted in 2002 that she had a relationship with England coach Sven-Goran Eriksson. While Eriksson refused to acknowledge the affair with his blonde fellow Swede, the former TV weather girl spoke out to end the frenzied media interest. Saying the relationship with the coach almost twice her age was over, she also denied issuing Eriksson with an ultimatum to leave his long-term partner Nancy Dell’Olio for her. Eriksson maintained he would not comment on his private life.
Apart from his many, and much-documented, drinking exploits, allegations of George Best’s abuse of women kept cropping up during his career. His second wife Alex claimed Best was violent towards her during their marriage. The assertion that Best punched her in the face on more than one occasion was covered in an authorised biography Bestie. Earlier in the book it was revealed that Best struck another of his girlfriends and was later arrested and charged with assault on a waitress in 1972 who claimed he fractured her nose in a nightclub.
The kidnapping of Colombian Football Federation vicepresident Hernan Campuzano almost led to the axing of the 2001 Copa America competition. When the threat to abandon it was announced Campuzano was freed and it went ahead.
If ever there was physical confirmation of the chaos in Diego Maradona’s drug-fuelled personal life it was the picture of him maniacally staring into the camera while celebrating a goal at the 1994 World Cup finals staged in the USA. That crazed look was featured in the press the world over and might have been what led to him being picked for a drugs test, which he failed. He was sent home in disgrace for using ephedrine.
Vigili del Fuoco della Spezia had to wait 68 years to finally be recognised as the ltalian league champions of 1943-44. Their win, including a victory over mighty Torino, was hampered by World War 2 raging in the country and their only Scudetto was not awarded until 2002.
One of the most seen footballs shirts in Afghanistan today is not Manchester United or Real Madrid but that of English club Bradford City. The struggling club responded to an appeal for football shirts for Afghanistan’s new league and sent 2,400.
Throughout football history there have been numerous examples of goalkeeping proving fatal. Dumbarton’s Joshua Wilkinson died from peritonitis two days after a hard collision in a match against Glasgow Rangers in 1921. Malaga’s Jose Gallardo died from a brain haemorrhage in 1987, a month after receiving a head blow in a collision during a Spanish Second Division game against Vigo. In 1934 Charlton Athletic’s keeper Alex Wright lost his life after demonstrating his match-winning saves from a recent game. Standing on top of a raft off Torre Abbey Sands in Torquay, he dived into shallow water and broke his neck on rocks. Wolverhampton Wanderers goalkeeper James Utterson died aged 21 from a kick to the heart he received during a reserve game in 1935.
