One of the most memorable games of football ever played ... Brazil equalised in the 12th minute. But then Rossi got another chance which he blasted in from just inside the area. From nowhere Rossi was on a hat-trick. Italy held their lead deep into the second half. Brazil had drawn level with twenty minutes to play and now looked the more likely winners. But this was to be Rossi’s day. Hall of Fame, Never Say Never
The FA Cup ... At White Hart Lane in 2004 it produced arguable the greatest match ... Almost immediately Spurs took the lead ... Robbie Keane doubled the lead ... Spurs had added a sensational third and the game looked all but over ... City had pulled one back. Then a cruel deflection gave ten-man City a second goal. Suddenly they were back in the game ... City had levelled ... Amazingly, City had made the most unlikely of comebacks. ibid.
There was a time in the distant distant past when football fans had never heard of Nessun Dorma. And non-football fans had never heard of Gazza. All that was about to change in the summer of 1990. Hall of Fame: Tearjerkers
Paul Gascoigne entered the World Cup as England’s bright young hope ... England then scraped past Cameroon to set up a semi-final against Germany. Germany took the lead early in the second half. But England hit back from Lineker. England had equalised and the match went into extra time. With the game finely balanced Gazza lost the ball on the half-way line. Having already received a yellow card, Gazza would miss the final if England made it. Gazza and England played on. The game went to penalties. England were out. ibid.
No player has perhaps made such an immediate impact as Faustino Asprilla against Middlesbrough in 1996 ... Asprilla was signed for £6.7 million to give the team a new dimension. Hall of Fame: Do You Remember the First Time?
Until 2004. Until the Invincibles. Arsenal started the season as one of the favourites for the title guided by their brilliant manager Arsene Wenger ... Arsenal had clinched the title at the home of their biggest rivals ... An entire season – thirty eight games – without defeat. Hall of Fame: Winning Streaks
Manchester United v Blackburn: United trailed their Lancashire neighbours by two points going into the last day of the season ... Blackburn had won the league, and it was all thanks to Harry Redknapp’s Hammers. Hall of Fame: The Deciders
The 1991 [FA Cup] Final ... It wasn’t long before Gazza stamped his mark on proceedings. Gascoigne had got away with one awful challenge, but he was about to commit another. Inexplicably, Gascoigne wasn’t sent off. He got up and joined the wall ... Gazza was off to hospital and things couldn’t get much worse [Lineker’s good goal disallowed, misses a penalty etc.] ... Spurs were back in the game and came surging forward. But they couldn’t break the deadlock; the game went into extra time ... A spectacular own goal from Des Walker gave Spurs the lead. ibid.
It’s rare to see four or five blossoming at the same time in the same place. In 1995 Sir Alex Ferguson was planning big changes at Manchester United in one of the biggest gambles in Premier League history. Hall of Fame: Dream Teams
After being brought by Russian tycoon Roman Abramovich the club’s future looked bright, and suddenly Chelsea found themselves with the spending power of a small country ... Jose Mourinho, fresh from Champions League triumph with Porto, was drafted in to be the new manager ... This newly assembled dream team couldn’t stop scoring. ibid.
The most amazing upsets in the history of sport: Wimbledon’s self-styled Crazy Gang had ridden roughshod ... Wimbledon v Liverpool FA Cup Final, Old Wembley. Hall of Fame: The Upsets
It’s one thing to start a tournament as a rank outsider, it’s another to start outside the tournament altogether ... Then it kicked off – not the Euros but Yugoslavia ... And called upon the humble runners-up of Group Four to replace them ... When the final kicked off the Germans were heavy favourites. From the outset Germany were all over the Danes ... ibid.
The sensation of the first goal which was for me, maybe the most important ... That first goal against Brazil is the one that gives me the most satisfaction. Paolo Rossi
The great fallacy is that the game is first and last about winning. It is nothing of the kind. The game is about glory, it is about doing things in style and with a flourish, about going out and beating the lot, not waiting for them to die of boredom. Danny Blanchflower
Football is an art more central to our culture than anything the Arts Council deigns to recognise. Germaine Greer, Independent 28th June 1996
In March Kolo Toure tested positive for a banned doping substance: Bendroflumethiazide. Dispatches: The Truth About Drugs in Football, Channel 4 2011
Since 2003 there have been a total of twenty-one positive tests for cocaine. ibid.
Our document also suggests a cover up at the heart of our national game. ibid.
Football has a much larger group of athletes to test than other sports. ibid.
The FA refused to tell us how frequently they test players. ibid.
Dispatches goes undercover to lift the lid on football match fixing. We reveal the story behind the conviction of match-fixers who try to infiltrate the English game. Dispatches: How to Fix a Football Match, Channel 4 2014
But why fake just the team when you can fake the entire match? You get ninety minutes of commentary and bets on a fixture that never even existed. ibid.
Global match-fixers have infected all levels of the game. ibid.
There’s an uncomfortable marriage we can no longer afford to ignore … Football & Gambling: who’s really winning out of these deals? And at what cost? Now the law on gambling is up for review. Dispatches: Football’s Gambling Addiction, Channel 4 2021
An estimated 1.4 million aged 16-34 gamble regularly on football, mainly online. ibid.
So how did we end up with this 24/7 football betting culture? ibid.
The Jules Rimet trophy had been on display at the Westminster Central Hall alongside a collection of rare stamps and with somewhat laid-back security arrangements ... Sadly only a year later Pickles was dead. Crimes that Shook Britain
Ukrainian police admit that there are nearly 1,500 active football hooligans in the country ... inspired by neo-Nazi politics. Special Report: Ukraine’s Football Hooliganism, Sky Sports 2012
This film is about the Ninth Commandment – Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour. Hillsborough – Never Forgotten, BBC 2013
This is the world of Hillsborough – a world from which there is no escape. ibid.
The police response had been chaotic and disorganised. ibid.
The police were already briefing the press with a story of their own. ibid.
The easiest people to blame were the Liverpudlians themselves. ibid.
And then came the riots. ibid.
The Chief Constable praises his men for their conduct at Hillsborough. ibid.
The Chief Constable kept his job. ibid.
For Liverpool it simply meant that the police had got away with it. ibid.
Television has gone undercover inside the Premiership to expose the depth of corruption in the nation’s favourite sport. Panorama: Undercover: Football’s Dirty Secrets, BBC 2006
‘I’ll walk straight into the office … sit down with me dad; it’s easy.’ ibid. son of Allardyce
He [Allardyce] sometimes bumped up the commission his club paid to agents so he could get a secret cut. ibid.
‘It’s become a culture in football.’ ibid. Mike Newell
We now had a hat-trick of agents who had told us on camera it was normal for some managers to take bungs. ibid.
Allegations of tapping-up have recently centred around one club: Chelsea. ibid.
Corruption at the heart of world football. We reveal the three senior FIFA officials linked to an extraordinary list of secret payments worth around $100,000,000. Panorama: Fifa’s Dirty Secrets, BBC 2010
Big brands paid millions in good faith to put the World Cup logo on their products … TV networks paid even more … So why did ISL always win the fight for the World Cup rights? ibid.
And another World Cup in South Africa: and Jack Warner was at it again ordering $84,000’ worth of tickets from FIFA to sell to touts. ibid.
New evidence about the cover-up over Hillsborough. With a new Inquest ordered, pictures never before broadcast reveal how Britain's worst sporting disaster was allowed to happen. But the full story wasn’t told and the truth wasn’t told for a generation. Some witnesses were leaned on. Others were discredited. It’s a scandal that taints the political establishment. Panorama: Hillsborough – How They Buried the Truth, BBC 2013
Even before the game kicked off people were dying on the terraces. ibid.
Already the blame for Hillsborough was being shifted on to the fans. ibid.
The Chief Constable Peter Wright was in no mood to accept any blame for the disaster. ibid.
A cover-up had already begun: it lasted almost a quarter of a century. ibid.