Table of contents for July 2020 in FourFourTwo UK

Coventry 4 QPR 1 April 20, 1987 First Division “I came off the bench to make my senior debut for QPR at Coventry, about a month before they went on to win the FA Cup. I was up against one of my heroes in Cyrille Regis, who scored twice that day. We were 3-1 down when I was brought on – I got so nervous, and because of that I can’t remember who I replaced! Even though we suffered a heavy defeat, the chance to make my league debut was the realisation of a dream.” Fenerbahce 0 Besiktas 1 June 21, 1989 Turkish Cup Final “I got the winner in the first leg of the final during a season-long loan with Besiktas, after weaving through a few bodies. We won…

The coronavirus pandemic has produced some rather unexpected season outcomes, and while the biggest losers have been a side from Jersey, the big winners are in Romania. In English football, the FA’s March decision to declare the Combined Counties Division One season null and void meant the Jersey Bulls lost their promotion – despite clinching it that month, mathematically uncatchable after winning all 27 league encounters. In Romania’s third tier, one side has had better luck... and not for the first time. In 2016-17, Pascani survived on goal difference. In both 2017-18 and 2018-19, they finished third from bottom, the final relegation place. On both occasions, off-field issues at other clubs meant that, in the end, only two teams tasted the drop. After several reprieves, it seemed like 2019-20 would…

As far as acts of pettiness go, refusing to sit next to two of your team-mates on the plane ride to a World Cup is right up there. If Bebeto and Muller didn’t know Romario quite so well, they might have been offended. This was, after all, the same chap who once married his 17-year-old girlfriend on a football pitch for live television, and had more recently served a four-match suspension at Barcelona for clocking Sevilla midfielder Diego Simeone. Ahead of USA 94, the free-scoring frontman had also asked coach Carlos Alberto Parreira to drop Muller in favour of old pal Edmundo, only to be rebuffed. But Romario’s own memory required a refresh: it was nearly him stranded out in the cold. In December 1992, Parreira had called up the…

Photo evidence remains of the day Diego Maradona breached enemy territory during the mid-noughties. There stood the Argentine icon in a Brazilian hotel room, flanked by two of the Selecao’s most shining stars in Ronaldinho and Robinho. It would have been quite a front three, the grinning samba double act dovetailing with deadly Diego. That famous picture represents a particular mood at a particular moment in time, though – one in which it was believed these three attackers represented the past, present and future of football. When he first pirouetted into the spotlight, Robinho was described as the defining figure of his generation. Like Diego and Ronaldinho before him, the twinkle-toed talent, all whirring feet and wonder, was expected to spearhead Brazil’s quest to wrench the World Cup back to…

With five World Cup victories, Brazil can justifiably claim to be the most successful country in football history – but according to one ranking system, they still lag woefully behind Scotland. The Unofficial Football World Championships were originally unveiled in FourFourTwo by Paul Brown back in 2003, and have continued online ever since using the system employed in boxing: to become the world champions, you have to beat them. Given England drew 0-0 against Scotland in 1872’s first-ever international, then won the rematch 4-2, the Three Lions became unofficial world champions, before the Tartan Army bagged the bragging rights thanks to a 2-1 Scotland win in 1874. No fewer than 49 nations have now held the title as it has passed from country to country. Brazil grabbed it in 1952…

01 Ronaldinho secured a €5 million transfer to Paris Saint-Germain in 2001 after departing which club? 02 Which central midfielder moved to Arsenal in 2006, going on to make 153 outings until 2013? 03 Which coach led Brazil to World Cup glory in 1994, after victory over Italy in a penalty shootout? 04 Legendary Porto talisman Mario Jardel made 11 appearances for which Premier League side in the 2003-04 season, slightly past his best? 05 Pele was famously named after which American, renowned for inventing the electric light bulb? 06 Alisson and Ederson are two of the five Brazilian goalkeepers in Premier League history. Can you recall at least two of the other three? 07 Which bow-legged dribble king was awarded the Golden Ball as Brazil won the 1962 World…

You’ve been in China for four years – how has that experience been? Very interesting. I left Brazil at 18, spent three and a half years in Japan, four in Portugal, four in Russia and now four in China. I’ve been in four different places, always enjoying some good moments. I’ve never struggled adapting to a new culture. It’s different to Brazil here, but I’ve learned so many things. I’ve been lucky to end up in an extraordinary city like Shanghai, which helped a lot – and the food is amazing. Were you still in China when the virus outbreak started in Wuhan? The first time I heard anything about it was in January, during pre-season. We were in Australia and I saw the Chinese saying there was a problem…

Pele was adamant. It was July 1966, and the Brazilian dream was over. Their greatest player had made up his mind: he never wanted to play at the World Cup again. A winner in both 1958 and 1962, he was still only 25 years old, but enough was enough. The famous forward had lasted only two group matches in Chile 62 before injury denied him any further action in the Selecao’s march to glory. Four years later, he had been mercilessly booted around Goodison Park first by Bulgaria, then Portugal. Reduced to a limp, he was powerless to stop Brazil exiting before the quarter-finals. The common denominator was clear to him: European referees offered no protection, and he wasn’t willing to risk his health at another World Cup. “I was…

There were just 90 seconds left on the clock, and Barcelona were coming to terms with the unthinkable. Anxiety besieged the Camp Nou, as 85,000 fans prayed for a miracle. The Catalans had twice taken the lead at home to Valencia in the final match of a disastrous domestic season. Real Madrid had sailed into the distance to win La Liga, 17 points ahead of their Clasico foes. Deportivo La Coruna and unfancied Real Mallorca had already guaranteed their top-three spots. The fourth and final Champions League place was a shootout between the two sides facing each other in Barcelona on June 17, 2001. Twice Rivaldo had superbly fired the hosts in front – the first with a sublime free-kick, the second with a rasping low drive from 25 yards…

During the course of a glittering career, Roberto Carlos hit 115 goals. Not bad for a full-back. With four La Liga titles, three Champions League triumphs, two Copa America crowns and a World Cup to his name, he is undoubtedly one of the finest left-backs in history – and before he won any of those prizes, he also scored one of the most iconic goals in history. His mind-bending free-kick at 1997’s Tournoi de France is a source of wonder; a virtually unexplainable phenomenon like Carlos Valderrama’s hair. After a run-up that started in the centre circle, how did he bend that football quite so ferociously – evading the French wall by almost a yard as it whizzed off in one direction, leaving a ball boy ducking for cover, before…

As dawn was breaking on Tuesday April 19, 1994, curious passers-by started to gather on 2225 Borges de Medeiros Avenue, in the south of Rio de Janeiro. Near the beautiful Rodrigo de Freitas Lagoon was a white Mitsubishi Eclipse – number plate DNR-0010 – contorted around a tree. From the passenger door just ajar, the scene was bleak: there rested Dener’s limp body, reclined all the way back in the seat that had been transporting him to training only a few hours earlier. At 5.15am the footballer’s pal, Otto Gomes de Miranda, had fallen asleep and lost control of his car while driving the hefty 434km from Sao Paulo overnight, crushing both of his legs. A year later, he was murdered. The prodigious boy alongside him, aged just 23, died…

Thirty-eight years on, there is still pride in Zico’s voice while he discusses the part he played in one of the most famous teams in World Cup history. “Wherever I go in the world – and I’ve been to many places – everyone talks about Brazil’s team of 1982,” the 67-year-old tells FourFourTwo. “We tried as hard as we could, but sadly it wasn’t quite enough.” In Brazil, they have spent recent weeks revisiting that iconic summer. With football in lockdown, one television channel decided to cheer up the nation by screening every Selecao fixture in Spain. “They showed all of our games from 1982, even though we weren’t champions,” explains Zico. Trophy or no trophy, the love remains. Revered in Brazil and beyond, Tele Santana’s team of ’82 are…

1 PHANTOM MENACE You’ve probably heard of the ghost goal – at Borussia Monchengladbach they have ghost fans, too. With the Bundesliga restarting behind closed doors, supporters created cardboard cutouts and put them in the stands at Borussia-Park. Take-up surpassed 17,000, filling entire sections of the stadium. Cutouts brazenly ignored social distancing rules and huddled together in the Nordkurve, the traditional home end. Some fans eschewed selfies and opted for a famous face instead – among them, club icons Gunter Netzer and Berti Vogts, plus current goalkeeper Yann Sommer, who was confusingly watching himself play. Others were much sillier. Cutouts of guard dogs and an unfortunate-looking blobfish were situated on the stadium gates; in the stands was a cat in a Roma kit. With behind-closed-doors fixtures labelled as ‘ghost games’…

Brazilians are a little bit radical when it comes to the World Cup. Second place is worth nothing to them – it’s either the title or failure. Fifty years on, our team from 1970 is still rated by many around the globe as the best that has ever played the game. But as insane as this may sound, our squad left for Mexico with low expectations back home. Unlike our people, however, I was so confident that I booked my wedding for one week after the final. Their scepticism could be explained for two main reasons. Firstly, the draw back in January that year had put us in a very tough group with Czechoslovakia, reigning world champions England and Romania. On top of that, less than three months before we…

Fifty miles north of Sao Paulo, it all begins with sausages. Inside the Estadio Nabi Abi Chedid, a snack bar has done a roaring trade for years. Its most popular item is a range of sausage sandwiches each dedicated to a club legend – featuring Brazil’s 1994 World Cup-winning manager Carlos Alberto Parreira, fellow ’94 champion Mauro Silva and ex-Real Madrid head honcho Vanderlei Luxemburgo. In Braganca Paulista, you have not done anything in life until you have been immortalised in sausage. A small city of just 160,000 people, Brazilians know it for little else than its traditional delicacy. However, things are changing. Less than three years ago, the football team suffered relegation to Brazil’s third tier. Now they are in the top flight, ready to break up the country’s…

The best female footballer of all time is welling up, her voice quivering as she remembers the most treasured moment of her career. Marta, the six-time FIFA World Player of the Year, is on the verge of tears not because she is the overall top scorer at men’s or women’s World Cup finals, nor because she has overtaken Pele in her tally for the Selecao. The 34-year-old Brazilian is rewinding to 2006, and cherishing the day when Dois Riachos – her hometown in western Alagoas with a population of just under 12,000 – gave her a hero’s welcome in the middle of the night as she showed off the first of her six coveted individual prizes during a record-breaking journey. As she opens up to FourFourTwo, the Orlando Pride forward…

They say if you don’t ask, you don’t get – but often, polite enquiries take you about as far as a beached whale attempting a triathlon. Sometimes, you have to be a bit more proactive. Or, like Simon Clifford, you befriend the father of your boyhood football team’s new Brazilian signing, learn a different language in two months, convince your wife that it’s a good idea to take out a £5,000 loan and spend your summer holiday searching for Pele, Romario and Zico in South America. Clifford, then in his late-20s, was a humble teacher in Leeds with a longstanding passion for coaching young players. He may have been relatively inexperienced, but he was steadfast in his belief that English football was missing something significant. “I was in love with…

What was it like to be the first Brazilian to play in England? I’m very proud of that. Even though I played in four games for the Brazilian national team, my time at Newcastle was the peak of my career. I had the opportunity to live in a great country. I’m grateful for the way the people welcomed me and my family, and for the heartwarming way they still receive us whenever we go back to visit the city. What did you know about Newcastle before signing from Palmeiras? Very little, to be honest. English football wasn’t that popular in Brazil at the time. A couple of weeks earlier, everything was sealed for me to join Club America in Mexico – I even had flight tickets. Then Newcastle came in…