A Sticker's Worth 500 Words

Today Emlyn Jones takes a look at a man who proves that the beauty of football often rests in the stories it creates and that the majority of the game’s fans would much rather read about a man who ate nine dinners on one coach trip than one who doesn’t like films . Additionally if there are any publicists out there looking for a salesman I think Emlyn might do a good job. Over to Mr Jones. Hundreds of football autobiographies are released each year, particularly following any strong showings in international tournaments; leading to hastily arranged tomes cashing in on the footballing Zeitgeist. Wayne Rooney released the first of, to date, three autobiographies at the age of 20, capitalising on England’s narrow World Cup wins over the mighty Paraguay and Ecuador. The bulk of these are transparently ghost-written, with little insight beyond ‘Born, trained, was good at the football, scored some goals’. However, every once in a while, a genuinely fascinating book is released that gives in

You might have noticed from some of our earlier posts that all of us here at A Sticker’s Worth 500 Words have a soft spot for a player with exceptional hair. Clearly some of you have as, no doubt influenced by our ramblings about the likes of Jason Lee , Domagoj Vida and Simon Rodger , our good friend Chris sent us a message the other day urging us to check out a timeline of today’s subject’s hairstyles. I would strongly recommend you do the same by clicking here . Even the font of all knowledge, Wikipedia, acknowledges the importance of Abel Xavier’s appearance describing him as one of the key figures of Euro 2000 “not only due to playing some of his best football but also due to a distinctly bleached-blonde hairstyle with a matching beard”. Xavier was undoubtedly pivotal in Portugal’s progress to the tournament’s semi-finals as part of a defence that recovered from conceding twice in the first twenty minutes against England (courtesy of Paul Scholes and Steve McManaman) to keep cle

In the world of work the phrase “never go back” is often bandied about. After all, if you left a job (or got asked to leave a job), why would you want to return to your former employers? In football returning to a former club can be portrayed by some as an admittance of failure or a lack of ambition but the game is full of players who have made such moves for a range of reasons. For some, like Kevin Davies , it was due to a struggle to hit the expected heights but there are plenty of others who returned to an old flame to reignite a career or, like Brian Deane , finish their careers where they first hit the headlines. And then there’s Neil Shipperley. Neil Shipperley first arrived at Selhurst Park following a spell at Southampton where his first-team opportunities were limited by the arrival of Egil Ostenstad and the continuing excellence of Matt Le Tissier . Oh, and Graeme Souness signing ‘George Weah’s cousin’ Ali Dia (rather than George Weah’s actual cousin Christopher Wreh ) due to

Today Emlyn Jones is taking a closer look at a larger than life character from the world of 90s football. Neil Ruddock’s brief spell at Crystal Palace was interesting to say the least but my main memory comes from an FA Cup clash where ‘Razor’ was brought on for the injured Fan Zhiyi and given the unenviable task of marking Kevin Phillips in the middle of his 30-goal season. I won’t go into too much detail but let’s just say that Ruddock spent a lot of time on his arse. Over to Emlyn. The subject of today's article is an example of the small Venn diagram intersection of players to have played for both Millwall and West Ham United and, befitting such a combination, has doubtless been described on a couple of occasions as being 'pwopa nawty'. Neil Ruddock began his career with Millwall, but didn't play a league game for the club before transferring to Tottenham Hotspur. Unfortunately, he broke his leg on his debut and played only a handful of games before returning to Mi

I saw my parents for the first time in nearly six months the other day – the first time since the Covid-19 lockdown and therefore the first time since I started this blog. Whenever I see my folks I’m presented with a bag of stuff ranging from post that I probably should change my address on (it has been nearly eight years) to suggested reading or listening. This time though I was presented with a tin of random football cards from some of the less established series that graced the 1990s including a wad of Pro Match cards and a deck of the questionable attempt by the table football legends at Subbuteo to enter the trading card market: Subbuteo Squads. I have some distinct memories related to these cards. First of all getting in trouble in Year 3 for knocking a wad of them out the hands of a kid in the year above (it was in self defence I promise) and secondly my Dad and I trying to get our heads round the game during a three hour train journey between Westport and Dublin. Dad fell aslee

Emlyn Jones is at the helm for today’s post. A few weeks ago Emlyn’s post on David Hirst highlighted some of football’s funniest injuries and, when I first read it, genuinely made me laugh out loud in a hospital corridor. Today’s subject didn’t feature in that post as his decision to get in the way of a powerful free kick was anything but amusing. Over to Emlyn. The phrase ‘one of our own’ is a favourite among modern football fans, the explosion in global transfers of the early 90s and increased propensity for agents garnishing signing on fees making genuine local players an increasingly noteworthy rarity; something to be recognised and celebrated. Alan Smith was born in Rothwell, Yorkshire, and having come through Leeds United’s youth teams marked his senior debut with a goal against Liverpool. The 1998/99 season was a breakthrough one for Smith (and the appalling curtains depicted in his sticker). As a local boy, he was hugely popular with fans, and a title challenge and foray into

During one of my recent forays into actual social contact (we’ll see how long that lasts) my friend Stu asked me “if you were to have any player’s career, whose would you have?” Treating the question as if I were Matt Hancock responding to questions about the availability of PPE or the due date for a world-beating Track and Trace app I provided Stu with a list of players I wouldn’t want to have emulated rather than an actual answer to the question. However, unlike Matt Hancock, I now have an actual answer for Stu and that answer is Gareth Barry. Stu’s answer was fairly straightforward: David Beckham. Beckham won everything on offer with Manchester United, won, lost and won back the hearts of the English public, became a Galactico at Real Madrid and then hit the glamour clubs of AC Milan and Paris Saint-Germain during his winter holidays from LA Galaxy. He also looked bloody good doing it. It’s very hard, and frankly quite stupid, to argue with Stu’s decision and supporting evidence but

Between 2007 and 2012 Fabio Capello did a lot with the England team. Compared to his predecessor, Steve McLaren, he was something of a success guiding the Three Lions through qualification for both the 2010 World Cup in South Africa and the 2012 European Championships in Poland and Ukraine. During these campaigns he encouraged the squad to end the club-based cliques that had blighted the so-called ‘Golden Generation’ and insisted on his selected players eating together without the distraction of mobile phones. On the other hand England were so dismal in the 2010 World Cup that it was almost a relief when Germany dominated them in their Round of 16 clash and put fans and players alike out of their misery. Mat and I watched that game in a Norwegian bar in Turkey and the German lads who were there didn’t even bother abusing us. The stall owners on the road down to the beach were not so forgiving although that might be down to the fact that Mat had opted to have Ledley King’s name printed

Mat Jolin-Beech brings us the story of an injury-prone English footballer from the 2000s. This doesn’t exactly narrow things down so here are some clues: excellent hair; a cracking early signing for your Master League team on Pro Evolution Soccer 2; an interesting mid-Atlantic/German accent. Over to Mat for the rest.   Michael Owen’s glossy dossier proving his fitness shows that, if you try hard enough, and have access to a fancy printer, anything can happen. How else do you explain going from Newcastle United and having hamstrings made of old elastic bands, to moving to Manchester United, scoring a last-minute winner in the derby, and winning a Premier League winners medal? (Are you watching Steven Gerrard?) That post, along with the time-wasting wormhole that is YouTube, inspired this post on England’s other Owen. Owen Hargreaves. He was ranked, in this Monday lunchtime’s video recommendation, as the best full England international to play abroad since David Beckham left these shore

Richard Allinson brings us another tale from the Steel City today, albeit one that spent more time in Hartlepool, as well as some speculation about the Amsterdam property market that would impress Homes Under The Hammer star Dion Dublin . Needless to say though we start in Cleethorpes. Over to Rich.   Other than the World Cup, the FA Cup is the single greatest football competition around. Still. Despite what naysayers/people who want to denigrate all football at the expense of the Premier League and Champions League say. Whilst these two competitions may produce technically and statistically the best football, their eventual victors are both so incredibly boring and predictable that they might as well be the Scottish Premier League. The FA Cup brings you Mo Salah v Dave that works in a Salad Bar (see what I did there?) and sometimes the little man wins. Sometimes, however, the little man gets absolutely pumped. Which is where we get on to Ritchie Humphreys. Just as with the start of a

In the seemingly endless debate on the greatest footballer of all time you rarely hear the names Edson Arantes do Nascimento or Arthur Antunes Coimbra mentioned. However, if you were to refer to them as Pele or Zico you might have less trouble recognising their names. In fact a whole host of Brazilian stars over the years have taken on a shortened form of their name or a childhood nickname on their path to global stardom. Ronaldo de Assis Moreira went by the name Ronaldinho from the age of eight owing to his small stature and the fact some bloke called Ronaldo was already quite well known. Givanildo Vieira de Sousa got the nickname Hulk due to his stocky build and his resemblance to 1970s actor and embodiment of the green Marvel superhero Lou Ferrigno. This is particularly impressive seeing as he looks nothing like him.   As we can see from today’s sticker this phenomenon is not unique to Brazil and, ahead of the 2018 World Cup in Russia, the world beyond those familiar with the Turkis

Emlyn Jones takes us through the career of another Welsh goalkeeping great today. The more eagle-eyed amongst you may have noticed that we’ve got into the habit of making links back to earlier posts at any given opportunity. It’s almost as if our admiration for the song writing of Craig Finn and Dan Campbell has leaked into our blogging. Emlyn comfortably takes this self-referencing to new heights below. Enjoy.   “No matter how good you are at something, there's always about a million people better than you.” Homer Simpson.   There are plenty of players that played surprisingly few international games; we've written previously about the likes of Gary Charles and Matt Le Tissier , who struggled with playing at the same time as Paul Parker and Lee Dixon in Charles' case and, er... Carlton Palmer in Le Tissier's. After all, you can always transfer to another club, but your choice of international team is usually limited to your place of birth, or questionable relatives;

Today Mat Jolin-Beech covers a player who ticks so many boxes for a blog post that I won’t even list them all in this brief introduction. Especially as that would duplicate a lot of his first paragraph. It’s worth noting here that the sticker itself has misspelled Hadji’s first name by adding a superfluous ‘o’. Merlin have previous with this – ‘ Bontcho Guentchev ’ was actually called Boncho Genchev. As someone whose own employer regularly refers to me as ‘Mani Hawkes’ I feel their pain.  Over to Mat.   When choosing to write a piece on a footballer, there are many reasons we here at ‘500 words’ have used: Club and country loyalties; cult status; fights; the ability to eat many dinners ; being key to Football Manager successes ; and actually being a good footballer. This latest blog was not based on any of those. The reason was purely because the name remains in my memory from early noughties football. The name: Mustapha Hadji. My actual memories of him include, and are limited to: his