“You learn more from losing than winning” no not MacArthur, Alan Hudson
I have been writing recently about players “mouthing” it off about what they are and what they’re not going to do and then let everyone down, and those fans in particular. They don’t let themselves down because it seems today’s players have not got the brains to do their talking with their feet and their heads, much like say our second best captain in an England shirt, Bryan Robson.
Anyhow, 46 years ago in the year of ’70 when Chelsea were flying high and on their way to beating Leeds United in that epic FA Cup final of two matches; in the first ever replay at Old Trafford we played the same rivals at Stamford Bridge in a League match and they were top, I think.
Before our last training session, on the Friday, Dave Sexton called us into the middle of the pitch and gave us a dressing down about someone “mouthing” in the morning paper about what we were going to do to Leeds the following day. It was the first (and only) time that I’d ever really taken notice of our manager/coach because it was terrific advice and more than that, quite obvious. He said “Listen, we are playing a team coming to London in great form, and the last thing we want to do is “fire them up even more”. Enough said, Dave never took it any further but it has always been my advice all these years on and has proved right every time an individual mouths it off. In other words it’s the perfect team talk for your enemy, and there was no bigger enemy than the team from Yorkshire.
24 hours on we played as well as we did all the time I wore a Chelsea BLUE but somehow got beaten 5-2 by a Billy Bremner led team who simply took their chances, although I found out later that our stand-in GK Tommy Hughes played “out of his head drunk through taking pain killers and Brandy” because he was also injured like Peter Bonetti, but did not want to let us down. He would have been better saying in bed and let David Webb play between the sticks, because he did so against Ipswich and performed admirably in a 2-0 win at the Bridge.
Whilst watching Iceland getting the same treatment last night it all came flooding back…..How can a team perform so well, yet the score-line will tell a totally different story, and I think a lot of that was that a few of them looked like Tommy, only punch drunk from the recent days gone by when reaching heights they never knew existed.
France cashed in alright, and everything, like Leeds with us, went in one way or the other.
I wrote yesterday of that Dream Final with Wales but it weren’t to be and I sat on my settee sipping my V&O (Screwdriver) thinking ‘Please don’t let it be ten’ which was more a cry of help for those terrific Icelanders, because they had performed brilliantly up to this match. Their manager must take great credit for his half-time team talk because you might have been fooled by thinking that they were winning 4-0 when they came out for the restart.
Unlike with England, they tucked up their sleeves and went head to head with the hosts and had that chance gone in at 4-1 they would have (just might have) put the frighteners up the French, because at 4-2 another goal would have had them home team wobbly.
So you BOYS in Iceland, take heart from your performance, like we did, as we kept our mouths shut and gained revenge in that FA Cup final, where we trailed Leeds three times, and kept our heads to win that most famous of domestic cup trophies.
That Dream Final was not my prediction, merely a hope and a dream for football in a season of the Underdog here in England, and although it was not to be, I went to my bed thinking that they can do the same with their heads held high, unlike “you know who?”
Well done to the men who go back to Iceland a proud bunch of young men whilst ours lay on round the beaches of the world “sunning it” as seen in our local newspapers.
Fake tans for fake players tells the real story!
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