Sir Alex Ferguson of Manchester United refers to his players as "boys" and calls them "son," when speaking to them of matters most important. His "sons" grow up to call him "father." Both Beckham and Ronaldo have described him as such. He is the last of the great British coaching daddies.

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There are different ways to manage players and teach and educate - no one style is the right way, as it has to fit each coach's personality.
Alan Black of Goal.com writes about the parenting style of Sir Alex Ferguson, and how that context of teaching and coaching appears to be a dying breed. Click to continue reading...

Via the Guardian (of course), following our 5-0 demoltion of Blackburn on the weekend ...

"The oversimplified reading of a diamond formation* suggests that any success is significantly dependent on the excellence of attacking full-backs. Yet Chelsea were without Ashley Cole and Jose Bosingwa when they obliterated Blackburn at the weekend.

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Tom Hopper's The Damned United is a fun British sports drama based on David Pearce's novel of the same name. Starring Michael Sheen as Clough, the film opens in select U.S. theaters today (it already ran in the U.K. and Ireland). It tells the story of Brian Clough's tumultuous 44 days in charge of Leeds United in 1974.

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Dirty, dirty Leeds. Dirty fucking Leeds. After reading David Peace's novel The Damned UTD these words cycled through my head for days. They work as an obsessive refrain in David Peace's account of Brian Clough's infamous 44 days as the manager of (dirty, dirty) Leeds.
I knew nothing about Clough, Leeds, and this bizarre story before reading Peace's novel - that I enjoyed the book, and felt as if Clough himself, in all his puerile genius, had wormed his way into my head is as good a testimony as I can give to the intensity and distinctiveness of Peace's writing. Click to continue reading...

I was sitting in a plush screening room at the Sony Pictures Lot in Culver City, CA just a short walk down the hallway to anything and everything Spider-Man (hell, Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst may have been on premises for all I know – the studio lot was so infested with Spider-Man promos) but when The Damned United kicked-off I was no longer in warm Los Angeles.

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There is a thin line between being a mad genius and simply being mad. If Brian Clough was the mad genius of English football, the new film The Damned United explores Clough's simply mad stage when he got fired at Derby County and then, after 44 days in charge of Leeds United, got himself dismissed there as well.

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Today's video flashback is from the late 1960s when two quality teams, Leeds United and Manchester United, faced each other at Elland Road.

The video footage is interesting for several different seasons. It's in black and white. Plus you get to watch the opening of the show for a program that's simply titled "Football" with its title music that sounds like it's going to be the Match Of The Day theme but quickly transpires into a different song.

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The Damned United will be making its cinematic debut in the United States on a limited release this September 25, 2009 in New York City and Los Angeles.

And now Sony Pictures has officially launched the movie trailer for the film. It's quite a bit different than the UK version.

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- 1974 Video: West Ham vs QPR
- Numerous other old QPR Video snippets
Marking A Quarter Century Since Alan Mullery Appointed:
Twenty-Five Years ago (yesterday! Click to continue reading...

1974. This is the story of the Match of The 70s 1974-75. A fantastic retrospective Series by the BBC chronicling the professional game in England in the 70's. And i loved it.I discovered it on Youtube by accident. A wonderful bloke named PaulMagicflute...Has posted a whole decades worth of the series and i am going to devour it. Click to continue reading...

The Australian Financial Review ran a great story in its Review pages this Friday, 'Pitch black: England and its national game in the 1970s' by Dominic Sandbrook. It was inspired by David Peace's book 'The Damned United' which will be released here in August.
I was very young in 1974 playing for the Redbacks. Click to continue reading...

"Football defeated anti-football" — Catalan press (uncredited)
"What is football?" — James Richardson on Football Weekly
First, a confession: I missed all the Champions League quarter and semi finals for the first time in five years because, like millions (well, hundreds of thousands) of other NAFFS, I was working a boring day job (incidentally, that's also the reason my post rate has fallen through the floor but you didn't come here to listen to me talk about my 'problems,' did you? Click to continue reading...

I'm not gonna lie...I'm superstitious.
Whether it be what I eat on game day to what I wear on the sidelines, I think having little superstitions help keep me at ease.
FIFA.com has a list of some of the unique superstitions from managers all over the world.
Legendary Leeds United manager Don Revie was exceptionally superstitious. Click to continue reading...

Michael Sheen as Brian Clough as my Id
Although it would seem—oh okay—although it is self-indulgent to write about writing about football, in my defense I will say that a) most of my readers also write about the sport so I'm sure they might identify with some of the themes here and b) it's my birthday, so I can be as goddamn self-indulgent as I like. Click to continue reading...