Through Gritted Teeth #35: Liverpool 1988
August 9, 2011 § 15 Comments
by Mike Counsell
Occasionally in life, something happens that is so alien, so counterintuitive, so brain-jarringly wrong that it makes you question whether there can ever again be such a thing as certainty. It was May the 14th 1988, FA Cup final day, and I was in the pub. Nothing unusual or counterintuitive about that, as anyone who knows me would confirm.
(Incidentally, as a digressing disclaimer, there will be errors of fact and attribution in this piece. Football is a game of passions and opinions, and I prefer the kind of truth that’s refracted through memory and experience rather than the kind that reflects, you know, what actually happened. The date I can vouch for, but I’m afraid that that constitutes the full extent of my research.) « Read the rest of this entry »
Through Gritted Teeth #32: England
July 28, 2011 § 1 Comment
by Shaughan McGuigan
Growing up in a football daft Scottish family in the early 1980s meant three important messages were imparted into my youthful and impressionable mind. Firstly, Kenny Dalglish was the best striker in Europe; secondly, Charlie Nicholas could be if he trained with the same degree of enthusiasm that he seemed to put into shopping for earrings; and lastly, when it came to international football, England were the bad guys.
It may have taken me quarter of a century but I’ve come to realise that only the first two lessons I received back then were actually accurate. England aren’t actually that bad. There. I’ve said it. Through teeth that are not just gritted but clamped shut, but I believe it nonetheless. « Read the rest of this entry »
