Innholdsfortegnelse for FourFourTwo 25th Anniversary Collection i FourFourTwo 25th Anniversary Collection

Ever since its launch in September 1994, FourFourTwo has been breaking new ground in the quest to get you up close and personal with the icons of the beautiful game. Across its 300 issues to date the magazine has scoured the globe to talk to the likes of Ronaldo, Zidane and Messi, as well as true greats like Iain Dowie and Lee Trundle. We’ve spoken to fanatical fans, analysed the hottest new talent, illustrated some of the most breathtaking strikes and dived into the history of the game’s craziest owners–including one who toured Madrid on an elephant. With all that in mind, narrowing our selection of FFT’s finest content down to 148 pages was harder than pulling off Zlatan’s ‘pigeon wing’ in a phone box. Within the following pages you’ll…

“All the boys would call me Pelé and I’d fight with them–I didn't want to be called that!” My nickname “My father gave me the name Edson, because he really admired the American inventor Thomas Edison. I was very proud, because it was the name of a very important person. Then, when I moved to Bauru in Sao Paulo State, where my father played football, my sister Lucia starting calling me Dico, which comes from Edson–Edinho, Edico, Dico! Then, in Bauru, because they had a player–a goalkeeper–called Bile, who was a friend of my father, some people started to call me Bile–which sounds like Pelé. So all the boys started to call me Pelé, and I would fight with them, because I was very proud of my name Edson–I didn’t…

So the cycle begins again. Just when it seemed the playmaker had been consigned to history, just when it seemed even those areas such as Argentina and the Balkans that had always idolised their number 10s had begun to question their devotion, so they emerged again at the World Cup, different in form, reinvented for modernity, but distinctly, undeniably there. There was Mesut Ozil, perhaps the most classical of the new breed, sliding passes through for onrushing colleagues. There was Wesley Sneijder, probing and prompting, ever alert to a shooting opportunity. There was Lionel Messi, jinking and scampering, the latest incarnation of the pibe ideal. And there, deeper-lying, was the scheming Xavi Hernandez, the cerebral heart of the best national team there has been in two decades. ‘The Point of…

Of all the days to interview Diego Maradona, we couldn’t have picked a much worse one than this. Less than four hours before we’re due to arrive at his house in Buenos Aires, it’s announced that former Argentina president Nestor Kirchner has died. Maradona is a close family friend. Then we get wind that the Argentine FA have chosen Diego’s 1986 team-mate Sergio Batista as the new national team coach. Clichés about raining and pouring spring to mind, but we plough on, ringing the doorbell at Diego’s mansion in the Buenos Aires neighbourhood of El Trebol (‘the clover’) at the pre-arranged time. “Diego is not here,” says the man on the gate. Some news sources are even reporting that Maradona is already on a flight to El Calafate in southern…

NUTMEG The oldest and most enduring item in football’s box of tricks is also the most argued over. There is no definitive explanation as to where the term came from: some say ‘nuts’ refers to the gentleman’s testicles the ball passes beneath, others believe ‘melts’ is simply Cockney rhyming slang for (between the) ‘legs’. A more likely story is that it’s a Victorian saying derived from the seed of the nutmeg tree itself, which unscrupulous exporters replaced with worthless wooden replicas in the 1870s. To be nutmegged, ergo, is to be tricked. What we do know is that there are umpteen names for the move around the footballing world, many of them variations of ‘bridge’ and ‘tunnel’, while in Panna - Dutch street football of Surinamese origin - nutmegging an…

CHRISTIAN MAGGIO vs Livorno, Serie A, 2010 “I lived a week in Van Basten’s shoes,” says a joking Christian Maggio about the events of 24 January 2010–when the Napoli wingback scored “the best goal of my life”. His life, or almost any other player’s. Maggio’s astonishing strike against Livorno bore close resemblance to Marco van Basten’s for the Dutch in the Euro 88 final; from less of a tight angle, perhaps, and a smaller occasion, certainly, but just as perfect in its execution. “We were at the end of the first half,” recalls Maggio, “and Livorno’s keeper cleared the ball quickly. Unfortunately for him, it went to my team-mate, [Salvatore] Aronica. “He hit it long into the box, because the speciality of our forward, German Denis, was his heading. But…

1 He brings a tactical ideology Klopp isn’t one to flit between formations in the way Louis van Gaal has this season, and a more settled tactical identity would serve United well as they continue to adapt to life without Alex Ferguson. Klopp is still capable of switching things up and would deploy United’s multi-talented squad cannily, but he’d have a plan in mind. 2 He’s a media maestro Van Gaal has mithered and moaned about commercial pressures on his players, but Klopp openly embraces “media opportunities”. After all, he’s the man who got Dortmund’s players to pose for FourFourTwo’s giant feature on the club in 2013. That’s an extra asset at a side such as United, who trade heavily on their global brand. 3 He’s Mr Personality There’s one…

Of all the scenarios that could unfold in Russia later this summer, among the less likely is Argentina and Portugal meeting in the final. Not just because neither side are among the hot favourites, but also because it would mean Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi–the two best players of their generation–facing off for the game’s biggest trophy. And that almost never happens. You could perhaps argue it did in 1998, when Zinedine Zidane and Ronaldo went toe-to-toe in the Stade de France showpiece, though the Frenchman blossomed into a truly world-class player only in the wake of that match. So you’d say the exception that proves the rule was the 1974 final–when the Kaiser met the King. That Franz Beckenbauer and Johan Cruyff came up against each other on the…

“First of all I’d like to say what a big pleasure it is to be here among friends to talk about football,” says Pelé, and it’s hard not to believe him. This may be the billionth time The Greatest Footballer Ever has spoken about his extraordinary career, but if he’s bored of telling the same old stories, he’s doing a good job of hiding it. One thing the 69 year old does bemoan, though, is his lack of match-fitness. “Normally I train with kids at my soccer school in Santos,” he explains, “but this year–because of the World Cup, all the interviews that go with it, and then going to Africa–I haven’t had time so I’m a little out of shape. I’ve still got a good touch–you never lose that.…

To say Pelé’s potential was obvious from a young age would be a huge understatement: when Waldemar de Brito took him to Santos, he told the directors that the modestly built 15-year-old would be “the greatest football player in the world”. No pressure then. But Pelé didn’t disappoint. When he arrived in the industrial port city, 50 miles from Sao Paulo, the club was already on the up. Pelé sent them into orbit. He was top scorer in his first full season and Sao Paulo champions in his second. Nine more state titles followed, along with five national and two South American titles. When Santos won back-to-back Intercontinental Cups against Benfica and AC Milan in 1962 and 1963 respectively, Pelé scored seven goals across two two-legged ties. Pelé didn’t make…

“The papers in Brazil said we couldn’t play together–the best Brazil team of all time!” You retired from international football after 1966. What made you return? I did two or three interviews and said, ‘This is my last World Cup’, but I kept playing with Santos and in 1969 I was in good shape and I said, “OK, I’m gonna play.” I played in all the qualification games [Pelé scored six goals in six games] and in four or five months together we didn’t lose a single game. Were you able to enjoy the experience more and take it all in because you were that bit older than in ’58? No. It was tougher for me because the responsibility was on my shoulders. We had two or three players who…

England 3-0 Poland, 1986 World Cup Tyler Jason, England fan “My dad followed England in three World Cups,” says Tyler. “He sadly passed away last year at the age of 51, and being the only one in the family who’s bothered about football, his ticket stubs are now in my possession. “He had a story about meeting Trevor Brooking the night before our final group game in Mexico. Dad was a massive West Ham supporter and idolised Brooking. The England squad came into their hotel, and Dad and a few mates were asking, ‘What’s going on here?’ We’ve lost our first game and drawn the second–we’re not going to qualify.’ “Brooking [there as a pundit] just said, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll win tomorrow and it will all be OK.’ My dad…

On 14 December 2014 Jan-Henrik Gruszecki walked towards the door of his Dortmund flat with a heavy heart. The 30-year-old was returning from Berlin, where he had watched his team, Borussia Dortmund, put in yet another depressing and by-and-large inexplicable Bundesliga performance. The same players who not very long ago came close to winning the Champions League and thrilled an entire continent with daring attacking football, turning spectators into fans wherever they went, had stumbled across the pitch like shell-shocked soldiers. Jurgen Klopp, their iconic coach, had watched from the sidelines with the body language of a man who was rapidly reaching his wits’ end. A rather pedestrian Hertha team had won the game 1-0, sending Dortmund back into the relegation zone. Relegation. As Gruszecki grabbed the door handle, this…

Xavi looks confused. It’s probably because he’s never seen a rattle before. “And people actually take these to games in England?” the perplexed playmaker asks. Then he screams, as a ratcheting cacophony fills the plush confines of the Torch Hotel in Doha, Qatar. “Bloody hell, that’s loud! It makes a much better noise than those damn vuvuzelas in South Africa.” What you might be thinking, however, is why. Why the rattle? Why has FourFourTwo travelled more than 3,000 miles to the Middle East to interview a player who admits he’s in semi-retirement in Qatar? In leaving Camp Nou last May, albeit as a Champions League-winning captain, Xavi also left European football behind. So is the Catalan conductor still relevant? Put simply, yes. Xavi is footballing royalty; the key to a…

“Pelé is obviously infantile. He lacks the necessary fighting spirit.” That was Brazil team psychologist Joao Carvalhaes’ stark verdict on the 17-year-old striker who, averaging a goal a game in his first full season at Santos, had forced his way onto the fringe of the Selecao’s 1958 World Cup squad. The verdict must have shaken Pelé, who was, in his own words, just a “skinny little black boy” rigorously applying boiling hot towels to his injured right knee as he struggled to get fit. All his hopes now rested on coach Vicente Feola. Would he dare defy the psychologist? Losing the 1950 World Cup on home soil to Uruguay had felt, Pelé recalled, “like the end of a war, with Brazil the loser and many people dead”. The only way…

Playing a World Cup finals on home soil is generally seen as an advantage, but for some players it’s proved more of a burden. The seemingly ever-relaxed and affable Mario Kempes may not have given the impression he was feeling the pressure of being the poster boy for Argentina in 1978–he finished the tournament as top goalscorer and with a winners’ medal round his neck–but, as he confesses, the reality was rather different. “The problem was not the pressure of the fans’ expectations, but the pressure we put on ourselves–we felt that we had to win,” he recalled. “After we lost to Italy in the first group stage at Estadio Monumental, it seemed that the expectations boiled over. We were shocked. We had to leave Buenos Aires, but in the…

The press, crammed into the amphitheatre of Coverciano’s lecture hall, had one thing they wished to discuss with Fabio Cannavaro. The 2006 World Cup was a fortnight away, but Italy’s hopes were not what was on their minds. The media had finally stumbled across the labyrinthine threads of a nefarious web of influence, spun by the Juventus general manager Luciano Moggi through the 400-odd phone calls he made every day. Into this s**tstorm, Cannavaro dumped some dismayingly ill-judged remarks. “I think the methods exposed by the phone-taps concern everyone, the whole of [Italian] football,” he claimed. “Only Moggi’s phone was under surveillance… other clubs were not tapped.” This was regarded as the classic retort of the red-handed culprit. Cannavaro failed to condemn Moggi and made vaguely supportive comments about his…

Born in Tres Coracoes in Minas Gerais State in the southeast of Brazil, Edson Arantes do Nascimento grew up in near poverty in Bauru, Sao Paulo State, one of several stops on his father’s journey as a jobbing semi-professional striker. While Joao Ramos do Nascimento (aka Dondinho) supplemented his modest football income with part-time jobs, his wife Dona Celeste raised Edson and his two younger siblings (Zoca and Maria Lucia) with the help of her brother and mother, who also lived in the ramshackle two-room house. When the would-be ‘Pelé’ first kicked a ball aged six–having previously kicked several other objects around the favela near the family home–he dreamed only of following his father into the professional ranks of Bauru Athletic Club (BAC), where young Edson was a youth-team player.…

FROM THE FFT ARCHIVES: AUGUST 2013 Maradona’s cock and bull story “Diego could do whatever he wanted,” claimed former Napoli president Corrado Ferlaino, “but he had to be clean by Thursday.” By the late ’80s, El Diez was snorting so much coke that it was almost impossible to be ready for the drug-testers ahead of weekend games. So the club, as well as turning a blind eye to his habits, helped devise a way of beating the system. When summoned for a sample, Maradona would be given a small pump containing someone else’s urine, which he slipped into his tracksuit. Once in the testing room, he would fill a specimen jar from the concealed pump. “He was saved that way many times,” admitted Ferlaino, but the rubber penis ruse eventually…

As it approaches midnight on a frozen night in November 2005, an ill wind is blowing around Old Trafford. Hours earlier, it had been a mass of humanity - 67,471 souls, most of them groaning with frustration and anxiety - as Manchester United played out a grim goalless draw with Villarreal in the Champions League. By now the ground is empty, save for the last few remaining stewards, journalists, club officials and one very concerned-looking Knight of the British Empire. Appearing from a tunnel outside the Stretford End, Sir Alex Ferguson peers out into the night. His car has been brought around to the front for him by some lackey, but he looks beyond to where two United fans are huddled together, shivering, waiting. “Sir Alex, we’ve come over from…

Martin Palermo Boca Juniors The Buenos Aires side recently appointed Guillermo Barros Schelotto as their new coach, but their all-time record scorer was also in the frame. With spells in the Argentine top flight already under his managerial belt, it’s only a matter of time before Palermo gets the nod. Henrik Larsson Celtic What’s Swedish for ‘no-brainer’? Having already turned down the Hoops’ hotseat in 2014, Larsson–who has admitted he’d like to manage the club one day–is currently learning his trade at Helsingborg in the Allsvenskan, guiding them to a mid-table finish last season. Philipp Lahm Bayern Munich “The most intelligent player” Pep Guardiola has ever trained retired from international football because he felt leading Germany to World Cup glory was as good as it was ever going to get.…

“No one could imagine Jimmy Greaves not playing.” So wrote Geoff Hurst of his friend and fellow England striker, reflecting on the selection dilemma facing Alf Ramsey ahead of the 1966 World Cup final. “No one admired him more than I did. But to be honest, I wasn’t going around saying, ‘Poor Jimmy’. I was thinking to myself, ‘Thank God I’ve got this chance.’” The inescapable truth–one that lends sport such captivating poignancy–is that for every winner there is a loser; every fairytale strut on the grand stage masks a what-might-have-been weep in the wings. Has any footballer grabbed an opportunity with greater aplomb than Hurst, the man whose Wembley hat-trick in the final against West Germany made good on Ramsey’s winning pledge? Hurst’s entrance, for the quarter-final showdown with…

Less than three weeks after his infamous penalty miss in the final of USA 94, Roberto Baggio was asked about the incident that would be seen as the defining moment of the competition. “The murder of the Colombian player was the most upsetting thing during that time,” he said of the assassination of Andres Escobar. “An incredible, chilling incident, which unfortunately will mark the tournament forever. And all for an own goal… Shocking, to die like that.” By way of surreal coincidence, it was among guns that Baggio had been seeking refuge from the whole ghastly post-final brouhaha. With a yearning to indulge his childhood passion for hunting, he headed to his newly acquired 900-acre ranch in La Pampa, one of Argentina’s most sparsely populated provinces, deep in the heart…

Neither Xavi nor Andres Iniesta slept a wink on 16 June 2010. World Cup favourites Spain had just lost 1-0 to Switzerland in their opening group game. The latter was distraught. It was happening to him again. A year earlier, Iniesta had played injured in the 2009 Champions League Final against Manchester United. Advised not to shoot, he knew he was doing more damage to his right thigh. He’d spent much of the 2009-10 season recovering not just from that–coach Vicente del Bosque had waited until the last moment for Iniesta to prove even the remotest fitness–but also the death of his close friend, Espanyol captain Dani Jarque, during pre-season. “It was,” he wrote in his autobiography, “like nothing was right.” Now, 77 minutes into the World Cup, his thigh…

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