25/26 Football thread DEAD, USE A NEW ONE

[Statto]

Random notable footballers you've seen live is a fun one. 

The first one that leaps to mind for me is Philip Cocu, who before winning 101 caps for the Netherlands & playing for Barcelona etc was in the Vitesse Arnhem team swept aside 3-0 in Norwich's first ever European game. So were the likes of Glenn Helder & Raimond van der Gouw, but as they went on to play for English clubs they're not quite as "odd".

Sadly that was the only one of Norwich's UEFA Cup adventure 11 year old me went to in person, so I can't claim any of the legendary Bayern or Inter lads.

Edit: Actually, I've just remembered there was a charity Norwich Legends vs "Inter Forever" match a few years back, so I can claim elderly versions of the likes of Sebastien Frey, Javier Zanetti, Nicola Berti, Marco Materazzi, Francesco Colonnese & Massimo Paganin.

Edited February 16 by Statto
Old blokes.

[SuperBacon]

I went to every England home game (bar one) from Terry Venables debut up until the Euro 96 semi final defeat. 

They were some of the best times I've ever had as a kid, as a whole group of us would go from the estate, including my late sister (I even wrote this "journey" for a small football zine called Diego magazine, obviously had to be called that, I'll try and upload it sometime)

Anyway it meant I got to lots of top players, especially at Euro 96, but the highlight was seeing one of my first ever heroes, Gheorge Hagi, in the flesh as England played out a stinking 1 all draw with Romania. I think he came off at half time and I probably cried.

I've seen Messi live as well, but it was a particularly heavy Spurs defeat (WHEN IS IT NOT EH? LOLOLOLOL) so its a slightly soured memory.

[Devon Malcolm]

I was at the 2-2 in the Champions League between United and Barcelona where Lee Sharpe scored the lovely backflick. Romario was the best player on the pitch by some distance.

[King Mal the Glorious]

In terms of talent + name value it's probably Shearer for me. I didn't get to many games as a kid and the ones I did were cup matches against lower league teams.

Nowadays I'd class a few of our current/former players as world class level, your Bruno Gs, Tonalis and (boo) Isaks. It's nigh on impossible to get tickets to top PL or CL games so nobody notable on the other side.

I did see us play Arsenal about 10 years ago and so assumed I must have seen someone great there, but looking back at the lineup it's one of the weakest Arsenal squads in memory. We still lost.

[SuperBacon]

2 minutes ago, King Mal the Glorious said:

It's nigh on impossible to get tickets to top PL or CL games so nobody notable on the other side.

We joined our local Spurs official supporters group, and it works well. They get given allocations before the nonsense of the online sales, and (sadly) we've been able to get tickets to every game we've applied for in the last two seasons. It's been relentlessly shit.

The only drawback is you're limited to a few places in the ground, but we've always "lucked out"

I'm taking my youngest Sunday to her first North London derby, as I'm a terrible parent.

Her Mums whole family are Arsenal fans, and as we're right next to the away fans, I expect to look over the police line and see half her bloody family! Ffs.

[gmoney]

I've seen Dean Saunders score. 

[Cousin Jim Bob]

Mid 90's Chelsea were good value for this. Seeing an admittedly way past his best but still pretty awesome Ruud Gullit at Ewood Park was very cool.

[King Mal the Glorious]

I would love to get to a derby here but that's literally a dream at this point. I have gone to the women's derby the last couple of seasons and while not quite the same it's still been a really good experience.

@Cousin Jim Bobthe first match I remember going to was with Gullit as our manager. Scraped by Blackburn on penalties in the cup in the pissing rain (St James was being expanded and was missing the roof).

Edited February 16 by King Mal the Glorious
Tím Sherwood celebrated right in front of me, the bastard

[Carbomb]

1 hour ago, gmoney said:

I've seen Dean Saunders score. 

Same here. For Derby against United in 1990, one of my first visits to Old Trafford, when we lost 2-1.

[DCW]

I was at Roy Keane's last match for Ireland before Saipan, a 2 -1 friendly defeat to Nigeria at the auld Lansdowne Road. Was rare to get Keane for a friendly at this stage, but he'd pulled out of Niall Quinn's testimonial earlier that week, so was under a bit of pressure to keep up appearances. I remember getting home that night and looking up Jay Jay Okocha and Julius Agahowa on Championship Manager, because they both looked way better than all of our players!

[RIDDUM_N_STYLE]

I got to see a young Cristiano Ronaldo play against England’s U21s at Goodison in 2003, a month after he signed for United

I was also present for a pre season game between Everton and Real Sociadad in which Xabi Alonso ran the show for the Spaniards 2 weeks before he signed for Liverpool, the Sociadad team also featured Mikel Arteta who had only signed for them earlier in the summer but went on to sign for us that January

[waters44]

Being a Reading fan growing up I didn't get much of chance to see any big names. The biggest would have been when we played Chelsea in the League Cup in 2003, they had Hernan Crespo at the time and he was the guy everybody was excited to see at Madejski. I was way more excited to see Strictly alumni Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink myself. 

Chelsea again, but the one of the weirdest games I went to was when they came back in 2006, and TWO of their goalkeepers got stretchered off unconscious. 

[mim731]

I was quite lucky in so much as a teenager a family friend had four ticket registration for every home game at Arsenal, so I got to see some incredible players back in the day because he often had a spare floating around. Probably my favourite was seeing us play Roma in 2003 in the Champions League, finally getting to see Cafu and more importantly, Totti who I had become a bit obsessed with for some reason. He then got himself sent off after 20 minutes, but it was still a very cool thing. 

[tiger_rick]

14 hours ago, SuperBacon said:

I went to every England home game (bar one) from Terry Venables debut up until the Euro 96 semi final defeat. 

They were some of the best times I've ever had as a kid, as a whole group of us would go from the estate, including my late sister (I even wrote this "journey" for a small football zine called Diego magazine, obviously had to be called that, I'll try and upload it sometime)

Anyway it meant I got to lots of top players, especially at Euro 96, but the highlight was seeing one of my first ever heroes, Gheorge Hagi, in the flesh as England played out a stinking 1 all draw with Romania. I think he came off at half time and I probably cried.

I've seen Messi live as well, but it was a particularly heavy Spurs defeat (WHEN IS IT NOT EH? LOLOLOLOL) so its a slightly soured memory.

I'd forgotten about England games. Would have to look into some of the teamsheets from the mid-2000s but my first England game was the one where Salas scored a worldie at the old Wembley so he'd be on the list.

14 hours ago, Devon Malcolm said:

I was at the 2-2 in the Champions League between United and Barcelona where Lee Sharpe scored the lovely backflick. Romario was the best player on the pitch by some distance.

Told this before but I tried the Lee Sharpe flick in school team training a day or two after the game, missed a sitter and didn't get picked.

Wasn't the return game that season the one were Barca won 4-0 in the Nou Camp and Romario absolutely ran riot? United were slightly hampered by the 3 foreigner rule.

 

[RedTwoster]

18 hours ago, tiger_rick said:

It was a great game and I'd agree with you that the whole title race is a good advert for Scottish football but it was pretty poor quality. Poor passes all over the place. Couple of catastrophic goals conceded. Celtic are clearly a much better team, technically but, have a really soft underbelly.

Scottish football in a nutshell these days, to be honest - the quality isn’t always great, but my goodness it can be exciting. Obviously I’m Scottish so there’s some obvious bias, but I have a lot more fun watching most Scottish games than I do English Premier League matches.

19 hours ago, tiger_rick said:

Did find it amusing that Steve Clarke was in the studio for it. Presumably just there for the payday because there was hardly any fucker for him to be worth scouting!

True - but there are a few Hearts players I’d like to see him take a look at - Craig Halkett has been one of the best defenders in Scotland this season, and Harry Milne is worth a chance also. I wouldn’t object to Stuart Findlay getting a call-up either. But yeah, with Shankland out and James Wilson joining Spurs, it wasn’t a match packed with Scottish talent.