100 bizarre football stories – Part 4
Alfredo Di Stefano – the mercenary?
A pirate league shook up the football world from 1949 to 1954. The so-called Columbia El Dorado for a while attracted some of the biggest stars of the era before it ended in recriminations over money. Columbia broke away from FIFA to set up a seemingly cash-rich professional division. Spanish ace Alfredo Di Stefano, along with England’s Neil Franklin and Charlie Mitten were among the big-name signings promised fabulous signing-on fees. Later, many players were not paid and were almost held hostage by armed guards in their hotels. The disillusioned ‘mercenaries’ left South America to not very warm welcome back in their home countries.
Colchester became the first English league club to have both goalkeepers dismissed in the same match. John Keeley and his understudy Nathan Munson were both sent of for professional fouls. Colchester ended up losing 5-0 to Hereford.
Barry Fry, who managed nine English clubs including Birmingham and Peterborough, was advised that the best way to stop a run of bad luck was to urinate at each corner of the pitch. He said: “It’s hard to squirt a bit out, walk 60 yards and then do it again.”
One of the more bizarre stoppages for a game was in 1979 when an elephant strolled into a Buckingham Town United Counties League match. The elephant’s appearance was behind the referee’s back and only the frantic waving of a goalkeeper alerted him to the intrusion. Minutes later two men appeared looking for an elephant that had gone walkabout from a travelling circus pitched nearby.
Cameroon’s goalkeeping coach Thomas Nkono was beaten, handcuffed and detained before an Africa Cup of Nations match with Mali in 2003 because he was suspected of leaving a voodoo charm on the pitch.
Off you go Jose!
Jose Mourinho missed the moment he won his first silverware with Chelsea in 2005. He was dismissed for putting finger to his lips in an apparent hush sign to opposition Liverpool fans, which the referee judged as inflammatory. He watched all the celebrations on a stadium TV.
The Imperfect Crime – featuring Glen Johnson and Ben May
Two highly paid English players were fined in 2007 for trying to steal a toilet seat from a DIY superstore. The incident involved Glen Johnson, reputed at the time to be on a £30,000 a week with Chelsea, and Millwall striker Ben May. In what seemed an elaborate plot the duo tried to leave B&Q’s Dartford store in Kent with the seat concealed in the packaging of a much cheaper type. The smirking pair were successfully ‘tackled’ by a 74-year-old security guard and later fined £80 by magistrates for attempted theft.
Without Terry and Co. the list would have been pointless eh?
A number of Chelsea players were fined by their club in 2001 for rowdy and drunken behavior on the day of the World Trade Center disaster in New York. John Terry and team-mates Jody Morris, Frank Lampard and Eidur Gudjohnsen were drinking heavily at a Heathrow Airport hotel on the day of 11 September attacks but the behavior witnessed by many grieving Americans who were stranded by the lack of flights home. There were also many claims that there was some harassment of American tourists. The players went on their binge after a game against Levski Sofia had been called off – ironically out of respect for the victims of the terrorist attack.
Newcastle directors Freddy Shepherd and Douglas Hall committed three cardinal sins – they rubbished not only their own club and start player, but also Geordie women. The pair were caught in a tabloid newspaper sting in 1998 in which they thought they were setting up a business deal with a wealthy Arab. During the recorded conversation in a Marbella brothel, they mocked club’s own supporters for spending extortionate amounts of money on merchandise, called women supporters ‘dogs’ and branded star striker Alan Shearer the ‘Marry Poppins of football’.
Sir Stanley Matthews, who played for Stoke City and Blackpool, never received a booking in his 33-year career. He was 50 when he retired from top-class football.
Read some of the other stories from the series here:
100 bizarre football stories – Part 3
100 bizarre football stories – Part 2