Robbie's Jobbie, Busy C****, The Tactics Truck and Rocky RIP: The 100 most shocking football moments of the decade, numbers 90-81
With the Noughties nearly at an end, MirrorFootball's Steve Anglesey looks back on the decade's biggest gob-smackers. Here's his Day 2 selection...
90. Jaap Stam writes himself out of United history (14/8/2001)
Bought for a song by the Daily Mirror, Jaap Stam's autobiography Head To Head proved to be one of the most entertaining football books ever, principally because the big Dutchman had failed to read it before publication.
A defensive rock alongside Ronny Johnsen, Stam had won three Premier League titles, an FA Cup and the Champions League in his three seasons at Old Trafford and at 29 could have expected to continue in the heart of defence for several seasons. Instead, two weeks after the Mirror's serialisation began, he was sitting in a tight-fitting Lazio shirt, staring blankly into the middle distance and admitting: "Right now, I don't know what to believe".
Stam's crimes had included detailing how he was 'tapped up' by United while at PSV Eindhoven and how Sir Alex Ferguson has urged attackers to go down more easily in European matches. But the final straw appeared to be his remarks about Gary and Phil Neville. "We call them 'busy c***s' for their endless grumbling about everything in general and nothing in particular," he revealed. "They never stop."
The Mirror's exclusive led to a memorable phone conversation between then-deputy sports editor Dean Morse and Ferguson which is still discussed with fondness in our offices...
89. Phil Neville knocks England out of Euro 2000 (20/6/2000)
Eight-eight minutes gone in Charleroi and despite some nervy moments, England are drawing 2-2 with Romania and on course for the second phase. I feel confident enough to walk into the kitchen for a celebratory can of Stella, popping the ring pull as Viorel Moldovan breaks into the right-hand side of the box and Phil Neville dives in with a kamikaze tackle from behind. I adopt a Jaap Stam phrase, omitting the word "busy", as sub Ioan Ganea lines up to send Nigel Martyn the wring way, England home and Alan Shearer into international retirement. Cheers, Phil.
88. Robbie Savage uses Graham Poll's toilet (22/4/2002)
Not like Graham Poll to suffer a sense of humour failure, yet unaccountably that was what occurred when Savage, beset by stomach problems after taking antibiotics to cure an infection in a gashed ankle, found the Leicester dressing room toilet engaged before a game against Aston Villa. Urgently needing to answer the call of nature, Savage rushed next door to use the refeeres' toilet and, job done, joked with official Poll before going out for kick-off. Imagine his delight when the subsequent referee's report cited him for leaving the toilet door open, failing to wash his hands and pretending to wipe them on the blazer of the refs' assessor. The subsequent £10,000 FA fine and loss of two week's wages made it, according to Savage, "the most expensive poo I've ever taken" as 'Jobbie Savage' headlines dominated the back pages.
87. Harry Redknapp goes to Southampton (1/12/2004)
"I will not go down the road, no chance," 'Arry reassured a Portsmouth supporter after walking out of Fratton Park over a long-running spat with chairman Milan Mandaric. Two weeks later he was installed as the new manager of Southampton - although Pompey fans couldn't fault the job he subsequently did at St Mary's.
86. Death of David Rocastle (31/2/2001)
Diagnosed with the aggressive cancer non-Hodgkin's lymphoma just a month earlier, Rocastle's passing brought to mind Hugh McIlvanney's famous line about Jock Stein and the "larceny of death". Just 33 when he died, leaving a young family, Rocastle never truly fulfilled his devastating potential - as a youngster he was dubbed "the Brazilian" by awed Arsenal team-mates - but he was renowned throughout football as humble and humorous, twin attributes rarely found in a single player. His former colleague Ian Wright breaking down in tears on a radio broadcast as he recalled his friend spoke volumes about a player admired by millions and a man cherished by those closest to him.
85. Xabi Alonso scores from the halfway line against Luton (7/1/2006)
Curling one in from 65 yards out in the final minute of a fantastic FA Cup third round tie? Not bad. But going round the goalkeeper IN YOUR OWN HALF while doing it? Fantastic.
84. Andy Townsend drives the Tactics Truck over a ratings cliff (18/8/2001)
When ITV took over Saturday night football - "we'll see you after the break," quipped Gary LIneker presciently on the 'final' MOTD - they appeared to have thought of everything. There were features, fan vox pops, ProZone statistical analysis and, most notoriously, Andy Townsend in the Tactics Truck, which turned out to be the deadliest lorry since the one which chased Dennis Weaver in Duel. The only thing ITV had forgotten was the football itself, which occupied just 28 minutes of the first episode's 68-minute running time.
83. Mourinho the basket case (6/4/2005)
Banned from dressing room, tunnel and touchline for both legs of Chelsea's Champions League quarter-final after spats with referee Anders Frisk and Frank Rijkaard in the first knockout round, the man subsequently described by UEFA as "an enemy of football" responded with a show of magnificent petulance rarely seen outside the bedrooms of adolescent girls.
The first leg, at Stamford Bridge, was hilarious. Ditching a plan to send coach Steve Clarke out in the manager's trademark Armani coat and scarf, Mourinho instead employed either blatant skulduggery or a remarkable sense of humour. First fitness coach Rui Faria was sighted wearing a huge woolly hat which appeared to conceal an earpiece, then goalkeeping coach Silvinho Louro made repeated second-half trips to the dressing room bearing pieces of paper, then returned with advice on Chelsea substitutions. Lastly and brilliantly, the coach was reported to have delivered his half-time address as normal, having been carried into the dressing room inside a laundry basket in which he then made his escape.
82. South Korea knock Italy out of the World Cup (18/6/2002)
It has been said that Sepp Blatter has 50 ideas before breakfast each morning, 51 of them bad. Which explains the FIFA president's decision to scrap the golden goal just as the world embraced it following South Korea's thrilling win in Daejeon.
It's great to look back on this game now and realise how many football cliche boxes were ticked over the 116 minutes - a penalty miss, a player picking up a bloody wound and coming back with an enormous bandage around his head, an overhead kick, a stack of wild challenges from behind, a last-gasp equaliser, a subsequent glaring miss in normal time. Then, gloriously, Ahn Jung-Hwan's winner - which later saw him dumped by his Serie A club Perguia - accompanied by numerous shots of the 1million-plus going politely mad on the streets of Seoul.
81. Gazza is sectioned (22/2/08)
Many years ago, on another website, I compiled a list of 50 Great Paul Gascoigne Moments which briefly became an internet cause celebre for its true tales of robot butlers, flaming lighters held to noses and mince pies stuffed with cat shit. Some years later, the list even appeared as an appendix to Gazza's first autobiography, with comments on each story's veracity by the lad himself. Oddly, he denied one event had ever happened - a reporter shortly after his Soho kekab stop asking "how do you feel?" and him replying "I feel like a kebab with onions" - when I had heard it happen live on the radio.
The stories you used to hear about Paul Gascoigne were routinely hilarious. They stopped being so early in the decade and have grown increasingly darker since his retirement, culminating in the horrifying and bizarre details of his stay in Newcastle hotel early in 2008 - buying pints for his toy parrots, scoffing raw liver from room service, calling his father and telling him to prepare for a flight to New York, where they would play chess against Presidents Bush and Clinton.
Thankfully Gascoigne's family had him sectioned under the Mental Health Act and appearances since have shown a man who, while painfully thin and clearly damaged, at least has regained something of the spark which once illuminated an entire country. As his friend Danny Baker recently wrote: "More than anything in this world now, I wish Paul would realise how widely loved, respected and important he is. You did it, Paul... nothing more to live up to and certainly nothing whatsoever to live down. Just live, Paul. Live."
Tomorrow: Divots, Taxis, Invincibles and Philosophers: The 100 most shocking football moments of the decade, numbers 80-71
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