Cornerstone Collection

Stuart Quigley

Description

The Cornerstone Collection is the most comprehensive and innovative account of the history of the Premier League. It distils that history to 45 key players and examines it through the lens of every club that has ever played in the top flight since its inaugural season. It is a journey from front to back both in terms of eras and positions on the pitch. Football has all kinds of stories to tell, both on and off the field. Straightforward narratives of triumph or failure, milestone moments that were a lifetime in the making and everything in between. Each club have their own protagonists, every team a tale to tell. The people behind those events shaped the course of English football history and became forever etched in the minds of those watching. They are the foundation of what became modern football. Their stories tell us how far the game has gone and where it might be going. They are the cornerstones of the Premier League.

Sujets

• Inglaterra
• England

Informations

• Publié par: Pitch Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 11 juillet 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781801502825
• Langue: English

Extrait

First published by Pitch Publishing, 2022
Pitch Publishing
A2 Yeoman Gate
Yeoman Way
Durrington
BN13 3QZ
www.pitchpublishing.co.uk
Stuart Quigley, 2022
Every effort has been made to trace the copyright.
Any oversight will be rectified in future editions at the earliest opportunity by the publisher.
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A CIP catalogue record is available for this book from the British Library
Print ISBN 9781801501231
eBook ISBN 9781801502825
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Contents
Introduction
1. Wayne Rooney
2. Ian Harte
3. Charlie Adam
4. Heurelho Gomes
5. Nwankwo Kanu
6. Oleksandr Zinchenko
7. Dion Dublin
8. Gunnar Halle
9. Glenn Murray
10. Cesc F bregas
11. Wilfried Bony
12. Nick Barmby
13. Chris Sutton
14. Bukayo Saka
15. David Unsworth
16. Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink
17. Jason Puncheon
18. Edwin van der Sar
19. Nicolas Anelka
20. Robbie Savage
21. Kieran Trippier
22. Paul Ince
23. Darren Bent
24. Craig Bellamy
25. Nigel Martyn
26. Jermain Defoe
27. Ruud Gullit
28. Ade Akinbiyi
29. Matt Holland
30. Stan Collymore
31. Jussi J skel inen
32. Andrew Johnson
33. Sol Campbell
34. Jan ge Fj rtoft
35. Sergi Can s
36. Ashley Young
37. Edin D eko
38. Titus Bramble
39. Alisson
40. James Beattie
41. Ben Thatcher
42. Patrick Vieira
43. Les Ferdinand
44. Robert Huth
45. Paolo Di Canio
Photos
For my dad and my mum, who gave me the words.
For Bry, who gave me all strength to carry on.
For Baz, who put up with me every time I d had too much to drink and helped make all of this a reality.
For Matt, Bill, Barber, Dave, Chris and Mike. Without you this process would have been so much harder. I owe you all.
For everyone I ve ever had a drunken conversation with.
For a game that brought us all together.
Introduction
FOOTBALL DIDN T get me until I was nearly ten years old. Which is to say I didn t get it. Hopeless when it came to playing (some things never change) and completely shut out from this world that I barely understood. Slowly, that shifted.
It feels like so many who grew up during the 1990s have an identical experience. Competing to finish sticker books. Watching games on Teletext. Learning to play Sensible Soccer , then endless nights of Championship Manager . As time moved on, what was once a passion became an obsession. Whatever I knew, there was always more. Whether it was Serie A on Channel 4, stories of players and teams gone by well before my time or the few occasions a year - without Sky - that I could sit down and watch a full game. Each 90 minutes was its own, yet all of them belonged to something bigger.
Throughout my teenage years into adulthood and from watching games on TV to experiencing them in real time; from having to sit alone and absorb the madness unfolding to being in either a packed stadium or drinking establishment and sharing in those moments - making memories that will last forever.
I am - unashamedly - a complete football romantic. Stats, facts and figures all intrigue me but the humanity is what excites. There s no questioning the wider sanity of pinning all one s hopes on 11 men kicking a ball around every week, just an embrace of the emotions that take us along the way.
English football is more than just the confines of the top division since 1992; that s not when it was invented. Over the course of the last 30 years, the Premier League has taken all those who supported a team within it on a journey, some good, some bad. Some have lasted decades, others just a matter of months. Within the pages of this book I hope to have told them all.
Most of these stories are very familiar, others less so. Choosing the players you re about to read about wasn t easy. Every fanbase will be able to nominate someone I ve missed, which in part is the beauty of it. This wasn t about going back over the greatest players to have ever played within the Premier League, though that s part of it.
It s not just about their goals or their trophies but rather the things that shaped them, as well as the league itself. Shining a light on where football has been over the last three decades and where it s going.
This is for anyone who loves the game anywhere near as much as I do. Regardless of who you support, we are all fans.
1
Wayne Rooney
CERTAINTY IS a trap. Conversational camouflage over a black hole of opinion. Some are all too eager to jump down this particular void of stubbornness, carrying with them nothing more than either bad or blind faith and personal bias. The light at the end of this particular tunnel vision lies within an objectivity that is difficult to muster within the moment. Even within that, it defies reason that the most gifted English player of his generation requires a second opinion. Accolades of a certain distinction shouldn t need further investigation. Abandon all hype all ye who enter here.
Aside from the great partisan divide, football demands an ever-increasing instant insistence in regard to consensus. It doesn t make sense to appraise someone s place in history before they ve even become it. Like so much when it comes to opinion, there s no exact science. But there does need to be an accepted baseline. Nobody in their right mind could ever put down a playing career that consisted of five English top-flight titles, a European Cup and half a dozen other major trophies. The gripe with Rooney, once you move past the realm that one can exist, is that it s not more.
As is so often the case with footballers, what initially propels them forward can ultimately lead to their undoing: potential. Used as an arbitrary, imaginary line drawn not once but repeatedly, for every set of subjective eyes watching. The idea that learning and success are both aligned, while reasonable in theory, soon turns sour once one fails to coordinate with the other. For Rooney, this appears to be especially harsh given the frequency with which the records tumbled so very quickly. Bursting on to the scene in such a way, it would have been nigh-on impossible for anyone to keep up with the perpetual motion machine that was the English media. Therein lay the ultimate source of his perceived failure.
Certain players have a buzz even before they ve taken to the pitch. To say that things were different in 2002 than they had been before in regard to those on the verge of the first team is to exaggerate slightly,; however, media has played a part in bringing to a boil the hype for a new generation in such a way as didn t happen before the saturation of the game on TV. An ever-increasing showing of youth prospects as they make their way along their early careers as broadcasters scour even deeper for a particular narrative makes for a greater expectation. Everton fans didn t believe, they *knew*. Buzz around the club grew as Rooney s breakthrough in the first team drew ever closer. They were privy to an advance screening of a phenomenon. When the wider world saw him, his A-List status would be confirmed almost instantly.
For all the prestigious highs reached in a career, there were none quite as seismic as that first. He scored a multitude of winning goals over the course of his time in the Premier League. None lit the touch paper quite so spectacularly as that which he scored at Goodison against Arsenal in October of 2002. He had made his debut some two months prior, playing in every game of Everton s season to that point barring one. Those who remember it do so with him doing it in an instant; being summoned off the bench by destiny rather than David Moyes.
Ten minutes was all he needed. Of all that stands out in retrospect all these years later, it s his first touch which underlines everything else that is to come, both in terms of this game and forever onward. Richard Wright s booming goal kick bobbles in and around midfield, resulting in another indiscriminate poke forward by Thomas Gravesen. Football at this point generally evaporates, the battle between defender and forward so commonplace it could be mistaken for code. Rooney s control of the ball does what the goal itself will, and opens up a world of possibilities. The turn to face goal is effortless, the finish exquisite. With one strike of a football he would be tethered to the future. Whatever happened from here on in, tomorrow had found its main character.
Everton s joy was also their struggle. Developing and unleashing this kind of talent soon led to the conundrum of how they were going to hold on to him. The two years that followed produced almost as many yellow cards as goals and for all the skill and technique that was very clearly there, it became more and more of an inevitability that his career would be more fulfilled elsewhere. What s more, the need that came down from boardroom level to cash in and push him in the direction of Chelsea illustrated part of the problem at Goodison Park during the 2000s. For all the good work Everton were doing in building a team that would very soon go on to challenge for the top four, there would always be the need to sell to buy. With that - along with some behind-the-scenes negotiations with Newcastle in order to inflate interest - he got his move to Manchester United following the conclusion of Euro 2004.
Given the anticipation for Rooney s debut, it would have been hard to meet expectations. He exceeded them to a level that even the most ardent Unit