Mad for it: From Blackpool to Barcelona: Football’s Greatest Rivalries
A celebration of the classic football derby matches. From the Celtic–Rangers rivalry and Tyneside derby to the biggest global clashes from Barcelona to Buenos Aires, journalist Andy Mitten uses the fans' own words and stories to illuminate the conflicts, tensions, histories and culture behind these fascinating games.From Belfast to Barcelona, Buenos Aires to Bogotá, these are football matches that are far more than a game.Often a microcosm of life in a city, there are countless rivalries between clubs which are steeped in a historical enmity based on class, religion, politics, envy or philosophy. Some of the games, like Rangers v Celtic, are renowned for their vocal sectarianism, others like Tenerife v Las Palmas for their eclectic fan base, while little or nothing is known about the derbies in Cairo and Calcutta which attracts twice as many fans as any Old Firm clash.Andy Mitten journeys across the UK and the far-flung regions of planet football, talking to a host of passionate fans – from the vividly ordinary, working-class supporters to the corporate box brigade who think nothing of hopping on a plane for their weekend jaunt to the exotic cities of Madrid, Barcelona or Milan – and gets to share their highs and lows. This in turn provides a fresh and revealing insight into the people who make these matches matter – the fans – using their own words and stories to illuminate the conflicts, tension and histories behind the games. He also interviews players, managers, politicians, local journalists and agents drawing out differing opinions and perspectives on the beautiful game.Among the highlights:Celtic v Rangers, Man Utd v Liverpool, Cliftonville v Linfield, Sunderland v Newcastle, Preston v Blackpool, Barcelona v Real Madrid, Roma v Lazio, Boca Juniors v River Plate, Fenerbache v Galatasaray, Ajax v Feyenoord, the Faroe Islands derby, the Calcutta Derby, and the worst derby on the planet, alongside many more.
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Mad For It
From Blackpool To Barcelona Football’s Greatest Rivalries
Andy Mitten
This book is dedicated to the people I met along the way and their incredible passion for a game called football. And to my dad Charlie, who lit the spark by taking me to watch him play in the Irlam v Urmston cup derby in 1984.
‘By the 1980s, the rivalry had become vicious, with United’s Scouse manager Ron Atkinson describing a trip to Anfield as like going into Vietnam. Big Ron’s experience fighting the Viet Cong has not been fully substantiated, but he can be forgiven for exaggerating – he had just been tear gassed.’ Liverpool v Manchester United
‘Ian Ramsey began supporting The Shire “to be different from my mates. I wanted to support the least fashionable club.” He didn’t have to look far…to a club that gave 32-year-old Alex Ferguson his first managerial job in 1974. There were only eight registered players when Ferguson arrived. “They were the worst senior club in the country,” Ferguson later wrote.’ Elgin City v East Stirlingshire
‘Tyres are set ablaze, telephone booths vandalised, windows smashed, and anti-regime chants are heard across Tehran and Iran’s other cities…in a country where boys and girls fear holding hands in case the special morality police take them in or, worse, send them to a moral correction unit, football may not be enough to contain their passions.’ Iran v Iraq
Table of Contents
‘Getting on with the Neighbours?’
The Coldest Derby in the World
Sheep Shaggers v Donkey Lashers
It was not a day too soon. When Manchester United took on Manchester City away in October 1986, I pestered my dad to take me. I was 12 years old. Dad wasn’t a lover of watching football, always preferring to play, but he finally relented and acquired three tickets for the main stand at Maine Road.
I devoured the pre-match hype in the Evening News and knew every player of both sides. It wasn’t a golden age for Manchester football and the attendance of 32,440 was then the lowest post-war for a derby, partly because the game was the first Manchester derby to be televised ‘live’. Before we left the house, mum again warned us to be careful as we went off to watch players like Graeme Hogg, Terry Gibson, John Sivebaek and Chris Turner. So much for United having the big name stars.
Dad parked the car near the stadium in Moss Side’s tight terraced streets. I was impressed, as he seemed to know all the ticket touts loitering outside the ground looking to do business. Most were black lads whom he’d played football with and against, a lot of them City fans who ribbed him about ‘being United’ and told him to watch his back as we were in a City section. They were joking, but the atmosphere was vicious outside Maine Road as fans scurried towards the relative safety of the turnstiles, the police moving everyone along to stop trouble erupting. Unlike our local home-town semi-professional derby involving Irlam and Urmston, the antagonism expressed in this derby was not born from social and economic differences but was generated by football. Both laid claim to be the top club in Manchester. City had for a long time been the most successful club; United’s first league and cup victories were achieved, according to City fans, through subterfuge when United took advantage of City’s misfortune to poach their best players for a pittance. And the list of United’s crimes against their neighbours went on from there. United fans gloried in their club’s far greater glamour and worldwide fame.
The game had an interesting twist as John Gidman, the Liverpudlian fullback, had left United days earlier. ‘I had bought a sports shop in Liverpool and honestly thought that I was going to run that for the rest of my life as I drove back to Liverpool,’ he recalls. Almost immediately, he received a phone call from Jimmy Frizzell, Manchester City’s manager.
‘Frizzell wanted to sign me. He said, “We’re playing United on television this weekend and I want you to play.” So I signed and I marked Peter Barnes. He told me to go easy, but you can’t do that. He was a great lad but a bit of a softie and I said: ‘I’m going to kick f**k out of you for 90 minutes.’ They took him off. It was nice for a Scouser to make an impact in the Manchester derby, although when I played at United we always considered Liverpool to be our biggest game.’
It still is, mainly because United’s players and supporters began to measure themselves, not against their ‘lowly’ Mancunian neighbour, but against the Scouse juggernaut which dominated English football and swaggered across Europe until Heysel. Derby rivalries often defy logic. Although Mancunians will tell you they despise Scousers for a whole set of other reasons, historical economic rivalries between the two cities being one, Everton versus Manchester United is rarely described as a derby, neither is Liverpool versus Manchester City.
