World Football Daily

“Rome wasn’t built in a day. But I wasn’t on that particular job.”
- Old Big ‘Ead, on getting things done.

The Damned United, the story of Brian Clough’s 44-day reign at Leeds United, has spawned a wide variety of must-see clips on YouTube as expected.  Below is the famous joint interview where Clough, freshly sacked by Leeds, confronts his predecessor, Don Revie.  The accuracy to which every detail is preserved in the new Peter Morgan film is almost eerie when you watch the original ITV interview.

It’s broken down into three parts as the entire interview spans close to 27 minutes, but with each passing minute you can feel the blood bubbling below the surface and see just how much both managers despise one another.
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“Life is a job. You get $14.50 a day, but after you die, you have to pay for your sins. Stealing a hub cap is around 100 dollars. Masturbation is 35 cents … it doesn’t seem like much, but it adds up. If there’s money left when you subtract what you owe from what you’ve earned, you can go to heaven. If not, you have to go back to work. Sort of like reincarnation – many nuns are Mafia guys working it off.”
- Father Guido Sarducci, gossip columnist and rock critic for The Vatican City newspaper L’Osservatore Romano

Myths and legends and scandals live wildly in the Game of Football. We love them for the magnitude they provide, as an illusion of near-perfect wonder or as an explanation for star-crossed characters which expand the possibilities once thought narrow within most men’s ordinary being. Sporting heroes and the – at times – corrupt inner sphere for whom they play exist largely to those in need of them, as a form of living proof that the dog-eat-dog delirium of life is almost bearable. Take another look at Georgie Best, they say; an iconoclast defined by the tyranny of insatiable demons and still played the system like a drum. Or Paolo Rossi, resurrected from the abject humiliation of national disgrace. And Ronaldo Luis Nazário de Lima – O fenômeno – who won it all, scoring from every angle imaginable until he tried doing so with crudely decorated persons of the same sex.
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They’ve got more crazy rules than Blockbuster video these referees with the offside rule these days.
- Ray Hudson

The top flight of international football is no place for rank amateurs these days. Not even Don King could deal with the venality of it all. Take my word on it, Sparky … I’ve encountered some heartless and calculating operators in my time, and this crowd should be sent to a small vacant island with no government of any kind and no extradition treaties where all the inhabitants would be found absolutely guilty and no crime against the state or humanity is regarded as too heinous to gain acceptance into the club.
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There are no experts. You probably know as much about possession than most priests. Look, your daughter doesn’t say she’s a demon. She says she’s the devil himself. And if you’ve seen as many psychotics as I have, you’d know it’s like saying you’re Napoleon Bonaparte.
- Father Damien Karras, The Exorcist

The latest sign of madness just scrolled under the talking heads on SKY Sports, followed by a story about the managerial job at Sunderland and Olympique de Marseille fans gang-banging with local law enforcement, indefinite suspensions and more hard-earned fine money for Lord Treisman’s chosen epicurean charity – Club Med with Soccerettes Rhian and Peta. Then, on cable TV news, arrived news of an unemployed Ohio automotive worker who was subdued earlier in the day for dropping more than a dozen bowling balls onto Interstate 71 from an overpass because, as he explained to state troopers at the scene, “he was killing Manchester United fans before they could hatch.”
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