Left in the shade from 90s heyday

IT WAS a mixed week for still impressionable thirtysomethings. In front of a Bologna police station and inside a hall in Dundalk, two 90s heroes made a little news.

Two men we couldn’t forget anyway made sure we remembered them a while longer. One made us shake our heads, the other gave us 10 more minutes of enjoyment after all these years.

The two are a lot alike, when you think about it. Both ciotógs, when they were kings neither truly got to sit on the throne. Glamorous bridesmaids at a party nobody could crash.

Beppe first: Giuseppe Signori, the man who once sold more sky-blue shirts in Ireland than the Dubs. The kind of forward for whom the words ‘swash’ and ‘buckling’ were conjoined. The man who excised the run-up from playgrounds all over the land. Goalkeepers everywhere gave thanks to Beppe as they threw their caps on one-step, side-footed tributes.

When Beppe was banging in the goals every Monday night on RTÉ, his revived Lazio side remained adrift of one of history’s greatest teams. In ‘93, ‘94 and ‘96, Beppe was the Capocannoniere while Milan took the Scudetto.

This week Beppe — 43 now but the hair still flowing — was arrested on account of his alleged involvement in a match-fixing operation. He hadn’t a lot to say. “Have some mercy. I will meet with my lawyer and then he’ll speak for me,” he said to a newsman. We should leave it at that until we hear more.

Jimmy White didn’t say much either when he took the call in a hall in Doncaster on Thursday evening, because Jimmy had three minutes before he was due in the VIP room of a Snooker Legends gig, to sign cues and kiss babies on the latest leg of a lap of honour that could last a lifetime.

But with what time he had, he told the story of last Saturday afternoon at another Legends event in Dundalk, when the breathtaking talent that made him the sport’s favourite nearly-man chalked another line in the record books.

“This bloke had won the raffle to play a frame against me,” says Jimmy, “and the best thing was he’d brought along his own cue. And he comes up to John Virgo and says ‘I’m Terry, call me Tornado Terry.’”

It had been Tornado’s lifelong dream to face the Whirlwind. “Have you seen it on the internet?” Jimmy breaks off, as proud as if he was fetching baby photos from his wallet. Of course I had, hadn’t I emailed it to everyone I knew.

“So, yeah, I pot the lot and Tornado doesn’t even get a shot. But he loved it. They tell me it’s the first ever 147 that’s been done off the break-off.”

Jimmy doesn’t do it justice. The fluked red off a break designed to open the pack and give Tornado a handy one, paved the way for an incredible maximum. Two reds on a rail. Pink in baulk. A devilish final red with the rest.

“Yeah, I was nervous. Making a 147 is a special thing. You know I played a great pink. When the pink went in I was delighted to have got perfect on the black so the black was unmissable.”

I reminded Jimmy of words he used back in the days when Steven Hendry was his van Basten, Gullit and Rijkaard in one. ‘When everything’s right a funny feeling comes over me. My whole body is affected. I get all warm and my head starts to buzz. I know then that I can’t miss. I’m unbeatable.’

“Yeah, I still feel it, but it’s harder,” he says now. “When you get into a zone, people could burst a balloon next to your ear and you can’t hear. You can only hear the balls click.”

Back in the day, Jimmy added four sad words about that warm feeling; “…but it doesn’t last.” And at the end of the cruel 90s, he bankrupted himself chasing every other buzz going.

We don’t yet know what Beppe did to replace the buzz, but Italian club football, like snooker, has tumbled from those 90s heights. It’s hard to see either man’s arena hold the world in thrall again like they did in those glory days.

But at least Jimmy and his sport enjoyed a small renaissance last term. Judd Trump lit up the Crucible and White qualified for four World Series events. “If I didn’t think I could win, I wouldn’t play,” he says defiantly.

With Beppe we’ll wait and see. The arena he once lit up can ill-afford another shame.

Fergie’s dependables no match for Barca brilliance

“TWO” said a fella on talkSPORT once, when Andy Townsend, in his role as quizmaster, asked him how many wheels a tricycle had.

Yet wrong as he was, our weakest link wasn’t nearly as wrong as I was last week.

I was as wrong as painting a glass door when I suggested Catalan hubris would unseat Barcelona at Wembley. Alex Ferguson, with his Charlie Sheen winning ways, would do a job on them, I frothed. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

As it turned out, all the hubris on display during the Champions League final was of the Govan variety. Perhaps Fergie truly bought into all the Game of the Decade stuff he’d been spinning beforehand, but astonishingly the Manchester United manager arrived at Wembley with less up his sleeve than an Aussie Rules player in a surgical gown.

He simply tried to take on one of the best midfields we’ve ever seen with probably the worst midfield he’s ever fielded. And trusted the rest to the renowned durability, honesty and good fortune of his troops.

Barcelona, meanwhile, showed exactly why they told us last week they would stick to their principles and win this the right way.

And in doing so they gave us a spectacle we won’t forget in a long time.

And if Beppe once gave our youngsters the one-step, surely Barca’s tika-taka triumph will exorcise the long ball from playgrounds all over the land.

Sitting back is just not an option

AFTER a curious fortnight in Irish football, doesn’t this evening’s game in Macedonia have the feel of a watershed?

Just as the great Icelandic triangle of ‘86 gave Jack Charlton’s Ireland a chance to bask in pretty low-wattage glory, the no-shows also crystallised some selection issues.

Fast-forward 25 years and Robbie Keane might have looked pretty sheepish as he hoisted the Carling Nations Cup, but the players who did postpone their holidays to be in Dublin last week have every right to feel better bonded by the experience.

Now can Giovanni Trapattoni turn feel-good factor into three points? You sense a win in Macedonia, which has only given us disaster and comedy training bibs in the past, could instil the belief that would propel us to Poland and the Ukraine.

But surely Trap must show the ambition to win it, rather than allow us sit and settle for the point that would still leave us in the playoff shake-up. Playing defensive in Skopje didn’t serve us well last time.

Judge & Jury

THE ACCUSED: The FA

THE RAP: Hanging themselves out to dry in this week’s belated protest against Sepp Blatter.

EVIDENCE: None of the other 208 associations spoke up for the FA’s move to postpone this week’s election.

PROSECUTION: Blatter’s smug “forgiveness” of the English afterwards will have chilled David Bernstein. And where were all these official misgivings when 2018 was up for grabs?

POSSIBLE SENTENCE: England can forget hosting World Cups but next on the line could be Britain’s four seats on the International Football Association Board.

FOR THE DEFENCE: The FA played the game and that didn’t work. Short of sending in Pippa Middleton instead of Wills, they’ll never host another World Cup anyway.

VERDICT: Case dismissed. England doesn’t need a World Cup anyway while the Premier League fascinates the world. And why would it want to break the bank to generate cash for an organisation that is rotten to the core?