Welcome to
my weekly blog “The Igor Bišćan Hall of Fame” every week I’ll be adding two new
additions, one will be a Liverpool Legend or fans favourite, the other a
Player, Manager or Club who have contributed to the world game we all love
(Eric Djemba-Djemba need not worry). Please comment below who you’d like to see
make the IBHoF, here are this weeks entries. YNWA
JAN MOLBY
1984/85 -
1994/95
Few
top-flight managers could put their hands on their hearts and say they did not
covet the ability of Jan Molby. Yet the Danish international midfielder, a rare
and at times irresistible combination of dainty skills and bear-like strength,
became a shadowy figure on the fringe of the Anfield action long before
reaching the veteran stage and being freed to become player-boss of Swansea in
February 1996.
Joe Fagan
took him to Anfield as a £200,000 recruit from Ajax of Amsterdam in August 1984
and pitched him straight into the team. The initial impression was of a
sluggish, rather corpulent individual who lacked the speed to make the most of
his natural gifts. Jan played on for the first half of the campaign before
being replaced by Kevin MacDonald, and a brief end-of-term reappearance as
sweeper was not enough to prevent many critics from writing him off.
Never a man
to be swayed by the media, Kenny Dalglish was of a different opinion. The new
Liverpool manager installed a slightly slimmer Jan in his side for 1985/86, and
his faith was quickly repaid. The Dane, having had time to adjust to the
frenetic demands of the British game, exuded authority as the Reds' creative
fulcrum, supplying Ian Rush in particular with a nourishing diet of exquisitely
weighted through-balls. Like Souness before him, Jan laced his constructive
merits with formidable power, and his dead-ball expertise - he scored nine of
his 19 goals from the penalty spot - was indispensable. His finest hour came in
the FA Cup Final at Wembley, in which Liverpool were distinctly second-best to
Everton until the hefty schemer began to exert his influence. First he put Rush
through to level the scores at one-apiece and then opened up the match with a
succession of flowing crossfield passes, which led ultimately to two more
goals.
Jan's
Anfield future was apparently assured. Not only was he a success on the pitch,
he also became a personal favourite with the fans, who delighted in his
Danish-Scouse accent and general willingness to embrace the Merseyside way of
life. The way ahead, however, was paved with problems. After playing well
enough for a slightly below-par 'Pool in the following season, he broke his
foot in training and missed most of the vintage 1987/88 campaign. Jan was back
for 1988/89, deputising in defence for Alan Hansen, but soccer was forced to
take a back seat as he was sentenced to three months in prison for a driving
offence.
To his
credit, Jan survived the trauma with dignity, returning to fight for his place.
But, though arguably still the most artistic play-maker in the land - as he
showed repeatedly during 1991/92, contributing hugely to Liverpool's FA Cup
triumph - the affable Dane seemed to have lost the impetus of earlier days.
Part of the
reason was his eternal battle with his weight - if he could have controlled
that ample girth as ably as he mastered a football then, surely, Jan must have
attained true great-ness – but also he suffered appallingly with injuries
throughout the first half of the nineties. In addition, there were times when
the team's pattern of play, with so many attacking ideas stemming from more
fleet-footed colleagues, simply did not suit his measured approach.
For all
that, there is no escaping the truth that the sumptuous talents of Jan Molby
remained frustratingly peripheral at a time when they should have been reaping
their richest bounty. By any reckoning, that amounts to a dreadful waste.
BORN:
Kolding, Denmark, 4.7.63. GAMES: 251 (30). GOALS: 58.
CLUBS:
Kolding 81/2; Ajax, Amsterdam 82/4; Barnsley (on loan) 95/6 (5, 0); Norwich
City (on loan) 95/6 (3, 0); Swansea City 95/6-97/8 (42, 8).
HONOURS:
League Championship 85/6, 89/90. FA Cup 85/6, 91/2.
MANAGER:
Swansea City 96-97; Kidderminster Harriers 99-02 – 03-04; Hull City 02.
INERNATIONAL
CAREER: 33 Denmark caps, 2 goals (82-90).
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FC ST. PAULI
FULL NAME:
Fußball-Club St. Pauli von 1910
CITY:
Hamburg
COUNTRY:
Germany
LEAGUE: 2.
Bundesliga
FOUNDED:
1910
STADIUM:
Millerntor Stadion (23,201)
COLOURS:
Brown, White
NICKNAMES:
Die Freibeuter der Liga (The Buccaneers of the League), Totenkopf (The Skull
& Crossbones)
RIVAL:
Hamburger SV
WEBSITE:
fcstpauli.de
DESCIPTION:
The club
began its existence in 1899 as a loose, informal group of football enthusiasts
within the Hamburg-St.Pauli Turn-Verein. This group did not play its first
match until 1907, when they faced a similar side assembled from the local Aegir
swimming club. Officially established on 15 May 1910, the club played as St.
Pauli TV in the Kreisliga Groß-Hamburg (Alsterkreis) until 1924, when a
separate football side called St. Pauli was formed. The team played as an undistinguished
lower-to-mid table side until making their first appearance in 1934 in the
top-flight Gauliga Nordmark, one of sixteen premier level divisions created in
the re-organization of German football that took place under the Third Reich.
They were immediately relegated, but returned to the top flight in 1936.
Relegated again in 1940, St. Pauli re-appeared in the Gauliga Hamburg in 1942,
and played there until the end of World War II.
Since the
1980s FC St. Pauli is the most popular football club in the German left wing,
anti-fascist and punk movement. This is not only due to their well-known Skull
logo but to the house-squatting scene that many St. Pauli fans were in involved
in during the late 1980s and early 1990s.
FANS:
St. Pauli
opens its home matches with "Hells Bells" by AC/DC, and after every
home goal "Song 2" by Blur is played.
St. Pauli
enjoys a certain fame for the left-leaning character of its supporters: most of
the team's fans regard themselves as anti-racist, anti-fascist, anti-homophobic
and anti-sexist, and this has on occasion brought them into conflict with
neo-Nazis and hooligans at away games. Fans of St. Pauli are also known as
"Zecken" (Ticks), this is a name that right-wingers call punks and
other people who they accuse of being parasites.
Team
supporters traditionally participate in demonstrations in the Hamburg district
of St. Pauli, including those over squatting or low-income housing, such as the
Hafenstraße and Bambule. The centre of fan activity is the Fanladen St. Pauli.
St Pauli
fans currently have a strong relationship with Celtic F.C fans and Hapoel Tel
Aviv fans.
The club
prides itself on having the largest number of female fans in all of German
football. In 2002, advertisements for the men's magazine Maxim were removed
from the team's stadium, in response to fans' protests over the adverts'
allegedly sexist depictions of women.
CLUB LOGO:
The Skull
and Crossbones symbol had always been associated with St Pauli in one way or
another. Hamburg fostered the most famous pirate of Germany Klaus Störtebeker
and the symbol had been used by the house occupants at Hafenstrasse, but the
one who should be credited with finally bringing the symbol to the terraces is
probably Doc Mabuse, the singer of a Hamburg punk band. As the legend tells, he
first grabbed the flag from a stall while passing drunk through the Dom on his
way to the Millerntor-Stadion.
MILLERNTOR
STADION:
The home
venue of the FC St Pauli is the Millerntor-Stadion. Work on the stadium began
in 1961, but its completion was delayed until 1963 as there was initially no
drainage system in place, making the pitch unplayable after rain. It originally
held 32,000 supporters, but the capacity was later reduced for safety reasons.
In 1970,
the stadium was renamed Wilhelm Koch-Stadium, in honour of a former club
president, but this name became highly controversial when it was discovered
that Wilhelm Koch had been a member of the Nazi Party during the war. After
protests by fans, the name was changed back to Millerntor-Stadion in 1999.
A
reconstruction began in 2006. The goal is a total renovation of the four
tribunes of the stadium. The renovation is expected to be fully completed by
2014 and the new capacity will be approximately 30,000 spectators.
The Stadium
is located next to the Heiligengeistfeld, and is overlooked by the infamous
Flak tower to the north and a building of the Deutsche Telekom to the south. It
can easily be reached with the Hamburg U-Bahn line U3 (St Pauli Station and
Feldstrasse Station).
HONOURS:
Weltpokalsiegerbesieger
(the World Club Champ beaters) (2002)
The
Weltpokalsiegerbesieger is an imaginary cup, which we imagine St Pauli claimed
in 2002 after beating then World Club champions Bayern Munich.
It seems to
the fans of FC ST. Pauli there’s more to football than winning silverware.
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