When the England football manager Fabio Capello today announced his squad of players for the European Championship qualifiers, little did he realise he was keeping my dream alive.
The day may soon come when the England team takes the field armed with two strikers named Crouch and Bent. Medievalists rejoice. It's the Name of the Rose all over again.
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4 comments:
Maybe if we add Defoe and Huddlestone, we could enter Dickensian publishers' choice.
Funny! Inspired by your research, I've been looking at the names again, and it made me wonder how much football has changed since we were lads. The '66 team had lads like Bobby, Nobby and Jack and Geoff. Now we've got Darren, Ashley, Joleon and Carlton.
Carlton? He was Rhoda's doorman!
If I may contribute the German angle, people here are also doing a fair bit of head-shaking in this respect, but not quite for the same reasons.
1966: Franz, Uwe, Wolfgang, Sepp, Bernd, Dieter, Siegfried, Helmut
2010: Manuel, Jerome, Marcell, Serdar, Sami, Piotr, Mesut, Mario, Miroslav - and not forgetting the Ur-German one-name-for-the-price-of-two: Cacau
Nice one Ian! Are there any other Europeans out there with national team name neuroses?
Also, what is the story with these one-name footballers? Ronaldo, Deco, Kaka, Poopoo et al?
Imagine if Mr. Stiles was playing today. Would he be just known universally as 'Nobby', 'El Nob' or 'Da Nobster'?'
As the song says...."What a wonderful world that would be!"
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