“Dear Gaz,” began the open letter posted on X. “I wanted to play football because of you.” The writer was Stan Collymore, former Aston Villa, Nottingham Forest and Liverpool centre-forward. And the Gaz was Gary Shaw, the European Cup-winning Villa striker whose death in September, at the age of 63, brought such poignancy to his old team’s long-awaited return to the competition just 24 hours later.
With the recollections that followed, about wanting to wear the same No8 shirt as Shaw and even emulate his blond wedge haircut, Collymore, now 53, captured something of the wonder of a child falling in love with football. “It’s hard to put into words how grateful I am to have latched onto the magic you gave,” he added. “You made a little boy dream big.”
Even for this non-Villa follower, the news of Shaw’s passing took me – as a fellow child of the 1980s – right back to those years of discovery. The Villa-Bayern final of 1982 was the first I watched, and it was Shaw, the spark for the sequence that brought the only goal, who left the biggest mark on my eight-year-old self. That, in truth, probably owed as much to his blond mop and cool Le Coq Sportif kit – white shirt with claret pinstripes, hanging long over fashionably tight shorts – as to the attacking qualities that earned him the Bravo award as Europe’s best young player in 1982.
In my case, those 80s wonder years also included Panini sticker books, Shoot! magazine player profiles (“Favourite food and drink: Steak and lager”) and the exciting sights, sounds and even smells of Saturday afternoons at Everton’s Goodison Park.
A fresh wave of nostalgia came a couple of days after Shaw’s passing when it was announced that Totò Schillaci, Golden Shoe winner at the 1990 World Cup, had died also. Italia ’90 was the last World Cup of my teens and Schillaci’s name recalled a time when football was so far from the 24/7 content factory of today. In the season before that World Cup, there were only 12 top-flight matches broadcast live on television in England. The old First Division had barely any players from outside the British Isles. Therefore, you certainly took notice when a wild-eyed Sicilian in that gorgeous blue Italy shirt started lighting up your TV screen with his goals.
As Collymore’s moving post highlighted, the heroes of our youth seldom lose their place in our hearts, and the beauty of our business is the opportunities it can provide to meet those dream-makers. Indeed, if Shaw – to so many – remains preserved in aspic in that Le Coq Sportif kit with the best Brummie haircut of the decade (sorry, Duran Duran fans), it was a joy for me to encounter him occasionally in the Villa Park press room when reporting on the Midlands scene a decade ago. Cheerful, down to earth and much happier discussing the fortunes of Warwickshire County Cricket Club than basking in old glories.
“Dear Gaz,” began the open letter posted on X. “I wanted to play football because of you.” The writer was Stan Collymore, former Aston Villa, Nottingham Forest and Liverpool centre-forward. And the Gaz was Gary Shaw, the European Cup-winning Villa striker whose death in September, at the age of 63, brought such poignancy to his old team’s long-awaited return to the competition just 24 hours later.
With the recollections that followed, about wanting to wear the same No8 shirt as Shaw and even emulate his blond wedge haircut, Collymore, now 53, captured something of the wonder of a child falling in love with football. “It’s hard to put into words how grateful I am to have latched onto the magic you gave,” he added. “You made a little boy dream big.”
Even for this non-Villa follower, the news of Shaw’s passing took me – as a fellow child of the 1980s – right back to those years of discovery. The Villa-Bayern final of 1982 was the first I watched, and it was Shaw, the spark for the sequence that brought the only goal, who left the biggest mark on my eight-year-old self. That, in truth, probably owed as much to his blond mop and cool Le Coq Sportif kit – white shirt with claret pinstripes, hanging long over fashionably tight shorts – as to the attacking qualities that earned him the Bravo award as Europe’s best young player in 1982.
In my case, those 80s wonder years also included Panini sticker books, Shoot! magazine player profiles (“Favourite food and drink: Steak and lager”) and the exciting sights, sounds and even smells of Saturday afternoons at Everton’s Goodison Park.
A fresh wave of nostalgia came a couple of days after Shaw’s passing when it was announced that Totò Schillaci, Golden Shoe winner at the 1990 World Cup, had died also. Italia ’90 was the last World Cup of my teens and Schillaci’s name recalled a time when football was so far from the 24/7 content factory of today. In the season before that World Cup, there were only 12 top-flight matches broadcast live on television in England. The old First Division had barely any players from outside the British Isles. Therefore, you certainly took notice when a wild-eyed Sicilian in that gorgeous blue Italy shirt started lighting up your TV screen with his goals.
As Collymore’s moving post highlighted, the heroes of our youth seldom lose their place in our hearts, and the beauty of our business is the opportunities it can provide to meet those dream-makers. Indeed, if Shaw – to so many – remains preserved in aspic in that Le Coq Sportif kit with the best Brummie haircut of the decade (sorry, Duran Duran fans), it was a joy for me to encounter him occasionally in the Villa Park press room when reporting on the Midlands scene a decade ago. Cheerful, down to earth and much happier discussing the fortunes of Warwickshire County Cricket Club than basking in old glories.
As for Schillaci, I had the honour of interviewing him for a book about Italia ’90 – an afternoon at the Sicilian football school carrying his name, following a morning spent exploring the Palermo neighbourhood where he had grown up (which only emphasised the scale of his rags-to-riches tale).
Such days are what make this job – if it can be called that – a privilege. And the passing of Shaw and Schillaci led me to reflect on other memorable meetings. Five years ago, for example, I visited the late Colin Grainger, an England winger of the 1950s who had a career on the side as a singer; in fact, he was so good he twice shared a bill with the Beatles. On the day of my visit, a delivery man dropped off a package and caught sight of Grainger’s autobiography, The Singing Winger. “I didn’t know you were a footballer,” he said. “Oh aye,” came the reply.
It is often the little details that remain with you from such conversations. Such as Grainger’s description of standing, in his England blazer, for the entire length of his train journey home to Yorkshire after a Wembley international in which he had suffered ankle ligament damage. Or another England winger of old, the great Tom Finney, marvelling at the lightweight, short-sleeved tops Brazil wore at the 1950 World Cup. “We had woollen shirts with long sleeves,” he reminisced, before telling me that England’s hotel on Copacabana Beach was “like being in Blackpool in season”.
There was also the time Sir Alex Ferguson, in an interview for UEFA, recalled his frustration at having to leave the 1960 European Cup final on the final whistle. “I left right at the end of the game because I had to get up for work in the morning and getting buses back to Govan from Hampden Park was very difficult, so I missed all the celebration. I was angry with myself for missing it.”
Be it a future managerial great captivated by Alfredo Di Stéfano, Ferenc Puskás and Co, or a young Stan Collymore idolising Gary Shaw, football has always had that power to inspire. And we all look back on certain eras with a special glow. Yet as for the question of whether one period is better than another, it is tempting to draw on the words of Neil Simon’s protagonist Eugene Jerome when summing up his army years in the film Biloxi Blues: “I liked it for the most selfish reason of all. I was young.”
“Dear Gaz,” began the open letter posted on X. “I wanted to play football because of you.” The writer was Stan Collymore, former Aston Villa, Nottingham Forest and Liverpool centre-forward. And the Gaz was Gary Shaw, the European Cup-winning Villa striker whose death in September, at the age of 63, brought such poignancy to his old team’s long-awaited return to the competition just 24 hours later.
With the recollections that followed, about wanting to wear the same No8 shirt as Shaw and even emulate his blond wedge haircut, Collymore, now 53, captured something of the wonder of a child falling in love with football. “It’s hard to put into words how grateful I am to have latched onto the magic you gave,” he added. “You made a little boy dream big.”
Even for this non-Villa follower, the news of Shaw’s passing took me – as a fellow child of the 1980s – right back to those years of discovery. The Villa-Bayern final of 1982 was the first I watched, and it was Shaw, the spark for the sequence that brought the only goal, who left the biggest mark on my eight-year-old self. That, in truth, probably owed as much to his blond mop and cool Le Coq Sportif kit – white shirt with claret pinstripes, hanging long over fashionably tight shorts – as to the attacking qualities that earned him the Bravo award as Europe’s best young player in 1982.
In my case, those 80s wonder years also included Panini sticker books, Shoot! magazine player profiles (“Favourite food and drink: Steak and lager”) and the exciting sights, sounds and even smells of Saturday afternoons at Everton’s Goodison Park.
A fresh wave of nostalgia came a couple of days after Shaw’s passing when it was announced that Totò Schillaci, Golden Shoe winner at the 1990 World Cup, had died also. Italia ’90 was the last World Cup of my teens and Schillaci’s name recalled a time when football was so far from the 24/7 content factory of today. In the season before that World Cup, there were only 12 top-flight matches broadcast live on television in England. The old First Division had barely any players from outside the British Isles. Therefore, you certainly took notice when a wild-eyed Sicilian in that gorgeous blue Italy shirt started lighting up your TV screen with his goals.
As Collymore’s moving post highlighted, the heroes of our youth seldom lose their place in our hearts, and the beauty of our business is the opportunities it can provide to meet those dream-makers. Indeed, if Shaw – to so many – remains preserved in aspic in that Le Coq Sportif kit with the best Brummie haircut of the decade (sorry, Duran Duran fans), it was a joy for me to encounter him occasionally in the Villa Park press room when reporting on the Midlands scene a decade ago. Cheerful, down to earth and much happier discussing the fortunes of Warwickshire County Cricket Club than basking in old glories.
“Dear Gaz,” began the open letter posted on X. “I wanted to play football because of you.” The writer was Stan Collymore, former Aston Villa, Nottingham Forest and Liverpool centre-forward. And the Gaz was Gary Shaw, the European Cup-winning Villa striker whose death in September, at the age of 63, brought such poignancy to his old team’s long-awaited return to the competition just 24 hours later.
With the recollections that followed, about wanting to wear the same No8 shirt as Shaw and even emulate his blond wedge haircut, Collymore, now 53, captured something of the wonder of a child falling in love with football. “It’s hard to put into words how grateful I am to have latched onto the magic you gave,” he added. “You made a little boy dream big.”
Even for this non-Villa follower, the news of Shaw’s passing took me – as a fellow child of the 1980s – right back to those years of discovery. The Villa-Bayern final of 1982 was the first I watched, and it was Shaw, the spark for the sequence that brought the only goal, who left the biggest mark on my eight-year-old self. That, in truth, probably owed as much to his blond mop and cool Le Coq Sportif kit – white shirt with claret pinstripes, hanging long over fashionably tight shorts – as to the attacking qualities that earned him the Bravo award as Europe’s best young player in 1982.
In my case, those 80s wonder years also included Panini sticker books, Shoot! magazine player profiles (“Favourite food and drink: Steak and lager”) and the exciting sights, sounds and even smells of Saturday afternoons at Everton’s Goodison Park.
A fresh wave of nostalgia came a couple of days after Shaw’s passing when it was announced that Totò Schillaci, Golden Shoe winner at the 1990 World Cup, had died also. Italia ’90 was the last World Cup of my teens and Schillaci’s name recalled a time when football was so far from the 24/7 content factory of today. In the season before that World Cup, there were only 12 top-flight matches broadcast live on television in England. The old First Division had barely any players from outside the British Isles. Therefore, you certainly took notice when a wild-eyed Sicilian in that gorgeous blue Italy shirt started lighting up your TV screen with his goals.
As Collymore’s moving post highlighted, the heroes of our youth seldom lose their place in our hearts, and the beauty of our business is the opportunities it can provide to meet those dream-makers. Indeed, if Shaw – to so many – remains preserved in aspic in that Le Coq Sportif kit with the best Brummie haircut of the decade (sorry, Duran Duran fans), it was a joy for me to encounter him occasionally in the Villa Park press room when reporting on the Midlands scene a decade ago. Cheerful, down to earth and much happier discussing the fortunes of Warwickshire County Cricket Club than basking in old glories.
“Dear Gaz,” began the open letter posted on X. “I wanted to play football because of you.” The writer was Stan Collymore, former Aston Villa, Nottingham Forest and Liverpool centre-forward. And the Gaz was Gary Shaw, the European Cup-winning Villa striker whose death in September, at the age of 63, brought such poignancy to his old team’s long-awaited return to the competition just 24 hours later.
With the recollections that followed, about wanting to wear the same No8 shirt as Shaw and even emulate his blond wedge haircut, Collymore, now 53, captured something of the wonder of a child falling in love with football. “It’s hard to put into words how grateful I am to have latched onto the magic you gave,” he added. “You made a little boy dream big.”
Even for this non-Villa follower, the news of Shaw’s passing took me – as a fellow child of the 1980s – right back to those years of discovery. The Villa-Bayern final of 1982 was the first I watched, and it was Shaw, the spark for the sequence that brought the only goal, who left the biggest mark on my eight-year-old self. That, in truth, probably owed as much to his blond mop and cool Le Coq Sportif kit – white shirt with claret pinstripes, hanging long over fashionably tight shorts – as to the attacking qualities that earned him the Bravo award as Europe’s best young player in 1982.
In my case, those 80s wonder years also included Panini sticker books, Shoot! magazine player profiles (“Favourite food and drink: Steak and lager”) and the exciting sights, sounds and even smells of Saturday afternoons at Everton’s Goodison Park.
A fresh wave of nostalgia came a couple of days after Shaw’s passing when it was announced that Totò Schillaci, Golden Shoe winner at the 1990 World Cup, had died also. Italia ’90 was the last World Cup of my teens and Schillaci’s name recalled a time when football was so far from the 24/7 content factory of today. In the season before that World Cup, there were only 12 top-flight matches broadcast live on television in England. The old First Division had barely any players from outside the British Isles. Therefore, you certainly took notice when a wild-eyed Sicilian in that gorgeous blue Italy shirt started lighting up your TV screen with his goals.
As Collymore’s moving post highlighted, the heroes of our youth seldom lose their place in our hearts, and the beauty of our business is the opportunities it can provide to meet those dream-makers. Indeed, if Shaw – to so many – remains preserved in aspic in that Le Coq Sportif kit with the best Brummie haircut of the decade (sorry, Duran Duran fans), it was a joy for me to encounter him occasionally in the Villa Park press room when reporting on the Midlands scene a decade ago. Cheerful, down to earth and much happier discussing the fortunes of Warwickshire County Cricket Club than basking in old glories.
As for Schillaci, I had the honour of interviewing him for a book about Italia ’90 – an afternoon at the Sicilian football school carrying his name, following a morning spent exploring the Palermo neighbourhood where he had grown up (which only emphasised the scale of his rags-to-riches tale).
Such days are what make this job – if it can be called that – a privilege. And the passing of Shaw and Schillaci led me to reflect on other memorable meetings. Five years ago, for example, I visited the late Colin Grainger, an England winger of the 1950s who had a career on the side as a singer; in fact, he was so good he twice shared a bill with the Beatles. On the day of my visit, a delivery man dropped off a package and caught sight of Grainger’s autobiography, The Singing Winger. “I didn’t know you were a footballer,” he said. “Oh aye,” came the reply.
It is often the little details that remain with you from such conversations. Such as Grainger’s description of standing, in his England blazer, for the entire length of his train journey home to Yorkshire after a Wembley international in which he had suffered ankle ligament damage. Or another England winger of old, the great Tom Finney, marvelling at the lightweight, short-sleeved tops Brazil wore at the 1950 World Cup. “We had woollen shirts with long sleeves,” he reminisced, before telling me that England’s hotel on Copacabana Beach was “like being in Blackpool in season”.
There was also the time Sir Alex Ferguson, in an interview for UEFA, recalled his frustration at having to leave the 1960 European Cup final on the final whistle. “I left right at the end of the game because I had to get up for work in the morning and getting buses back to Govan from Hampden Park was very difficult, so I missed all the celebration. I was angry with myself for missing it.”
Be it a future managerial great captivated by Alfredo Di Stéfano, Ferenc Puskás and Co, or a young Stan Collymore idolising Gary Shaw, football has always had that power to inspire. And we all look back on certain eras with a special glow. Yet as for the question of whether one period is better than another, it is tempting to draw on the words of Neil Simon’s protagonist Eugene Jerome when summing up his army years in the film Biloxi Blues: “I liked it for the most selfish reason of all. I was young.”
“Dear Gaz,” began the open letter posted on X. “I wanted to play football because of you.” The writer was Stan Collymore, former Aston Villa, Nottingham Forest and Liverpool centre-forward. And the Gaz was Gary Shaw, the European Cup-winning Villa striker whose death in September, at the age of 63, brought such poignancy to his old team’s long-awaited return to the competition just 24 hours later.
With the recollections that followed, about wanting to wear the same No8 shirt as Shaw and even emulate his blond wedge haircut, Collymore, now 53, captured something of the wonder of a child falling in love with football. “It’s hard to put into words how grateful I am to have latched onto the magic you gave,” he added. “You made a little boy dream big.”
Even for this non-Villa follower, the news of Shaw’s passing took me – as a fellow child of the 1980s – right back to those years of discovery. The Villa-Bayern final of 1982 was the first I watched, and it was Shaw, the spark for the sequence that brought the only goal, who left the biggest mark on my eight-year-old self. That, in truth, probably owed as much to his blond mop and cool Le Coq Sportif kit – white shirt with claret pinstripes, hanging long over fashionably tight shorts – as to the attacking qualities that earned him the Bravo award as Europe’s best young player in 1982.
In my case, those 80s wonder years also included Panini sticker books, Shoot! magazine player profiles (“Favourite food and drink: Steak and lager”) and the exciting sights, sounds and even smells of Saturday afternoons at Everton’s Goodison Park.
A fresh wave of nostalgia came a couple of days after Shaw’s passing when it was announced that Totò Schillaci, Golden Shoe winner at the 1990 World Cup, had died also. Italia ’90 was the last World Cup of my teens and Schillaci’s name recalled a time when football was so far from the 24/7 content factory of today. In the season before that World Cup, there were only 12 top-flight matches broadcast live on television in England. The old First Division had barely any players from outside the British Isles. Therefore, you certainly took notice when a wild-eyed Sicilian in that gorgeous blue Italy shirt started lighting up your TV screen with his goals.
As Collymore’s moving post highlighted, the heroes of our youth seldom lose their place in our hearts, and the beauty of our business is the opportunities it can provide to meet those dream-makers. Indeed, if Shaw – to so many – remains preserved in aspic in that Le Coq Sportif kit with the best Brummie haircut of the decade (sorry, Duran Duran fans), it was a joy for me to encounter him occasionally in the Villa Park press room when reporting on the Midlands scene a decade ago. Cheerful, down to earth and much happier discussing the fortunes of Warwickshire County Cricket Club than basking in old glories.
