ucceb8419-f778-5880-8786-e77e57818d32">
Mad For It
From Blackpool To Barcelona Football’s Greatest Rivalries
Andy Mitten
This book is dedicated to the people I met along the way and their incredible passion for a game called football. And to my dad Charlie, who lit the spark by taking me to watch him play in the Irlam v Urmston cup derby in 1984.
‘By the 1980s, the rivalry had become vicious, with United’s Scouse manager Ron Atkinson describing a trip to Anfield as like going into Vietnam. Big Ron’s experience fighting the Viet Cong has not been fully substantiated, but he can be forgiven for exaggerating – he had just been tear gassed.’ Liverpool v Manchester United
‘Ian Ramsey began supporting The Shire “to be different from my mates. I wanted to support the least fashionable club.” He didn’t have to look far…to a club that gave 32-year-old Alex Ferguson his first managerial job in 1974. There were only eight registered players when Ferguson arrived. “They were the worst senior club in the country,” Ferguson later wrote.’ Elgin City v East Stirlingshire
‘Tyres are set ablaze, telephone booths vandalised, windows smashed, and anti-regime chants are heard across Tehran and Iran’s other cities…in a country where boys and girls fear holding hands in case the special morality police take them in or, worse, send them to a moral correction unit, football may not be enough to contain their passions.’ Iran v Iraq
Table of Contents
‘Getting on with the Neighbours?’
The Coldest Derby in the World
Sheep Shaggers v Donkey Lashers
Two Languages, Two Peoples…and Two Countries?
It was not a day too soon. When Manchester United took on Manchester City away in October 1986, I pestered my dad to take me. I was 12 years old. Dad wasn’t a lover of watching football, always preferring to play, but he finally relented and acquired three tickets for the main stand at Maine Road.
I devoured the pre-match hype in the Evening News and knew every player of both sides. It wasn’t a golden age for Manchester football and the attendance of 32,440 was then the lowest post-war for a derby, partly because the game was the first Manchester derby to be televised ‘live’. Before we left the
