Raheem Sterling has said he was left "fuming" after a press release issued by his management company claimed the Manchester City winger would captain England against Netherlands in the UEFA Nations League semi-finals in June 2019. Raheem was awarded the arm band on 6th June 2019, in an important UEFA Nations' League semi-final v Holland, as he earned his 50th cap for his country. He did hand the arm band over to Harry Kane, when he came on to try to save his country's embarrassment late in the game.This is about England captains.
The list contains Old Carthusians (old boys of Charterhouse School) except, of course, for Billy, Bobby, and Raheem whom you should know.
The old boys played as amateurs in the 19th Century when soccer was growing and international matches getting more common. GO Smith you should know because I would have mentioned him before (several times) was the classic amateur, academic, sporting footballer who played for England 20 times and captained them on 13 occasions. The FA would not allow a professional footballer to captain the country, just in case!
Cuthbert Ottaway was the first England captain on 30th November 1872 when England played their first official international match against the Scots, away. He played twice and captained his country both times.
Alexander Morten captained England at home against the Scots in March 1873, a game which England won and it was his only appearance.
The captain was often appointed by the FA as a "head boy" keeping everyone in order! Indeed, in this amateur/pro era, in the event of something spectacular happening in the game, the captain would have reached into his shorts' pocket and given the lad involved a shilling for his trouble.
Other captains include Vivian Woodward of Arsenal, George Hardwick from Huddersfield 1946-8, Dr Tinsley Lindley (OBE eventually for service in WW1) an amateur who never wore football boots! Claude Ashton, a Cambridge University footballer, who with brothers, Hubert and Gilbert, played as a trio for the University and were known as Ashton Villa. Claude played one game for England, as captain.
Billy Wright, of Wolves in the late 1950s-60s, captained England 90 times out of 105 apps.
On this day in 2000 a crowd of nearly 67,000 at Old Trafford saw Manchester United defeat Dynamo Kiev 1-0 to qualify from their Champions League group. The next day United captain Roy Keane, using his usual diplomacy criticised the poor vocal support of the team by the crowd. his main complaint was that the fans in the hospitality boxes "have a few drinks and prawn sandwiches and they don't realise what is going on out on the pitch." From that point the hospitality boxes contained what became known as the "prawn sandwich brigade". Roy had made his mark, so that when ever a copy of his autobiography was sold, the shop owner gave the buyer a free freshly prepared prawn sandwich.
No comments:
Post a Comment