Sir Robert Charlton was an English professional footballer who played as an attacking-midfielder, left-winger or centre-forward. Widely considered one of the greatest players of all time, he was a member of the England team that won the 1966 FIFA World Cup, the year he also won the Ballon d'Or. He finished second in the Ballon d'Or voting in 1967 and 1968. He played almost all of his club football at Manchester United, where he became renowned for his attacking instincts, passing abilities from midfield, ferocious long-range shooting from both left and right foot, fitness, and stamina. He was cautioned only twice in his career; once against Argentina in the 1966 World Cup, and once in a league match against Chelsea. With success at club and international level, he was one of nine players to have won the FIFA World Cup, the European Cup and the Ballon d'Or. His elder brother Jack, who was also in the World Cup–winning team, was a former defender for Leeds United and also for ten years was the manager of the Republic of Ireland.
Liverpool Football Club is a professional football club based in Liverpool, England. The club competes in the Premier League, the top tier of English football. Founded in 1892, the club joined the Football League the following year and has played its home games at Anfield since its formation. Liverpool is one of the most valuable and widely supported clubs in the world.
The Hillsborough disaster was a fatal crowd crush at a football match at Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England, on 15 April 1989. It occurred during an FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest in the two standing-only central pens within the Leppings Lane stand allocated to Liverpool supporters. Shortly before kick-off, police match commander David Duckenfield ordered exit gate C to be opened in an attempt to ease crowding, which led to an influx of supporters entering the pens. This resulted in overcrowding of those pens and the fatal crush; with a total of 97 fatalities and 766 injuries, the disaster is the deadliest in British sporting history. Ninety-four people died on the day; one more died in hospital days later, another in 1993, and in 2021, a 97th who had suffered irreversible brain damage on the day. The match was abandoned and restaged at Old Trafford in Manchester on 7 May 1989; Liverpool won and went on to win that season's FA Cup.
Hillsborough Stadium is a football stadium in Sheffield, England. It has been the home of Sheffield Wednesday since opening in 1899.
Eric Daniel Pierre Cantona is a French actor and former professional footballer. A large, physically strong, hard-working and tenacious player, Cantona combined technical skill and creativity with power and goalscoring ability. Invariably utilised as a deep-lying forward, he was also capable of playing as a centre-forward, as an out-and-out striker, as an attacking midfielder, or as a central midfielder. In 2004, he was named by Pelé in the FIFA 100 list of the world's greatest living players.
The Battle of Orgreave was a violent confrontation on 18 June 1984 between pickets and officers of the South Yorkshire Police (SYP) and other police forces, including the Metropolitan Police, at a British Steel Corporation (BSC) coking plant at Orgreave, in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, England. It was a pivotal event in the 1984–1985 UK miners' strike, and one of the most violent clashes in British industrial history.
John Walker Motson was an English football commentator. Beginning as a television commentator with the BBC in 1971, he commentated on over 2000 games on television and radio. From the late 1970s to 2008, Motson was the dominant football commentary figure at the BBC, apart from a brief spell in the mid-1990s.
Brian Reade is a British journalist and author who writes a weekly opinion column for the Daily Mirror. He was born in Wavertree and grew up in Huyton.
Henry Winter is an English sports journalist. He currently writes for World Soccer, having previously been the Chief Football Writer for The Times and a Football Correspondent for The Daily Telegraph.
Alan Green is a Northern Irish former sports commentator, mainly on football but also on golf, rowing and the Olympic Games.
David Roland Elleray,, is an English former football referee who officiated in the Football League, Premier League and for FIFA. As of September 2021 he held the position of Technical Director at the IFAB.
Peter Swales was a businessman who served as the chairman of Manchester City F.C. from 1973 until 1993. He held a variety of prominent positions within the game of football, including chairman of The Football Association's International Committee and vice-president of the F.A.
Pinhas "Pini" Zahavi is an Israeli football agent.
Sir David Gerald Richards is the former chairman of the FA Premier League, member of the Football Association's (FA) Board, chairman of the FA's international committee, president of the European Professional Football Leagues organisation, chairman of UEFA's Professional Football Committee, and former chairman of Sheffield Wednesday F.C.
Leeds Trinity University is a public university in Horsforth, Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. Originally established to provide qualified teachers to Catholic schools, it gradually expanded and now offers foundation, undergraduate, and postgraduate degrees in a range of humanities and social sciences.
The Liverpool F.C.–Manchester United F.C. rivalry, sometimes referred to as the Northwest derby, is a high-profile inter-city rivalry between English professional football clubs Liverpool and Manchester United. It is considered one of the biggest fixtures in English football and one of the biggest and fiercest rivalries in world football. Players, fans and the media consider the fixture between the two clubs to be their biggest rivalry, above even their own local derbies, with Everton and Manchester City respectively.
The Paul Foot Award is an annual award run by Private Eye, for investigative or campaigning journalism, in memory of journalist Paul Foot, who died in 2004.
The Guardian is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as The Manchester Guardian, and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister papers, The Observer and The Guardian Weekly, The Guardian is part of the Guardian Media Group, owned by the Scott Trust Limited. The trust was created in 1936 to "secure the financial and editorial independence of The Guardian in perpetuity and to safeguard the journalistic freedom and liberal values of The Guardian free from commercial or political interference". The trust was converted into a limited company in 2008, with a constitution written so as to maintain for The Guardian the same protections as were built into the structure of the Scott Trust by its creators. Profits are reinvested in its journalism rather than distributed to owners or shareholders. It is considered a newspaper of record in the UK.
Beginning in at least the 1960s, the United Kingdom gained a reputation worldwide for football hooliganism; the phenomenon was often dubbed the British or English Disease. However, since the 1980s and well into the 1990s the UK government has led a widescale crackdown on football related violence. While football hooliganism has been a growing concern in some continental European countries in recent years, British football fans now tend to have a better reputation abroad. Although reports of British football hooliganism still surface, the instances now tend to occur at pre-arranged locations rather than at the matches themselves.
David Edward Charles Lacey was a British journalist and football writer. He spent the majority of his career at The Guardian, serving as chief football correspondent from 1973 until 2002.
