These Football Times These Football Times

It’s a grand old team to write about and These Football Times is proving the point with a special magazine dedicated to Everton. Aidan Williams, Chris Lepkowski and true blue Evertonian Paul Mc Parlan talk you through some of the contents of the magazine, covering league and cup wins, great players and managers, and Goodison Park itself, and ruminate on Everton’s place in the wider scheme of English football, past and present.

It might not have been a Panenka, but when Stuart Pearce blasted his penalty into the Spanish net during the quarter-final shootout at Euro 96, he produced a penalty, and certainly a celebration, every bit as iconic. Dave Bowler and Gary Thacker debate the stones of steel shown by Pearce on a day when, after his penalty nightmare at Italia 90, lesser men might have found their way to the back of the bus queue. 

Johan and his famous Cruyff turn at the 1974 World Cup was all very well, but did it end up with the ball in the back of the net? It did not. Some 42 years later, Hal Robson-Kanu showed how it should be done in the white heat of the 2016 Euros quarter-final, sending the Belgian defence for a bag of chips - mayonnaise optional - and then bludgeoning the ball past Thibault Courtois. Matthew Gibbs points out to Gary Thacker that the Welsh are therefore better than the Dutch. Popcorn all round.

Joining Gary Thacker today is Dr David Turner who takes us back 20 years to a day when England looked to be emerging as genuine contenders for the Euros in 2004, only to have those hopes dashed by injury. It’s all about England v Croatia and it’s mostly about Wayne Rooney.

Fresh from being chiselled into the European Championships’ Mount Rushmore, Antonín Panenka takes centre stage as Aidan Williams brings us chapter and verse on perhaps the most iconic penalty ever taken. 

A goal of beauty is a joy forever as the old saying almost goes. Proving the old adage true in 1996 was Davor Šuker who produced one of the tournament’s immortal moments with his goal for Croatia against Denmark. Rob Fletcher tells Gary Thacker all about it.