What if they’d won World Cup?

IMAGINE things had gone differently. What if Newcastle United had won the league title in 1996 instead of collapsing on the run-in? Or what if they’d won the FA Cup in 1974, 1998 and 1999 instead of losing in each final? Or what if Bobby Charlton had signed for his boyhood team, Newcastle United instead of joining Manchester United.

Football, like life, is full of ifs and buts.

Now, a new book, If Only: An Alternative History of the Beautiful Game, offers an original counterfactual history of football.

The book’s author, Simon Turner, says: “It is often tempting to believe in the grand sweep of history - to conclude that the triumphs of football’s greatest teams were simply inevitable.

“The truth, however, is that history can turn on what appear, at first glance, to be infinitesimally small events. Behind all those triumphs lie the countless disappointments of teams that were denied glory by a cruel bounce, the width of a crossbar or a dubious refereeing decision.

“Challenging the perception that the outcome of great clashes could never have been any different to what they were, If Only reflects on what our football history could have been, what it might have been and, in some cases, what it probably should have been.”

And so, what if England, featuring Gazza, Waddle, Beardsley, below, and Bobby Robson, had won the World Cup at Italia ‘90, beating Argentina to avenge the 1986 ‘Hand of God’?

Or what if, in 1930, Scotland featuring a certain Hughie Gallacher - had beaten Uruguay to win the first ever World Cup final?

Or what if Brian Clough’s Derby County had met Johan Cruyff’s Ajax in the 1973 European Cup final?

There’s much more like this to enjoy in a book for the dreamer in every football fan.

■■If Only: An Alternative History of the Beautiful Game, by Simon Turner. Pitch Publishing. £9.99.