Health key for Matteo
SUFFERING CHANTS OF ‘WHAT A WASTE OF MONEY’ WHEREVER HE WENT, FRANCIS ADMITS IT WAS TOUGH BEING THE FIRST £1M MAN BUT SAYS: EVERYONE CAN REMEMBER MY TRANSFER FEE...WHAT WAS GARETH BALE’S?
ARSENAL midfielder Matteo Guendouzi has urged football not to restart until coronavirus “is taken off this world”.
Guendouzi, 20, said: “For me, what I think is most important is to not start things up again, no games, no training, until this epidemic stops.
“What’s most important is everybody’s health, and not just in the football world, but in the medical world and the world in general.
“I’m in favour of nothing starting up again until this virus is taken off this world.”
TREVOR FRANCIS says the first British player to cost £100million won’t have the pressures of his price tag from 40 years ago.
Francis famously became the first player to cost £1m when his move from Birmingham City to Nottingham Forest shattered every record in the book.
David Mills had joined West Brom from Middlesbrough for £516,000, to set a new British transfer record, just a week earlier.
Brian Clough’s staggering swoop for Francis smashed that new benchmark in a way that seemed as if it had been made up. The new record was a staggering seven figures. This was more Mills... and BOOM!
Hot favourite to be the first British player to break the £100m mark is England star Jadon Sancho, who will cost any club wanting to take him from
Borussia Dortmund at least that figure. Francis says whoever it is, they will be spared the same pressure he faced back in February 1979, insisting it’s completely different.
Francis (training with Forest apprentices in 1980, below) recalled: “Do I feel proud of being the first £1m player? Absolutely. I played professional football for 23 years until I was 39, I won European Cups with Nottingham Forest, I played 52 times for England.
“But, whenever go to a sporting occasion, I’m always introduced as the first £1m footballer.
I see it as a question on TV quiz shows here and there. That’s how big it was.
“Gareth Bale went from Tottenham to
Real Madrid for a huge amount of
I money but, if you asked the general public, I think a lot of them would struggle to know exactly how much (£86m).
“But mine was that significant. That’s what I’m known as – the first £1m player. I get dads coming up to me with their children telling them about it.
“You can see these kids of seven or eight thinking, ‘Well, that’s nothing’. These days it isn’t. It’s not much more than a free transfer.” Francis is under no illusions there was added pressure simply because of the man he was trying to impress – Forest boss Clough.
Francis’s winning goal in the 1979 European Cup final was more than enough to do that, but he admits it was a bit of a bumpy start under Old Big ’Ead.
His actual first game was in the third team against Notts County in front of about 20 people. And when one of them dared ridicule the new superstar over a missed shot, it was met with an unpredictable response.
“You’ll have to do better then that, Francis!” yelled the supporter to some amusement from those around him, until an indignant Clough raced around the pitch, wagged that famous finger at him, and said:
“His name’s Trevor.” His debut proper was at Portman Road and he recalls the Ipswich Town supporters reminded him of the size of his fee and how he got a major ticking off from Clough.
Francis, now 65, laughed: “They were a very good Ipswich team at the time, and I think it was Martin O’Neill who put a cross in, and the ball was just beyond me, so I punched it in.
“I didn’t get away with it. The referee saw it and gave a freekick against me. When I got in the dressing room, I got the biggest rollocking I’ve ever had in all my years as a professional footballer.
“I was told in no uncertain terms that that kind of thing was something that Brian Clough would not accept as a manager.
“He was furious. He said: ‘We’re Nottingham Forest Football Club. We play correctly here. We don’t do that and don’t