THE SUPERSUBS
Players who make an impact
THE game is at stalemate, both teams are cancelling each other out and there´s little time left in a match you desperately need
to win.
As the manager, you look along your club’s bench until you see that one player who could make the difference.
So, you signal the player to get ready to go on but one of his qualities is that he’s always ready to enter the fray. Not just physically but, more importantly, mentally, he’s attuned to the state of the match, having been watching intensely the action and is acutely aware of what is required of him. You don’t even have to give him any instructions, you just glance into his eyes and on he goes.
Minutes later, he is surrounded by his jubilant team-mates and the fans are loudly cheering and singing his name. He looks towards the bench and sees you with a knowing smile that your faith in him has once again been justified. He has scored the vital winning goal, victory has been achieved.
Your team’s Supersub has done it again!
This may just be a story, but it is based on fact.
Over the years, time and time again players have come off the bench and made a vital contribution in winning or saving an important match.
The first time that the term Supersub was used by the press or by fans was in the 70s, when clubs started making more substitutions as part of a strategy rather than just to replace injured or tired players.
Substitutions had first been allowed in League matches during the 1965/66 season but only one per team per game and only to replace an injured player.
Before this rule was introduced, if a player was injured and unable to continue then the team played on with ten men.
This rule only applied to the domestic game and even at the 1966 World Cup, teams could not make any substitutions for injuries.
Finally, the rule-makers saw sense and from the 1967/68 season the rule was relaxed to allow substitutions for tactical reasons at all levels of the game.
But back to August 21, 1965 and Keith Peacock, of Charlton Athletic, became the first ever substitute used in a League match when he replaced their injured goalkeeper Mike Rose just 11 minutes into the match against Bolton.
On the same day, Bobby Knox was the first sub to score a goal - for Barrow against Wrexham. Over the years, there has been an increase of how many players are allowed on the bench, from just the one player (the 12th man) to now seven players named in Premier League and Cup matches, while clubs are now allowed to use any three of them.
Now, it is a squad game, no longer 11 v 11. The planning of the way substitutes are selected and then used in games is totally different. In the past, it was all about consistency of selection, nowadays squad rotation is the way forward.
The first player that I remember being referred to as a Supersub was Liverpool’s David Fairclough.
Most memorably, he came off the bench and scored the decisive goal as Liverpool beat French side St Etienne in the European Cup quarter-final second leg at Anfield in 1977.
The Reds went on to lift the trophy for the first time in their history.
He would, in fact, act, score more than 50 goals for Liverpool, but it was the 18 goals s that he netted when coming on as a substitute that he is so fondly remembered for by all Liverpool supporters.
Sadly, he regarded his place in the club’s history as a Supersub as a handicap to furthering his career.
In February 1980, 80, he started a League match against Norwich and scored a hat-trick, only to be back on the bench for the next match versus Nottingham Forest. He came on in the second half and scored!
In those days of just the one substitute, he felt that being the 12th man meant he wasn’t considered quite good enough for a regular starting place in the team. Of course, he was at a club that had Kevin Keegan and John Toshack as first-choice strikers when he bega began and then had Kenny Dalglish and Ian Rush ahead of him by the time he moved on.
O One player who was at ease with the tag of a Supersub is the current caretaker-manager of Manchester United, the legend- ary Ole Gunnar Solskjaer. One of the many reasons why he is so beloved at Old Trafford is of the way he so often made an impact from the bench. He is the perfect example of what I was saying earlier about a player watching and studying how the match is going.
He scored 126 goals in 366 games, with 29 coming in 150 substitute appearances. These were nearly always in crucial matches and he made a habit of making an impact in these.
Solskjaer made his debut in August 1996 as a sub against Blackburn and scored after only six minutes.
In a match against Newcastle in April 1998 with the score 1-1 and United hanging on, he came on with just ten minutes left. Newcastle’s Rob Lee had a clear goalscoring opportunity, running unopposed towards goal. Solskjaer ran back, committed a foul and stopping an almost certain goal. He knew that he would be sent off and suspended from a future match, but he put the team before his own personal
situation (this was something the United supporters wouldn’t forget).
The following season he managed to score four goals in 12 minutes against Nottingham Forest after coming on in the 72nd minute, but it was in the 1999 Champions League final against Bayern Munich, where his place in United’s folklore was assured.
He came on for the last few minutes, along with Teddy Sheringham, as the Red Devils trailed 1-0. With the help of two David Beckham corners, the pair changed history.
Sheringham scored the injury-time equaliser and then, just moments later, he flicked on from Beckham’s cross and Solskjaer poked into the roof of the net from close range.
It should be mentioned that Sheringham also had a bit of a Supersub reputation. Apart from the above, he also came on as a replacement for the injured Roy Keane in that season’s FA Cup final after only ten minutes and would go on to score United’s first goal and set up their second for Paul Scholes in a 2-0 win over Newcastle.
Two years later, as England were struggling in a World Cup qualifier against Greece at Old Trafford, Sheringham came off the bench. Within seconds, he scored with his first touch. Then he won the freekick that allowed Beckham to score and send England to the finals in Japan/Korea.
There have been many more examples of players coming on and changing the course of a match.
At Italia 90, Roger Milla came out of retirement at the age of 38 and struck four goals for Cameroon - as a substitute each time.
Louis van Gaal’s young Ajax team were drawing 0-0 with the multi-talented AC Milan superstars when he replaced the experienced Jari Litmanen with 18 year old Patrick Kluivert, who scored the only goal in the 1995 Champions League final.
At the Euro 96 final at Wembley, Germany’s Oliver Bierhoff came off the bench with 20 minutes left with the Germans losing 1-0 to the Czech Republic. He scored to level and take the game into extra-time and then he netted the first-ever Golden Goal in Euro history to take the trophy back to Germany.
In the Euro 2000 final, France were losing 1-0 to Italy. The French coach Roger Lemerre made three substitutions late on and all three made an impact.
Sub number one, Sylvain Wiltord, slammed home the equaliser to take the game into extra-time, where sub number two Robert Pires crossed for sub number three David Trezeguet to score the Golden Goal winner.
Mario Götze replaced Miroslav Klose in the 2014 World Cup final and in extra-time scored the winning goal for Germany against Argentina and thus became the first substitute to score the winner in a World Cup final.
Also, at the same World Cup, the manager of the Dutch side (a certain Mr Van Gaal) took the unusual step of substituting his goalkeeper Jasper Cillessen a couple of minutes before the end of extra-time with penalties looming in their quarter-final against Costa Rica for his second-choice keeper Tim Krul.
He felt that Krul would be better suited to saving penalties. It worked, with Krul making two vital saves in the shoot-out and the Dutch going through to the semi-finals, where Cillessen was back in goal.
On the flip side, sometimes a manager makes a change for all the right reasons, but it doesn’t work out as well as they were hoping.
For example, Liverpool were losing 1-0 to Manchester United at home in a Premier League match in 2015.
Brendan Rodgers, the Reds manager, made a half-time change and brought on Steven Gerrard to inspire a comeback. However, Gerrard was only on the field for a minute and a half when he was sent off for appearing to stamp on United midfielder Ander Herrera. Liverpool lost 2-1. Amazingly, Lionel Messi’s debut for his country ended after just three minutes. He had come on in a friendly International against Hungary with Argentina leading 2-1.
The 18-year-old immediately got involved and was running down the wing with the ball heading towards the penalty area with Hungarian defender Vilmos Vanczak right beside him, trying to get the ball off him. Young Messi raised his hands to fend off the challenge and the defender fell like he had been hit by a truck, clutching his face.
The referee called a foul, walked towards Messi and showed him the red card. Messi walked off in tears. Sometimes there is a logical plan behind a substitution, other times it is just a gut feeling that could turn into a tactical masterstroke. Whatever the reasoning, and maybe there’s a bit of luck involved too, the game is all the better for the drama the Supersub provides.