Teams That Made Us Fall In Love With Football #11 Sheffield Wednesday '93

Never ones to do things by the book, here's number 11 in our supposed 10-part series. Welcome to Magic Spongers, Mr Alex Douglas

Bill Shankly once said: ‘Some people believe football is a matter of life and death. I am very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that.’ Although I don’t wholly agree with the sentiment, I have always thought that football was a good analogy for life. If football is the journey, then the teams that accompany us are our partners. I have to admit that in my early teens, I was a bit of a slag, chasing shirt. I have had exotic romances with foreign mistresses including a dirty weekend in Paris (St Germain) and an ultimately destructive on-off relationship with England. But if Manchester United were to become my life partner then the Sheffield Wednesday team of 93’ was my first kiss. It was an affair to remember.

Teams That Made Us Fall In Love With Football #10: Olympique de Marseille 1991

Diamond highlights

Unashamedly self-indulgent, here's friend of Magic Spongers James Longhurst on his love affair with Marseille and a Geordie winger

First a confession

I’m a Wimbledon fan. In fact nowadays I’m an AFC Wimbledon fan and Trust member, and when the Magic Spongers asked me to chip in on the team that made me fall in love with football, they naturally thought it would be the ’88 cup final team.

It would be pretty easy to write a piece extolling the virtues of that legendary (in almost every sense of the word) Crazy Gang team, but I was only seven at the time of final and while I remember it clearly, that’s probably as much from the amount of times I have rewatched my VHS, DVD and now Sky+ versions of the game as from any contemporary viewing.