True Football Stories, Part 6: Championship Manager

When art doesn't imitate life in the slightest

Herculean achievements, long forgotten, make for perhaps the best stories. Here's Sam Macrory with an almost unbelievable tale...

The name of the manager wasn’t important. It wasn’t important when he was appointed. It was never a concern during his long reign in charge. And not once after he had gone did anyone take the time to rifle through an index to discover more about him. All that mattered was he had been the manager. The boss. The undisputed man in charge. The star signings, the manual-redefining formations and, of course, the endless trophies. They were halycon days. His days.

True Football Stories, Part 5: Stanley Bagshaw

This story DEFINITELY did happen

Everyone loves an unlikely adventure don't they. A caper. We welcome back semi-regular Dan Forman with one such remarkable story of a young lad from Huddersgate. 

When the editors first approached me about this series some time before the last World Cup, I had the idea of writing about a prodigious young boy who so mastered tactics and the transfer market on Championship Manager that he got a break at a professional club in the ultimate Moneyball-style experiment. But then Andre Villas Boas happened.

True Football Stories, Part 4: I Am The Ref

'You f*cking WHAT?!'

We all hate referees. But what if you ARE the ref. Or you are THE ref. Emphasis aside, here's Richard Bellis on the perils of being the man in the middle...

It was when that bloke starting coming to all my matches with an easel, then I knew things had really got out of hand. Every Sunday it was the same. I’d turn up, look around hoping he wasn’t there, it’d get closer to kick-off, I’d shout at the ‘keepers, check they were ready to stand getting cold, then I’d spot him wandering along the bumpy field, equipment tucked under his arm. Was I cursed or just unlucky? All this decisions I had to make, I couldn’t make a decision on that question…

True Football Stories, Part 3: The Hurricanes

Stavros Garkos: A vile, vile man

Not many will remember the ill-fated World Soccer League. Adam Bushby reminds us of the world's biggest sporting clusterfuck.

When a 12-year-old girl inherits a football club in the World Soccer League after her father mysteriously disappears, it’s a recipe for disaster really isn’t it. It’s also a recipe for repeated kidnap, annexing entire towns for enterprises such as paper mills or just for fun, attempted murder, robbery, assault, more kidnap... in short, it’s a fucking shit storm, it really is. Not that the young Amanda Carey could take much, if any, of the blame. Little did she know when she got the deeds to the Hispanola Hurricanes that she would have to overcome a daily war of attrition against one of the most evil men to have walked the earth. After all, why would she, she was only 12.

True Football Stories, Part 2: Harchester United

Some or all of these men may kill each other

It’s now been seven bewildering years since Harchester United’s light went out. Rob MacDonald pays tribute to perhaps the greatest dream team of them all.

Has ever a team burned so violently and tragically as Harchester United? As rich in history as the vibrant purple that adorned their La Viola-inspired kits, perhaps the most remarkable factor was that the club only truly existed in the national consciousness for a fleeting ten years. But what a ten years – seemingly a lifetime’s worth of ups and down compressed into a relatively tiny space, like a neutron star, or a tin of corned beef.

True Football Stories, Part 1: Shaolin Soccer

Yet another straight red.

Our True Football Stories series kicks off with a remarkable piece of coverage from John Dobson...

TEAM EVIL STRIPPED OF TITLES IN DOPING SCANDAL

In a frank confession on Oprah Winfrey's chat show, head coach and former star player of Team Evil, Hung, admitted widespread doping offences during Team Evil's long reign as Hong Kong Open Cup champions. Hung has already been stripped of his chairmanship of the HKFA and is now likely to be subjected to criminal trials for corruption, fraud and drug offences. Prosecutors are likely to accept plea bargains and a five-year term, but Hung is likely to receive a life ban from all football activity. Additionally, Team Evil players will also face doping tribunals with the possibility of sine die bans being imposed.

Charity begins in Munich

Bayern fans pay less for tickets so they have more money to buy shite like this

If there’s one thing that makes for a popular feel-good story in football, it’s the ‘gesture’. Not the Theo Walcott-style ‘gesture’ for, though very funny, it incites small-minded idiots and that would never do, but the grand sort of gesture that generally ends up in players or clubs giving fans money.