04/24/24
December 08, 2004
G8 hurts back imitating Torvill and Dean, blames Jimmie Five Bellies. David Seaman to the rescue.: You couldn't make this stuff up.
My memories of Gazza ever being a decent footballer have all been replaced by memories of him being a lazy, stupid, drunk buffoon
posted by molafson at 02:30 AM on December 09, 2004
G8 = Wayne Rooney in 15 years time?
posted by afx237vi at 08:33 AM on December 09, 2004
So was Gascoigne a good player or not? I know the English have an annoying tendency to praise even the most mediocre player as being a great talent just because he's English (think Chris Kirkland)...but I don't know much about Gazza.
posted by StarFucker at 09:06 AM on December 09, 2004
I would say that Gazza was a very talented player, but never lived up to his potential due to injury and, erm... personal problems. His best years were at Tottenham, and he was something special whilst there. After he went to Lazio, he became a bit of a caricature of himself and never hit the heights he should have... that's my take on it anyway.
posted by afx237vi at 09:39 AM on December 09, 2004
I'd pretty much agree with that. He was never as good as the media hyped him up to be (who could?), but he was a special player (and a special kind of idiot).
posted by squealy at 10:06 AM on December 09, 2004
Gazza was not much better than David Dunne, in my opinion, which is not to slag him off as Dunne is extremely talented. In an age of mediocrity Gazza stod out because he dared to do something different and as often as not was capable of delivering. He had maybe one good season and then pissed his talent up the wall; he's been living on memories ever since. In the grand scheme of things though, he was nowhere near as good, effective or entertaining as players like George Best, Stan Bowles, Frank Worthington, Peter Osgood, Alan Hudson, Tony Currie, Keith Weller, Matt Le Tissier, Trevor Francis, Johnny Vincent, Barry Bridges, Willie Johnson or dozens of others. He's lucky that the media no longer seems to be able to differentiate between a character and a buffoon, or he would have faded from the national consciousness years ago.
posted by Fat Buddha at 11:55 AM on December 09, 2004
This link has the same story. I was going to link to it yesterday and forgot. Now I rue not doing it, not because someone else beat me to it, but because the original caption under the second picture read "Jayne Torvill yesterday" - it has since been changed. Some senior editor with no sense of humour to blame no doubt. Gazza was a decent player, SF. He was exciting to watch in the same way as it's exciting to watch a match being dropped into a box of fireworks - some days, the match would go out, other days, it would send the whole lot up in smoke. Had he not cried in the 1990 World Cup though, I'm not sure if we'd all remember him so well now. That did a lot for the public's perception of him. But he was no George Best (in terms of his football or his drinking).
posted by JJ at 12:47 PM on December 09, 2004
I am laughing really hard, this was a G(R)8 link.