Latest news with #SteveCoppell
Telegraph
17-05-2025
- Sport
- Telegraph
Steve Coppell interview: Fergie said we kicked Man Utd off the park, but that's baloney
Steve Coppell still recalls the day, 50 years ago, when, in an office at Prenton Park, he signed for Manchester United and asked Tommy Docherty the question uppermost in his mind. Coppell was studying economic history at Liverpool University. A bright teenager who had attended John Lennon's former school, he was playing for Tranmere Rovers although rarely training with the team. He wanted to finish the second year of his degree, knowing he would then have the option to do his third at any time. Docherty offered to double his weekly wages to £60. Then Coppell approached the subject of his degree with the combative Scot across the desk. 'The Doc said to me, 'You'll finish all three years. We will make it work',' Coppell says. 'Then he said something I have remembered to this day. 'Football will chew you up and spit you out. You get a degree and it is with you for life'. He has been proven correct.' The 69-year-old sitting opposite me now, over lunch, is the great player and coach who built the finest Crystal Palace team in their history – until perhaps now. He will be at Wembley for the FA Cup final on Saturday, as he was for the semi-final. It took just one cutaway to Coppell on the television coverage for his phone to buzz with scores of messages. After all, Coppell is not just a great Palace manager. His is one of the great football lives. How many people sat in a dressing room with Bill Shankly, as Coppell did at Tranmere? Or with Sir Matt Busby, as Coppell would at Old Trafford? Coppell played in Sir Alex Ferguson's second game as a manager – a pre-season friendly at Stirling University between Tranmere and East Stirlingshire in the summer of 1974. Coppell was picked in his first England squad by Don Revie and capped by Ron Greenwood. In the Eighties he discovered Ian Wright. He gave Sir Gareth Southgate his debut. He almost beat Ferguson in Palace's memorable first FA Cup final, 35 years ago. Coppell coached long enough that the last great episode of his managerial career, Reading's two seasons in the Premier League, saw him go head-to-head with a new generation, including José Mourinho. Is there another, Ferguson aside, whose life connects all these eras and people? Coppell, a modest, thoughtful man, takes a sip of his drink, and pauses. 'Until you list them all like that,' he says. 'I suppose I had never really thought about it'. 'Shanks went berserk' Coppell remembers Shankly as an immaculate dresser, 'always a suit, a trilby hat and the shiniest shoes I had ever seen'. The then former Liverpool manager would accompany Tranmere to away games when they were managed by his great centre-half Ron Yeats. Coppell was still a student but remembers pushing a kit skip with the rest of the first team through the streets of Gillingham to Priestfield while Shankly strode ahead of them like a sergeant major. 'Shanks had this trick: after the game, the classified results would come on the radio in the dressing room. He would listen to them and then say, 'Ask me any result and I'll tell you'. And he could, he was so immersed in it.' After that Gillingham game the players got back exhausted to Euston for the train home to Lime Street. British Rail staff told them there would be no dining car. 'Shanks went berserk,' Coppell says. 'He said in that gruff Scottish voice, 'These boys have given everything today. They have sweated blood. They need to replenish. You lot are useless – you deserve to be shot'. Then Shanks paused. 'With heavy bullets'. Ordinary bullets were not enough! You can imagine what an impact he had.' Liverpool fan joins United Coppell was a star at Tranmere. A Liverpool fan who had stood in the famous boys' pen on the Kop, it was United, then in the Second Division, who signed him on the recommendation of Busby's great Welsh assistant, Jimmy Murphy. Coppell still holds the record for the most consecutive performances for the club, 206 between 1977 and 1981, during which time he played in three FA Cup finals. In his first game, he was such an unknown that United spelt his name 'Kopel' in the programme, assuming it was the same as former player Frank. 'I always kept the programme and over the years I thought, 'That is going to be worth a few bob'. At the Variety Golf society, one of the members gave me that programme as a present. I said, 'That's so kind of you, do you mind me asking where you got it?' He said it was eBay. I asked if he wouldn't mind telling me how much. He told me to guess. I said, 'If you told me £100, I wouldn't be surprised'. He said it was £1.83.' Coppell graduated at Liverpool's Philharmonic Hall in 1977 shortly after United's FA Cup final win that denied Liverpool a treble. Docherty also came along, to the delight of Coppell's parents. He got a 2:2 – 'no one got any higher'. His dissertation was a comparison of the economic conditions that drove the development of British and American railways. 'At United, Sir Matt Busby used to come into the dressing room before the first game of every season, quarter past two. He would say, 'Lads, I just want to wish you all the best for the season'. And we never saw him again. There was no interference whatsoever. He was too wise to do that.' Coppell's abiding memory of Busby is away from United. The Scot served on the English Football Association's international committee and accompanied the England team to a game against West Germany in Munich in February 1978. As the plane came into land, Coppell looked out the window and saw thick snow covering the ground. Startled, he looked across the aisle at Busby who had almost died in that plane crash in the same city 20 years earlier, when so many of his players perished. 'I was thinking, 'My word, I wonder what is going through his mind'. His face never cracked at all. I thought back to what happened on a snowy day… in a way I feel privileged to have seen that moment and, in a way, it is intruding. It is almost as if I shouldn't have been there. He didn't talk about it.' Career-ending tackle In a 1982 World Cup qualifier at Wembley in November 1981, Coppell was the victim of a vicious challenge from the Hungary left-back Jozsef Toth. It would ultimately end his career two years later. He went through some of the first arthroscopic surgery in Britain, but to no avail. Only 10 years ago did a surgeon discover that Coppell's cruciate ligament had been snapped with such violence that part of it had whipped back and coiled around his posterior ligament. It would be the equivalent now of Bukayo Saka's career being extinguished by a brutal foul. Coppell would play eight more times for England. At the 1982 World Cup, he had a bad reaction to the anti-inflammatory injections taken in a last attempt to be fit for the crucial Spain game. 'That night I was sweating, vomiting, feeling terrible. Ron Greenwood came to me in the middle of the night. I'll always remember. A wonderfully sympathetic man. He just said, 'Listen Steve, you get yourself right. Hopefully we'll go on to the next stage and you play a part, but you can't play tomorrow'.' Years later, as Palace manager, he was on pre-season in Finland and a local journalist said that Toth, who died in 2022, lived nearby and would like to meet Coppell. 'He asked whether I would be interested. I said, 'No, I wouldn't. That fella changed my life in a way I didn't want it to be changed'.' Discovering Ian Wright After he became manager of Palace in 1984, at just 28, Coppell would invite non-League managers to watch the team train. The club did not have much money but he found that these men, grateful to mix with a professional team, would tell him useful things. They were his de facto scouts. Billy Smith, who worked in the Covent Garden flower market, said he had a 21-year-old striker training with his team who had never been affiliated with a pro club but 'looked a bit different'. 'I remember saying, 'Bill, I've heard this before. The scouting networks now are so sophisticated. No one slips through the net'. And the first day this lad trained with us, I saw it. Great left foot. Great right foot. He's got pace. Great in the air. Great attitude. Fun to be around. I thought, 'There's got to be a flaw'. 'After three days, I phoned our chairman Ron Noades and said, 'This is going to sound stupid, but we've got a young kid training with us with the ability to play for England'. And Ron must have been impressed because instead of giving him a three-year deal, as I advised, he gave the kid a three-month deal on minimum wage.' That player was Ian Wright, a man whom Coppell says simply, 'could score a goal from nothing'. Wright became the star of a Palace team that went to the FA Cup final. 'Look at the way Ian's developed as a human being,' Coppell says. 'I see him now on TV and he's the voice of reason. He's considered. And the fact that not only has he done football, but he's done television. He is just phenomenal. I love him to bits.' 'Kick in the teeth to every English coach' Coppell is very grateful that the FA chair, Debbie Hewitt, made him and his friend Alan Smith, his Palace assistant, so welcome at Wembley for the semi-final. The pair are looking forward to being back there as guests of the FA on Saturday. He jokes that he hopes that what he has to say now will not result in his ticket being withdrawn. What does he think of the Thomas Tuchel appointment? Coppell pauses. 'I think he's a terrific coach. He just shouldn't be coach of England. I think what the FA have done is a kick in the teeth to every English coach. And they have been running courses since the Second World War, trying to produce coaches. If it had been an open competition [a process like the one that appointed Tuchel] to choose the England manager, Gareth Southgate would never have got the job. 'People say to me, 'You haven't got any top English coaches'. I say, 'Yes we have'. We've got loads of top English coaches. They might not be top profile. It's the opportunity. Obviously, a lot of the Premier League clubs now – to quote Alan Sugar – they go to the Carlos Kickaballs rather than Tom Smiths. 'There have been 39 World Cups and European Championships, and only one foreign winner as manager [Germany's Otto Rehhagel with Greece in 2004]. There is no evidence to suggest it works. Tuchel is a terrific coach, don't get me wrong. It's not about him or [Fabio] Capello or Sven [-Goran Eriksson]. But we're England. No other international force would choose a foreign coach. 'What is the aim of the FA now? Is it to be a successful financial enterprise? Or to encourage elite-level football? They will be judged on elite-level football. Looking at the financial results they've just announced, everything's hunky-dory. 'We should have had a system in which potential managers would have been working with Gareth, even if they'd been in club management. Part of the brief of being England manager would be to think of some emerging managers to come in on the next England game on an educational… just to be there and look at things. 'How many football people are actually within the FA? You need football people to produce football people. There's got to be some kind of development process… and we choose a non-Englishman for the Under-21s [former Ireland international, Lee Carsley]. It's just not right. This is England.' Southgate was part of Coppell's Palace team post-1990. 'Gareth did an absolutely magnificent job for England. And he was English. And he knew that nationalistic pride, which is something people don't like talking about now and I think, 'Why not?' 'I played for England and although I never sung the national anthem, Ron Greenwood would say to me, 'When that national anthem is played, your thumbs go down the seams of your shorts and you stand with your chest out. And I thought, 'That will do for me'.' 'A dead man walking there' Coppell says he was never approached to succeed Sir Bobby Robson as England manager in 1990. But around that time there was another job that history suggests he was close to getting. Many felt that Ferguson would have been sacked had he lost the Cup final replay to Palace in 1990. Coppell would have been an obvious candidate to succeed him as a United great, and the most talented young English manager of the era. 'We played United in December [in the league] at Old Trafford and we won 2-1. Fergie, always courteous, said, 'Come in for a drink'. And while we were having a drink he was staring at the floor. He was polite, but no conversation. It was uncomfortable. Archie Knox [Ferguson's assistant] was doing the talking. And very quickly we got the vibe and left. As we got on the bus to come home, I remember saying to somebody, 'Could be a dead man walking there'. He had spent £13 million, which at the time was a fortune. And at that stage, I'm thinking, 'There's not much life left in him'. And then it changed.' Coppell did not select Wright for the 1990 replay, despite his electrifying effect on the Cup final. The striker had broken his leg in March. He was only just fit and desperate to play but Coppell felt his team had already shown themselves capable of beating United. 'Looking back now, I wish I made the change and started with Ian. The replay was wonderfully misinterpreted by Fergie. He condemned us as trying to kick them off the field. We didn't do it in the first game. Why would we think it would be a winning tactic the second game? If you look at the stats on the number of fouls in the game, it was total baloney. But because he was the winning manager, people have a tainted opinion of that game.' More fortunate than most The left knee injury ended Coppell's career and, as is the way with many old footballers, one problem leads to another. He cannot get around the golf course as much as he would like now but he is glad that he took the advice of the surgeon in 1983. He was told he should retire if he wanted one day to be able to run around with his grandchildren. Coppell is delighted to say he does run around with his grandson, Finlay, son to Mark, Steve's oldest son who is based in Singapore. He is also aware that he is luckier than many of his generation. So many have suffered with neurodegenerative disease leading to dementia from heading footballs. That includes his late United team-mate Gordon McQueen and his England room-mate Dave Watson, another formidable Seventies centre-half. 'After every training session, Dave would get someone to take goal-kicks and he'd be on the halfway line and boom!' – Coppell mimes a powerful header – 'as far as he could. I used to say, 'Dave, that's got to hurt'. They never looked after the balls. You train in the rain, freezing cold, and the balls swelled and got really heavy. Then they just left them in a cold dressing room overnight. They weren't dried and looked after. The water would soak into the leather and they become cannonballs.' Later, when Coppell became Brighton manager in 2002, he set up a drill to allow him to assess the finishing of Bobby Zamora, his star striker. 'Bobby knocked it out wide, ran into the box, and when the cross came over, Bobby ducked. The ball went over his head. I said, 'What are you doing?' 'Bobby said, 'Have you felt the weight of those balls? I'm not heading them. I'll head it on a Saturday'. At the time I thought, 'What a tart'. But looking back, it was the right thing to do. And he was wise enough to opt for self-preservation.' For the love of the game Coppell is 70 in July. His 52 years in football have been remarkable and come Saturday, if Oliver Glasner's team triumph over Manchester City, he will arguably no longer be Palace's greatest manager. Although given that he served the club in four spells, he may always be its most popular. Win or lose, he will pull on his flat cap afterwards and slip unnoticed through the crowds at Wembley, a place where he played in three FA Cup finals, managed in another and suffered the dreadful foul that ended his career. He avoids attention but he would like to point out that he is a lot more cheerful than some people think. 'Somebody sent me a television clip [from the semi-final] and it's me standing there, obviously happy Palace have got to the final. And the commentator says something like, 'There's Steve Coppell smiling, and I can assure you he doesn't do that very often'. 'I thought, 'I know that commentator, but I've never spent time in his company. How dare he say that?'' And he is laughing now at the memory of it, and how after all these years, all those matches, some people really do not seem to understand just how much he does love the game.
Yahoo
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘If it had been a film, we'd have won': former Palace finalists share Cup memories
Geoff Thomas (Crystal Palace captain, 1990) Palace 3-3 Manchester United (aet); replay: Palace 0-1 United Being captain of that side was a special time. We had been thrashed 9-0 by Liverpool earlier in the season so after getting past them in the semi-final when Alan Pardew scored the winner at Villa Park, it felt like we had nothing to fear. Advertisement You get to this stage of the season and a lot of teams will be tapering off because they don't have much to play for. What Steve [Coppell, the manager] and Alan [Smith, the assistant] did straight after the semi-final was really kick on – it was like a pre-season again. We'd play a game on the Saturday and have Sunday off and then straight into a long run on the Monday. We were really confident in our physical side of the game. As soon as we came off the pitch after winning the semi-final, we found out what the FA Cup final is all about. Eric Hall became our agent and had us doing all sorts of things. Some of the guys were on Blue Peter but I missed that because I was at the pre-Cup final dinner with the Duke of Edinburgh and the United captain, Bryan Robson. Please don't ask me about our appearance on Sky to sing our version of Glad All Over – I remember John Salako and Gary O'Reilly giving it some! It was quite embarrassing having to sing in front of a live TV audience … Looking back at the final, the frustrating thing is that we were seven minutes away from lifting the Cup after Ian Wright scored in extra time. If it had been a film, we would have won the game and it would have been one of the greatest achievements in sport. We'd been beaten 9-0 by the team that we had then beaten in the semi-final … That's the sad thing – history is made by certain moments and Mark Hughes came up with that moment. Bryan Robson says we kicked them off the park in the replay but I remember them being just as physical. I think it was Brian McClair who brought me down in the box and the referee gave a free-kick but you could see the divot inside the area. I'll never forget that. Advertisement I'm from Manchester and was brought up as a Blue; every time we played against City it was a bit special. All my family would be in the Kippax at the old Maine Road and I used to love playing against them. But as a footballer Crystal Palace are my club. Ever since I joined in 1987 right up to today I feel a part of it. The support of the club when I was diagnosed with leukaemia in 2003 is something I'll never forget. I can see the same enjoyment among the players today that we had under Steve all those years ago. We loved going out there and beating bigger teams. Unfortunately Crystal Palace weren't a big enough club to keep players like Ian Wright and Mark Bright and our team was disbanded. But hopefully times are changing and Palace will be able to build on their progress under Oliver Glasner. I hope it's third time lucky for them on Saturday. Like us in 1990 they've got nothing to fear. City have got quality but so have Palace. I just hope that it's a day that history is made. Alan Smith (assistant manager, 1990) When I arrived in 1984, Palace had nothing. Steve Coppell has to take a lot of credit for everything that team achieved. Steve was a bit of a fitness fanatic so we spent a lot of time working on that. There's a place called Farleigh Downs, which was the hill we used to run up, and the lads had to get up it eight times. It was some run. But because they were so willing to do anything that Steve told them they did it. He had that much respect among the players. Advertisement We also must have been one of the first to do any sort of video analysis. We had this guy called Vince Craven who came in who used to be at Wimbledon and helped them win the 1988 FA Cup final against Liverpool. He was way ahead of his time. Vince would break up the clips with bits of comedy, otherwise the players would start losing interest. He was a natural and it really helped with our attacking set plays. Eric Hall sorted everything out for the players like the suits and a deal with Ray-Ban sunglasses. The sad thing about that was that it pissed with rain about an hour before kick-off so they couldn't wear them. Eric still managed to find 20 umbrellas from somewhere though! United were under a lot of pressure because Alex Ferguson knew he had to win that game – if he hadn't then who knows what might have happened? To have beaten Liverpool in the semis and scored four goals without Ian Wright, who had been out with a broken leg, was some achievement. But he was our talisman: we won some games when we shouldn't have done when he would pull a goal out of the blue like Eberechi Eze does now. In the final, Steve could have put him on earlier and kept on saying: 'Shall we, shall we?' When he came on he was like a coiled spring, a bundle of combustion that burst on to the pitch. In many ways by scoring two goals it was his Cup final. Of course, it wasn't to be because Hughes equalised and they won the replay. But his performance made other clubs interested in him. We finished third the next season before Ian left to join Arsenal. We didn't get into Europe and I think that hit Steve hard. He had done so much work since joining the club in 1984 and by that time we were finding it much more difficult to hold on to our players. Some of them thought: 'What more can we do at Palace?' Advertisement I'll be sitting next to Steve at Wembley on Saturday and Palace have a genuine chance. You can't help but think this is the third time they've been there and they are coming into form at the right time again … Pape Souaré (Palace defender, 2016) Palace 1-2 Manchester United We were like a proper family in the dressing room. You felt everyone in the community wanted Palace to go to the top level. I remember being so excited when we reached the final by beating Watford in the semi-finals – we had special suits made for the day and it was very exciting. Everyone remembers Alan Pardew's dance when Jason Puncheon scored after coming off the bench. It came from a corner – we had worked on that move in training and he said before: 'That's how we're going to score.' The manager was always telling us about the goal he scored in the semi-final against Liverpool in 1990 so it was his way of celebrating. It showed how close we all were to him. Advertisement Alan was always around the players making jokes and he gave us a lot of confidence. When you went on the pitch you wanted to do everything for him. He would often ask after my family and check how I was settling in. And he helped me with my English – the reason I speak it now is partly because of him. I thought we were going to do it when Punch scored. But it's football; sometimes you just have to accept it. We were so close and hopefully now they will finally win it against City. That would make me very happy. A few months after the final, I was in a car crash that forced me to miss almost two years of football. I was very lucky to get back on my feet and playing games again. I'm still in touch with the chairman [Steve Parish] and he gives me some advice. I'm really close to people who are still there and I feel like the support of the fans helped me to get back from injury much quicker. I really appreciate that. I was the first player from Senegal to play for Palace and that makes me proud. When I go back home you see a lot of Palace shirts everywhere.
The Guardian
16-05-2025
- Sport
- The Guardian
‘If it had been a film, we'd have won': former Palace finalists share Cup memories
Palace 3-3 Manchester United (aet); replay: Palace 0-1 United Being captain of that side was a special time. We had been thrashed 9-0 by Liverpool earlier in the season so after getting past them in the semi-final when Alan Pardew scored the winner at Villa Park, it felt like we had nothing to fear. You get to this stage of the season and a lot of teams will be tapering off because they don't have much to play for. What Steve [Coppell, the manager] and Alan [Smith, the assistant] did straight after the semi-final was really kick on – it was like a pre-season again. We'd play a game on the Saturday and have Sunday off and then straight into a long run on the Monday. We were really confident in our physical side of the game. As soon as we came off the pitch after winning the semi-final, we found out what the FA Cup final is all about. Eric Hall became our agent and had us doing all sorts of things. Some of the guys were on Blue Peter but I missed that because I was at the pre-Cup final dinner with the Duke of Edinburgh and the United captain, Bryan Robson. Please don't ask me about our appearance on Sky to sing our version of Glad All Over – I remember John Salako and Gary O'Reilly giving it some! It was quite embarrassing having to sing in front of a live TV audience … Looking back at the final, the frustrating thing is that we were seven minutes away from lifting the Cup after Ian Wright scored in extra time. If it had been a film, we would have won the game and it would have been one of the greatest achievements in sport. We'd been beaten 9-0 by the team that we had then beaten in the semi-final … That's the sad thing – history is made by certain moments and Mark Hughes came up with that moment. Bryan Robson says we kicked them off the park in the replay but I remember them being just as physical. I think it was Brian McClair who brought me down in the box and the referee gave a free-kick but you could see the divot inside the area. I'll never forget that. I'm from Manchester and was brought up as a Blue; every time we played against City it was a bit special. All my family would be in the Kippax at the old Maine Road and I used to love playing against them. But as a footballer Crystal Palace are my club. Ever since I joined in 1987 right up to today I feel a part of it. The support of the club when I was diagnosed with leukaemia in 2003 is something I'll never forget. I can see the same enjoyment among the players today that we had under Steve all those years ago. We loved going out there and beating bigger teams. Unfortunately Crystal Palace weren't a big enough club to keep players like Ian Wright and Mark Bright and our team was disbanded. But hopefully times are changing and Palace will be able to build on their progress under Oliver Glasner. I hope it's third time lucky for them on Saturday. Like us in 1990 they've got nothing to fear. City have got quality but so have Palace. I just hope that it's a day that history is made. When I arrived in 1984, Palace had nothing. Steve Coppell has to take a lot of credit for everything that team achieved. Steve was a bit of a fitness fanatic so we spent a lot of time working on that. There's a place called Farleigh Downs, which was the hill we used to run up, and the lads had to get up it eight times. It was some run. But because they were so willing to do anything that Steve told them they did it. He had that much respect among the players. We also must have been one of the first to do any sort of video analysis. We had this guy called Vince Craven who came in who used to be at Wimbledon and helped them win the 1988 FA Cup final against Liverpool. He was way ahead of his time. Vince would break up the clips with bits of comedy, otherwise the players would start losing interest. He was a natural and it really helped with our attacking set plays. Eric Hall sorted everything out for the players like the suits and a deal with Ray-Ban sunglasses. The sad thing about that was that it pissed with rain about an hour before kick-off so they couldn't wear them. Eric still managed to find 20 umbrellas from somewhere though! United were under a lot of pressure because Alex Ferguson knew he had to win that game – if he hadn't then who knows what might have happened? To have beaten Liverpool in the semis and scored four goals without Ian Wright, who had been out with a broken leg, was some achievement. But he was our talisman: we won some games when we shouldn't have done when he would pull a goal out of the blue like Eberechi Eze does now. In the final, Steve could have put him on earlier and kept on saying: 'Shall we, shall we?' When he came on he was like a coiled spring, a bundle of combustion that burst on to the pitch. In many ways by scoring two goals it was his Cup final. Of course, it wasn't to be because Hughes equalised and they won the replay. But his performance made other clubs interested in him. We finished third the next season before Ian left to join Arsenal. We didn't get into Europe and I think that hit Steve hard. He had done so much work since joining the club in 1984 and by that time we were finding it much more difficult to hold on to our players. Some of them thought: 'What more can we do at Palace?' Sign up to Football Daily Kick off your evenings with the Guardian's take on the world of football after newsletter promotion I'll be sitting next to Steve at Wembley on Saturday and Palace have a genuine chance. You can't help but think this is the third time they've been there and they are coming into form at the right time again … Palace 1-2 Manchester United We were like a proper family in the dressing room. You felt everyone in the community wanted Palace to go to the top level. I remember being so excited when we reached the final by beating Watford in the semi-finals – we had special suits made for the day and it was very exciting. Everyone remembers Alan Pardew's dance when Jason Puncheon scored after coming off the bench. It came from a corner – we had worked on that move in training and he said before: 'That's how we're going to score.' The manager was always telling us about the goal he scored in the semi-final against Liverpool in 1990 so it was his way of celebrating. It showed how close we all were to him. Alan was always around the players making jokes and he gave us a lot of confidence. When you went on the pitch you wanted to do everything for him. He would often ask after my family and check how I was settling in. And he helped me with my English – the reason I speak it now is partly because of him. I thought we were going to do it when Punch scored. But it's football; sometimes you just have to accept it. We were so close and hopefully now they will finally win it against City. That would make me very happy. A few months after the final, I was in a car crash that forced me to miss almost two years of football. I was very lucky to get back on my feet and playing games again. I'm still in touch with the chairman [Steve Parish] and he gives me some advice. I'm really close to people who are still there and I feel like the support of the fans helped me to get back from injury much quicker. I really appreciate that. I was the first player from Senegal to play for Palace and that makes me proud. When I go back home you see a lot of Palace shirts everywhere.
New York Times
14-05-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
Rebecca Lowe: Crystal Palace are my lifelong love. Winning the FA Cup would mean everything
Over the last few weeks, I have dared to dream. I've contemplated Marc Guehi, Crystal Palace's captain, going up to the Royal Box at Wembley, sporting that wonderfully sheepish smile of his, and sharing a word with Prince William before he grasps the FA Cup and lifts it to the crowd. The noise. The sea of red and blue balloons. The tears. The unbridled joy. I've imagined it all. Advertisement To be honest, I've been struggling to think of much else. Palace, my team, are in their third FA Cup final and only Manchester City — 'only', she says — stand between us and a first major trophy. Every Palace fan out there will have their own reason why this means so much. For me, it would be the culmination of a 36-year journey I've shared with my father. All those dreams and hopes would converge on one moment. It would feel like completion. Dad, a newsreader for the BBC, grew up in Caterham, a town near the M25 motorway that encircles London and prime Palace-supporting territory. We actually lived in Ealing, around 20 miles away in west London, but his allegiance never wavered and, while neither of us can remember quite how it happened, there we were in September 1989 watching Palace, then managed by the great Steve Coppell, playing Everton at Selhurst Park. We had seats in the Arthur Wait Stand (it was dilapidated then and hasn't really changed since) and, as a wide-eyed eight-year-old, I was hooked. I'd never witnessed anything like this. My parents divorced when I was 10 and, overnight, those long drives across London to Palace came to represent quality time with my dad. They were precious. We had a routine. We would leave early, 10.30am on a Saturday for a 3pm kick off, and park up a stone's throw from the ground on one of the roads that climb up from Whitehorse Lane, which backs onto the stadium. I dreamt of living in one of those houses; I'm based in California now, but I still think about that road. I'd peer in through the windows, cursing how lucky the occupants were to live this close to Palace, then on past the chip shop on the corner to the club store. Dad would treat me to a key ring or a shirt, buy the matchday programme, and then it was up the steps to Crystals — a dingy nightclub turned function room above the Sainsbury's supermarket at one end of the ground — to be first in the door when it opened at midday. Advertisement What a place that was. All sticky floors, brown mottled tables and nasty padded chairs. God knows what had seeped into those over the years, but we couldn't care less. We'd order sausage, chips and beans twice — still the best pre-match meal I've ever had — and Dad would buy me a Coke (I was never allowed Coke) and he'd have a pint of London Pride beer. We would digest every word of the programme while we ate, and watch the raffle. Sometimes I'd take myself off to the ladies' because there was a window from where you could see the green of the pitch. I'd just stand there, staring: 'Wow, what a view'. I was completely enthralled by everything Crystal Palace. It was my happy place. Then, at around 2.15pm, we'd amble over to the Holmesdale Stand at the other end of the ground where Dad had season tickets: upper tier behind the goal. We'd watch the game, soak it all up, then drive home listening to the 606 fans' phone-in on BBC Radio 5 Live. Those were some of the best days of my life. I probably didn't appreciate it at the time, but being a girl obsessed with football was an anomaly. As a teenager, I had a few friends who were Manchester United fans, mainly because they were David Beckham fans, but no one who actually went to football matches. But those trips were the focus of my fortnight. And Palace was everything. Those players were my heroes, up there with Take That, the boy band whose posters adorned my bedroom wall. Geoff Thomas, Ian Wright, Nigel Martyn, Gareth Southgate, Marc Edworthy… I used to write to our old midfielder Alan Pardew — he never wrote back — and I still get a little pang of disbelief whenever Mark Bright, one of our greatest strikers, messages me now. I named my goldfish 'Coppell' and, at 14, I chased one of our players, Simon Rodger, who was on crutches recovering from a broken leg, across the car park at Aston Villa, hoping to get his autograph. Advertisement We'd been having a picnic at the car before the FA Cup semi-final in 1995 and I didn't have a piece of paper, so my dad emptied a wine bottle and I presented that to Simon to sign. He must have thought I was such a weirdo. I kept that bottle for years in a wardrobe at my mum's house, only for her cleaner to discover it and deposit it in the recycling. Two decades later, my friends at Men In Blazers tracked Rodger down — he was working as a chauffeur in Bognor Regis — and sent him a bottle of champagne, which he signed for me. I still have it to this day. These are the players who decorated my formative years, who I would watch from our seats behind the goal. Of course things changed as I ventured into journalism and found myself next to the players I had idolised with a microphone in hand and a game to analyse. But my affinity for the club remained. The last game I saw Palace play live was the 2013 Championship promotion play-off final against Watford. I had just taken the job at NBC in the United States, covering the Premier League, and seeing the team go up just felt like the next stage of the rollercoaster, a high to be cherished for as long as it lasted. I turned to my dad at the final whistle and said: 'Well, this is fun. It means I'm going to have Palace in the Premier League for the first year in my new role at NBC.' We'd only last a year because we only ever lasted a year! Twelve years later, they are still there. And now I might see them make history. I left it about 10 minutes after the final whistle of Palace's 3-0 semi-final win over Aston Villa last month to call my boss at NBC, Pierre Moossa. Games may have been moved from the Saturday, but this is still a Premier League weekend and there's a show to roll out. Even so, I had to make my pitch to be at Wembley. I'd been practising what I was going to say for a while. Advertisement I'd missed out on Palace's first FA Cup final in 1990 because I was too young and watched us concede an equaliser to Manchester United seven minutes from the end of extra time on the television; the pain was gut-wrenching. We lost the replay 1-0 a few days later. I couldn't fly back for our next appearance in 2016, also against United, because I'd just given birth to my son, Teddy, and was nursing a three-week-old baby. I dressed him up in a Palace baby-grow and watched from home instead. This time, we were 12 minutes away from glory; again, it was snatched away. So this was my chance and, when Pierre picked up, I launched into my spiel. I explained about the two previous occasions. I could travel out late on the Friday, perhaps, and there was a flight back at 8pm on Saturday to New York, so we could do Sunday's show from there. I wasn't worried about a lack of sleep. I just needed to be at Wembley. He interrupted me mid-flow: 'Rebecca, you're fine. You're going.' I could honestly cry. I was so grateful. He just gets it. So I'm lucky enough to be a guest of the Premier League at the final, and I'm taking Teddy and my husband, Paul, to see the Palace. This is a pilgrimage. A return to Wembley, the stadium I could see from our house growing up and a ground I've been to many times since to present pitchside. But Palace being there makes it different. I've been struggling to sleep. I can't think about anything else. It churns my stomach up imagining us winning, of what it would mean for my dad, the chairman Steve Parish and everyone who has worked at the club for so long. But I'm scared of the pain if things don't go our way. Above all, though, I'm proud. Proud of the club and the fans. Proud to be a Palace fan and to support a club where this means something. Sir Alex Ferguson always used to say at Manchester United that, if you can't win the league, just win something every year just to tick along, and that's very much what City are trying to do after what's been a terrible season by their recent standards. Advertisement But this is life-changing for Palace. This is a line in the sand moment in people's lives. It isn't just ticking on. It is everything. All those years of relegations, the administrations when we feared the club might disappear entirely, the mid-table mediocrity in the Championship, or even watching players leave for bigger and better things: this would make all that worthwhile. I can't imagine what life is like as a City or Liverpool fan. Or even a Chelsea, Arsenal or, dare I say it, Manchester United supporter. They're in the same game as me, but their lives are completely different. And I'd rather have what I have because, when that joy comes — please, God, let it come — it's more elevated. If Palace win on Saturday, it'll be one of the top three days of my life, behind the birth of my boy and my wedding day. You can't say that if you support a team who have won so many trophies. I would always take quality over quantity. So I'm travelling 6,000 miles to watch them, but I'd travel 26,000 miles, 126,000 miles. This is everything and I'm so proud to share that hope and love for something that's been a thread in my life for as long as I can remember. (Top photos: Joe Prior/Visionhaus via Getty Images; Rebecca Lowe)
Yahoo
07-05-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Reading legend calls on Rob Couhig to 'build on foundations' for the future
Reading FC v Barnsley. Sky Bet League One 24/25. (Image: ©Jason Dawson) Legendary former Reading boss Steve Coppell has called for soon-to-be new owner Rob Couhig to 'build on the foundations' laid by Noel Hunt. 'Sir' Steve, a Manchester United and England legend in his playing days, famously took the Royals to the top-flight for the first time in it's history 20 years ago, in record-breaking fashion too. Departing in 2009 and having not managed in England for over a decade, the former skilful winger returned to the SCL Stadium on Saturday for the final day defeat to Barnsley. Few of the 21,500 supporters in attendance cared, however, as news broke earlier in the day that Couhig's takeover had been agreed pending 'legal technicalities.' We were joined by two members of Reading royalty on Saturday when Steve Coppell and Brian McDermott took part in a special Q&A in our Royals hospitality suite. You can watch the Q&A in full now on Royals TV 👇 — Reading FC (@ReadingFC) May 7, 2025 Speaking to supporters alongside fellow Championship-winning manager Brian McDermott, Coppell spoke of Hunt and the job he has done with the club, leading them to seventh in League One. Coppell signed Hunt back in 2008 but it was under McDermott that the Irishman won a Championship title, coming in 2012. "Brian brought Noel in. When he brought him in, I wasn't sure about him at first, but the warmth of his personality won everyone over, and he could play too. Two boxes were ticked. It's great to see him now with Gibbo, who worked with both of us, a solid football person. "The foundations are there. Let's hope the takeover happens and the foundations aren't thrown out but built upon for the future success of this very special football club." It has now been two decades since the Royals roared into the Premier League with 106 points, a Championship record. Only losing its status as an EFL record last month as Birmingham City won League One with 111, Coppell spoke of the 'season sent from heaven.' "For a moment in time, there was something very special. The season in which we got the record number of points was the season sent from heaven. After the first game at Plymouth when I drove home and thought 'not again'- 45 games later we were only beaten one more time. That will live with me for a long long time, until my dying day. "I look back on certain games and certain occasions- times where it looked like we were going to lose games- Derby away and Shane Long jumped higher than the crossbar to head an equaliser in the last couple of minutes, so many special occasions in that year and the next year, to a lesser extent. It was a culmination of a couple of years hard work from everybody and everything aligned. We had hungry players who had never played in the Premiership before, and they created a very special atmosphere. "If that atmosphere becomes a template for future teams at this club, then that is a legacy."
