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154 pages

English

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I'm with the Cosmos' was the phrase New York Cosmos players used to get a table reserved at the city's best restaurants or skip the queue at the glamorous Studio 54 nightclub. And it was one Steve Hunt became used to trotting out, after he was transferred from Aston Villa to New York Cosmos at the tender age of 20, having played just seven times for the first team at Villa. He walked straight into a world of celebrity and a team of superstars including two of the world's finest players, Pele and Franz Beckenbauer. This is Steve's story of those heady days in New York - but also a stellar career back in England during the early 1980s. Returning to the West Midlands, Steve played for Coventry City, West Bromwich Albion and returned to his beloved Aston Villa for a second spell - and at the age of 28, he won the first of two England caps under Bobby Robson, realising an ambition held since early childhood. This is Steve's story, and in it he writes frankly about his football career, as well as his life outside the game.

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Publié par	Pitch Publishing Ltd
Date de parution	08 mars 2021
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781785319068
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0500€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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First published by Pitch Publishing, 2021
Pitch Publishing
A2 Yeoman Gate
Yeoman Way
Durrington
BN13 3QZ
www.pitchpublishing.co.uk
Steve Hunt with Ian McCauley, 2021
Every effort has been made to trace the copyright.
Any oversight will be rectified in future editions at the earliest opportunity by the publisher.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the Publisher.
A CIP catalogue record is available for this book from the British Library
Print ISBN 9781785317620
eBook ISBN 9781785319068
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Contents
Acknowledgements
Foreword by Adrian Chiles
Introduction by Ian McCauley
1. Freddie s Head
2. The Ron Saunders Charm School
3. I m With the Cosmos
4. You Want a Cathedral? Coventry City Song
5. The Good, the Bad and the Baldy
6. Tackle Him! Bring Him Down!
7. Bingo! We re Down
8. I Should Have Thought About That
9. Sweet FA and Other Matters
10. Heroes and Villans (Not Baddies, Not Villains)
11. The Big Six
12. Subbuteo in the Snow: Reflections on a Friendship, by Dean Brookes
13. It s Worth a Try
Bibliography
Photos
This book is dedicated to my family, including my soulmate and wife, Kirsty, who has been an endless source of guidance and understanding.
Acknowledgements
A HUGE thank you to Ian McCauley and to Kathryn Dignan for their dedicated efforts with this project. Thanks also to Kath s brother, Patrick Dignan, for introducing me to Ian and Kath. Thanks to Mike Pearson, whose expertise with photographs has been invaluable. Finally, many thanks to Adrian Chiles for his kind words in the foreword, and to Paul and Jane Camillin at Pitch Publishing for their support.
Foreword by Adrian Chiles
I ONCE saw a beautiful thing at the Hawthorns. It was in the mid-1980s, when things of beauty were in short supply for West Brom fans, but this one would have shone in any era. I was standing behind the goal, about halfway back in the Birmingham Road End. I can t remember who we were playing. The penalty area was congested and one of our players had the ball on the edge of the area but instead of hammering it, hitting and hoping into the melee, he executed one of the most sublime chips I ve ever seen.
The ball rose above the madding crowd before dipping under the crossbar. So it was that Steve Hunt imprinted himself forever on my footballing consciousness.
He already had an air of mystery, devilment and the downright exotic about him. He had started out at Aston Villa for a start, never something to commend a man to any West Brom fan. Even worse, he left us to go back to them, but I ll let that pass. And then there was the exotic something else of which we were dimly aware: his time in New York City with the Cosmos.
Blokes from Birmingham who had played for the likes of Villa, Coventry and us, generally didn t also have a stint with Pel under their belts. What was that all about? For the teenage me it was quite difficult to get my head around, until the arc of that chip somehow made sense of it all.
It must have been 25 years later when his name came up at work. Steve Hunt! What on Earth is he doing now? Somebody told me he was working at a caravan park on the Isle of Wight. Now there s nothing wrong with working on a caravan park on the Isle of Wight, far from it, but it s not what I felt comfortable with for one of the finest players I had ever seen in my club s colours. I got to interview him on a radio show, but not for long enough to get the whole tale now told here.
Footballers stories always enthral me, but they re getting slightly less interesting all the time. These days they re all rather similar: a kid is spotted at an alarmingly early age and then gives up much of their childhood for the chance of a career in the game. Heartbreakingly few make it but many of those who do trouser an awful lot of money in a short time before fading into comfortable obscurity. I don t begrudge them any of it, but stories like Steve s are more interesting than that. It s the story of a life in the sport told by a gifted footballer who played the game just off the shoulder of the household names, the legends even, we re all familiar with. His perspective is fascinating.
I have to tell you I wasn t Steve s first pick to write this foreword. His first choice was Pel , which is fair enough. It s quite an honour to play second fiddle to Pel , and even more of an honour to write these words for Steve. Enjoy his story.
Introduction by Ian McCauley
A Shaft of Light
In the 1971/72 season, Aston Villa were in the third tier of English football. It was an ignominious position for a club with such a distinguished history. It was also a depressing period for their supporters, which is perhaps why they responded with such enthusiasm to the news that the world s greatest player, Pel , was going to grace Villa Park. Although the old stadium always had an air of grandiosity, much resented by city rivals Birmingham City, the ground still retained the Witton End terrace, which was no more than a mound of earth into which concrete steps had been inserted. There was no stand.
For modern players and supporters, it is impossible to convey first-hand how exalted Pel was. He transcended the game in much the same way that Lionel Messi does today. The difference was that the English public had been denied regular access to Pel s genius. He had been crudely treated by opponents in England during the 1966 World Cup. Today, we can watch Messi s club football live on TV, he can be seen in England at Champions League games, and we marvel at his genius over and over again on YouTube. We had watched Pel in World Cups but he played his club football in Brazil for Santos.
By this time, Santos, with their world-class players, and with Pel as the main attraction, were like the Harlem Globetrotters. Keen to cash in on the great Pel , Santos had been playing a series of exhibition friendly matches in Europe for many years. Aston Villa supporters were unworried by the commercial aspect of this fixture; all they knew was that they had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see this genius live at the grand old ground.
Some 55,000 Brummies gathered at Villa Park. The country was in the midst of the miners strike; Villa were in the Third Division. Why wouldn t anybody want to lighten the gloom? For people who didn t have the opportunity to see Pel play, this report from The Times gives a sense of his brilliance, Trying to contain Pel is like trying to capture a shaft of light in a matchbox. At one moment he looks as harmless as a sleeping cat. The next he has disappeared into open space with feline speed, sliding past man after man so that they are left in a maze looking for the ball.
Santos played as if it were an exhibition game, whereas Villa were eager to gain a notable scalp. Villa won 2-1 but the result didn t really matter. Pel was playing at half-pace, but still produced a range of flicks and feints, and a range of passing that produced excited gasps from the Brummies in the crowd. He was given a rapturous reception, the Villa fans chanting his name, and constant appeals were made for fans to climb down from the floodlights (which incidentally failed at one point, holding up the match).
At the end of the game the crowd was ecstatic, not because Villa had won but because they could say that they had seen the great Pel in the flesh. They could boast about the day they saw the best footballer on the planet.
One Birmingham boy of 16, however, would soon trump that. He was an apprentice at Villa on that day and had his photograph taken with the great man. Born and bred within spitting distance of Villa Park, five years later he could truthfully state that Pele was his team-mate. This is the extraordinary football story of that Birmingham boy.
He s Behind You
On 28 August 1977, in the 19th minute of the game between New York Cosmos and Seattle Sounders, Steve Hunt scored one of the most memorable goals in his career, and one of the most important in American Soccer Bowl history. Look closely at the footage and you will see a wonderful pass from Giorgio Chinaglia with the outside of his left foot. You will then see a determined run from Steve. The ball, however, was gathered by the goalkeeper, Tony Chursky. Steve had outpaced the full-back and just failed to make it - his run had taken him beyond the goal line and Chursky had gathered the ball. Did Tony forget that Steve was still there? He seemed to take a glance. Did he see Steve and just not reckon on his pace and determination?
The keeper rolled the ball to his left, by which time Steve had sensed what was possible. The keeper had his back to him. One of Tony s Seattle team-mates was shouting, warning Chursky that Steve was behind him. By the time the keeper had realised the danger Steve had nudged the ball with his left foot. A futile race to the line ended with the keeper rugby-tackling Steve, but that little nudge with his left foot was history.
Steve runs away with one arm aloft to be held in the embrace of a beaming Pel - the superstar he had been thrilled to be photographed with at Villa Park. This was Pel s last game of competitive football: the Soccer Bowl Final between New York Cosmos and Seattle Sounders. We all felt responsible, said Steve. We wanted to do it for Pel . This wasn t Steve s only contribution to the great Brazilian s last game. He produced a perfect left-footed cross for Chinaglia to