News about Alan Ball

Footballers today are too namby-pamby, and they're badly marred by gamesmanship. The sight of players diving to gain an advantage - to get a foul or win a penalty - is disgraceful. Stratospheric salaries have created a huge gap between the players and the fans whose season tickets and TV subscriptions pay their wages. The afternoon after my hat-trick, I went home to Hornchurch and mowed the lawn. The car looked like it could use a wash, so I did that, too. I think it's safe to say Judith's experience had almost nothing in common with the glamorous life of a modern footballer's wife.

LEWIS STEELE: This is a mistreated club where time has stood still - certainly off the pitch with a carousel of chaos at board level in recent years - but one for whom a brighter future awaits on the horizon. On this particular morning there are blue skies but, still, gloomy clouds often congregate above the stunning new docklands stadium. While there are green shoots of positivity - which we will come on to - Everton are still the Premier League's most uncertain club.

JOE BERNSTEIN: Tens of thousands of Mail readers have voted over the summer to choose the greatest-ever player at every current Premier League club. Thank you to everyone who participated either through our online poll or by email. With the 2024-25 top-flight season beginning on Friday August 16, we are revealing all the winners this week.

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW BY AADAM PATEL IN BERLIN: Guy Mowbray sits down in a Berlin cafe and recalls our encounter on the night that England stumbled to victory over Serbia in their first game of the tournament. Put simply, it wasn't the most optimistic of conversations about England's display in Gelsenkirchen but the BBC's lead commentator recalls his own words from the end of that game. 'I hope they (BBC) include it in the edit for the final, he says. 'I was trying to rationalise the performance and came out with, "Teams that win tournaments tend to grow into tournaments." I don't tend to remember these things but I hope that ages well.' Just four days after the Serbia game, Mowbray signed off England's 1-1 draw against Denmark with: 'Goodness me, that was a hard watch at times.'

Sir Geoff Hurst (pictured left and right, centre) shared how he is filled with 'great sadness' when he looks back on memories of his early career as the last surviving member of the 1966 World Cup-winning team. The England striker famously scored three as Sir Alf Ramsey's side beat West Germany 4-2 at Wembley to win the national men's team's only major trophy 58 years ago. But the death of Sir Bobby Charlton at the age of 86 last October following a battle with dementia left Hurst - who spent the bulk of his career at West Ham - as the only remaining hero from the final-winning team.

Nicklas Bendtner is well-known for his love of designer trainers. But among Arsenal fans, the Dane is perhaps even more renowned for some of the iconic moments of brilliance he has delivered on the football pitch.  One memory that will forever live long in the mind of Gunners supporters will be his sensational goal in the 87th minute against Dynamo Kyiv that secured Arsene Wenger's side a berth in the knockout stages of the tournament back in November 2008 - notably in his iconic pink boots.  While some credit Everton's Alan Ball for being the first player to wear white boots, it was here that Bendtner became the first player to sport a pair of pink boots in the Premier League. 

A Quavers crisp packet from almost half a century ago has been dug up accidentally by a man in his back garden. Cenk Albayrak-Touye unearthed the remarkably intact - watertight, with no holes at all - snack in Poole, Dorset, and they are dated October 31, 1975. The 28-year-old also found an old beer bottle but said it was the yellow packaging that first caught his eye, before confirming it was the 'curly potato puffs' after washing it clean. 'I was digging up the garden to re-turf the lawn and started finding all this rubbish,' he said. 'It was like a time capsule. I saw this yellow packet covered in dirt and I hosed it down to find it completely intact. It was like it had been put there yesterday.'

Sir Geoff Hurst has spoken of the 'extreme sadness' he feels when he sees a picture of England's 1966 World Cup winners - with the hat-trick hero now the only surviving member. Hurst famously scored three as Sir Alf Ramsey's side beat West Germany 4-2 at Wembley to win the national men's team's only major trophy 58 years ago. The death of Sir Bobby Charlton at the age of 86 last October following a battle with dementia left Hurst - who spent the bulk of his career at West Ham - as the only remaining hero of 1966.

EXCLUSIVE BY MATT BARLOW: Jimmy Rimmer reaches out a hand and apologises for the state of his grip. 'Like the hands you see in horror films,' he says drily, running a finger along some of the artificial joints. 'It's not pretty is it? That's plastic in there, and that, and that's been frozen,' explains the 76-year-old former Manchester United, Arsenal and Aston Villa goalkeeper. 'At least I'm still alive,' he laughs. 'They only gave me two days to live, you know.' This seems like a good place to start. Rimmer was living in Vancouver when he suffered a heart attack, collapsing as he climbed out of his Jeep on a routine trip to the bank.

Two ancient rivals clash once more. Mighty founders of the Football League with their rich pasts and whelming recent histories, as well as an intricate storyline that made their match the most controversial of all top-flight fixtures. They are in Liverpool today for the 212th time in all, and their records are so close that they barely have four victories and three goals to distinguish them over 135 years. They have 34 major trophies between them, with at least one in each decade from the beginning of organised football to the start of this millennium, minus the 1940s when war intervened.

Mail Sport talked to 'El Tel' in 2018 about making waves in Carnaby Street with Rodney Marsh, Alan Ball, and Terry Mancini, England's progress under Gareth Southgate and Mohamed Salah's quest to be the best footballer in the world.

IAN LADYMAN: It was February 6, 2018, the 60th anniversary of Sir Bobby's life so irrevocably, and as he sat and listened to an address by United chaplain John Boyers, it began to snow in Manchester. The crash occurred six decades ago in snow. It was snow that killed his fellow workers. Snow that turned his life in a way that was not for the best. However, Sir Bobby's expression did not change the day as the clock ticked past 3.04 p.m., the time of the disaster.

Sir Bobby Charlton's death at the age of 86 leaves only one surviving member of England's 1966 World Cup final triumph over Germany. Sir Geoff Hurst, the team's longest player from the side that famously defeated West Germany 4-2 after extra time at Wembley, is now the only living player from the team. Sir Bobby's family reported his death on Saturday.

Despite being sick, the 1966 World Cup winner bravely posed for snaps as he obtained his coronavirus vaccine in 2021. Sir Bobby, who was dressed in a white shirt and red jacket as he held an NHS leaflet about the jabs. It came a year after his wife Norma announced that the footballer had been diagnosed with the illness, which also claimed the lives of his brother Jack in 2020. Lady Norma, Suzanne and Andrea, and his grandchildren are the England and Manchester United players.

MATT BARLOW: As he ducks through the door, Mick Lyons imitates the Everton legend. A regal presence with a warm smile, solid handshake, and the club emblem on his rain jacket was absorbed in tales of how he fell in love with the club. On matchdays, he and his brother Joseph would ride the 44D bus to make sure they were outside Goodison Park when the gates opened so they could dash to the old scoreboard. 'We'd be in there dead early, and we'd run to sit in the old box where they changed the scores,' Lyons says. We'd watch the game from there.' They were crowned 1963-63 in the league. Alex Young, a great player.'

Trevor Francis, the first-ever £1 million player, has died on Friday. His conversion from Birmingham City to Nottingham Forest was historic at the time, as a pre-cursor to the exorbitant sums we see today. So how has the transfer record in Britain evolved down the years and risen to the peaks we see today?

Everton has been a fixture in the top flight since 1954, but their Premier League status is on the line. Goodison Park's game against Bournemouth on Sunday has been billed as the biggest of modern times in recent history, and has dominated every supporter's thoughts. The DOMINIC KING of Mail Sport spent the week canvassing fans' opinions.

FAN VIEW - BRIAN VINER: With all the controversies surrounding Sunday's final round of Premier League matches, there's one thing you should not miss: around 6.30 p.m., an outside broadcaster will look at the available camera photos and select one of a young fan sobbing inconsolably, most likely next to a stricken parent. And the photograph may well be that it came from one of England's oldest citadels, Goodison Park. For as long as I can remember, I've been on TV for as long as I can remember. However, the dissatisfied little poppets were never in Everton blue.

INTERVIEW BY JACK GAUGHAN: About three weeks before achieving his Manchester City debut, James McAtee was kicked to shitee at Glanford Park. In front of 860 people, Papa John's Trophy match for the club's Under-21 team against Scunthorpe United was decided. The glamour of Glamour. And the hospitalization wasn't his fault. In the city's faraway end, the true villain sat. John McAtee, the brother of three years old, was a step forward. Since turning down a new deal, John had left the Iron for Grimsby Town. It was all raw.

CHIEF SPORTS WRITER: I stayed there for a while, admiring a print of Sir Geoff's iconic photograph on July 30, 1966, with his left leg extended in front of him and the ball soaring toward the West Germany net, one of the finest sports action photographs ever shot, CHIEF SPORTS. It was England's fourth goal in the World Cup Final and Hurst's third. The BBC commentator Kenneth Wolstenholme was quoted somewhere in the stands as 'They think it's all over,' and "it is now". Sir Geoff is one of the few links to a fading world, a link to a period of glorious past that we may never fully understand. Only he and the great Sir Bobby Charlton from the Boys of 66 remain, and the team is regarded as the youth that gave England its best sporting moment nearly 60 years ago. One of the lessons we can learn from the Gary Lineker affair, which the BBC should have heeded, is that there is a strong link between the sporting heroes of yesteryear and the fans. It's impossible to break the unity and near-unanimity of football's support for Lineker, not a World Cup champion but one of our best ever goalscorers, was another reminder of the affection in which we hold the game's icons.

MATT BARLOW: The country ground came to a halt with the train workers and lorry drivers on strike, schools closed, inflation soared, politics collapsing, and football gorged on a gluttony of spending. This was February 1979 and the dog days of Discontent's winter. Nottingham Forest paid Birmingham City £1.18 million for Trevor Francis, less than a month after West Bromwich Albion had been the first to crack the £500,000 barrier. Chelsea's new US owners have returned to action, while football remains immune from the nation's highest cost of living crisis, as train drivers strike, schools close, and inflation rises. Some things don't change.

When England defeated West Germany 4-2 in 1996, the late footballer wore the number seven red shirt. He was also awarded the medal, which went for twice the estimated value at auction this week. The mementos from the 1996 World Cup were first available in 2005, only two years before the former Man City and Southampton boss died of a heart attack at the age of 61. After Bobby Moore's death in 1993, he was the second member of the winning team to pass away.