The World Cup is well underway in Qatar now and although Coventry City have no current players at the tournament I’m sure City fans will be following the progress of Sky Blue Academy graduates Callum Wilson and James Maddison in the England shirt.
Trying to be topical I thought I would answer some World Cup themed questions.
Paul Brucculeri from Alderman’s Green asked me to remind him of the name of the long- bearded American World Cup defender who nearly signed for the Sky Blues many years ago. It was in 1994 after the World Cup in the USA when City attempted to sign US central defender Alexi Lalas. I’m sure he was close to joining the Sky Blues and did travel to Coventry but eventually signed for Italian club Padova. He played there for two seasons before returning to play for New England in the newly formed MLS. Lalas went on to win 96 caps for his country as well as appearing in the 1996 Olympic Games.
Paul also asked if City had had any US born players other than Cobi Jones (another star of the US 1994 World Cup team). There have been two others, Gerry Baker and Jack McBean. Baker, the son of Scottish parents, was born in New York State but his parents moved back to Scotland when Gerry was quite young. Gerry had a successful career north of the border and with Ipswich before signing for City in the twilight of his career in 1967. He played 34 games for the Sky Blues and won several caps for the USA.
Californian McBean came to the club on loan from LA Galaxy in that horrendous autumn of 2016 when Mark Venus had taken over as manager following Tony Mowbray’s departure. A striker, Jack made six appearances, three from the bench, failed to find the net and made very little impression on Sky Blue fans.
Wales are appearing in their first World Cup finals since 1958 when they massively over-achieved before narrowly losing to Brazil in the quarter finals. As with Gareth Bale today, Wales had a talismanic figure in John Charles, who had moved to Juventus a year earlier for a British record fee of £65,000. John Sills remembers City signing one of the Welsh heroes, Ron Hewitt a couple of years later.
John writes: ‘Ron arrived at City just in time for the semi-final and Final of the Southern Professional Floodlit Cup, scoring both goals in City's 2-1 win over West Ham in the final. If I remember correctly, his second goal came at the Spion Kop end as he cut inside the penalty area from his inside-left position, side-stepping a defender, and hitting a powerful low shot into the far side of the goal - or was it the near side? I used to commentate myself to sleep with that goal for many weeks afterwards - that victory being the high spot of my first year of following 'The Bantams'. I was 10 years old.’
The veteran Hewitt played 65 first team games for City and scored 26 goals but after Jimmy Hill arrived in late 1961 he was out of favour and in March 1962 joined Chester. He had won five full caps for Wales but never played for his country after the 1958 World Cup. In the team photo from 1960 with the Southern Professional Floodlit trophy he is far left in the back row.
.JPEG)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment