GARFORTH JUST LIKE WATCHING BRAZIL
They say if you don’t ask, you don’t get – but often, polite enquiries take you about as far as a beached whale attempting a triathlon. Sometimes, you have to be a bit more proactive.
Or, like Simon Clifford, you befriend the father of your boyhood football team’s new Brazilian signing, learn a different language in two months, convince your wife that it’s a good idea to take out a £5,000 loan and spend your summer holiday searching for Pele, Romario and Zico in South America.
Clifford, then in his late-20s, was a humble teacher in Leeds with a longstanding passion for coaching young players. He may have been relatively inexperienced, but he was steadfast in his belief that English football was missing something significant.
“I was in love with football from my very first Middlesbrough game,” he tells FourFourTwo. “I liked creative players – my favourite at Boro was Terry Cochrane, who introduced me to the stepover. When I watched the Brazil team at the 1982 World Cup, though, I thought, ‘Wow, that is how a team should play football’. I was backing England in that tournament but I fell in love with Brazil. Every player could control the ball and had dexterity.
“SOCRATES GAVE ME A MARLBORO AS A GIFT – I ENDED UP SMOKING FOR NINE YEARS BECAUSE OF HIM”
“When England failed to qualify for USA 94, I wasn’t very happy. I watched Graham Taylor: An Impossible Job and thought, ‘Deary me, is that the best we’ve got?’ I started to study how the Netherlands and Italy play, and had been trying to do the same with Brazil but couldn’t get hold of any proper materials.”
A NEW STAR OF SAO PAULO
For years, Clifford’s boyhood enchantment had been merely that. It wasn’t until the arrival on Teesside of a pint-sized playmaker by the name of Osvaldo
