Richard Cawley has published the latest instalment of the Peter Varney diaries, this time giving the inside story of the Greatest Game.
You need to subscribe to Richard's excellent Substack page to get all the gems, but here is a taster extract about how Sasa Ilic became the keeper at Wembley.
'He had been playing in Yugoslavia but then was on the books
of St Leonards Stamcroft, a non-league side based in Hastings.
It transpired Sasa was standing outside our training ground,
holding a bag, and was stopping cars as they came in. He had decided he
wouldn’t write to the club about training with us, or ring up, he’d just come
up to Sparrows Lane.
The natural reaction is just to get rid of players in that
scenario. I think Curbs was the one who went down and asked what the story was.
They put him in a game, it wasn’t a first-team one, and they
thought he had something about him. It was a very similar story with Nick Pope.
He didn’t just rock up at the club but he came in from Bury Town - we gave them
something like £9,000 and some kit.
It was Keith Peacock who said: ‘I think Ilic has got
something about him, but he’s very, very raw’.
He got in the team and kept all these clean sheets. Still to
this day he makes out he made a wonder save from Gray and not that it was a bad
penalty. He was a character Sasa, you had to admire the fact he had a huge
amount of self confidence.'
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