Goodison Park has undersoil heating, so ours was one of them.”All the postponements meant it also became Match of the Day. I had one of my best games and Trevor Brooking highlighted some of the things I did that night. It was hardly the most glamorous of moves – “no one else wanted me,” McCarthy said with disarming candour – but within six months circumstances conspired to bring his blend of touchline trickery and hard graft to a wider audience.The Potteries club forced a deserved draw at Everton, then the FA Cup holders “Only a handful of ties were played because of the weather. They beat Uruguay to take third place, after which McCarthy, by now a BSc in Sports Science, graduated to the full-time ranks at York.John Rudge made him Vale’s record buy in 1995. I remember it well because Helen Sharman, the British astronaut, dropped the torch and the flame went out!”Britain reached the semi-finals before losing to the Dutch.
“He’d just been transferred from Wednesday to Leeds and you could already see he had that something extra.”He had to speak at the opening ceremony because he was the local boy. He is also determined to make more of his second experience of the fifth round than he did of the first, which by coincidence was also against Leeds.”David was the one who stood out in the 1991 Games in Sheffield,” McCarthy recalled. On Saturday the First Division play-off contenders will be striving to reach the FA Cup quarter-finals at the expense of Leeds, a contest which the 27-year-old Teessider awaits with even greater anticipation than usual.One reason is the prospect of matching his progress against that of David Wetherall, a team-mate and friend from the British student side who is now vice-captain and defensive mainstay for the Yorkshire club. A bronze medal from the World Student Games was followed by promotion with York.
Then came a pounds 450,000 transfer to Port Vale and World Cup combat with Northern Ireland.Last September brought a pounds 1.5m switch to Birmingham, equalling their highest outlay, and with it the possibility of Premiership football. When their small squad was depleted by injuries, they remembered McCarthy. The student winger seized his second chance.As befits a late starter, he has crammed more into the ensuing years than most players do into two decades. He was allowed to drift off to college in Nottingham, where he subsidised his rent by earning pounds 25 a game from Shepshed Charterhouse while consoling himself that he at least had played League football.
And that might have been that had the management duo who gave him his debut, John Bird and Alan Little, not resurfaced at York two and a half years later. McCarthy’s first appearance, as a 17-year-old to whom the gathering of 1,002 seemed “a big crowd”, was nearly his last.
EVEN by the standards of Andy Warhol’s famous-for-15-minutes dictum, Jon McCarthy looked to have been short-changed All he got was 10 as substitute for Hartlepool and then.. nothing. The goal, from Predrag Radosavljevic, the former Everton and Portsmouth forward, not only put the Americans in the final of the 10-nation tournament, but was the first by a US player against Brazil in 68 years.. If they don’t do that and it costs us points, it is going to cost them money.”The United States defeated Brazil for the first time on Tuesday, beating the world champions 1-0 in the semi-final of the Concacaf Gold Cup in Los Angeles. He said: “Players are given a specific job to mark an opponent at set pieces.
There was good news for Ferdinand as well, after his damaged ligament turned out to be bruised, not torn as first feared.Manchester United have put back the kick-off of their Good Friday match against Liverpool at Old Trafford by half an hour after religious groups objected to the original 3pm start, because that is the time they commemorate Christ’s death.Alex McLeish has swapped one struggling Scottish Premier Division side for another, after he left Motherwell to become the new manager of Hibernian yesterday.Chris Kamara, the Stoke manager, is encouraging his players to defend at set pieces by fining them for not marking. Gross has to lead his attack with Armstrong, although he is not yet 100 per cent fit, because Jurgen Klinsmann, Les Ferdinand, Steffen Iversen and Rory Allen are all injured.Klinsmann yesterday returned to training for the first time since fracturing his jaw a week ago and Gross expects the German to be playing again in about three weeks’ time. I am looking to build for the future and Stephen is an important part of that future.”
Wenger also said yesterday he was “very hopeful” that Ian Wright would be fit to face Crystal Palace in the FA Cup on Sunday, while Dennis Bergkamp’s fear of flying means he will not be travelling with Marc Overmars for the Netherlands’ matches in the United States and Mexico, and so will be available for Arsenal’s league game against Palace the following weekend.
Christian Gross, the Tottenham manager, yesterday pulled Chris Armstrong out of a reserve game to ensure the striker was fit to make his first senior start since November against Leicester at White Hart Lane on Saturday. Arsene Wenger, the Highbury manager, said: “It is important to keep talented young players at the club. STEPHEN HUGHES, who scored twice against Chelsea on Sunday, has finally signed a new five-year contract with Arsenal. The 5,000m there is very important.”And Sunday’s meeting in Birmingham is very important for British athletics, launching as it does a new era of major domestic meetings.
