Beyond The Last Man
638 FOLLOWERS
Explore 20th century football writing and nostalgia in a skilled and cultured groove. Beyond The Last Man by Craig McCracken is the author's humble effort to help bridge that void; a place to retell some marvelous stories and share some wonderful old photographs that you might not be familiar with from the golden age of the game.
Beyond The Last Man
3w ago
1962: A fine Stade de Reims side featuring the brilliant Just Fontaine and Raymond Kopa stroll to a sixth post war French championship success. Twice European Cup finalists previously, the club looks forward to another European campaign as France’s foremost football ambassadors and one of the continent’s elite clubs. 1998: Those club stalwarts Just Fontaine ..read more
Beyond The Last Man
2M ago
On a largely forgotten world tour, a young pup who five years later would lift the World Cup at Wembley was being tutored by a footballing legend at the end of his glittering career. In 1961 Bobby Moore’s international career was beginning as Tom Finney’s was ending. This was the 20-year-old Moore’s first trip away ..read more
Beyond The Last Man
3M ago
We round off another year on Beyond The Last Man with our annual tribute to, and recognition of, the great footballers we have lost over the past 12 months. If you are new to our Deceased Eleven feature, each year end we assemble an imagined team featuring the very best of these footballers. Our selections ..read more
Beyond The Last Man
6M ago
The latest edition of our regular Shorts feature is distinctly Gallic in outlook, so get ready to shrug nonchalantly as BTLM gamely tries to amuse and inform you about the sometimes wacky world of French football in the 1960s. After a spate of physical attacks by supporters on opposing players and referees in 1960, officials at lower division ..read more
Beyond The Last Man
8M ago
International football in 1960s Europe represented something of a golden era for a number of the continent’s nations. England’s World Cup win in 1966 was an obvious pinnacle for the country that invented the game, but other nations like Portugal, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and even Sweden boasted some of the strongest ..read more
Beyond The Last Man
1y ago
Our final Coventry City Vintage post features yet more images of the club’s movers and the shakers during the late 1970s and early 80s. The Sky Blues were by now a fairly well established Division One club, albeit one prone to major and unpredictable swings in form from year to year: a very narrow escape from ..read more
Beyond The Last Man
1y ago
Alex Ferguson’s glorious tenure at Aberdeen peaked with the Cup Winner’s Cup triumph over Real Madrid in 1983, but, egregious as it may sound, is it possible he could have achieved more during those halcyon days at Pittodrie? The Dons were, for a period, rightly considered one of the best teams in Europe and their ..read more
Beyond The Last Man
1y ago
We love the wonderfully descriptive nicknames that the famous Italian journalist Gianni Brera gave to the top Serie A footballers of the day. Luigi Riva was the fortunate recipient of one of his most descriptive: to Brera he was ‘rombo di tuono,‘ or roar of thunder; an elegant and concise encapsulation of the way the Cagliari ..read more
Beyond The Last Man
1y ago
Ask a footballing layman what they know about Dutch club football and chances are the answer you’ll get will be a splash of Ajax, a pinch of Feyenoord and a smidgen of PSV – a natural response considering the extent to which the giants of Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Eindhoven dominate the Dutch game culturally and ..read more
Beyond The Last Man
1y ago
An annual Beyond The Last Man tradition is to dedicate our final post of the year as a tribute to and recognition of the great footballers who have sadly passed away over the past 12 months. We create an imagined team by selecting the very best of those players judged on the entirety of their ..read more