On this day 10 March

Covered in Blatter...

The man who brought us silver goals...

 

When he’s not suggesting that female players should wear “tighter shorts”, Joseph "Sepp" Blatter, born today 72 years ago, has been trying to change the game of football beyond all recognition. The FIFA President since 1998, Blatter is responsible for a few of the more barmy rules introduced into the game in recent years. Namely the ‘silver goal’ and ‘golden goal’ (so well received they’ve both now been scrapped) booking players who remove their shirts or are guilty of ‘over-zealous’ celebrations, or that that no football matches will be played above 2500 metres. Probably the most highly-paid jobsworth in the world.

Today in 1945, 300 American bombers dropped 2,000 tons of fire bombs on Tokyo, killing 100,000 civilians, and 29 years later today, a Japanese soldier was found still living in fear in the Phillippines unaware that the war had actually ended. And they say ignorance is bliss. On a lighter note, Sandy Shaw released Puppet on a String in 1967, which would go on to win the Eurovision Song Contest for Britain, while inventor Alexander Graham Bell is the man indirectly responsible for all those crap BT ads, when he made the first telephone call today in 1876.

And we say Brian Howard! as they say in Barnsley to former England ‘B’ International Chris Sutton (35), Northern Irish music and sport monkey Colin Murray (31), Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden (51) and martial arts hard-nut Chuck Norris (68).