England went over 37 years without scoring directly from a free-kick

 

Everyone loves a free-kick; a moment of pause and tension in a game that's often played at breakneck speed, and one that requires an exquisite level of skill to execute. And it's this difficulty in actually hitting the back-of-the-net that's the subject of this very article, as amazingly the English National Team failed to score directly from a dead-ball situation for almost four decades.

In their first 66 (really) years the Three Lions managed to put the ball past the keeper straight from a set-piece half-a-dozen times, but between the 2nd December 1936 and the 29th May 1974 they failed to add even on more to their tally.

Even after they broke this particular duck pickings continued to be slim with only a further 4 over the next twenty years. 

Indeed, it wasn't until the emergence of David Beckham, England's top-scoring free-kick taker of all time (although arguably not the "greatest" as second place man Eric Brook had a far better return), that things really took a turn, although the average is still around one every four years, and still only three English players in history have achieved more than a single goal from un calcio di punizione diretto (as they call it in Italy):

1. David Beckham (1996-2009, 115 caps) - 6
   
2. Eric Brook (1929-1937, 18 caps) - 3
3. Wayne Rooney (2003-2018, 120 caps)- 2

The most recent (as of writing) was Kieran Trippier in 2018, which is already four years ago, but not to worry, that leaves us another 33 until this article needs to be updated... Which is a relief given the rate I write at!

Alex Ferguson is a very angry (and succesful) man.

Love him or hate him, you can't deny that Manchester United boss Alex Ferguson has won a frightening amount of medals. In fact you could say that the only thing more intimidating than the size of his trophy cabinet is his notoriously short temper.

Indeed the Grizzly Glasweigan's outbursts and overreactions have become a matter of routine over the years. Some of the more bizarre (and most infamous) include kicking a boot at David Beckham, gatecrashing Ryan Giggs and Lee Sharpe's house party,branding Paul Ince a "big time charlie", refusing to speak to the BBC after they questioned his son's business dealings and even going as far as boycotting Manchester United's in house television channel MUTV after they criticised his tactics.

However perhaps strangest of all was when the then-Aberdeen manager fined his star striker John Hewitt for overtaking him in his car. As in they were both driving on a road. And John Hewitt overtook the car in front. And Alex Ferguson was driving that car. And that apparently merits a club fine.

Most would agree it would've been fair for Ferguson to at least seek an explanation from Hewitt before issuing the fine. After all he might just have really needed to go to the toilet!