May 14, 2011: Manchester Football's Greatest Day

May 14, 2011: The greatest day in the history of Manchester soccer -- "football," as they would say.

Manchester United clinch their 19th League title, breaking the record they shared with Liverpool FC. They needed only a draw in 1 of their last 2 games of the season, or a loss by Manchester City and a loss by Chelsea FC in either of their last 2 League games, and the title was theirs. They got their draw, 1-1 with Blackburn Rovers at Ewood Park in Blackburn, Lancashire.

But Man City, with the wealth of the United Arab Emirates' royal family and government behind them, win their 1st trophy of any kind in 35 years, and their 1st FA Cup in 43 years, defeating Stoke City of Staffordshire in the Final at the new Wembley Stadium in West London.

Yaya Touré scores the game's only goal, in the 74th minute. Rather than a member of the royal family, as is usually the case, City's Captain, Carlos Tevez, who had famously left United for City, received the Cup from a recent hero of the British Army's effort in the War On Terror in Afghanistan, Corporal Mark Ward.

It begins a run that has now reached 12 seasons with 6 League titles, 2 FA Cups, 6 League Cups (including this season's), and a berth in the 2021 UEFA Champions League Final. As for Stoke, it remains the only FA Cup Final in their history. They have been playing since 1863, and have just 1 major trophy, the 1972 League Cup.

Yaya would have set a new record for highest uniform number worn in an FA Cup Final, 42, had not his teammate Mario Balotelli worn 45. That would remain a record until, 11 years later to the day, Trent Alexander-Arnold wore 66 for Liverpool in the 2022 Final. (UPDATE: The record was broken again in 2025, by Manchester City left back Nico O'Reilly, who wore 75. Alexander-Arnold remains the highest-numbered player for a winning team.)

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May 14, 2011, like all FA Cup Final days, was a Saturday. American-style football was out of season. The NBA Playoffs were in progress, but no games were played. One game was played in the Stanley Cup Playoffs: The Tampa Bay Lightning beat the Boston Bruins, 5-2 at the TD Garden in Boston. The Bruins went on to win the series, and the Cup, anyway.

And these Major League Baseball games were played:

* The New York Yankees lost to the Boston Red Sox, 6-0 at the new Yankee Stadium. Josh Beckett allowed 4 hits over 6 shutout innings, Matt Albers 2 over 2, and Rich Hill 1 in the 9th, outpitching CC Sabathia. Derek Jeter went 1-for-4 with a walk. Alex Rodriguez went 1-for-4. Adrián González hit a home run for the Sox.

* The New York Mets lost to the Houston Astros, 7-3 at Minute Maid Park (now Daikin Park) in Houston. J.A. Happ outpitched R.A. Dickey. Daniel Murphy hit a home run for the Mets.

* The Florida Marlins beat the Washington Nationals, 1-0 at Nationals Park in Washington. Anibal Sánchez pitched 8 innings of 3-hit shutout ball, and Juan Carlos Oviedo completed the 4-hit shutout.

* The Atlanta Braves beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 5-3 at Turner Field (now Center Parc Stadium) in Atlanta. Martín Prado and Nate McLouth hit home runs for the Braves.

* The Baltimore Orioles beat the Tampa Bay Rays, 6-0 at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Florida. Brad Bergesen pitched a 4-hit shutout. Mark Reynolds and Jake Fox hit home runs.

* The Cincinnati Reds beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 7-3 at Great American Ball Park in Cincinnati.

* The Detroit Tigers beat the Kansas City Royals, 3-0 at Comerica Park in Detroit. Brad Penny pitched 8 innings of 5-hit shutout ball, and José Valverde pitched a perfect 9th.

* The San Francisco Giants were leading the Chicago Cubs, 3-0 after 6 innings, when the game was called due to rain. Ryan Vogelsong had allowed 7 hits over 6 shutout innings.

* The Milwaukee Brewers beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 8-2 at Miller Park (now American Family Field) in Milwaukee.

* The Toronto Blue Jays beat the Minnesota Twins, 9-3 at Target Field in Minneapolis. José Bautista hit a 2-run home run in the top of the 11th inning, opening the gates to a 6-run inning.

* The Los Angeles Angels beat the Texas Rangers, 3-2 at Rangers Ballpark (now Choctaw Stadium) in the Dallas suburb of Arlington, Texas.

* The San Diego Padres beat the Colorado Rockies, 9-7 at Coors Field in Denver.

* The Arizona Diamondbacks beat the Los Angeles Dodgers, 1-0 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. How many Diamondbacks does it take to pitch a 4-hit shutout? This time, 4: Josh Collmenter allowed 2 runs over 6 innings, Aaron Heilman pitched a perfect 7th, David Hernandez allowed a hit in the 8th, and J.J. Putz allowed a hit in the 9th.

* The Oakland Athletics beat the Chicago White Sox, 6-2 at the Oakland Coliseum (then named the Overstock Coliseum).

* And the Cleveland Indians and the Seattle Mariners were rained out at Progressive Field in Cleveland. The game was made up as part of a doubleheader on August 23.

March 9, 1946: The Burnden Park Disaster

Burnden Park, Bolton, circa 1946

March 9, 1946: A 2nd-leg tie of the Football Association Cup Quarterfinal is played at Burnden Park, a soccer stadium in Bolton, in what is now Greater Manchester, in the North-West of England. It ends in disaster -- and not because of the game itself.

This was the 1st FA Cup tournament held after World War II, and every round from the First Round Proper to the Sixth Round (the Quarterfinal) was held over 2 legs, 1 at each team's ground. (At the time, "stadium" seemed too grand a word for many of the venues in question). In the 1st leg of this round, at the Victoria Ground in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, Bolton Wanderers beat Stoke City 2-0.

For the return fixture, a crowd estimated at 85,000 people crammed into Burnden Park, a ramshackle structure built in 1895. Unlike in American baseball, there was no building boom in English football when concrete and steel stadiums became viable early in the 20th Century. Many of the old wooden structures were still in place as the Century neared its end.

And the crowds were bigger than ever, following the suspension of Football League and FA Cup competition at the dawn of the 1939-40 season, as the British Empire entered World War II. Buildings like Burnden Park were simply not designed with that many people in mind. Indeed, the gates were closed at 2:40 PM, 20 minutes ahead of the traditional English football kickoff time, because the stadium stewards didn't think any more people could fit in.

Shortly after the 3:00 kickoff, fans started spilling out of the Railway End, the stadium's north end, onto the pitch (the field). The referee, George Dutton, stopped the game, and had the pitch cleared. But two of the standing-room barriers on the End collapsed, and the crowd fell forward, crushing those underneath.

Unaware of this occurrence, Dutton restarted the game. But a police officer came onto the pitch to tell him that a fan had died. Dutton called over the Captains, Harry Hubbick of Bolton and Neil Franklin of Stoke, told them, and the players left the pitch.

After half an hour, in which the dead and injured were carried out, the game was restarted. Stanley Matthews, the Stoke superstar known as "The Wizard of Dribble," said that he was sickened by the decision. Not surprisingly, the game had little urgency, and ended 0-0. Thus, Bolton won 2-0 on aggregate, and advanced to the Semifinals.

It was later determined that 33 people had died, with over 400 injuries. It was the worst stadium-related disaster in British history, and it remained so until the Ibrox Park disaster in Glasgow, Scotland in 1971. It has also been surpassed by the Hillsborough Disaster in Sheffield, Yorkshire in 1989.

The FA Cup Semifinals were played on March 23. Bolton went to Villa Park in Birmingham, home of Aston Villa, and were beaten 2-0 by Charlton Athletic of South-East London. At Hillsborough Stadium, where the aforementioned 1989 disaster would occur, Birmingham City and East Midlands team Derby County played to a 1-1 draw. A replay was held on March 27 at Maine Road, home of Manchester City, and Derby won that game 4-0. The Final was played on April 27, at the original Wembley Stadium in West London, and Derby beat Charlton, 4-1 in extra time. There were no security or safety incidents at any of these games.

A benefit match for the Burnden Park victims was held on August 24, 1946, at Maine Road. The national teams of England and Scotland played to a 2-2 draw.

Following the Hillsborough Disaster of 1989, it was ruled that all British stadiums would be converted to all-seater. This doomed most of the old stadiums that hadn't already been modernized, as it became cheaper to build an entirely new stadium than to fix up and maintain the old one. Conversion to all-seater left Burnden Park with a capacity of around 25,000.

Burnden Park, near the end

In 1997, Bolton Wanderers moved to what's now known as the University of Bolton Stadium, with a seating capacity of 28,723. Burnden Park was demolished in 1999, and an Asda supermarket is now on the site. (UPDATE: In 2023, Bolton's new home was renamed the Toughsheet Community Stadium.)

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March 9, 1946 was a Saturday. Among the other English soccer games played that day was Arsenal losing to Chelsea, 2-1 at Highbury, North London.

It was the off-season for the NFL. The NBA would be founded a few weeks later. And baseball was in Spring Training.

There was an NHL game played on the day, or rather the night, as the Canadian Broadcasting Company broadcast it live on coast-to-coast (or, as they tend to say in Canada, "sea-to-sea") prime-time radio. The Montreal Canadiens defeated the Toronto Maple Leafs, 2-1. The Leafs were defending Stanley Cup Champions, but would not make the Playoffs this time. The Canadiens would win the Cup, beating the Boston Bruins in the Finals.

February 27, 2010: The Attack On Arsenal's Aaron Ramsey

February 27, 2010: Arsenal Football Club, of North London, travel to Staffordshire in the West Midlands, to play Stoke City, a team already known for its thuggish behavior.

A month earlier, Stoke, hosted Arsenal at the Britannia Stadium (now named the Bet365 Stadium), in the 4th Round of the FA Cup. Stoke played its usual starters, while Arsenal manager Arsène Wenger, surveying what had become an annual event, an injury crisis, fielded a team of prospects and washed-up veterans, and lost, 3-1, getting knocked out of the tournament.

I had begun following and supporting Arsenal the season before, 2008-09, by going into New York City and watching games with British expatriates and American fans of the Premier League, in bars that had the cable-TV package necessary to show the games. For reasons I've since forgotten, I did not make the trip to see this game. And with the cable TV package I had at the time, I could not have watched this game at home. So I only found out about what happened afterward, online.

The game was tied, 1-1 in the 66th minute, Arsenal's goal having come from Nicklas Bendtner, when Aaron Ramsey, a 19-year-old Welsh midfielder who had already begun to make his mark for Arsenal, got tackled by Stoke captain Ryan Shawcross, breaking Ramsey's leg.

This followed incidents from 2006, when the leg of Abou Diaby had been broken by a purposeful tackle by Dan Smith of Sunderland; and 2008, when Eduardo da Silva suffered the same fate from Martin Taylor of Birmingham City.

Arsenal would win the game 3-1, with stoppage-time goals from Cesc Fàbregas and Thomas Vermaelen. They still had a shot at the Premier League title and the UEFA Champions League, but those runs ended up equally broken: Arsenal finished 3rd, 11 points behind League winners Chelsea of West London; and were knocked out of the CL by FC Barcelona in the Quarterfinals.

Shawcross was accused of injuring Ramsey on purpose. The argument from Stoke fans -- and pretty much everybody who hated Arsenal -- was, "He's not that kind of player." He was that kind of player. Andrew Mangan, the Irish fan who has run Arseblog since 2005, called Shawcross "Lennie," after the developmentally-disabled giant in John Steinbeck's novel of Mice and Men, who accidentally kills animals and even a young woman, because he doesn't know his own strength. The difference is, Shawcross knew exactly what he was doing, every time he launched a horror tackle.

Ramsey needed 9 months before he could play again, although, unlike Eduardo, he came back more determined than ever. In spite of Stoke's troglodyte fans singing, "Aaron Ramsey, he walks with a limp," seemed to play particularly well against them.

Ramsey scored the winning goals in the 2014 and 2017 FA Cup Finals, and also played in the victorious 2015 FA Cup for Arsenal. In other words, he won 3 major trophies; while Stoke, in business since 1863, have won just 1, the 1972 League Cup. Ramsey would also be named Captain of the Wales national team.

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February 27, 2010 was a Saturday. This was also the day that Wayne Bridge of Manchester City refused to shake hands with John Terry of Chelsea during pregame introductions at Stamford Bridge in West London, a game that City went on to win, 4-2. It was because Terry had been revealed to have had an affair with Bridge's girlfriend. I have a separate entry for this event.

Baseball and American-style football were out of season. The NHL was on a break, so that its players who had been selected for the Winter Olympics in Vancouver could play in them.

There were 7 games in the NBA:

* The New York Knicks lost to the Memphis Grizzlies, 120-109 at Madison Square Garden.

* The New Jersey Nets beat the Boston Celtics, 104-96 at the TD Garden in Boston.

* The Milwaukee Bucks beat the Miami Heat, 94-71 at the American Airlines Arena (now the Kaseya Center) in Miami.

* The Indiana Pacers beat the Chicago Bulls, 100-90 at the Conseco Fieldhouse (now the Gainbridge Fieldhouse) in Indianapolis.

* The Portland Trail Blazers beat the Minnesota Timberwolves, 110-91 at the Target Center in Minneapolis.

* The Utah Jazz beat the Houston Rockets, 133-110 at the Delta Center (then the EnergySolutions Arena) in Salt Lake City, Utah. Deron Williams led all scorers on the day with 35 points.

* And the Golden State Warriors beat the Detroit Pistons, 95-88 at the Oakland Coliseum Arena (then named the Oracle Arena).