The Knowledge: April fool!

Posted Thursday, March 31, 2011 by theguardian.com

The Knowledge: April fool!
Michel Platini mulls over another gag.

"As it's April Fools' Day on Friday, can you remember any of the 'best' japes in football history?" asks Eric Benson.

Football-related April fools gags? Seeing it would be too cheap to point out that David N'Gog was born on 1 April 1989, and mean to boot, here's a random selection of All Fools Quips Modest (you'll understand later) gleaned from the pages of this very august journal.

We begin with a couple of classics from 1991. When Notts County visited Bristol City, the Magpies manager Neil Warnock handed the referee a teamsheet containing the England line-up from the previous week's international against the Republic of Ireland. That County line-up in full (including two Nottingham Forest players): Seaman, Dixon, Adams, Pearce, Walker, Wright, Robson, Platt, Beardsley, Lineker, Barnes.

Meanwhile the Sheffield United midfielder John Gannon took a phone call from the club office. "Could you get to the ground by 9am on Monday morning in your matchday suit for a new team photo?" asked a voice down the line. Gannon duly arrived, tarted up to the nines. Bramall Lane was, needless to say, deserted.

In 1985, Michel Platini, Werder Bremen and a West German television station ganged together in order to mock up a story of the Juventus midfielder's transfer to the German club. It would be the lead item on the news. "I have achieved all that is possible with Juventus," said Platini, who was preparing at the time for a European Cup semi-final against Bordeaux. "The time has come for a fresh challenge." Werder's players were shown toasting the transfer with champagne. "The news was received with astonishment, doubly so when it spread to Italy," reported Patrick Barclay in the Guardian soccer diary. "But then even April Fools' Day is conducted with Teutonic efficiency in the land of the Bundesjoke."

In 1996, Tomas Brolin was forced to apologise to his manager at Leeds, Howard Wilkinson – "as well as the chairman and managing director in person," added Sgt Wilko – after telling Swedish television that he was to leave Elland Road for a loan deal with Norrköping. It was supposed to be a gag, and one causing an outbreak of high amusement no doubt, but news agencies picked up the story and wired it around the world, much to Brolin's chagrin.

Life has since imitated art, but in 1997 an announcement was made in the Sun newspaper that Gary Lineker was ready to purchase Leicester City, with the intention of turning the stadium into a crisps museum and renaming the club Lineker Crisps FC. "Stunned Gary tried to deny the takeover when the Sun confronted him," reported the paper, "but he finally admitted: 'It's in the bag'."

In 1988, the Russian newspaper Isvestia reported that Diego Maradona was going to sign for Spartak Moscow. It turned out to be their April fool joke. A made-up transfer! Tee hee, Isvestia! And to think newspapers in England were publishing this sort of nonsense for real on the other 364 days of the year.

Ten years later, millions of Portugal fans were tricked into thinking their team had been granted a reprieve in the World Cup, having failed to qualify for France 98. A Lisbon broadcaster announced that Iran had decided not to bother taking up their place "for security reasons", and that Fifa had chosen Portugal as their replacement. The station even went to the lengths of recording spoof quotes in English from "Fifa officials" confirming the story. The spoilt British, meantime, thought they had it bad with Alan Green.

Just before a match at Goodison Park in 2000, Watford police informed their Merseyside counterparts that Elton John was planning on landing his helicopter on the pitch. He wasn't, though. Not exactly sure what the police were trying to gain by doing this.

And to conclude in slightly unhinged fashion, here's some vaguely football-related April fools tomfoolery from the first world war. It's from the 17 April 1915 edition of this paper, written in the free jazz style, and headlined "The Quip Modest":

"There are some jests that have more wisdom in them than much solemnity can boast, and that which 'Eye-witness' describes in his latest dispatch was one of them. On 1 April a British airman dropped upon the quarters of some German troops in Lille what appeared to be a large bomb, and stayed long enough above the scene of his exploit to make sure that the startled enemy, when they were sufficiently reassured to approach what was, as a matter of fact, merely a football, had read and appreciated the message attached to the bomb – 'April fool! Gott strafe England!' The German temper being what they are only too ready to prove it, this must have been a very subtle and successful form of attack; for having made a national duty of a hatred as heavy as the potato bread which feeds it, it is highly annoying to be laughed at for your pains and to see what should have been the blood-curdling slogan of that hatred tossed back to you as an All Fools' Day greeting. The wisdom of the jest lies in the fact that it embodies what is so very much the best way of acknowledging this gloomy, elaborately drilled Teutonic fury, if it has to be acknowledged at all. This Quip Modest is vastly more effective than any retorts in kind, if only because the Germans have so abundantly proved themselves incapable of it. Whereas the Germans, if they hold any communication at all with us, can only give us the Lie Direct and invent fresh and fearful stages of dispute we, in the intervals of carrying on the war very vigorously, can yet get back now and then to Quips Modest or even Retorts Courteous. This, apparently, the Germans cannot do, and the failure is not a symptom of strength."