I'm an admirer of Frank Lampard, as both a Chelsea player and a Chelsea manager, so I liked this observation by
Dan Jackson in a piece on the backgrounds of England's Euro 2020 squad:
Although the class profile of football supporters has changed a lot since the 1960s, the team itself seems as resolutely working-class as it ever was - there was no space in the squad for the genuinely posh Patrick Bamford of Leeds United (of the JCB digger dynasty), a public school footballer in the mould of Frank Lampard - whose A* in Latin GCSE probably made him the most accomplished Latinist to play for England since C.B. Fry.
2 comments:
Patrick Bamford has repeatedly denied being a member of the Bamfords that own JCB, though having been to Nottingham High School he is fluent in conversational French.
Michael Dawson, product of the same Nottingham Forest academy, has a GCSE in Pottery, which earned him the nickname 'Professor' amongst his centre back colleagues.
Thanks for that! In my day they would have called him "Bamber".
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