You see the internet as something to win. The rest of us see it as something to bestride like a colossus.
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In the early era of satellite television there was an array of weird and wonderful channels which (sometimes) showed football from around Europe and the world.
I recall Super Channel and Sky Channel launching around maybe January or February 1987.
Super Channel showed highlights of the previous year’s Brazilian championship, which I think was knockout, featuring teams such as Sao Paolo, Fluminense and Internacional. Super Channel was, to be entirely fair, shit.
Sky Channel - which at this stage was heavily Dutch based - had an initial football offering of a Dutch football highlights show featuring a soundtrack of “Pride” by U2. This was pretty professionally done and comparable in quality to the highlights show of Italian football featuring Martin Tyler that RTE would later show around 1990-1992. Wim Kieft was the show’s Gazza, and featured quite heavily in interviews. When he headed in that googly in Gelsenkirchen in 1988 nobody in Ireland knew who he was but I knew all about him.
Screensport was already on the scene by then, lending its name to the Screensport Super Cup in the 1986-87 English football season, a competition in which Liverpool thrashed Everton in the final over two legs (I think). It mostly featured weird stuff like powerboats and catamaran racing, possibly featuring the sort of catamaran event that former F1 driver Didier Pironi was killed in in 1987. The reception on Screensport was always gammy and wobbly, a bit like my eyesight now. Screensport’s showpiece offering was Spanish football. Real Madrid v Barcelona games were covered live from about 1988. There was a Monday evening highlights round up up to and including around 1992.
Eurosport launched on February 5th 1989 as part of a new stable of Sky satellite channels along with Sky News and Sky Movies. It heavily featured stuff like skiing and Formula 1 and WWF Wrestling and a bit of Aussie Rules but definitely heavily covered the 1990 World Cup. There was Eurosport News each night, which to a young fella like meself was simply “the news”.
Around 1989 there was a stable of channels which launched called BSB (British Satellite Broadcasting). I never saw these channels as they weren’t carried in Ireland but they did exist. BSB was supposed to be a rival to Sky. I think it had its own dedicated sports channel. Martin Tyler left ITV to go to BSB and this was where he was first paired with Andy Gray. The initial Italian football highlights show RTE showed starting January 1990 was made by BSB with Tyler on commentary. In the latter stages of this BSB sports channel the Cablelink channel in Dublin started picking up feeds of live FA Cup games from BSB with Tyler and Gray on commentary. The day after the 4-4 between Everton and Liverpool in the 1991 FA Cup I went in to school to find everybody else had watched the game live on the Cablelink channel - but I had not been aware it was being shown because I was glued to the crackly medium wave reception of BBC Radio 2 in my kitchen. I did see the next replay when Everton won 1-0 (King Kenny was gone as Liverpool manager by this stage) live on the Cablelink channel.
Then in early 1991 (I think) Sky took over BSB and merged with it to be called British Sky Broadcasting. Part of the deal I think was that the BSB sports channel would effectively continue as a new rebranded Sky sports channel. This was Sky Sports which launched on April 15th, 1991.
This left Sky’s existing sports channel Europsort out in the cold and it ceased to exist on May 1st, 1991, but not until it had finished up covering its major events such as the European club basketball cup.
Then about three weeks later, Europsort was resurrected when it was bought by the French TV network TF1 but it no longer appeared on Irish terrestrial screens.
So at this stage there was Sky Sports (which I didn’t receive) and Screensport, which did a bang up job of covering the 1991 Copa America, as well as the resurrected but out of sight Eurosport. I was by this point buying World Soccer magazine, as nobody will be surprised to learn.
My world changed about March 1992 when my German teacher mammy unveiled a new satellite box featuring German channels and Sky Sports and the resurrected Eurosport. Sky Sports at this point was featuring live Serie A on Sundays and live Bundesliga on Friday nights (featuring INXS’s “Suicide Blonde” as the theme music) as well as live Scottish football with a bagpipe heavy soundtrack which endured up to 1998. And BDO darts, and rugby league, including the 1992 Ashes series from down under.
You’d sometimes find German football on the German satellite channels. I watched Celtic losing a UEFA Cup game to 1. FC Koln away in September 1992.
In the summer of 1992 Sky bought the Premier League and the world changed. It remained “free” (if you had the satellite box) until the end of August. Norwich 3 Nottingham Forest 1 on Monday August 31st 1992 was the last Premier League game I saw live for three years. Then it “scrambled”. You could still hear the commentary of live games, but you couldn’t see the picture.
Screensport then ceased to exist in about February 1993, it was subsumed into Eurosport. It was at this point that Eurosport entered its imperial phase, with Archie MacPherson coming on the scene and all sorts of weird and wonderful European club football being thrown our way, especially the Dutch, French, Belgian and Portuguese leagues. Maybe a bit of Swiss or Austrian football too. And lots of UEFA Cup.
Anyway, that’s enough of that rambling.
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Youre talking through you hat now.
Mate, you’re trying to put Stuart Pearce beside Maldini because he was a sparks. All you’re lacking is @ChairmanDan to come in and back you up.
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Brilliant 
Not sure as to the scale of drinking involved with Brehme. When I was in Germany about 10 years ago, he was in the news. He had just been declared bankrupt, had been homeless and had got a job cleaning toilets.
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My primary memory of Belgian club football from this period was Club Brugge conceding this bizarre goal against Rangers at Ibrox in the 1992/93 Champions League. It was obvious Rangers’ name was on the European Cup that year.
I know @mickee321 is a great fan of Anderlecht’s Constant Van Den Stock Stadium, which featured heavily on Eurogoals with Archie MacPherson.
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Wasn’t there some bizarre video of him around a year ago or so, almost like a porn video or something? I can’t remember the details but I do recall people saying he looked unrecognisable.
Philip Lahm is probably the best left back I’ve seen in my lifetime. He offered so much
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The lad from Clyde who finished Roy Keane’s career was a subbie for Stuart Pearce
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There’s a great story about Cloughie bringing Pearce down to earth after being capped by England. He threw his wife’s iron on dressing room floor and told him have that fixed by Saturday or your dropped
You’re not the only one who was never the same after the German channel
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Lizarazu was class as well
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Stuart was different class.He could peel a banana with his left foot and teach Christy Browne how to do it.
A pure wizard.
Stuart Pearce was one of the rrrrraaaaarrrrr generation of English football managers who rather predictably turned out to be not very good.
A cracking player.
He had Basque links which allowed him to play for Bilbao.
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Stuart Pearce as a manager summed up. He didnt even give James a heads up he was going to do this. He even had the shirt printed.
Kiki Musampa popped into my head the other day. I was wondering where he ended up. He’d be late 40s now. I have no idea.
the wry smile from pearce when james wiped out 2 middlesborough lads at the end 
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There was no better crosser of a ball than Stig-Inge Bjornebye
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Speaking of Liverpool players, Jim Beglin would have been a world class left back only for the leg break
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