ccfcchris
Well-Known Member
I wasn't aware of this.
With its moles, sleeper agents, intelligence, counterintelligence, top-secret files protected by impenetrable encryption codes and electronic surveillance, the clandestine world of espionage is not one you would readily associate with famous footballers. Despite Ryan Giggs’s urbane sophistication, rugged good looks and smouldering sex appeal, he is unlikely ever to be considered as a replacement for James Bond should the MI6 agent decide to hang up his Walther PPK. The Manchester United midfielder’s well-documented attempt to keep a secret couldn’t have been less successful if he’d personally called every house in the UK and told the occupants exactly what it was he didn’t want them to know.
Of course it’s a sweeping generalisation to suggest that, just because one might not necessarily trust West Ham’s striker Andy Carroll to successfully pull off a clichéd park-bench briefcase swap with a Russian counterpart, it is inconceivable a professional footballer might one day be considered to work for the secret service. However, one can’t help but feel that if the current head of MI6, Sir Robert Sawers, was looking to recruit someone from the professional ranks to investigate a shadowy crime syndicate run by an evil cat-stroking megalomaniac, the former Coventry City goalkeeper Steve Ogrizovic would hardly be the first port of call, even if he was a famously safe pair of hands.
The Joy of Six: football celebrations gone wrong
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Younger readers may not be familiar with the man they call Oggy, an aesthetically challenged former policeman and FA Cup-winning Coventry legend who had a famously crooked nose, made 507 appearances between the sticks for the Sky Blues between 1984 and 2000 and most recently made headlines when he was forced to confirm that, contrary to speculation that he’d been thrown in jail by the Kazakhstani government on suspicion of spying, he was in fact safe and well on the sovereign soil of his native England.
According to a petition posted on www.petitiononline.com in 2003, Ogrizovic had been travelling the world using only public transport in an attempt to raise money for a charity called Over The Bar, which was devoted to helping young goalkeepers develop their skills as athletes. On his way through Kazakhstan, the petition informed readers, the unfortunate Ogrizovic had accidentally trespassed on to private military land, resulting in the hapless tourist’s incarceration. “The British embassy has contacted the Kazakhstani government but nothing has come of this,” wrote the author of the Free Steve Ogrizovic appeal. “Here is our petition to Tony Blair and the Kazakhstani government demanding the release of footballing legend Steve Ogrizovic and protesting his innocence.”
Anyone in doubt of Oggy’s popularity among Coventry supporters was quickly set straight when a whopping total of just under 300 people flocked to sign the petition calling on Kazakhstan to release their hero, a number that, in the intervening nine years, has mushroomed to more than 700. “Please free Steve as he’s a bent-nosed hero to millions,” implored one signatory. “He’s obviously innocent and this is no way for a rubbish goalkeeper to have to spend his time,” wrote another.
A reporter from the Coventry Evening Telegraph, detecting the whiff of rodent in the air, becoming suspicious of the story of Ogrizovic’s internment and using the kind of dogged investigative techniques for which the names of the Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein have long been synonymous, eventually managed to discover that the then academy director wasn’t in fact languishing in a Kazakhstani cooler, by going to the club’s Ryton training ground … and asking him.
“This is a complete hoax,” said a slightly surprised Ogrizovic, upon being told of his plight. “I haven’t a clue where it has come from. I haven’t made any trips to Kazakhstan lately – nor am I planning to. I can only assume that with the well-documented breakthroughs in science of late, I have obviously been cloned.” While Oggy’s good humour in the face of such a bizarre and potentially upsetting story is to be commended, it is perhaps worth noting that although he emphatically denied ever having set foot in Kazakhstan, to this day he has never said he isn’t a spy. Barry Glendenning
With its moles, sleeper agents, intelligence, counterintelligence, top-secret files protected by impenetrable encryption codes and electronic surveillance, the clandestine world of espionage is not one you would readily associate with famous footballers. Despite Ryan Giggs’s urbane sophistication, rugged good looks and smouldering sex appeal, he is unlikely ever to be considered as a replacement for James Bond should the MI6 agent decide to hang up his Walther PPK. The Manchester United midfielder’s well-documented attempt to keep a secret couldn’t have been less successful if he’d personally called every house in the UK and told the occupants exactly what it was he didn’t want them to know.
Of course it’s a sweeping generalisation to suggest that, just because one might not necessarily trust West Ham’s striker Andy Carroll to successfully pull off a clichéd park-bench briefcase swap with a Russian counterpart, it is inconceivable a professional footballer might one day be considered to work for the secret service. However, one can’t help but feel that if the current head of MI6, Sir Robert Sawers, was looking to recruit someone from the professional ranks to investigate a shadowy crime syndicate run by an evil cat-stroking megalomaniac, the former Coventry City goalkeeper Steve Ogrizovic would hardly be the first port of call, even if he was a famously safe pair of hands.
The Joy of Six: football celebrations gone wrong
Read more
Younger readers may not be familiar with the man they call Oggy, an aesthetically challenged former policeman and FA Cup-winning Coventry legend who had a famously crooked nose, made 507 appearances between the sticks for the Sky Blues between 1984 and 2000 and most recently made headlines when he was forced to confirm that, contrary to speculation that he’d been thrown in jail by the Kazakhstani government on suspicion of spying, he was in fact safe and well on the sovereign soil of his native England.
According to a petition posted on www.petitiononline.com in 2003, Ogrizovic had been travelling the world using only public transport in an attempt to raise money for a charity called Over The Bar, which was devoted to helping young goalkeepers develop their skills as athletes. On his way through Kazakhstan, the petition informed readers, the unfortunate Ogrizovic had accidentally trespassed on to private military land, resulting in the hapless tourist’s incarceration. “The British embassy has contacted the Kazakhstani government but nothing has come of this,” wrote the author of the Free Steve Ogrizovic appeal. “Here is our petition to Tony Blair and the Kazakhstani government demanding the release of footballing legend Steve Ogrizovic and protesting his innocence.”
Anyone in doubt of Oggy’s popularity among Coventry supporters was quickly set straight when a whopping total of just under 300 people flocked to sign the petition calling on Kazakhstan to release their hero, a number that, in the intervening nine years, has mushroomed to more than 700. “Please free Steve as he’s a bent-nosed hero to millions,” implored one signatory. “He’s obviously innocent and this is no way for a rubbish goalkeeper to have to spend his time,” wrote another.
A reporter from the Coventry Evening Telegraph, detecting the whiff of rodent in the air, becoming suspicious of the story of Ogrizovic’s internment and using the kind of dogged investigative techniques for which the names of the Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein have long been synonymous, eventually managed to discover that the then academy director wasn’t in fact languishing in a Kazakhstani cooler, by going to the club’s Ryton training ground … and asking him.
“This is a complete hoax,” said a slightly surprised Ogrizovic, upon being told of his plight. “I haven’t a clue where it has come from. I haven’t made any trips to Kazakhstan lately – nor am I planning to. I can only assume that with the well-documented breakthroughs in science of late, I have obviously been cloned.” While Oggy’s good humour in the face of such a bizarre and potentially upsetting story is to be commended, it is perhaps worth noting that although he emphatically denied ever having set foot in Kazakhstan, to this day he has never said he isn’t a spy. Barry Glendenning
