Handy Guide to: Cardiff City FC

Researching tinterwebs for course materials for my new venture, 666’s Soccerball Tactics 101, I was amazed to find that our beloved Derby County entertain European opponents tomorrow in an uncompetitive nPower Championship fixture.

Amazed that Sepp and his cronies would sanction such a thing, I have scoured the supernets highway to glean all the info it could muster on Johnny Foreigner such that you may amaze your friends at the pub with ‘your’ knowledge.

Here we are then:

Formed as Riverside AFC in 1899, a full fifteen years after the birth of football, Cardiff City FC are from Wales, the country. For those sans geographical knowledge, Wales is to the mainland UK what giant buttocks are to popular ‘celebrity’ Kim Kardashian, ie the improbable and useless sticky-out bit.

They ‘play’ their ‘football’ in the imaginatively-titled “Cardiff City Stadium" in front of a potential 26,828 crowd although on average only 21,200 bother to pitch up. Given that football is only third favourite of their national sports behind egg-chasing and pretending that “Clwb Pêl-droed Dinas Caerdydd" is pronouncable, that’s not too bad.

Cardiff were the only foreign side to have won a major English honour, triumphing in the 1927 FA Cup final against Arsenal. Since then though, Arsenal and Chelsea have both won honours exclusively with foreigners.

Cardiff’s nickname “Bluebirds" was coined because the club from Wales that you will of heard of, Swansea, also have an ornithological moniker, Swans. In a poorly-disguised attempt to mimic the success of their famous rivals, Bluebirds was adopted.

Cardiff have more bottlers than Northern Dairies, having ‘made a number two’ in the play-offs every year since time actually began. In 08/09 it was Preston, 09/10 Blackpool, 10/11 Reading and in 11/12 it was West Ham’s fortune to get the perennial play-off bye.

Cardiff play in red, and now have a red dragon as the major element of their club crest, thanks to becoming the plaything of murky Malaysian ownership. Since Dave Jones, soon-to-be-sacked manager of Sheffield Wednesday, took the Cardiff reins in 2005 the club has had more club crests than it has managers.

Tan Sri Vincent Tan Chee Yioun is the man bankrolling the club and messing with it’s traditions. He has links with politicians over in Malaysia and was ‘awarded’ the country’s lottery franchise which was not subject to a lawful tender process. No ‘It might be you’ about it for Vincent, just a license to print money.

The Cardiff manager from 1996 to 1998 was Derbyshire’s own Russell Osman, movie star and former footballer.

Due to it’s nice position near the sea, many ex-Rams retire to Cardiff when their best days are behind them. Tommy Smith is currently out to pasture down there, as is Thalidomide-riddled Rob Earnshaw, albeit he’s on a brief holiday in Tel Aviv.

Craig Bellamy plays for Cardiff. I was going to slate him here as I have never liked him at all but, whilst researching this article, I have discovered what a top bloke he is and so will only him.

When Cardiff and Portsmouth contested the FA Cup, the FA tried to ban Welsh clubs from qualifying for Europe from English competition. Their attempted ‘clarification of the rules’ failed, but fortunately Portsmouth triumphed anyway and are presumably now doing very well out of their European exploits.

Famous fans of this Welsh minnow include: Dame Shirley Bassey, Shakin’ Stevens, the bird from Catatonia, un-funnyman Griff Rhys-Jones and Neil Kinnock.

Cardiff fans celebrate their very occasional goals by performing ‘The Ayatollah’. This is a movement of the hands above the head in a patting motion rather than issuing fatwa’s and murdering political dissidents; be careful not to get these confused.

Cardiff City used to have a ‘firm’ of football hooligans called “The Soul Crew" but, far from being hard as they would like us to think, in 1988 two Swansea supporters chased a group of thirty or more Soul Crew members into the sea, where they waited to be rescued by the police. Aw, diddums.

Nottingham Forest’s Peter Whittingham inexplicably continues to play for Bluebirds despite being sold to Forest two summers ago.

That’s all the information tinterwebs has on this Welsh minnow; please feel free to add any tidbits of your own such that we may all become enlightened.