Luther Blissett (footballer)
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Luther Loide Blissett (born February 1, 1958 in Falmouth, Jamaica) is a footballer and coach. Blissett played as a striker for, amongst others, Watford, A.C. Milan and England during the 1980s.
He was one of the first black footballers to play for England, and scored a hat-trick on his first full international match - a 9-0 win over Luxembourg. He never scored in any other international however, which led tabloid newspapers to dub him "Luther Missitt".
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[edit] Playing career
Blissett made 246 appearances for Watford, his first club, between 1975 and 1983, scoring 95 goals (including 27 goals in the 1982-3 season). Blissett moved to Milan for £1m in summer 1983, but he was not as successful as he had been in England, as he scored only 5 goals in 30 appearances (it has been suggested that scouts confused him with another black player at Watford at the time, John Barnes). Blissett was sold, at a loss, back to Watford for £550,000 after only one season at the Italian club.
Blissett played for Watford for a second time until 1988 (scoring another 44 goals in 127 appearances), then moved to Bournemouth for three years, back to Watford (for a third time), before finishing his career with short spells at West Bromwich Albion, Bury, Mansfield and Derry City.
[edit] Coaching career
Following retirement from playing in 1994, Blissett rejoined Watford as a coach in February 1996, coming in with returning manager Graham Taylor. He left the club in June 2001, following the appointment of Gianluca Vialli as manager. Vialli wanted to appoint his own back-room staff, and thus Blissett was deemed surplus to requirements, to the anger of many fans.
In April 2002, he moved to York City to carry out a coaching role. He has since left this post and on February 15, 2006 was appointed manager of Southern League team Chesham United.
[edit] Blissett and the "Luther Blissett Project"
Blissett's name has been adopted by many people in radical activist circles as a nom de plume or collective alias when engaged in weird performances, media hoaxes, and the production of radical theory. The Luther Blissett multiple name project first began in 1994 in Italy, no doubt a consequence of his link with A.C. Milan, and has since then been widely used by artists, underground reviews, poets, performers and squatters' collectives in cities throughout Europe and South America. In 1999 "Luther Blissett" authored a historical novel called Q , which soon became an international bestseller.
On 30 June 2004 the real Luther Blissett took part in the British television sports show Fantasy Football League - Euro 2004, broadcast on ITV. He jokingly claimed that he himself was part of the Luther Blissett Project, and read aloud the following sentence from a LBP manifesto (in Italian): "Chiunque può essere Luther Blissett, semplicemente adottando il nome Luther Blissett" [Anyone can be Luther Blissett simply by adopting the name Luther Blissett]. Highlights of the show can be easily found on the web, on social video sharing websites such as YouTube.
[edit] Trivia
- Blissett holds the records for the most appearances (415) and scoring the most goals (158) for Watford.
- He has worked as a television pundit, for Channel 4 and Bravo's coverage of Serie A.
- Part of the set on Sky TV show Soccer AM is called "The Luther Blissett Stand"
- Blissett ran the 2005 and 2006 London Marathons in aid of the Peace Hospice. In 2005 he completed the course in five hours and 46 minutes ([1],[2]).
[edit] References
Categories: English footballers | 1958 births | Living people | England international footballers | Watford F.C. players | A.C. Milan players | A.F.C. Bournemouth players | West Bromwich Albion F.C. players | Bury F.C. players | York City F.C. players | Mansfield Town F.C. players | Football League of Ireland players | Non-Italian football players in Italy
