Given that Fulham’s former American hero Brian McBride will be returning to Craven Cottage for Saturday’s game against Portsmouth, it seems appropriate to take a look back at his Fulham career. He was a rather low-key replacement for Louis Saha but noone was berating Chris Coleman for putting faith in a hardworking striker from Arlington Heights by the time his Fulham career came to a close, ironically enough on the pitch at Fratton Park after our Great Escape a couple of years ago.
You will all have your own great memories of McBride, both as a player and a man. He scored plenty of important goals, but none was perhaps more crucial than his spectacular overhead kick that gave Fulham a priceless lead against Pompey in a do-or-die encounter at the Cottage in early April 2005. It was a game Coleman’s side looked like losing, having trailed for a long time to a first half strike from Lomana LuaLua, and then missing a penalty through Steed Malbranque. Andrew Cole hauled Fulham back level, but it was when McBride – still being used as a substitute ocassionally at this point – replaced Claus Jensen that the home side really went for.
He produced a quite brilliant overheaded kick, which was a wonderful piece of improvisation after a mistake by Arjan de Zeeuw and some hesitancy from goalkeeper Jamie Ashdown gave him a sight of goal. It was hardly the kind of agility you’d expect from an ageing forward never blessed with any great pace but, as we know, McBride never gave a second thought to putting his body on the line. You can see the goal at about 0:50 into this video, which might bring a few more memories flooding back:
Fulham went on to win 3-1 and comfortably avoid the drop in the end, thrashing the unfortunate Norwich 6-0 in the sunshine on the last day of the season, with McBride instrumental again.
Let’s hope Brian gets a deserved standing ovation when he walks out at half time on Saturday. He certainly gave us plenty to cheer.
Everton goal when he returned from injury, was one of my favourites, especially as we were on Sky and I was watching it in Plymouth students union, everyone else probably thought i was crazy when I was going mental when it went in!
Spent a few lazy afternoons in the Plymouth Student Union myself. That was a terrific moment, especially his lingering pose saluting the Hammersmith End after he’d scored too.