{"id":131899,"date":"2025-11-10T09:34:05","date_gmt":"2025-11-10T09:34:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/131899\/"},"modified":"2025-11-10T09:34:05","modified_gmt":"2025-11-10T09:34:05","slug":"hoardings-showers-pink-dressing-rooms-the-creative-ways-clubs-get-an-edge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/131899\/","title":{"rendered":"Hoardings, showers &#038; pink dressing rooms &#8211; the &#8216;creative&#8217; ways clubs get an edge"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Forget moving the advertising hoardings, Graeme Souness brought in the actual touchlines.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">In September 1987, during his time as Rangers manager, the Scot decided he needed to take drastic action after his side were beaten 1-0 at Dynamo Kyiv in the first leg of their European Cup first-round tie.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Souness, who was never shy of a tackle during his own glittering playing career, thought a physical approach might be the way to beat the Ukrainian side at Ibrox.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">What better way to make it a more physical game than by making the pitch smaller and more condensed?<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;At that time, the pitch didn&#8217;t have to be a fixed width as long as it was above a certain minimum. So I made it the absolute minimum,&#8221; Souness told FourFourTwo.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Not only that, he waited until after the Kyiv players had trained on the regularly sized pitch before changing the dimensions on the day of the game.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It wasn&#8217;t purist stuff but it was within the rules,&#8221; Souness added.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Rangers won 2-0 to progress, and the rules were subsequently changed to prevent a repeat. Clubs now have to declare the size of their pitch before the start of a new season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Forget moving the advertising hoardings, Graeme Souness brought in the actual touchlines. In September 1987, during his time&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":131900,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-131899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131899"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131899\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/131900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}