Carlos Alberto, former captain of Brazil and scorer of that goal in the 1970 World Cup final, sadly has died.

The goal, which summed up that team – and perhaps Brazilian football as a whole – came after a brilliant sequence of dribbling and passing which culminated in Pele’s pass, apparently rolled to no-one, but perfectly timed for Carlos Alberto to gallop into the frame and thump the ball past Enrico Albertosi. Sublime.

The only drawback of the clip below is that it isn’t accompanied by Kenneth Wolstenholme‘s BBC TV commentary, where about halfway through it he said, “This is sheer delightful football!” more iconic to me than his other well remembered phrase “They think it’s all over.”

A reminder of a simpler, freer, less monetarily compromised time:-

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Carlos Alberto “Capita” Torres: 17/7/1944 – 25/10/2016. So it goes.

One of the enduring memories of my childhood and early adolescence is the animated BBC TV series Noggin the Nog, one of that long list of delightful creations from the team of Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin which also included Ivor the Engine (a bit early for me,) The Clangers and Bagpuss (a bit late.)

Noggin the Nog was such a hit with my schoolmates that one of our secondary school teachers was dubbed with the nickname of the show’s baddie, Nogbad the Bad.

Each episode always had an intro narrated against the muted strains of Hall of the Mountain King, “In the lands of the North, where the Black Rocks stand guard against the cold sea, in the dark night that is very long the Men of the Northlands sit by their great log fires and they tell a tale,” which then went on into that particular storyline.

Noggin the Nog intro:-

Noggin and the Ice Dragon:-