Luther Blissett (footballer)

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Luther Blissett
Personal information
Full name	Luther Loide Blissett
Date of birth	1 February 1958 (1958-02-01) (age 50)
Place of birth	Falmouth, Jamaica
Playing position	Striker (retired)
Senior clubs1
Years	Club	App (Gls)*
1975–1983 1983–1984 1984–1988 1988–1991 1991–1992 1992–1993 1993 1993–1994	Watford A.C. Milan Watford Bournemouth Watford West Bromwich Albion Bury Mansfield Town	246 (95) 030 0(5) 127 (44) 121 (56) 042 (10) 003 0(1) 010 0(1) 005 0(1)
National team
1982–1984	England U21 England	004 0(?) 014 0(3)
1 Senior club appearances and goals counted for the domestic league only. * Appearances (Goals)

Luther Loide Blissett (born 1 February 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. This made him the first black player ever to score a hat-trick for the national team. He never scored in any other international however, which led tabloid newspapers to dub him "Luther Missitt".

Contents 1 Playing career 2 Coaching career 3 Personal Life 4 Blissett and the "Luther Blissett Project" 5 Career statistics 6 References 7 External links

[edit] Playing career

Blissett made 246 appearances for Watford, his first club, between 1975 and 1983, scoring 95 goals (including 27 goals in the 1982-1983 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. 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, Southport, and Derry City.

Blissett presently holds the Watford club records for the most appearances (415) and scoring the most goals (158).

[edit] Coaching career

Following retirement from playing in league football in 1994, Blissett created a huge stir in the Eastern Counties League by agreeing to play for Fakenham Town FC in Norfolk, whose chairman was a lifelong Watford fan, and big crowds turned out wherever he played. He then 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 May 2002, he moved to York City to carry out a coaching role.^[1] He later left that post and on February 15, 2006 was appointed manager of Southern League team Chesham United. However, in April 2007 it was announced that Blissett would leave Chesham at the of the season to concentrate on his involvement with the Windrush Motorsport project that aims to enter the Le Mans 24 hour race.^[2]

[edit] Personal Life

Blissett has worked as a television pundit, for Channel 4 and Bravo's coverage of Serie A.

With fellow former footballers John Barnes and Les Ferdinand, he has founded Team48 Motorsport, a team aiming to promote young racing drivers of Afro-Caribbean background. For 2008 they enter the British Touring Car Championship, running Alfa Romeos for white Jamaican Matthew Gore and 18-year-old black Briton Darelle Wilson.

[edit] Blissett and the "Luther Blissett Project"

Main article: Luther Blissett (nom de plume)

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 an 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 are available on YouTube.

[edit] Career statistics

Club Performance			League		Cup		Total
Season	Club	League	Apps	Goals	Apps	Goals	Apps	Goals
England			League		FA Cup		Total
1975-76	Watford	Fourth Division	3	1
1976-77			4	0
1977-78			33	6
1978-79		Third Division	41	21
1979-80		Second Division	42	10
1980-81			42	11
1981-82			40	19
1982-83		First Division	41	27
Italy			League		Coppa Italia		Total
1983-84	Milan	Serie A	30	5
England			League		FA Cup		Total
1984-85	Watford	First Division	41	21
1985-86			23	7
1986-87			35	11
1987-88			25	4
1988-89		Second Division	3	1
1988-89	Bournemouth	Second Division	30	19
1989-90			46	18
1990-91		Third Division	45	19
1991-92	Watford	Second Division	42	10
1992-93	West Bromwich Albion	Second Division	3	1
1993-94	Bury	Third Division	10	1
1993-94	Mansfield Town	Third Division	5	1
Total	England		554	208
	Italy		30	5
Career Total			584	213

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• BBC Sport article
• FA website profile
• ThisIsYork profile

Awards
Preceded by Kevin Keegan	First Division top scorer 1982–83	Succeeded by Ian Rush