JOE’s Forgotten Footballers: Franz Carr

When someone says Franz Carr, you'd be forgiven for thinking of vehicles belonging to Love/Hate characters. To those of us of a more mature persuasion, we remember an incredibly pacey winger who played for Nottingham Forest. Franz Carr played for a plethora of clubs. He's played for Nottingham Forest, Sheffield Wednesday, West Ham, Newcastle United, Sheffield United, Leicester City, Aston Villa, Reggiana in Serie A, West Bromwich Albion and finally in the States with Pittsburgh Riverhounds. It's his time with Forest which we remember best. Under the stewardship of the great Brian Clough (pic below), Forest were a real force in English football. Not quite the force of old when they were winning European Cups for fun, but a force nonetheless. It was a team which had players such as Neil Webb, Steve Sutton, Garry Parker, Nigel Clough and Des Walker. Carr was a speed merchant winger. Alas, there wasn't much more to dear old Franz. He was a head-down-arse-into-the-wind kind of player. The speed of an Olympic sprinter with the crossing ability of a chicken in a bad joke. Tracy Chapman was so taken by his speed that she wrote a song about him, ahem... Brian Clough, his manager often voiced his frustrations about Carr and in typical idiosyncratic fashion described him 'as the best bloody corner flag hitter in the country, if only that was where the net was!' Such statements can't have been good for his confidence, but Clough continued to pick the winger where he contributed to Forest winning the League Cup in both 1989 and 1990. Relations soured between Carr and his manager Clough, where, after another typically inept performance against Oldham from the winger, Clough locked him in a boiler room. From then on, Carr went on a journey through a host of clubs. He suffered a lot with injuries and despite only playing three times for Aston Villa in two seasons, he scored the winning goal in an FA Cup quarter-final against his old club Nottingham Forest in 1996 (below). Villa went on to the semi-final where they were beaten by Liverpool, which meant we at least we got to see those lovely white suits. Franz eventually retired from professional football in 2000 following a spell in the US playing for Pittsburgh Riverhounds. He now lives in Derbyshire and works in sports management.