History Through Photos (3rd Part)!

This is the section of this page titled “History through Photos” under the cover of Arian Muraj, started in March 2020 in Facebook Page “Sports Vision / Champions Hour”.

Here is the link for the 2nd Part:
https://www.sportsvisionplus.com/history-through-photos-1st-part/

Here`s the Top 10 of the Third Part!

1.”The Rumble in the Jungle”!

“The Rumble in the Jungle” as it was known in the world, Albanianized as “Dueli ne “Xhungel”, was the most spectacular boxing final of the last century. This is according to the opinion of many specialists and admirers.
This historic duel took place in Kinshasa, Zaire, today Congo.

Facing each other, the reigning heavyweight champion, George Foreman “Big George” and Muhammad Ali “The King” (Muhammed Ali as he was called by many fans in Albania and everywhere).
Super heavyweight category. Both 1.91cm tall. Foreman 100kg, Ali 91 kg. It was the battle where George Foreman defended the golden belt of the world champion. Ali, dethroned, wanted to return to that throne, because, as he always said in the ring “I am the King” – “I am the King”!

The favorite, in every sense, was Foreman. His technique of “bombarding” with heavy punches supported by a body weight of 100 kg, justified the statistics of 44 victories without a single defeat. Ali was not invincible. He came with two defeats in a total of 41 fights in the ring. Age also gave Foreman an advantage, 25 years against Muhammad Ali’s 32. Ali, who was otherwise called “Butterfly”, because of his constant movements in the ring, which resembled the “irregular dance” of a butterfly, in contrast to the classic fighting technique in boxing, declared that he had prepared properly to face George Foreman.

The interest was the same as a World Cup final! In Albania too.
In most of the world, everyone who had a TV set turned their home into a mini stadium! In communist Albania too! The “Jungle Duel” managed to snub every kind of political regime in the whole world! The hours of the planet too! 60,000 viewers in the “25 Maji” stadium in Kinshasa, a billion viewers, including 50 million Americans with “pay per view” – in the cable broadcasting method as it is called today, the planet lived with the rhythm of that duel.

Muhammad Ali started the first round furiously. A flurry of accurate punches, with left and right hands to the face, confused Foreman, who was not expecting such a start. In the following rounds, Ali, according to what he had devised with his trainer, continued the fight with the “rope the dope” style. Leaving his opponent free to strike until he was tired, in parts of the body but not in the head, tiring him out and not scoring points.

After eighth round, Muhammad Ali leads on points in all three judgments. “Big George” is already tired, exhausted from the numerous blows to the head. Precisely, from the middle of the round, Muhammad Ali, after a left punch, brings Foreman’s face to the desired central position. Before the opponent understands, he delivers a right right to the face. “Big George” is taken off his feet and after three confused steps, he falls knocked out to the mat. Muhammad Ali is the winner of the “Jungle Duel”!

“The greatest” according to him, “The King” also according to him and all his fans in the world, ascended the throne again!
It was October 30, 1974.

From Kinshasa, the capital of Congo, the confrontation between the giants George Foreman and Muhammad Ali, went down in history as the “Rumble in the Jungle”.

In Albania, history did not change at all!
This is because in that small communist country where boxing was banned by law, only two world boxing icons were accepted by the community of fanatical fans of that sport. One was called Cassius Clay and the other Muhammad Ali!

2. Ayrton Sena!

It was 2:17 p.m. on May 1, 1994, the seventh lap of the Formula 1 Grand Prix in Imola, San Marino. It was right there, at the Tamburello corner, that Ayrton Senna would abandon his “Rothmans Williams” car and ascend into the sky for eternity!

After the fatal blow to the head, Senna was immediately found to be “brain dead”. His heart continued to beat but… It was clear that the worst was inevitable. Above him, the head of the Formula 1 medical team, Dr. Sid Watkins, although not religious, saw the soul of Ayrton Senna leaving his body…

More than 100,000,000 viewers around the world saw that in that lap, surprisingly, from the Tamburello turn, Michael Schumacher’s “Benetton” came out first.

The prophecy was clear!
Ayrton Senna, until that moment, had always been first. After him, came Schumacher…

Ayrton Senna’s heart stopped beating at 18.07.

By that time, he had already been beaten twice, once on the track and once in hospital. The interventions of the doctors had brought him back to his rhythm. His brother Leonardo and some random friends managed to say their last goodbyes while he was kept alive by equipment and was not legally considered dead.
The third time, it was no longer worth intervening and the equipment was disconnected.
A little later, the nurses would find an Austrian flag tucked under Ayrton Senna’s shirt…

That dark weekend, the most tragic in the history of Formula 1, began on Friday with the crash of Brazilian Rubens Barrichello. He was hit hard, very hard but, fortunately, escaped the worst. When he opened his eyes, he saw Ayrton Senna above his head, crying…

The Austrian Roland Ratzenberger on Saturday and Ayrton Senna on Sunday, did not have the same luck.
Fate did not even want Ayrton Senna on Sunday, after the triumph, to wave the Austrian flag from the cockpit of his car in honor of Ratzenberger…

Michael Schumacher’s heart still beats…

3. The Greatest save of the century

World Cup, Mexico 1970.
The match that was awaited with the greatest interest. The reigning world champion, England, faced the best team of the last century, Brazil. The match, the last of the group, in terms of points did not give any verdict. Both had qualified for the next round.
Tenth minute. Carlos Alberto starts on the right of attack Jairsinho.

He manages to pass Terry Cooper at the entrance of the area. Gordon Banks, the goalkeeper of the world champions, positions himself in goal, closing the right corner. Jairsinho, at the last moment, before the ball crosses the end line, raises a perfect cross for Pele, almost at the penalty spot. Pele jumps and hits a powerful header. The ball hits the ground and goes into the net near the left post.

It’s a sure goal for him, for the nearly 69,000 fans in the Jalisco stadium and for hundreds of millions of viewers around the world. Pele shouts “goal, goal” with his hands raised. Behind the gate, everyone is up and shouting goal. It’s also a goal for the 10 English players on the field… except for one. The goalkeeper. Gordon Banks, watching the action, leaves his left post and, just behind the centre of the goal, flies to his right.

He manages to punch the ball with his right hand, giving it the right trajectory to take it out next to the right triangle.
The incredible had just happened and, it was amazingly so beautiful that, it remained in history, as “the save of the century”!

…Banks got to his feet to prepare for the next corner kick. He felt Pele’s hand on his shoulder and his sincere words reached his ears;
– for me it was a goal
– for me too – Gordon Banks replied with equal sincerity!

In terms of statistical history, Banks was one of England’s heroes at the 1966 World Cup. The greatest English goalkeeper of all time and voted the second best in the world after Lev Yashin. However, Gordon Banks will always be remembered for that incredible save in June 1970. Under the scorching sun of the Jalisco stadium in Guadalajara, Mexico, with his acrobatic intervention, he gave football one of its most spectacular moments. One of those magical moments that only great players can create!

Read the full story here: https://www.sportsvisionplus.com/the-greatest-save-of-all-the-time-from-goalkeeper/#google_vignette

4. “Il mister quarantotto”!

“Il mister quarantotto” (“Mr. Forty-Eight”)!

That was the headline of “Corriere della sera” the day after the Partizani – Oransoda basketball match. The title expresses in the most complete way, that incredible evening of December 18, 1968. That evening when an international basketball match, was transformed into a 40-minute spectacle of only one protagonist! Agim Fagu!

Perhaps the most beautiful stories are those told in winter, but that winter evening in Tirana was such a beautiful sporting event that it crosses the boundaries of the unbelievable and flirts with the limits of the miraculous.
The Champions Cup in men’s basketball. Partizan of little Albania, for the first time in an international match. Facing him, the team that would later be crowned European Champion, Oransoda and Cantu of Italy. In its composition…two Americans, two Argentines and the star of Italy in basketball, Recalcate.

We are far from three points in basketball and the games could end in a draw.
It is a sporting duel of the David versus Goliath type!
That evening the spectators were so numerous that they almost climbed over each other. The size of the opponent did not provide premises for a positive result. Partizan’s experience at the international level was…zero!

People tried with all their might… and their larynx to give courage to the team and themselves by shouting incessantly in chorus “Partizani”!
On this side of history, there was a young boy, who had so much heart that no one counted against him in that sport. Partizani had its captain that evening, at a very young age, only 1.87 tall but fast and dribbling that destroyed any defense, frighteningly accurate in shooting from any point of the field and perfect in assisting when the ball weighs a lot!

Agim Fagu that evening, in front of the European champions, gave a recital that would make Dražen Petrovic or Nikos Galis twenty years later rub their eyes in surprise!
Because…48 points in a match where the poles of the teams’ positioning are farther apart than the south from the north and, the three-point system did not exist, seems too fantastic to be true!

That match ended in a 73 – 73 draw.

After that match, Agim Fagu, with all the right of this world, became a living legend, except that all that was given and said about him, were not legends but truths.
Sports fans began to refer to him as the “Moxart” or “Strauss” of basketball!
In his honor, an Italian newspaper, the prestigious “Coriere della Sera”, after that match, gave him the title “Mr. Forty-Eight” (the points he scored in that match).

He was announced by FIBA in the top five.
By its president, William Jones, he was given a small badge as a sign of congratulations that was given by the president himself, to high-class players!
The surprise of Europe, more than the “Partizani” of Tirana, was called Agim Fagu! The Oransode team asked to buy him for the sum of 100 million lire. No player cost more at that time in Europe.
In Italian football, the most expensive cost 300 million.

Agim Fagu remains to this day the most brilliant athlete of Albania on a personal level. Far from the others and valued with all possible sports titles of the Albanian state.

Agim Fagu that evening of December 13, 1968, was only 21 years old!

Red the full story here: https://www.sportsvisionplus.com/agim-fagu-il-mister-quarantotto-partizani-oransoda-73-73-in-1968/

5. Thomas Mueller!

When Thomas Müller started appearing on television screens in Albania, as had never happened before, the entire Albanian football-loving public “fell in love with him at first sight”!
Maybe because he wasn’t the charming one but he was the “action” man. He didn’t have the glamour of Schweinsteiger or Podolski but he was the smiling guy who never gives up under any circumstances. Well, precisely because he wasn’t/is not an Alain Delon but was/is a Jean Paul Belmondo!

No one has been a participant, even very active, in the matches that football history reserves with a dropper.

“Maracana” Stadium, the largest stadium in the world. Where the wound caused by Uruguay in 1950 was added to the other one in 2014.

Brazil – Germany 1:7.
Müller scores the first goal of the match.
“Estadio da Luz” stadium, Portugal. The stadium where the incredible happened, the coronation of Greece as European champions against Portugal! It is there, Müller notes that at the opening of the match and then comes the even more incredible…
Barcelona – Bayern 2:8!
It is the end of the cycle of the great Barcelona of tiki-taka football. It is the epilogue of the Messi era at Barcelona!

Of course, these two matches, in these two stadiums against two such opponents, are worth more to Thomas Muller than the 11 Golden Balls of Cristiano Ronaldo and Leonel Messi!
After winning the cup and the championship with Bayern, as well as the Champions League, after being declared World Champion with Germany, in an era when the winner of the Golden Ball is often placed in the darkness of bureaucratic behind the scene, what more can a footballer ask for from his career?!

6. Neuer über alles!

Neuer über alles!

Which means, superior!
We are talking about the German school of football. The story begins in 1954 when some decisive interventions by Tony Turek were the main factor that Germany won such an impossible, if you will, the most unpredictable in history, that of the World Championship in the final called the “Miracle of Bern” against Hungary.

After Toni Turek came Hans Tilkovski and then, Sep Mayer, Harald “Tony” (in honor of Tony Turek) Schumacher, Bodo Ilgner, Andreas Koepke, the “monster” of penalties Jens Lehmann, Oliver Kahn and finally Manuel Neuer who will certainly be followed by Andre Ter Stegen.

In this great tradition of names, yesterday’s winner of the Champions League, Manny Neuer, is undoubtedly the best of all time! With all my unwavering admiration for Schumacher and the sympathy of the older ones for Sep Mayer or the younger ones for Oli Kahn, of course Neuer, summarizes all the best qualities of that, the German goalkeeper, who usually wins the Champions Cup with Bayern, who almost always wins a World Champion title with Germany, who is usually also the best goalkeeper in the world!

Yesterday, Neuer, won only the Champions League! Sixth for Bayern. Second for Neuer. Above all, leaving in the shade Neymar, Mbappe and the unfairly unannounced winner of the Ballon d’Or, Lewandowski! Because, yesterday’s final, was a show with one protagonist. Neuer!

We have no doubt at all about Hansi Flick’s merits as a coach, and about Bayern as a team that started and ended the 2019-20 Champions League season with only victories. Of course, we do not cast any shadow on the merits of Lewandowski’s goal “machinery”, but that evening in Lisbon will go down in history more for the incredible performance of Bayern and Germany captain Manuel Neuer. Sunday, August 23, 2020, will go down in history as the day when Manuel Neuer, in everyone’s mind, was called the best German goalkeeper of all time!

7. Duel between Pele and Mazurkiewicz!

Photo: Sequence from Pele’s famous dribble against Mazurkiewicz, with the goalkeeper remaining in place between the ball on one side and Pele on the other.

For all those who do not know him, his name was Ladislao Mazurkiewicz, the Uruguayan goalkeeper of Polish origin from his father. He passed away in 2013. He defended the goal of the blue Uruguayan national team from 1965 – 1974.
As for Edson Arantes Do Nascimento – Pele, there is no need for an introduction. The “Orey” of classic football, celebrated his 80th birthday on October 23.

But let’s go back to the famous duel of the two protagonists in the battle match between Brazil and Uruguay in the semi-finals of the World Cup in Mexico in 1970. The match was tied at 1-1 and was not being broken at all, after goals by Cubillas 19′ and Clodoaldo 44′. When, suddenly, Pele breaks through in the attack, coming out alone with the goalkeeper who leaves the goal and goes ahead of him to the arc of the penalty area

But Pele makes an incredible maneuver, leaving the goalkeeper in place: he passes the ball to him from the right, while he himself rotates to the left and, controlling it quickly, shoots but the ball ends up very close to the perpendicular post outside. An episode that has remained in the memory, as well as the symbolic player of world football himself, showing in this case, in addition to technical skills, also an excellent athletic preparation. Mazurkiewicz raises his eyes and thanks the sky, but still Jairsinho and Rivelino give Brazil the 3-1 victory and passage to the final.

8. “Five Birds in one shot”!

Photo: Five Coventry players in the match against Manchester Utd. One of the most special and at the same time most surprising cases in memory of players being given a card at the same time occurred in the 1971-1972 English Championship season in the Manchester United – Coventry City match at the legendary “Old Trafford” stadium!

The five Coventry players who form a wall for a free kick are signalled by the referee to keep the legal distance of 9.15m (10 yards). But the players refuse to do so, and are even reluctant to do so. The referee is left with no choice but to calmly show all five yellow cards at once.

9.”The Flying Tobacco Seller” Who Played Two World Cups!

Jan Jongbloed was one of the special goalkeepers of world football. Born on November 25, 1940, he practiced this sport only for pleasure. Active with the clubs DWS and then with FC Amsterdam, he had only a brief moment of glory.

On October 26, 1962, he made his debut for the national team “Oranje” in Copenhagen, replacing goalkeeper Lagatade 5 minutes before the end. The Dutch lost 4-1. Jongbloed once again returned to anonymity as a goalkeeper, to appear after 12 years, when only a week before the 1974 World Cup, in a friendly against Argentina, coach Rinus Michels tested him and was satisfied enough to make him the starter, ahead of goalkeepers like Schrivers (Twente) and Treytel (Feyenoord).

This is a surprise for everyone. It is revealed that his first passion is fishing and then football. He is given a semi-professional contract after owning a tobacco shop and hardware store in Amsterdam.
What has amazed coach Michels is the special ability of this goalkeeper to possess and maneuver the ball with his feet outside the goal area, becoming an added defender.

After the withdrawal from the national team of Hulshoff, the Ajax bearded man, and without the possibility of activating Mansveld and Drost, Michels has decided to return midfielder Arie Haan to defense where he will be assisted by goalkeeper Jongbloed, capable of covering the role of center-back (always with the risk of a bitter defeat with a deep result).

In the world there are those who laugh at the choices and recoveries of the strange Dutch coach, the “crazy” Michels.
But starting from the facts, Jongbloed results in the entire world tournament to concede only 3 goals, even one of them being an own goal by Krool against Bulgaria and the other two in the final against the West Germans!

There are those who do not consider it, others appreciate it, but Jongbloed himself, now the world runner-up, after the world championship decides to dedicate himself entirely to professional football. He spends time with the Dutch club “Roda”, extends his training hours, completely abandoning his tobacco shop. And here at the age of 38 he wins again his place as a starter for the national team “Oranje”, losing in the final against Argentina 1-3. His career as a footballer will continue even longer without asking about age.

He broke the attendance record in the Dutch “Eredivisie” championship and when he was close to the age of 45, he was stopped by misfortune in September 1985. During a training session with his team “Go Ahead Eagles”, the “flying” goalkeeper suffered a heart attack.
He overcame the crisis but had to finally give up football.
However, a year earlier, the Dutch goalkeeper had suffered a great misfortune when he lost his son, at the age of 21, also a goalkeeper, while being struck by lightning during a match!

Read the full story here: https://www.sportsvisionplus.com/the-flying-tobacconist-who-played-two-world-cups/

10. Usain Bolt

In Jamaica, everyone…plays football for fun and takes athletics seriously. After athletics, Husain Bolt’s biggest passion remains football! A Manchester United fan. He spends his free time playing football, wherever he can and with whomever he can. At one point in his life, Borussia Dortmund allowed him to touch his dream by opening its doors…

Here is the link for the 2nd Part:
https://www.sportsvisionplus.com/history-through-photos-1st-part/

To be continued….

Translated to English by Pjerin Bj
New Tork: August 9, 2025

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Sports Vision + Plus / Champions Hour in activity since 2013

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