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A super sub is a player that performs well when being brought on as a substitute rather than starting a game, usually scoring a late winning goal. There are plenty of examples of players who have been given the tag of ‘Super Sub’ because of how good they were at reading the match when sitting on the bench, then coming on and exploiting the weaknesses they had picked up on. A good manager knows who and when to substitute on to change a match.
During Manchester United’s treble-winning season of 1998/1999, Alex Ferguson was lucky enough to have four top-quality strikers to call upon. With Andrew Cole and Dwight Yorke mostly leading the line, he had two super subs to bring on late in matches, none more famously so than the Champions League final where Teddy Sheringham equalised in the 91st minute and Ole Gunnar Solskjær scored the improbable winner in the 93rd minute.
Top bins is football slang for goals that are scored where the ball hits the very top corner of the net - near the stanchion or the ‘postage stamp’ where the crossbar meets the posts. It takes high precision and power to place the ball in such a hard-to-reach area of the goal. It’s the peak of shooting, often a worldie.
In the penultimate match of the 2018/19 season, Vincent Kompany scored a thunderbastard of a goal, right in the top bins. Manchester City beat Leicester 1-0 that night and won the league with 98 points to Liverpool’s 97. Top bins, big grins.
The award given to the goalkeeper deemed to have had the best overall performance and biggest impact on their team during the World Cup, part of a trio of trophies along with the Golden Boot and Golden Ball. It doesn’t necessarily mean the keeper who has kept the highest number of clean sheets, although a high number of clean sheets will point towards a great tournament for a keeper. In other competitions, such as the English Premier League, the Golden Glove is awarded the goalkeeper with the highest number of clean sheets during a season.
The first Golden Glove at the men’s World Cup was awarded to Belgium’s Michel Preud’homme despite losing in the first knockout round to Germany at USA 94.
The Golden Ball trophy is awarded to the best player at the World Cup. A shortlist is drawn up by the FIFA technical committee and the winner voted for by the media. Not to be confused with the Golden Boot, which is awarded to the top scorer in the tournament. In the men’s World Cup, it was first awarded in the 1982 edition, and in the women’s World Cup it has been awarded since 1991. Runners-up receive the Silver Ball and third place the Bronze Ball.
In 2023, England’s Lucy Bronze actually won the Silver Ball, just missing out on both the player of the tournament and a Bronze for Bronze.
The award given to the player who scores the most goals in a single World Cup tournament. This accolade is called the Golden Boot in both the men’s and women’s World Cup. It doesn’t always correlate that the player with the most goals at the tournament also win the Golden Ball trophy for the best player. For example, Germany’s Oliver Kahn won the player of the tournament in 2002 despite Ronaldo scoring 8 goals on the way to the title with Brazil. There is also a Golden Glove trophy for the best keeper at the World Cup.
The highest number of goals scored by a Golden Boot winner remains the 13 by Just Fontaine for France at the 1958 men’s World Cup and 10 by Michelle Akers for USA at the 1991 women’s World Cup.