Luther Loide Blissett (born 1 February 1958) is a former professional footballer and manager who played for the England national football team during the 1980s. Born in Jamaica, Blissett played as a forward, and is best known for his time at Watford, whom he helped win promotion from the Fourth Division to the First Division. Blissett set Watford's records for appearances and goals, having played 503 games and scored 186 goals, and was the top goalscorer in the 1982–83 Football League First Division as he led Watford to second-place. He was also one of the first black players to represent England. Blissett was capped 14 times by England, scoring a hat-trick on his debut. After retiring from playing, Blissett turned to coaching, initially under the management of Graham Taylor at Watford, and managed Chesham United from 2006 until 2007.
Blissett's other clubs included Milan, who paid £1 million for him in 1983 before selling him back to Watford for £550,000 in 1984, and Bournemouth, for whom he had a goals-to-games ratio of nearly one goal in every two appearances. After his disappointing season at Milan, he returned to Watford, where he remained until 1988, before moving to Bournemouth for the next three seasons, which were more successful. In 1991, he returned to Watford and the following year moved to West Bromwich Albion, where he played three games. He ended his professional career at the end of the 1993–94 season, playing for Bury in the Third Division, before continuing for a few years in the amateur divisions until his final retirement in 1996.
Although born in Jamaica, Blissett chose to represent England at the international level, earning 14 caps and scoring three goals between 1982 and 1984. Blissett scored all of his goals on 15 December 1982 in a UEFA Euro 1984 qualifying match against Luxembourg, contributing a hat-trick to England's resounding 9–0 victory. After embarking on a coaching career, he was part of the Watford coaching staff from 1996 to 2001; he subsequently served as coach of several smaller English teams, including York City and Chesham United. In 2007, he founded a racing team, Team 48 Motorsport. Since the mid-1990s, "Luther Blissett" has frequently been used as a pseudonym, most notably by members of the Luther Blissett Project.
Early life
Blissett was born in Falmouth, Jamaica, at that time still part of the British Empire as Colony of Jamaica, on 1 February 1958. He was given Luther as first name and Loide as middle name. Blissett moved to London, aged 5 or 6, and was brought up in the North London area of Willesden.
Club career
Watford
Blisset began his career at Kingfisher Youth<!-- FC --> of the Brent Sunday League. His debut came on 3 April 1975 as a substitute in a 1–0 win at home to Barnsley.
Blissett remained among the club's top goalscorers over the next three seasons as Watford consolidated in the Second Division and finally reached the Football League First Division for the first time in their history in 1982. showcasing his scoring ability. Blissett and his teammates made the headlines during the 1982–83 season as they surprised many by proving successful in the First Division. including 4 in a single game (8–0 against Sunderland, establishing a club record), and 33 goals across all competitions that season.
Milan
<!-- thumb|Blissett during the [[Derby della Madonnina in 1983]] -->After the good 1982–83 season, Blissett subsequently moved to Milan.
In the 1983–84 season, Blissett scored six goals in 39 appearances, and was best remembered for numerous disappointing performances that did not allow him to gain the sympathy of the Milan tifosi. He was also known as "Luther Miss It" due to his poor scoring streak.
Return to Watford
After one season with Milan, Blissett was sold back to Watford for £550,000. On Blissett's return, Watford failed to achieve their successes of the previous two seasons but survived another four seasons in the First Division. Blissett scored 21 goals in his first season back in the First Division, In 121 appearances for Bournemouth, he scored 56 goals. setting a club record that he continued to hold in subsequent decades.
Lower leagues
Blissett ended his English league career in late 1993 with a five-match spell with Division Three club Mansfield Town, where he scored once. He never scored in any other international despite playing for England a further 13 times. In 1984, he made an appearance for England B. In May 2002, Blissett moved to York City to carry out a coaching role. He later left that post and on 15 February 2006 was appointed manager of Southern League team Chesham United, which he even made two appearances for as a substitute. In April 2007, it was announced that Blissett would leave Chesham at the end of the season to concentrate on his involvement with the Windrush Motorsport project, which aimed to enter the 24 Hours of Le Mans. On 27 March 2010, it was confirmed that Blissett had signed to Hemel Hempstead Town as a coach. In the summer of 2016, Blissett was appointed Director of Football at Burnham, briefly serving as caretaker after the departures of both Dave Tuttle and Gifton Noel-Williams. as reported in 1982. For black English players, he was a trailblazer, as he was among the first, more specifically the fifth, the second forward after Cyrille Regis, and the 960th overall,
In a 2011 interview with Sky Sport Italia, Blissett said that playing for Milan was "a dream" and that it was "the best club". He added that he did not score much because his teammates gave him "so few balls" and their style was "too defensive".
It was long rumoured that Milan confused him with his Watford teammate John Barnes. Italian football journalist Gabriele Marcotti argued that this story was untrue, stating: "There are two main reason for which I think it's not true. First, even the most ignorant and provincial person could see that Blissett and Barnes looked absolutely nothing alike. Second, the fact is that at that time Milan were looking for an out-and-out goalscorer and Barnes just wasn't that type of player." He later stated this was a joking response to what he considered a stupid question from a journalist. In later years, he expressed regrets, wishing that the highly successful future Milan head coach Arrigo Sacchi was there during his time at Milan. He observed that the Italian game "still revolved entirely around" the concepts of catenaccio and ball possession, and praised Sacchi for having "revolutionised all of this", just as had been done with Dutch Total Football in his time, and that attack became the best form of defence in football. a team aiming to promote young racing drivers of Afro-Caribbean background. He was one of the fifty ambassadors to promote the England 2018 FIFA World Cup bid. While his comments came after the Corriere dello Sport put "Black Friday" in the headline, he spoke of a "cultural problem" in Italy, and called for punishments as in 2006 to make an example. Blissett was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2022 Birthday Honours for his services to association football and charity.
Blissett and the Luther Blissett Project
<!-- thumb|The photographic portrait of the imaginary "Luther Blissett" -->Starting in the 1990s, Blissett's name began to be adopted by many people in anarchist and radical politics activist circles as a nom de plume or collective alias when engaged in unusual performances, situationist pranks, media hoaxes, and the production of radical left-wing theory. The "Luther Blissett" multiple name project first began in 1994 in Bologna, Italy, where the real Blissett became one of the first English footballers to join its top division. In 1999, "Luther Blissett" authored a historical novel called Q, which sold hundreds of thousands of copies in over ten languages.
A "Luther Blissett" collective was the author of the 2007 book Il processo illecito. Tutte le verità nascoste dell'estate del calcio: intercettazioni abusive, sabbie, fumi, abusi di potere e procure creative (The Illegal Trial: All the Hidden Truths of Football's Summer. Abusive Wiretaps, Sand, Smoke, Abuses of Power, and Creative Prosecutors), a critical analysis of the 2006 Italian football scandal (Calciopoli), which involved among others Blissett's former club Milan but was especially focused by both the investigators and the media on Juventus. Alongside the website Ju29ro.com, a group of lawyers, accountants, and communication experts who collected and verified court rulings, despite the significant disadvantage in terms of visibility, this "Luther Blissett" collective was able to successfully create a counter-information that ultimately debunked most of the allegations by the prosecution and the media (match fixing, rigged leagues and drawing lots, Juventus exclusive or preferential relations with the referee designators, gifts, corrupted referees, journalists, and judges, a referee forcibly closed in the locker room, GEA World as a criminal conspiracy aimed at illegal competition with use of threats and violence, and comparisons to the Italian Mafia, the Sicilian Mafia Commission, and Propaganda Due) made at the dawn of the scandal and that had created a trial by media, overturning the presumption of innocence and the right to a fair trial, free from sensationalism. During his youth, Blissett used to help his father do car repairs and became a fan of motorsport, especially Formula One, the British Touring Car Championship, and sports car racing. The project never got off the starting line and the team failed to show up for any of the races. Blissett told Autosport: "It's important that all of our drivers are properly prepared and have sufficient time in the car prior to a race. Without this, we would be doing ourselves an injustice, which is why we took the decision to opt out on this occasion."
In 2011, Blissett took part in a celebrity motor race at the 2011 Silverstone Classic. He had a large crash on the opening lap, rolling the car several times but was unhurt. Rick Parfitt Jr. won the race, with Heston Blumenthal second and Brendan Cole third. They were all raising money for the Bobby Moore Fund for Cancer Research UK. From 2014, Blissett was racing his own Alfa Romeo 156,
Career statistics
{| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center"
|+ Appearances and goals by club, season, and competition
|-
!rowspan="2"|Club
!rowspan="2"|Season
!colspan="3"|League
!colspan="2"|National cup
!colspan="2"|League cup
!colspan="2"|Total
|-
!Division!!Apps!!Goals!!Apps!!Goals!!Apps!!Goals!!Apps!!Goals
|-
|rowspan="9"|Watford
|1975–76
|rowspan="3"|Fourth Division
|3||1||||||||||||
|-
|1976–77
|4||0||||||||||||
|-
|1977–78
|33||6||||||||||||
|-
|1978–79
|Third Division
|41||21||||||||||||
|-
|1979–80
|rowspan="3"|Second Division
|42||10||||||||||||
|-
|1980–81
|42||11||||||||||||
|-
|1981–82
|40||19||||||||||||
|-
|1982–83
|First Division
|41||27||||||||||||33
|-
!colspan="2"|Total
!246!!95!!!!!!!!!!!!101
|-
|Milan
|1983–84
|Serie A
|30||5||9||1||colspan="2"|–||39||6
|-
|rowspan="6"|Watford
|1984–85
|rowspan="4"|First Division
|41||21||||||||||||
|-
|1985–86
|23||7||||||||||||
|-
|1986–87
|35||11||||||||||||
|-
|1987–88
|25||4||||||||||||
|-
|1988–89
|Second Division
|3||1||||||||||||
|-
!colspan="2"|Total
!127!!44!!!!!!!!!!!!
|-
|rowspan="4"|Bournemouth
|1988–89
|rowspan="2"|Second Division
|30||19||||||||||||
|-
|1989–90
|46||18||||||||||||
|-
|1990–91
|Third Division
|45||19||||||||||||
|-
!colspan="2"|Total
!121!!56!!!!!!!!!!!!
|-
|Watford
|1991–92
|Second Division
|42||10||||||||||||
|-
|West Bromwich Albion
|1992–93
|Second Division
|3||1||||||||||||
|-
|Bury
|1993–94
|Third Division
|10||1||||||||||||
|-
|Mansfield Town
|1993–94
|Third Division
|5||1||||||||||||
|-
!colspan="3"|Career total
!584!!213!!!!!!!!!!!!
|}
; Notes
Honours
Awards
Blissett was awarded the Freedom of the Borough of Watford on 10 March 2021. On 18 June 2021, he was appointed as a Deputy Lieutenant of Hertfordshire. In June 2022, he was awarded an OBE as part of the 2022 Birthday Honours.
Club, international, and individual honours
; England
- British Home Championship, 1982–83, 1983–84
; Watford
- 1977–78 Football League Fourth Division
- 1978–79 Football League Third Division runners-up, PFA Team of the Year
- 1981–82 Football League Second Division runners-up
- 1982–83 Football League First Division runners-up, top goalscorer
- Watford Hall of Fame, 2003
; Sources
- Citing
See also
- List of England international footballers born outside England
References
External links
- Chi è Luther Blissett on YouTube – containing some footage of Blissett's football career
- On Luther Blissett (the Footballer) and Us at Wu Ming – interview with Luther Blissett from L'Unità, followed by a comment from the writers formerly known as the Luther Blissett Project