| Personal information | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Full name | Luther Loide Blissett[1] | ||
| Date of birth | (1958-02-01)1 February 1958 (age 67)[1] | ||
| Place of birth | Falmouth,Jamaica | ||
| Height | 5 ft10+1⁄2 in (1.79 m)[2] | ||
| Position(s) | Striker | ||
| Youth career | |||
| 1974–1976 | Watford | ||
| Senior career* | |||
| Years | Team | Apps | (Gls) |
| 1975–1983 | Watford | 246 | (95) |
| 1983–1984 | A.C. Milan | 30 | (5) |
| 1984–1988 | Watford | 127 | (44) |
| 1988–1991 | Bournemouth | 121 | (56) |
| 1991–1993 | Watford | 42 | (9) |
| 1992 | →West Bromwich Albion (loan) | 3 | (1) |
| 1993–1994 | Bury | 10 | (1) |
| 1993 | →Derry City (loan) | 4 | (1) |
| 1993–1994 | →Mansfield Town (loan) | 5 | (1) |
| 1994 | →Southport (loan) | 5 | (2) |
| 1994–1995 | Wimborne Town | ||
| 1995–1996 | Fakenham Town | ||
| 2007 | Chesham United | 2 | |
| International career | |||
| 1979 | England U21 | 4 | (0) |
| 1984 | England B | 1 | (0) |
| 1982–1984 | England | 14 | (3) |
| Managerial career | |||
| 2006–2007 | Chesham United | ||
| 2016 | Burnham (caretaker) | ||
| *Club domestic league appearances and goals | |||
Luther Loide BlissettOBE DL (born 1 February 1958) is a former professionalfootballer andmanager who played for theEngland national team during the 1980s. Born in Jamaica, Blissett played as astriker, and is best known for his time atWatford, whom he helped win promotion from theFourth Division to theFirst Division. As of 2022, Blissett holds Watford's all-time records for appearances and goals, having played 503 games and scored 186 goals.
Blissett's other clubs includedA.C. Milan, who paid £1m for him in 1983 before selling him back to Watford for £550,000 in 1984, andAFC Bournemouth, for whom he had a goals-to-games ratio of nearly one goal in every two appearances. Blissett wascapped 14 times by England, scoring a hat-trick on his debut. After retiring from playing, Blissett turned to coaching, initially under the management ofGraham Taylor at Watford, and managedChesham United from 2006 until 2007.
Since the mid-1990s, Luther Blissett has frequently been used as apseudonym, most notably by members of theLuther Blissett Project.
Born inFalmouth, Jamaica,[1] Blissett began his career with Watford as an apprentice on leaving school in the summer of 1974. He turned professional for the1975–76 season, making three appearances in theFootball League Fourth Division and scoring one goal. Four goalless appearances came in the1976–77 season, before he broke into the first team under new managerGraham Taylor in1977–78, when his six goals in 33 games helped Watford win promotion to theFootball League Third Division. 21 goals the following campaign played a big part in a second successive promotion which took them into theFootball League Second Division. He remained among the club's top goalscorers over the next three seasons as Watford consolidated in the Second Division and finally reached theFirst Division for the first time in their history in 1982, at the end of a season in which Blissett scored 19 league goals.[3]
Blissett and his teammates made the headlines in the1982–83 season as they surprised many by proving successful in the First Division. Watford briefly led the league in the autumn, before finishing second toLiverpool and qualified for theUEFA Cup. In Watford's first ever First Division season, Blissett was the division's top goalscorer that season with 27 goals.[4]
He subsequently moved toA.C. Milan for £1 million in June 1983, but he was not as successful as he had been in England, scoring only five goals in 30 appearances. It has since been rumoured that A.C. Milan confused him with his Watford teammateJohn Barnes.[5] However Italian football journalistGabriele Marcotti believes this story is untrue. "There are two main reason for which I think it's not true," he says. "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."[6] "No matter how much money you have here", Blissett famously complained about Italy, "you can't seem to getRice Krispies,"[7] though he later claimed this was a joking response to what he considered a stupid question from a journalist.[8]
Blissett was sold back to Watford for £550,000 after one season with AC Milan. In his absence, Watford had reached their firstFA Cup final, but lost toEverton, while new signingMo Johnston was top scorer with 20 goals in the First Division.[9]
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, though the Hornets could only manage a mid table finish. He also helped them reach theFA Cup semi finals in1986–87, but a year later they were relegated with Blissett scoring just four times in the league. He remained with the club until November 1988, when he signed forAFC Bournemouth.[9]
Blissett was successful atDean Court, scoring 19 times from 30 league games in1988–89 as the Cherries finished 10th in the Second Division, after emerging as surprise promotion contenders in only their second season at that level. He scored 18 goals in1989–90, though a slump in the second half of the season dragged the Cherries down the table and on the last day of the season they were beaten at home byLeeds United in a result which gave the visitor's promotion as Second Division champions and relegated the Cherries to the Third Division. Undeterred, Blissett continued his fine form forHarry Redknapp's team, scoring 19 goals, though it wasn't enough to earn promotion at the end of the1990–91 campaign.[10]
Blissett returned to Watford for a third spell at the start of the1991–92 season. They were still in the Second Division, and his 10 goals in the league that season were not enough for Watford to look like promotion contenders, meaning that they would be founder members of the rebranded Division One – rather than the newFA Premier League – for the1992–93 season. Blissett never played a first team game for Watford again, his only action in 1992–93 coming in shape of a three-match loan spell at West Bromwich Albion, which resulted in one Division Two goal.[10]
He ended his English league career in late 1993 with a five-match spell with Division Three clubMansfield Town, where he scored once, that had followed 10 games atBury. After that came a five-match spell in theFootball Conference atSouthport, producing two goals, and four games and a goal forDerry City in theLeague of Ireland, before he finally retired from playing in 1995 after a season playing forFakenham Town in theEastern Counties Football League.[11]
Although born in Jamaica, Blissett was eligible to play for England having moved to the country at a young age. After making four appearances forEngland under-21s, Blissett became one of the firstblack footballers to play for thesenior team. He scored ahat-trick on his full international debut – a 9–0 win overLuxembourg, in doing so becoming the first black player ever to score for England.[12] He never scored in any other international, however, despite playing for England a further 13 times.[13]
He rejoined Watford as acoach in February 1996, coming in with returning managerGraham Taylor. He left the club in June 2001, following the appointment ofGianluca Vialli as manager. Vialli wanted to appoint his own backroom staff, and Blissett was among those deemed surplus to requirements. Taylor was publicly critical of the decision not to retain long-serving members of staff such as Blissett andKenny Jackett.[14]
In May 2002, he moved toYork City to carry out a coaching role.[15] He later left that post and on 15 February 2006 was appointed manager ofSouthern League teamChesham United, which he even made two appearances for as a substitute. However, 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 theLe Mans 24-hour race.[16]
On 27 March 2010, it was confirmed that Blissett had signed toHemel Hempstead Town as a coach.[17]
In the summer of 2016, Blissett was appointed Director of Football atBurnham, briefly serving as caretaker after the departures of bothDave Tuttle andGifton Noel-Williams.
Blissett has worked as a television pundit forChannel 4 andBravo's coverage ofSerie A.
With fellow former Watford and England footballersJohn Barnes andLes Ferdinand, he foundedTeam48 Motorsport; a team aiming to promote young racing drivers of Afro-Caribbean background. In 2008, Blissett entered a team into theBritish Touring Car Championship, aiming to runAlfa Romeos for whiteJamaican Matthew Gore and 18-year-old black Briton Darelle Wilson.[18] However, the project never got off the starting line and the team failed to show up for any of the races.
Soccer AM, a football magazine programme onSky Sports, refers to the area where 'fans of the week' sit as the 'Luther Blissett Stand'.
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. He was unhurt. Rick Parfitt Jnr won the race, with Heston Blumenthal second and Brendan Cole third. They were all raising money for the Bobby Moore fund for Cancer Research. From 2014, Blissett was racing anAlfa 156 in theBRSCC Alfashop Alfa Romeo Championship.[19]
Blissett was appointedOfficer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the2022 Birthday Honours for services to association football and charity.[20]
Blissett's name has been adopted by many people in radical activist circles as anom de plume or collective alias when engaged in unusual performances,situationist pranks, 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 withA.C. Milan, and has since then been widely used by artists, underground reviews, poets, performers andsquatters' collectives in cities throughout Europe and South America. In 1999 "Luther Blissett" authored a historical novel calledQ, which sold hundreds of thousands of copies in over ten languages.[21]
On 30 June 2004, the real Luther Blissett took part in the British television sports showFantasy Football League – Euro 2004, broadcast onITV. 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].
| Club | Season | League | National cup[a] | League cup[b] | Total | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Division | Apps | Goals | Apps | Goals | Apps | Goals | Apps | Goals | ||
| Watford | 1975–76 | 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 | 33 | ||||||
| Total | 246 | 95 | 101 | |||||||
| A.C. Milan | 1983–84 | Serie A | 30 | 5 | 9 | 1 | – | 39 | 6 | |
| Watford | 1984–85 | First Division | 41 | 21 | ||||||
| 1985–86 | 23 | 7 | ||||||||
| 1986–87 | 35 | 11 | ||||||||
| 1987–88 | 25 | 4 | ||||||||
| 1988–89 | Second Division | 3 | 1 | |||||||
| Total | 127 | 44 | ||||||||
| AFC Bournemouth | 1988–89 | Second Division | 30 | 19 | ||||||
| 1989–90 | 46 | 18 | ||||||||
| 1990–91 | Third Division | 45 | 19 | |||||||
| 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 | ||||||
| Career total | 584 | 213 | ||||||||
Authority control databases: People |
|---|