Matt's year
Thursday, 30 December 2004.
TheFA.com continues to tickle your festive taste buds this holiday season with a series of interviews from across the footballing fraternity. We re-live the highs and lows of 2004, and discover hopes and aspirations for 2005. Today we get the views of Birmingham City and England defender Matt Upson.
| Matt Upson Profile |
 Matt Upson had long been hailed as a future England defender, and his move from Arsenal to Steve Bruce’s Birmingham in January 2003 allowed him the regular first team action he needed to flourish. His impressive performances in Birmingham’s solid defensive unit led to an international call-up in May 2003 to face South Africa. He now has 7 international caps, last featuring in November as a substitute during England's friendly with Spain in Madrid. |
On The Field
Best individual performance: When we played against Liverpool at the end of last season, Steven Gerrard absolutely murdered us.
Best team performance: The team that have impressed me the most is probably Everton. Nobody really expected them to be where they are. We lost 1-0 to them quite recently and although we had opportunities ourselves, I thought they set their stall out and have got something about them this season.
One thing you would like to change: Well really 2004 for Birmingham City has not been a great year – the second half to last season wasn’t particularly kind to us and definitely the start of this season hasn’t been.
One thing I’d change is the run of results we’ve had and maybe the way we’ve performed at times. We haven’t had the best of luck but we’ve got to look at ourselves and say that we haven’t quite done enough to keep winning matches. That’s one thing I’d like to change, and so would the Manager I think!
One rule change you would like: I don’t know if I’d change it, I’d just really like to tidy up the offside rule, make it a bit more black and white. I think there is a small grey area in that rule sometimes.
Professional ambition for the coming year: If I could name one thing I’d love to do, that would be to win The FA Cup. I was at Arsenal when they won it but I’ve never played in a Final.
Off The Field
Celebrating Christmas this year: Training and playing. Hopefully by scoring a goal and keeping a clean sheet. I think my mum and dad might come up and see me, and come and see some games.
Christmas memories: Nothing special, we generally just had your nice traditional kind of family Christmases at home.
Favourite Christmas song: The original Band Aid
New Year's resolutions: To make better use of my spare time.
If a film were to come out next year about your life, who would you like to play you? I don’t think they’d make a film about my life – it would probably only last about 5 minutes! If I did though it would have to be Matt Damon.
Log on to TheFA.com over the festive period for more end of year reviews.