Imagine this: it’s 1983 and you’re Brian Johnson. We’ve all done it. You’re standing under the lights at Florence’s Stadio Comunale in front of 25,000 screaming fans. The only thing is, you’re not singing for AC/DC. You’ve somehow been selected for the United States of America versus Italy charity football match, and you’ve just watched your teammate Chuck Norris get a red card for being “too dangerous”.
It sounds like something you’d dream of following a night on the Brown Ale, but for Johnson, this was just another day off on tour.
By this point, Brian Johnson had been the vocalist for AC/DC for a few years. In that time, he’d appeared on Back In Black and For Those About to Rock (We Salute You), and was about to head to Nassau’s Compass Point studio to work on its follow-up Flick of the Switch. In 1983, the Dunston-born singer’s heart was firmly anchored to the North East of England and he recently purchased a property in Jesmond Dene, a part of Newcastle-upon-Tyne regarded by Geordies as being ‘geet posh and that’.
Johnson invited local station Tyne Tees Television inside for a chat in what he calls his “recreation room”, complete with a dartboard, pool table, and well-stocked bar.
“You get wrecked when you walk out of it,” he laughs. The setup and punchline – flawless.
During the interview, the singer explains why life in Hawaii doesn’t compare to Newcastle and, talk turns quickly, as it might, to football, when two Geordies are nursing a drink in relaxing surroundings. The interviewer notices his Newcastle United t-shirt and asks whether he’d ever harboured ambitions to play for the North East’s best team.
“I just wasn’t good enough,” he admits with the weary resignation felt by most men brought up in the area, and then brightens. “I played for the United States of America against Italy.”
“Get away,” the interviewer says. This is what polite Geordies say when they think they’re on the business end of a wind-up.
VAR check on leg-pulling: no foul committed. Following a phone call from “Los Angeles or something”, Johnson was invited to join a USA all-celebrity team and play a match against an Italian show business XI at Stadio Comunale, the Florence-based home of ACF Fiorentina.
They thought we were gonna be a walk-over, but they didn’t know we had Chuck Norris.
Brian Johnson
“There was about 25,000 there,” says Johnson. “It was floodlit and yer knees turned to jelly. It was against the Italian showbiz XI and they were unbeaten; they thought we were gonna be a walk-over, but they didn’t know we had Chuck Norris. He was centre-half and you didn’t go near the man – he was dangerous!”
Despite apparently losing Norris to a red card, Team USA won 1-0 and, to top off a surreal day, the legendary Italian goalkeeper Dino Zoff presented Johnson with the Man of the Match award.
“It was a fantastic night,” he remembers. “Music’s me love and football’s me passion, you know what I mean? They’re two different things.”
Johnson goes on to say that he had plans to invest £100,000 into Newcastle United, who’d recently signed the late, great Kevin Keegan.
“I don’t want anything out of it,” he admits. “I want nothing, you know? Sometimes I think it may be a little unfair for me to be classed as anything to do with Newcastle if I’m not there. Who am I to say that I could make a big difference to the team? I like to think I could but maybe I’m too inexperienced.
“It’s a frightening thought,” he adds, “but I’d love to be able to do something.”
Johnson’s plan to financially help the club never came to fruition, despite the support of Newcastle’s iconic striker Jackie Milburn. But the singer, who eventually swapped his “geet posh” neighbourhood for the much warmer climate of Sarasota in Florida, confirmed his status as a celebrity Toon fan by making a cameo appearance in the 2005 football drama Goal! The Dream Begins (as himself). He later lent his voice to a Newcastle United hype video posted just hours before their EFL Cup victory in 2025.
Some fans believe his stirring speech spurred them on to their historic victory. Chuck Norris may have been able to slam a revolving door or count to infinity (twice), but he never inspired Newcastle United to win a final.
