Ask any football follower about the greatest players to play the sport and Diego Maradona will gloriously be at the very top of most lists. A career that started and ended in his homeland of Argentina, Maradona’s path detoured at some of football’s most prestigious locations – Boca Juniors, Barcelona, Newell’s Old Boys and famously…
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This feature is part of the Maradona World Cup series And so to the end of this story, which has intertwined the experiences and narrative of four World Cups, a footballing legend idolised and vilified in equal measure, and the coming of age of boy raised by a single parent, who fell in love with…
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This feature is part of the Maradona World Cup series Before this narrative skips to the 1990 World Cup in Italy, there is a day that needs to be commented upon to help with the context of this relationship between a now-vilified Argentine and an awestruck teenager from Yorkshire. There was a fleeting moment in…
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This feature is part of the Maradona World Cup series Four years can feel like a lifetime when you are a child. Since Spain 82 I had busied myself with playing organised football for the first time. Training with two under-14s teams, school teams, and the regional rep-team, I was starting out on my own…
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This feature is part of the Maradona World Cup series Diego Maradona played in four World Cups; in each one he left a different indelible imprint around the globe, none more so than on a football-mad youngster living in England. A boy who grew up watching a player that at times looked like he had…
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This feature is part of The Football Italia Years In a city where Roman Catholicism pervades all aspects of life, SSC Napoli represents an article of faith. At times its devotees have blurred the boundaries between football and religion beyond recognition. But the sacralisation of southern Italy’s biggest club has also been fused with the…
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Tread a path through every football-obsessed city on earth and seldom would you find the home of a retired professional footballer without the walls or spare rooms of their home habitually decorated with awards, medals, or shirts; mementos and keepsakes from their playing days proudly displayed for all to see. Their careers cruelly eroded by…
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The Stadio delle Alpi was a cold, cavernous, characterless stadium. The architectural monstrosity was designed by Studio Hutter and built from scratch ahead of the 1990 World Cup. Tucked away on the outskirts of Turin, shortly after its inauguration it became loathed by just every individual unfortunate enough to set foot inside the supposedly ‘futuristic’…
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In the historic Italian city of Naples, football goes very much beyond the game. This is the story of one man’s journey through the tifosa-laden streets of the Mezzogiorno and his Enterprise VIP match day experience at one of the world’s great sporting arenas. NAPLES IS A CITY LIVING IN PURGATORY. Trapped between the heavenly Tyrrhenian…
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“Mi amigos” is how Diego Maradona is known to describe them. Ali Bin Nasser and Bogdan Dotchev are not on cordial terms with one another. Three decades on, they still blame each other. It can probably be classed as a feud. There was beauty, there was sleight of hand and there was controversy. There was confusion, there…
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As 2015 approached its conclusion one team had dominated the European football landscape. The five trophies claimed by Barcelona set a standard that many will struggle to match. Just as impressive as the trophy haul are the statistics surrounding the attacking trident of Luis Suárez, Lionel Messi and Neymar, who combined to score an incredible…
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Football would be such a dull thing if everyone played by the rules. As much as the sport needs admirable professionalism, loyalty and players with an unwavering devotion to a clean lifestyle, at times it cries out for the rebel, the on-pitch mutineer who is ready to revolt when he sees fit. They are the…
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FOOTBALL IS CAPABLE OF BEING PURE THEATRE, producing storylines that would be tossed aside by even the most shameless Hollywood scribe as too implausible. Liverpool in Istanbul in 2005, Manchester United in Barcelona in 1999, even Greece in the 2004 European Championships (fittingly, with the indelible mark the country has left on the literary landscape)…
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When Diego Maradona when to Naplea and changed the city for all.
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