Football in its contemporary format is one dominated by the development of the superstar. With the sport becoming evermore a global game, it is reaching its tentacles into areas that had previously been…
Month: August 2016
In an age of continuous footballing progress, it’s fair to say that the game has a hold in most cultures across the world. Comfortably the world’s most dominant sport, football is unparalleled in…
Somewhere along the line, the beautiful game was corrupted. Perhaps it happened early on, the result of a collective realisation of just how much people cared about football. Or perhaps it was…
‘Boring James Milner’: as nicknames go, it’s not the worst dished out in England over the last few decades. He could have been called Shrek, or likened to a vegetable. His style…
Consistently punching above their weight against the behemoths of the time, Bobby Robson’s Ipswich Town were the epitome of sustainability and invention
Make no mistake, there is a battle going on. We are living in a world that is in danger of being overwhelmed by a tsunami of incoherence. A raging torrent of piffle…
Back before the days of Twitter and smart phones, there was a time when I had a pager. A little rectangular thing with a monochrome display and no reply facility, it swiftly…
Growing up, neither Cardiff City nor Swansea City were the most successful club in Wales. That accolade belonged to Barry Town. I grew up in Barry, a small coastal town some nine…
THE DEMEANOUR AND ACTIONS OF JOE FAGAN were of a modest man who would give his time to anyone. No job was beneath him, and to have passed him in the street…
CLOSE YOUR EYES and imagine you’re in Genoa, the city in the north-west of Italy where Christopher Columbus was born. On one side of the street you’ll find the Lanterna, the famous…
Success in football is most often quantified by trophies and awards, matches won and points accrued. A career in football is rarely deemed a success unless it is accompanied by silverware. Claudio…
Javier Hernández had been in Madrid for almost eight months and had not contributed anything significant in his capacity as a striker for Real Madrid, the giants of world football. When the…
How Leicester City would fare in their inaugural Champions League campaign was one of the most intriguing aspects in the aftermath of the most Hollywood season English football has witnessed for years. Would…
SELMA, ALABAMA is famous in the American consciousness as a major site during the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous marches from Selma to Montgomery in 1965 were…
The announcement was inevitable. Seeing Landon Donovan score against Bayern Munich in a meaningless game somehow signified a type of finality reserved for movie scripts. When Donovan announced his plans to retire…
The look on Nathan Dyer’s face said it all. With Leicester City captain Wes Morgan and manager Claudio Ranieri standing to his right, Premier League title lifted proudly above their heads, Dyer’s…
“There will be no past tense here,” Eamon Dunphy begins, as the mood turns sad and nostalgic. The date is 10 July 2016 and John Giles is appearing for the final time…
There’s an old saying that everything that can be interpreted can also, by design, be misinterpreted. Which camp the oft-besieged figure of striker Nicolas Anelka falls into is a matter of opinion.…