THE BEAUTIFUL SPORT of football, like life, can be visualized as a seemingly infinite game of Pac-Man, wherein young players are repeatedly chased throughout their career by an assortment of problems. While…
Month: March 2018
When Chanathip Songkrasin cynically barged an opponent off the ball less than five minutes into his J League debut, the Thai playmaker had made a statement of sorts. He may have picked up…
THE WORLD CUP IS MAGICAL. For any fan of the sport, whether your country is participating or not, it is something to look forward to, and the fact that it only occurs…
THE PANZER DIVISIONS rumbled to a stop as the unmistakable spires of the Kremlin came into view. Finally, the Wehrmacht were within touching distance of the Russian capital. Since the invasion of…
THERE IS NO CITY quite like Florence. Quintessentially Italian in culture, its history is both artistically rich and intertwined with political upheaval. The architecture is breath-taking, food and wine exquisite, and day-to-day…
THE 1975/76 SEASON in the old Division One was a whirlwind of beauty and, for a budding Queens Park Rangers, one of unspeakable cruelty. Liverpool supporters might barely have noticed Rangers being…
AS WORLD CUP FINALS GO, the one played out between Argentina and West Germany in 1986 would take some beating for drama. The game seemed won, before being cast into huge doubt,…
WHEN THE US lost to Trinidad and Tobago in October 2017 a classic debate about football in America came to the fore. Would the failure to reach the World Cup effectively kill…
Three games had passed since the man who adorns their iconic 21 was seen or heard from. His absence was shrouded in mystery, with various theories snaking through the local pubs and…
SPANISH SUPERSTAR Verónica Boquete has only been in Asia, more specifically Hong Kong, for 24 hours when we sit down to speak about a career that has previously taken her to France,…
Illustration by Brandon Layzell THE TITLE OF Marcel Proust’s epic seven-volume masterpiece À la Recherche du Temps Perdu has been variously translated as either ‘In Search of Lost Times’ or ‘Remembrance of Things Past’.…
On 23 October 1937, Manchester United hosted Sheffield Wednesday at Old Trafford as the clubs contested a routine Division Two tie. The occasion that followed was in almost every way unremarkable. United…
HE WAS A creative midfielder who never piled on the goals but was rather known for his ability to make his teammates look good. He was a wonderful dribbler in a pre-YouTube age…
WHEN BLAINE MCKENNA saw a potential Football League career slip away shortly before taking his GCSEs, it would have been so easy for the then-teenager to wind up as just another statistic…
Not for a moment did Reynald Pedros even entertain the thought of leaving his hand by his waist as his squad delegated penalty duties between them. Offering his services was exactly the…
THERE ARE TEAMS that win promotion to the top tier then fall after a short spell and never manage to return. But it is possible for clubs with decades of top-flight history to…
This began lifeas an article about me regaling of a career that, whilst I admired, passed me by. Eric and I were like trawlers passing in the night. While I was discovering what…
THE MOMENT IS FAMOUS NOW. On a humid June evening in 2002, seconds before the final whistle of a pulsating opening match in Group C, the Fevernova World Cup ball sailed through…