Cuban football is a minor mystery to the outside world. The league is amateur, in the literal sense, and the national team only contests one or two competitive ties each World Cup…
Month: September 2018
As the ball squirmed under the arms of DC United goalkeeper David Ousted, the travelling New York Red Bulls fans knew they were witnessing a moment of history. Bradley Wright-Phillips, the one…
The modern football fan can be ruthless, stark and unforgiving. He or she lives in a world of instant gratification, where facts on any subject can be obtained with the merest flick of…
The notoriously predatory Emilio Butrageuño was the dominant figure within Real Madrid’s legendary Quinta del Buitre. The striker, who went by the nickname El Buitre (The Vulture) – was so lethal a marksman…
It was March 2002 and Liverpool were flying high. As the 2001/02 Premier League season entered its closing stretch, manager Gérard Houllier made a grandiose declaration about his team’s future; they were,…
British illustrator and graphic designer Mark Johnson certainly knows a thing or two about harnessing the nostalgia of vintage kits and iconic players from classic eras of football, all in the name…
“Look at this kid, number 7, on the training pitch. Come and watch him for a minute.” Rio Ferdinand reminisces about the occasion his manager Sir Alex Ferguson eagerly called him to…
In 1946, at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, the former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill gave a speech entitled ‘The Sinews of Peace’. In it he made reference to an “Iron Curtain”…
Helenio Herrera glanced out of the window across the pitches at Internazionale’s training ground in Appiano Gentile, the picturesque venue located 40km north-west of Milan in Como. Life was good for the…
There is nothing glamorous about him. His body, hunched and taut, is soaked in a different kind of perspiration, a dirty, greasy sweat, not the type Cristiano Ronaldo is wetted by, and uses…
In a country where football is one of the most celebrated and passionate in the world, Portugal has created some of the most gifted players in the history of the sport. Ranging…
Gareth Bale faces a huge week as he bids to prove that there is life after Cristiano Ronaldo at Real Madrid. He returned to the starting line-up as Madrid lost to Sevilla, with…
In King Lear, when the hapless footman Oswald is tripped up by a duke and called a “base football player”, the audience is expected to sneer and snicker. Indeed, in the 16th…
Chris Waddle, in stark contrast to much of his England career – like Glenn Hoddle – became one of Europe’s finest players at Bernard Tapie’s Marseille
Roughly translated from German, ‘ein kampf zwischen brüdern’ means ‘a struggle between brothers’ and has been used to describe the game that took place as part of the initial group stages of the World…
Half-eaten dinners littered the floor of houses sheared in half. Pages from children’s bedtime story books fluttered hauntingly in the wind. On 19 April 2002, amidst the soft lunar landscape of the West…
Flying down the wing, the ball at the end of his toe, movement in his hips and flair in his soul, Denílson was the quintessential Brazilian winger. Any who had the pleasure…
When Brian McClair joined Manchester United in the summer of 1987, he wasn’t just a key signing in Alex Ferguson’s quest to bring the title to Old Trafford for the first time…