Hindsight is a wonderful thing. With just eight games remaining of the 1968-69 Bundesliga season, 1. FC Nürnberg parted company with their unpredictable, often volatile, yet metronomically successful coach Max Merkel. It…
IT WAS AT THE ESTADIO AZTECA with a mesmeric swipe of his right boot that the late Carlos Alberto added the final flourish to the beauty which was Brazil’s coronation as world…
The random and unprovoked memory of some games has the power to make you clench your jaw. Time isn’t always a healer. It might require a sharp intake of breath, a furrowed…
In an ocean of easy to ignore ‘breaking football news’, there has been a story of late which, while possibly having fallen under the radar for many people, certainly was genuinely newsworthy.…
As Sam Allardyce fell on his sword just 67 days into his tenure as manager of the England national football team, it became hard to countenance that the bottom of the barrel…
Few football stories in recent years can match that of Evian Thonan Gaillard, the tiny club purchased by Danone who fell as quickly as they rose
Momentarily paralysed, the familiar looking man in his mid-30s had to rely on the help of strangers to get home. This wasn’t a one-off occurrence. In extreme instances, an ambulance had to…
For many French fans who witnessed the Carré Magique of Platini, Giresse, Fernández and Tigana, there has never been a better midfield
Vitoria-Gazteiz is a proud city. The seat of government for the Basque Autonomous Community, it also serves as the unofficial capital city for the region. The home of not one but two…
MANY PEOPLE SEE THE DEFINING GOAL of John Barnes’ career as the one he scored for England in Rio de Janeiro, at the Maracanã against Brazil, in June 1984. While undoubtedly a…
”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. Over three decades on, they still blame each…
There may not be a clearer contrast in the career of one man at a club as there is with Graeme Souness at Liverpool, from legend to villain
The story of plastic pitches in English football, their rise, unfair advantages and sweeping controversy from QPR to Oldham and Luton to England.
It took not much more than a month in mid-1974 for the feel-good factor to return to the England national football team. A feel-good factor that was sorely required in the wake of…
As featured on Guardian Sport Over a quarter of a century has passed since Nessun Dorma was acquired by the great unwashed football fans of England, obtained in a generally well-spirited but occasionally…
THERE IS AN EVOCATIVE PHOTOGRAPH of Terry McDermott which was caught on camera in the aftermath of the 1974 FA Cup final. In this photograph McDermott is stood on the Wembley turf,…
On 30 April 1988, one of the most remarkable El Clásico encounters to ever take place unfolded at the Camp Nou between Barcelona and Real Madrid. The game came just two days after…
High farce in the midst of the projected hosting of a major international football tournament wasn’t an entirely new concept for the Colombian FA in late June 2001. Just over a decade and…