Now a 33-year-old winding down his career with Al Ahli, in 2010 Nigel de Jong was responsible for a moment that is as memorable as any associated with the World Cup final.…
Tag: ac milan
It was a goal that was impossible to ignore, the kind of high-level showboatery that’s worth the price of admission alone. On a misty January evening inside the Stade Chaban-Delmas in Bordeaux,…
Imagine a striker tall in stature but with lightning-quick feet, a velvety deft first touch, the explosiveness of a coiled spring, the flexibility and acrobatic ability of a gymnast, and the footballing IQ…
Before Gigi Buffon there was Lorenzo. The latter’s career, inclusive of legend at Milan, was also notable for a bitter personal and professional rivalry
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…
Finding the back of the net in today’s era of plastic footballs and packed defences has become a tailored art and relies as much on speed of instinct as it does on outright…
I’VE HEARD IT SAID that non-football fans are – to paraphrase Bart Simpson – the MTV Generation, knowing neither highs nor lows. Anyone not hooked up with a femme fatale of a…
Surrounded by 22 other Spanish trailblazers, Iker Casillas ecstatically took his rightful place at the centre of the podium as the all-conquering hero, discovering an uncharted world and raiding it of its riches.…
Jamie Carragher’s light-hearted jibe at Gary Neville over his career as a full-back on an episode of Sky Sports Monday Night Football, where he claims that no young footballer aspires to grow…
THE NEW SOCIETY OF AC MILAN doesn’t sound too far from something the iconoclastic Italian politician and media tycoon Silvio Berlusconi would have dreamed up, but it is in fact the symbolic…
Calcio in the 1990s was the golden age of modern football. From Franco Baresi and George Weah to Marco van Basten and Gabriel Batistuta, there were a good seven teams that could…
ONE OF THE MOST INESCAPABLE TRUTHS IN THE WORLD is the stark contrast between civilisations. There will always be the unapologetic difference in the comfort in which people live their lives. It…
Illustration by Federico Manasse “MY BIGGEST DREAM is to play for the national team, to play for 40,000 spectators and to score a lot of goals.” Jon Dahl Tomasson’s words, spoken in his…
Illustration by Federico Manasse Italian football is first and foremost defined by defence and tactics. No player in the history of calcio more closely defines these ideals than Franco Baresi of AC…
OVER THE COURSE OF TIME, football has seen its share of starlets burst onto the scene. And with every passing year, their age tends to be a bit younger as modern football…
Illustration by Charis Tsevis. View more of his work here The collective radar of world football is an enigmatic mechanism at the best of times. Sometimes it unearths tantalising treasures made to entrance…
If you were to ask a Real Madrid fan about Fernando Redondo, there is a distinct likelihood they would begin with a smile. Given the title of ‘El Principe’, Redondo helped the…
WHO CAN IDENTIFY a solid antivirus if not the best of hackers? And who can point to the toughest alarm system if not the stealthiest of thieves? In life, as in the…