The number seven shirt has a long history at Manchester United. Despite the lack of pedigree in recent years, it has grown to become one of the most prominent sights in football,…
Tag: england
I was seven years old and driving my mum mad. My younger brother had been born just over 18 months earlier and was occupying most of her time. Match days always followed…
Football didn’t come home this summer but, in truth, it was never supposed to. For a while it felt like it just might – the entire nation suddenly and inexplicably gripped by…
Cometh the hour, cometh the man. In the centre of the field, shaded from the autumn sun, a lean young man in white stands, feet apart; a slight hunch to his shoulders,…
The tradition within English football has always been to value hard work, physicality and determination over skill, technique and flair. It is a conundrum to me that, when football is known as…
As CONIFA members go, Ellan Vannin are already fairly long in the tooth. Approaching their third World Football Cup, having competed at the organisation’s previous tournaments in Östersund in 2014 and Abkhazia…
This feature is a part of Hot Bovril and Cold Terraces, a series looking at first-hand memories of football before the flash. I love football. I always have and I always will…
In what many believe may never happen again, the 1958 World Cup was unique for featuring England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland
On 16 July 2017, at the whim of warehouse manager and proud Yorkshireman Phil Hegarty, the Yorkshire International Football Association (YIFA) was founded. Just six months later, as the new year rolled…
Since the turn of the century, Manchester United have been one of the defining factors in the Premier League, expanding horizons with unprecedented levels of success. But just as success came to…
This feature is the third in a three-part series looking at why English football struggles to produce and develop creative midfielders, how it can learn from Spanish football’s success over the past…
This feature is the first in a three-part series looking at why English football struggles to produce and develop creative midfielders, how it can learn from Spanish football’s success over the…
When football clubs choose to embrace a big business approach, they often do so at the expense of their role as a focal point of the local community – a place for…
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…
The words Total Football conjure up an image of the Dutch teams of the 1970’s playing awe-inspiring, fluent football with defenders and attackers seamlessly interchanging positions, displaying consummate confidence in their talents…
A journey through the history of pass and move, possession-based British football, through the Tottenham Hotspurs teams of the 20th century (and a bit of the England team), cut together with archive…
TO SEE AN academy graduate make the step up from the youth ranks to the first team is always a source of pride for fans. That feeling is sweeter when the player…
When Herbert Chapman joined Huddersfield, it was a club in disarray. Within a few years, he would set records that are yet to be broken to this day