Tag: liverpool

The dethroning of Liverpool and lessons for today

When Alan Hansen lifted Liverpool’s eighth championship in 12 years in 1990 few would have thought it would be a quarter of a century, and counting, before the club would collect its next.…

A Tale of One City: Liverpool

This feature is part of A Tale of One City On Merseyside, you are red or you are blue. There is no happy medium when it comes to football in Liverpool, one of…

Terry McDermott: an unlikely Liverpool legend

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,…

Liverpool’s miracle men of Istanbul

A phrase like “Hernán Crespo may just have won the Champions League for AC Milan … Liverpool were all over the place there”, or “They don’t come much simpler than that … Crespo’s…

The unorthodox genius of Peter Beardsley

As a shell-shocked Nottingham Forest team trudged off the Anfield pitch that heady April night in 1988, they knew they had been beaten by a special side. Liverpool’s new attacking trio of Peter…

In praise of Jordan Henderson, a genuine all-rounder

JORDAN HENDERSON JUST CAN’T WIN OVER THE MAJORITY IT SEEMS. To some, he can’t pass, can’t dribble and doesn’t have a fixed position. He has underwhelmed for England, doesn’t really offer much in…

Ian Rush: twelve months in a foreign country

By the mid-1980s, the landscape of the United Kingdom had become synonymous with mass protests and bitterness. On the political front, the Conservative government fought continued battles on numerous fronts: Arthur Scargill and…

The Liverpool FC Academy Way

This feature is part of The Academy Way THE TRULY ICONIC FOOTBALL CLUBS ARE DEFINED BY THEIR ABILITY to dominate on and off the pitch. Perhaps no other enterprise is as results-driven…

Who is Mario Balotelli?

FOOTBALL THRIVES ON THE ECCENTRIC CAST OF CHARACTERS in its court. In it, we find rival kings like Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo leading their powerful armies armed to the teeth with soldiers…

A brief history of tactical phenomenas

Twenty-two years ago my brother and I bought our first console, the Super Nintendo, and our first game was Super Soccer. There were only eight directions you could run or pass in –…

How Robbie Fowler became Liverpool’s God in red

LET’S TALK about strikers – goalscorers to be precise. The players who make the difficult seem unerringly easy. The ones who generally tend to finish off their dinner. They’re the elusive ones, out…

The importance of sport psychology

WHEN THE LAYERS OF COMPLEXITY ARE REMOVED, football is, primarily, a science of preparation and execution. Players train on a daily basis for the challenges that await on the pitch so that when…