REWIND TO THE TENDER YEARS OF THE NEW MILLENNIUM, cast your gaze across the green grasses of the Premier League’s stadia, and there, dancing across them, you would inevitably find a pair…
Tag: premier league
Both overrated and underrated, Claude Makélélé’s public perception changes with each passing year. Perhaps it’s the idea that we’ve already seen his upgrade in the form of the high-speed blur that is…
Few strikers will ever match the records that Ole Gunnar Solskjaer broke at Manchester United, often coming off the bench to devastating effect
Illustration by Federico Manasse The abiding memory of Mark Viduka in the Premier League is that of a brooding bulldog forward, lazily monikered with the ‘good touch for a big man’ tag. The…
Illustration by Federico Manasse When Robbie Keane first began turning heads with the Republic of Ireland, scoring two goals against Malta in a 5-0 European Championship qualifying match, he also spun the…
Illustration by Federico Manasse When Gareth Bale struck the ball from 30 yards towards England goalkeeper Joe Hart, there was a pause of tentative expectation from the watching Wales fans. It felt…
Illustration by Federico Manasse The goals, the power, the engine; all done with that unmistakable beaming smile on his face for club and country. Few players are eulogised about fondly across supporter partisanships,…
Illustration by Federico Manasse If you didn’t know who he was, you would perhaps take one look at Nwankwo Kanu and think he was anything but a footballer. His appendicular skeleton looks…
I once spent most of an evening being eyeballed by Diego Costa. At least that’s what I thought was happening. I was in a pub in central London and whenever I looked up…
On the day that legendary Manchester United youth coach Eric Harrison was formally honoured for his extraordinary developmental work with young footballers – most notably his discovery and nurturing of the Class of…
THE PREMIER LEAGUE IS BACK with a bang but few transfers over the summer have divided opinion as much as the return of the prodigal son to Goodison Park. Some people say…
When Kevin Campbell arrived at Everton in 1999, they were facing the real threat of relegation. Months later, they were safe, and Campbell was a hero
Hit and miss: that’s an honest way to describe Chelsea’s history with forwards in the Premier League. For every Didier Drogba, there have been a couple of Adrian Mutus on the books…
It’s unlikely that anyone who witnessed the FA’s celebrations, which failed to capture the nation’s attention for over a year, will remember them fondly
Just over 20 years ago, as the team sheets were read out at Old Trafford, Derby County’s new signing, Paulo Wanchope, could still lay claim to being a relative unknown. Signed from Costa…
I DON’T USUALLY ACCOST the footballing heroes of my 1980s childhood. At Anfield, you see plenty of them drifting past on a match-day. Many of them are afforded a degree of anonymity,…
Above all else, Harry Redknapp is a football manager, arguably the last English manager to work at a top team in his homeland, and one who represents a dying breed. Seen as…
There are moments in which answers to inquiries that we ourselves have posed are brought home to us with such acute clarity that we instantly acknowledge the involvement of destiny. “Director of…