Cast your minds back, if you will, to the summer of 2006. Fresh off the back of the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany two members of the Argentina squad that were knocked…
Tag: premier league
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,…
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…
Cast your mind back to the turn of the millennium. A time when we first came to grips with Big Brother, a time when the Millennium Dome was revealed to a semi-astonished English…
AS HE SAT DOWN TO WATCH HIS NEW EMPLOYERS register a sodden display at Villa Park in 2001, little could Juan Pablo Ángel have known about what lay ahead. For the Colombian, one…
A rare breed in the modern game, the one-club star is something of an endangered species. Battling week in, week out to help their club get over the humps and bumps of season…
IT’S JUST AFTER LUNCHTIME WHEN WE FINALLY GET CHATTING, and Kevin Nicholson seems eager to get stuck in. Intelligent, assertive and approachable – three traits that have helped him become one of the…
As featured on Guardian Sport A FEW WEEKS AGO, THERE WAS A SUDDEN FRISSON OF ENTHUSIASM surrounding Michael Carrick. Having played for Manchester United for nearly a decade and having been capped by…
This feature is part of The Academy Way Invading the pristine St Mary’s pitch in their thousands, Southampton fans swarmed with a feverish energy towards the visiting Burnley faithful. Smoke grenades, plastic bottles…
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…
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…
Reggiolo is a rural cheese farming town in the heartlands of Italy’s north. Famous not only for its parmesan cheese, but a certain eyebrow-raising, world-class footballer and manager: Carlo Ancelotti. Born the son of…
THE DATE WAS 3 JUNE 2007 and Ivory Coast had just defeated Madagascar 5-0 to qualify for the following year’s Africa Cup of Nations in Ghana. Goals from Saloman Kalou, Yaya Touré,…
This feature is part of the Academy Way MANCHESTER CITY FOOTBALL CLUB HAVE MANY REASONS TO BE BOASTFUL. They are the reigning Premier League champions, have assembled a first-team squad brimming with star…
Advertising boardings emblazoned in gaudy print with Sega, Gardner Computers and Lucozade laced the edges of the pitch, transistor radios littered the compact, yet unsettled crowd of just over 40,000, and a team in blue…
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…
Chasing a lofted ball high into the October night sky, the player pushed himself hard to gain possession before his marker could. Clamouring for space 40 yards from goal, he was fixated on…
AS BRUISING MIDFIELD LAWRIE SANCHEZ cemented himself into English football folklore by heading in the winning goal against Liverpool in the FA Cup final in 1988 – a connection from a set-piece,…