IT SEEMED AN IMPOSSIBLE TASK, but by the end, Lazio had made it possible. For more than two years Juventus had been undefeated in Turin, an imposing, inexorable force with six successive…
Tag: serie a
THE POWER OF ONE FOOTBALLER can often have an immeasurable impact on a club. Although the collective efforts of 11 players ultimately trump the effect of a single player, teams can easily…
BEFORE MATTEO DARMIAN, FEDERICO MACHEDA AND MASSIMO TAIBI, there was another Italian on the books at Old Trafford – the Red Devils’ first ever non-British player, Carlo Domenico Sartori. Born on 10…
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…
DIEGO MARADONA IS AN IMMORTAL ICON IN NAPLES, a figure with almost divine right within his adopted city and the Stadio San Paolo. In the Campania capital, there is no Pelé, Ronaldo or…
LAND OF MY FATHERS swept through the cold St David’s Day air, the Swansea Male Voice Choir sang for one of their own. The crowds outside the Leeds parish church were there…
ON THE HILLY COUNTRYSIDE of Serra Riccò, deep inside the bowels of a parish church, Don Stefano Vassallo cracked a wry smile. After days of painstaking research, scrolling through copious archived documents,…
People like underdog stories. Football fans love them. It is part of that indescribable mixture of meanings and feelings that make football what it is. This is why two years ago the…
Illustration by Federico Manasse Football is seldom, if ever, free from political realities. Had it not been for the collapse of Communism in 1989, Pavel Nedvěd’s career would have likely followed the…
Illustration by Federico Manasse The 1982 World Cup may just have boasted more great teams, players and matches than any other since. Champions Italy, the brilliant France of Platini, Giresse and Tigana,…
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…
Illustration by Federico Manasse Before the summer of 2002, Asia was largely forgotten by the footballing world. A general awareness existed among top-level clubs that the continent offered large swathes of untapped…
The brutality was as effective as it was violent. The claustrophobia inflicted on his opponents was stifling to the point of suffocation. Reputations were swept away as easily as a standing leg…
During the 1980s and 1990s, there was one league in world football that you had to go to if you wanted to be considered ‘elite’. Serie A, where all the world’s best…
“My only real regret was not being able to share my life and success with my parents. If anyone could help me with this problem I would say to him: bring them…
After two consecutive seventh-place finishes, Juventus put plenty of faith in their veteran leadership to steer them back to the upper echelons of Italian football. Over the last six years, their old…
Football has a singular way of introducing its next big stars. Many of the elite footballers you see strutting their stuff at the top today earned critical acclaim and eventual superstardom by…
There is nothing more thrilling in football than a goal. The sight of seeing the ball hit the back of the net stirs up multiple emotions in different sets of fans and…