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…
Tag: serie a
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…
There might have been a moment, in the midst of his bike ride across the whole of Italy, when Crotone manager Davide Nicola thought the feat he had promised to accomplish was…
Few players have ever been revered with the same level of adulation, bordering on hysteria, as Francesco Totti. Il Capitano was the poster boy for the dying art of loyalty in modern…
It was in the second leg of the playoff tie between Benevento and Carpi that George Pușcaș’ clinical goal in the 33rd minute sealed promotion for the Beneventani. The Stadio Ciro Vigorito was sent…
A 16TH-PLACE finish in Serie A, a run of one win in the last four months of the season and the departure of captain and league top scorer Rolando Bianchi; the 2012-13…
OVER THE COURSE OF TIME, football has seen its share of starlets burst onto the scene. And with every passing year, their age tends to be a bit younger as modern football…