Football in its contemporary format is one dominated by the development of the superstar. With the sport becoming evermore a global game, it is reaching its tentacles into areas that had previously been…
Tag: spain
Club Deportivo Leganés, a small team from a quiet suburb in southern Madrid, will this autumn become the 61st club to contest a La Liga season, just two years after even tinier…
This story starts in Valencia, but not where you might expect. The year is 2015 and Benicàssim is hosting one of biggest music festivals on the continent. Thousands of sunburnt revellers are…
FOR MANY PEOPLE, Spain’s victory in Euro 2008 was an unexpected triumph. For 44 years La Roja had gone trophyless on the major international stages, and after clumsily negotiating their qualifying group…
Vitoria-Gazteiz is a proud city. The seat of government for the Basque Autonomous Community, it also serves as the unofficial capital city for the region. The home of not one but two…
DATELINE: 20 MARCH 1984. Fernando Torres, the youngest of three siblings, was born in the municipality of Fuenlabrada, some 22 kilometres from the Spanish capital. Joining his local side, Parque 84, at…
Few players with the CV that Gerard Piqué boasts divide opinion quite like the Spaniard. From his pro-Catalan public statements to his defending, which sways from world class to erratic, we examine how the Barcelona star polarises the football world.
When European football anoraks look back at the 2015-16 campaign the temptation may well be to label it the season of the underdog. Leicester City’s odds-defying title win would be used as evidence,…
Football fans are often crying out for an icon to lead them towards glory, a rare talisman who can create dreams on the field of play by acting as a glowing beacon to…
The art of diplomacy, it is said, is to recognise the beliefs, opinions and feelings of other people and to balance them accordingly with those of their opponents – breeding it itself an…
AS 2015 approached its conclusion one team had dominated the European football landscape. The five trophies claimed by Barcelona set a standard that many will struggle to match. Just as impressive as…
FRANCISCO GENTO MAY NOT BE A NAME that many of today’s younger supporters will recognise, however he is one of the most successful and decorated players of all time at club level.…
While Italy’s famed Catenaccio system may have been invented elsewhere, nobody used it to such devastating effect quite like the legendary Helenio Herrera
This feature is part of A Tale of One City GAZING OUT ACROSS THE MIRAGE of sparkling lights littering the night sky, it was impossible not to fall madly in love. There…
As colleagues and peers from the world of football stood up and applauded as he left the stage at an event organised specifically for his goodbye, one of Barcelona’s greatest leaders closed one chapter…
The story of Diego Tristán is an all-too-common tale, one that has beset numerous players across the eras of football. Aptly nicknamed ‘The Lizard’ for his slippery style of play, most notably when dribbling,…
The first thing that anybody fortunate enough to visit Barcelona’s Camp Nou will notice is the club’s proud slogan, Més que un club (More than a club). This mantra is a philosophy…
TO THE OUTSIDERS LOOKING IN, the sight of a teary 34-year-old, with his right forearm and two of his fingers hastily wrapped in a plaster cast must have appeared bemusing and bewildering. Indeed,…