WHEN THE UNHERALDED MAURIZIO SARRI was appointed as Napoli coach to replace Rafa Benítez ahead of the 2015/16 season, it was met largely with indifference. “We won’t have a winning Napoli with…
Tag: spotlight
Fireworks, smoke from flares and ticker tape filled the Buenos Aires night sky as Boca Juniors lifted their 32nd Argentine championship in June 2017. The title had been sealed five days earlier…
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…
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…
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
PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALLERS are wondrous athletes. The sheer talent that many possess often ensures fans and media run out of superlatives to describe what they have just witnessed. However, there are fine lines…
SIR ALEX FERGUSON RARELY SHIES AWAY FROM SPEAKING HIS MIND, even more so when he wishes to express his distaste for something, or someone. Distaste, though, would be a polite way of…
THERE WAS A TIME, NOT LONG AGO, when footballers were permitted the luxury of vastly different physical forms and appearances. Today’s identikit toolbox of tattoos, ruggedly groomed facial hair, short back and…
ON ZÉ ROBERTO’S 43rd BIRTHDAY, Gabriel Jesus took to social media in order to thank “a man who helped [him] no end in [his] arrival as a professional”. His “biggest reference” and…
Mark Roberts has been a professional footballer for 14 years, representing the likes of Crewe, Chester, Stevenage, Fleetwood and Cambridge, where he currently plies his trade. Join him for an exclusive look…
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…
“NO-ONE WANTS TO GROW UP TO BE A GARY NEVILLE.” Jamie Carragher’s remark in the Sky Sports studio may have appeared nothing more than a whimsical jibe directed at fellow pundit Neville, however,…
FOOTBALLERS TEND TO decline as they move into their 30s, with dimming enthusiasm and an assortment of injuries tending to slowly draw the curtain on their careers. But goalkeepers are the anomaly…
Ituzaingó is a district in Buenos Aires, only a 45 minutes train ride from the centre of the metropolis. Its team, Club Atlético Ituzaingó play in the Primera D, the lowest tier…
To talk about street football is to talk about the beautiful game at its core. It has connotations of getting back to basics, of the sort football fans, and stars, used to…
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…
ON 15 APRIL 1964, two Northern Irish legends made their national team debuts. One was a supremely talented footballer, who many believed was the best player in his position during the 1970s.…
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…