This feature is part of Diego Maradona: the World Cup diaries BEFORE THIS NARRATIVE skips to the 1990 World Cup in Italy, there is a day that needs to be commented upon…
Tag: world cup
This feature is part of Diego Maradona: the World Cup diaries FOUR YEARS CAN feel like a lifetime when you are a child. Since Spain 82 I had busied myself with playing…
This feature is part of Diego Maradona: the World Cup diaries Diego Maradona played in four World Cups; in each one he left a different indelible imprint around the globe, none more…
Gulf countries have rarely made an impact on the global stage in footballing terms. The Gulf Cooperation Council’s (GCC) six member states – Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United…
THOUSANDS OF SCREAMING FANS awaited the emergence of their heroes from behind the car park barriers. One could be excused for thinking this was the scene of a backdoor getaway after a boyband…
IT WAS AT THE ESTADIO AZTECA with a mesmeric swipe of his right boot that the late Carlos Alberto added the final flourish to the beauty which was Brazil’s coronation as world…
With 404 goals for Hamburg and 43 for the national team, German star Uwe Seeler has every right to be labelled as one of the greatest players of all-time
For close to a decade, the Chileans wandered in the wilderness looking for an identity. What eventually followed was perhaps the most entertaining and successful football in their nation’s history. Now they run…
The World Cup in Russia is seen by most as Argentina’s last opportunity for major honours with their so-called golden generation, but having leaned so heavily on the same group of players…
For most football fans, following the fortunes of their nations in World Cup qualification is quite simple, with the prospect of direct qualification or the nervousness of a potential playoff the only options…
On any occasion that a player’s participation in a major tournament is cut short courtesy of an accumulation of yellows, the empathetic aftermath often unites the watching world in a way unlike…
ONE OF THE great misfortunes of being a professional athlete is that your biggest failures are inevitably caught on camera. The ubiquity of media coverage for modern-day sport is a double-edged sword:…
“So, when are Norway playing again? Tomorrow?” The waiter at La Coupole, a beautiful restaurant found at Rue des Montparnasse in Paris, not far from Gare Montparnasse, threw his head back laughing,…
SELMA, ALABAMA is famous in the American consciousness as a major site during the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous marches from Selma to Montgomery in 1965 were…
As featured on Guardian Sport HE SURELY COULDN’T FLUFF HIS LINES AGAIN, COULD HE? Diego Forlán’s Manchester United career was on the verge of frittering out as he stepped up in front…
WHILE THE WORLD was in the death grip of the worst economic depression in history in the summer of 1934, fascist Italy hosted the second FIFA World Cup in what remains the…
THE DATE IS 7 July 1974 in a packed Olympiastadion in Munich. With the scoreboard showing 1-0 in favour of the dominant Total Footballers from the Netherlands, Bernd Hölzenbein latches onto the…
FOR MANY, 11 September conjures up memories of infamous moments that have been seared into modern history. In the USA, in 2001, the attacks on New York’s World Trade Center; in Chile,…