Visions of the Dutch Big Three
(This piece was written following the September 18-19 football weekend.) Over the previous international break, we all laughed as Louis van Gaal shot back at a journalist deriding the Netherlands manager for…
Romelu Lukaku – What Was It That You Said About Slow and Clumsy?
I sometimes wonder how tough life must be for a Premier League footballer. The ball flies past before you know it is coming; you must adapt to overcome the ever-growing number of…
Eredivisie Overture: Part One
The Dutch are a society littered with contradictions. Rising waters threaten a country largely below sea level, but it was Amsterdam that served as a breeding ground for the very capitalism which…
Portugal in the 21st Century – The Cost of Gold
The European Championships this summer were a lesson in team play, for both the robust attacking outfits and the overly conservative. Disregarding his country’s catenaccio history, Roberto Mancini looked to dominate play…
Manchester United, Ronaldo, Kathryn Mayorga, and Us: Everyone Has a Choice
450 goals in 438 games for Real Madrid. 101 in 134 for Juventus. 91 in his last three seasons for Manchester United. Five Champions’ League titles. Five Ballon d’Ors. Rape allegations with…
Football, Covid, and Quiet: How Much of It Do We Really Need?
This sport we love is loud. It is heavy handed, a picture of excess and consumerism featuring high-drama competition between lavish-living millionaires in front of tens of thousands of screaming fans. As…
Eric Lamela – The One That Slipped Away
Erik Lamela is 29 years old. There is something almost cruel about this sentence, which seems less like a statement of fact and more a dispatching of judgment. How is Erik Lamela…
The Broken Jigsaw: Joachim Low’s Legacy
Is a legacy what you leave behind in the past or what is built upon what you leave in the present? The history of something or the same thing’s unwritten history? Nobody…
FP Data Check: Manchester United Season Review 2020-21
Data and charts courtesy Lee Chunhang. David de Gea did not want to take that penalty. His face was tense, run-up short, and his kick neither had power or precision. Penalty shoot-outs…
Arsenal 1970-71: There and Back Again
This week marks fifty years since Arsenal won the league-and-cup double. There is a lot to learn from that season – for the club and fans both.
Case for the Planet: Football Needs to Think
By any football club’s standards, 2020 was a catastrophic year. Pandemic-driven shortfalls caused by the absence of fans has left clubs across Europe cash-strapped. The continent’s superclubs are no exception. Last month,…
The Jersey or the Jacket? – The Road to Becoming a Manager at a Big Club
Dennis Bergkamp is my favourite footballer (or organism) of all time. From watching the calm, measured way he played, to reading about his thought processes while on the field, he gives me…
The 4-3-3: A Revolution, Triangles and Arrogance
On the 16th of July, 1950, a great crowd surged into a seatless, concrete grandstand in Rio to watch a football match. It was supposed to be a trivial impediment that would…
Why All Eyes Should be on Serie A
Illicit Activities, Champagne Football, and a Three-Way Title Race – let us convince you that Serie A is the place to be, especially this season. To attempt to quantify what makes a…
Football Literature: The Gift That Will Always Give
Football touches on every aspect of life, which means you can put a book about the game in most sections of a library: politics, economics and social science; languages and geography, when…
Football fiction: Old Leather
I’m holding these old boots in my hands. Nike Tiempos. Leather. White with lime green highlights. Top-of-the-range boots that cost a small fortune back in the day. Battered now, though. They’re starting…
The Dance of Ambition: USA at World Cup 1990
The Trinidad and Tobago football team of the late 1980s, nicknamed the Strike Squad, was but a single point away from qualification to the 1990 World Cup in Italy. Needing only a…
Take a Look Around: Football Needs to Get Over Eurocentrism
In football, Europe has cultivated an international export in a way that no other continent or nation has been able to produce. Outside of the World Cup, the Champions League final is…
Finding Gazza – Jack Grealish and English Football’s Great Chase
First came Joe Cole. Then there was Wayne Rooney. Then Jack Wilshire. Soon after, Ravel Morrison. Next Ross Barley. Most recently Dele Ali, and now Jack Grealish. These current or former boy…
The Cosmic Kite – Farewell, Diego Maradona
This is a weird one. In a lot of ways, fans from my generation are not qualified to talk about Diego Maradona. He was a comet that lit up the sky and…
How American Culture Gave Rise to the Premier League’s Perverse Structure
This year has been defined, naturally, by the coronavirus pandemic sweeping our globe. The same can be said of football. Fans are barred from stadiums and many places of congregation, with authorities…
How Belarusian Football Rose up Against Europe’s ‘Last Dictator’
As the sun set over Soligorsk in early August, it looked as if Shaktar Soligorsk vs. Dinamo Brest was heading towards a drab 0 – 0. However, with ten minutes left on…
The Top 21: Experts Pick the Greatest Player of All Time
If you are involved in the sport in any way, the odds are that you’ve at some point pondered the pointless question about who the greatest player of all time is. But,…
Luis Suarez: More Than Fútbol’s Big Bad Wolf
Ballet, Bites, Brazil The year was 2014 and the FIFA World Cup in Brazil had already worked its magic and captivated the eyes and ears of the world. As had been the…