SINCE the pandemic stopped normal life in its tracks, football has been bemoaning the loss of significant sums of matchday income that have pushed some clubs to the brink. Eventually, fans will be allowed back in the stadiums and clubs will start generating cash from admission prices. Some clubs will have suffered more than others […]
OLYMPIQUE MARSEILLE (OM) are the only French team to have won the European Champions League and they happen to be the best supported club in Ligue 1. Marseille is a classic football city, full of passion that can overheated at times, a cosmopolitan place, colourful and edgy and a little extreme. The events of the […]
NEW YORK may have two well-backed football clubs but it is the profile and strength of its various sporting entities that makes it the world’s top sporting city, on the evidence of research by the Swiss-based consultancy Burson, Cohn & Wolfe (BCW). New York, for the second year running, has topped BCW’s Ranking of Sports Cities. […]
SOME fans are talking about a Liverpool decline, claiming Jürgen Klopp’s side are not making a very good job of defending the title they won so impressively in 2019-20. That’s a little of an over-reaction, Liverpool may have lost some of their momentum, but the long-awaited triumph – accompanied by premature and over-zealous claims the […]
LONDON clubs may not be setting the world alight at the moment, but the UK’s capital still provides 30% of the Premier League’s constitution, a figure that compares favourably with its counterparts around Europe. There are six London clubs in the Premier League (Arsenal, Chelsea, Crystal Palace, Fulham, Tottenham and West Ham), that’s 30% of […]
IT IS difficult to comprehend today, but between 1960 and 1973, Barcelona failed to win Spain’s La Liga. Every major club in history has its occasional lean spell, Manchester United and Liverpool, for example, did not win the English league for 26 and 30 years respectively. In 1973, Barca were desperate to end their barren […]
IN THE end, we were spared 30 minutes of what might have been tedious extra time, thanks to a wonderful goal totally out of character with the rest of the Copa Libertadores final in Rio de Janeiro. Palmeiras scored it, clinching their second Libertadores title after 104 minutes of cagey, fractious and largely uninspiring football. […]
A LOT of Chelsea fans were upset about the sacking of Frank Lampard, somehow assuming his status in the history books would make him immune to usual practice at one of the most ruthless clubs in Europe. Those that consider the appointment of Thomas Tuchel a foolhardy step that lacks ambition are allowing their heart to […]
IN the past few years, some big clubs have suffered relegation from the Bundesliga: Hamburg, Köln, VFB Stuttgart and Fortuna Düsseldorf to name but four. The list could see Schalke 04 from Gelsenkirchen added this season if the current form of the royal blues continues over the coming weeks. It has been a grim 12 […]
