THERE ARE some managers who get praised on a weekly basis by pundits, fans and the media, such as the hipsters’ favourite Marcelo Bielsa, gritty Sean Dyche and the monastic Nuno Espirito Santo. And there are others, such as pantomime villain José Mourinho, who can never do much right in the eyes of the critics. […]
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. […]
THERE was an old pub-quiz poser that asked how many sets of football floodlights you passed when you drove up the M1 (or was it A1?) motorway. I cannot remember the answer now, but that question highlighted the sign-posting aspect of the good old floodlight – steel pylons with an assortment of lamps perched upon […]
THE PANDEMIC may be having an unexpected impact on the football management sector in that fewer managers have been sacked so far in 2020-21. With the Premier League at the halfway stage, only one manager, West Bromwich Albion’s Slaven Bilic, has departed in a mid-season taxi. There will surely be more to come, but the […]
THE RECENT death of Nobby Stiles underlined that notable players from football’s golden age are passing away at a rapid rate. It rekindled a romantic moment in the history of the game, when a diminutive, toothless and short-sighted character won the World Cup. Such occasions are increasingly rare today. Little Nobby’s involvement in English football’s […]
THE 1974-75 season wasn’t a classic for English football. The country had been suffering a long hangover after the national team’s exit from the World Cup. We were excluded from the 1974 finals in West Germany, pinning our hopes on Scotland and Jack Taylor the referee. While the global audience marvelled at the exploits of […]
IN an age of anodyne post-match interviews and black-suited corporate football managers, there would probably be no place for the likes of Tommy Docherty. His bluntness, humour and market-trading improvisation would be totally at odds with the modern game. The “Doc”, as he was fondly known, has died, aged 92, and with him goes one […]
ARSENAL are having a tortuous 2020-21, a season that could end with inexperienced coach Mikel Arteta being sacked after little over a year in charge at the Emirates. Arsenal’s decline started long before Arteta was given the job, the club’s fall from Champions League regulars to Thursday night European football has been gradual, but their […]
MARCUS RASHFORD is one of the faces of 2020, a young footballer who urged the UK government to help children with school meals at a time when low-income families were being severely challenged. Rashford has become just as relevant to 2020 as Greta Thunberg was in 2018 when she led climate change protests. His elevation […]
