THE SUBJECT of a European Super League has been mooted on a number of occasions down the decades. After world war two, football became something of an emollient, a universal language that could unite nations and put aside old differences. To some extent, the creation of pan-European bodies, industrially, culturally or socially, was a way […]
THE 90th La Liga season is about to kick-off with a sense of relief that the competition’s biggest unique selling point has decided to stay with Barcelona. La Liga without Lionel Messi is unthinkable, although the time will come soon when the Barca number 10 departs Spain and takes up a fresh challenge. La Liga’s […]
REAL MADRID have not only been crowned La Liga champions, they have also topped Brand Finance’s rankings for the most valuable football brands. Real’s league title win, their first since 2017, partly compensates for the club’s relatively poor 2018-19 campaign when they were knocked-out of the UEFA Champions League earlier than usual and went through […]
IT LOOKS as though Real Madrid are going to lift their first La Liga title since 2017 and Barcelona, the reigning champions, will go into the close season resembling a family in conflict and misunderstanding. Amid this turmoil, Lionel Messi is one year away from the end of his contract and Barca officials’ nervousness continue […]
THE LA LIGA title will go to either Real Madrid or Barcelona, as if we didn’t know it, but neither side will go down in history as one of the best for the Spanish giants. Given the influence and status of the two clubs, it is logical that they are always compared to the past […]
THE death of Pierino Prati will have been met with appropriate sadness in Milan and Rome, but outside of Italy, there’s probably a lot of football fans who have never heard of him. He is part of a list of players who were on target in crucial games but their place in history has largely […]
STUDIES on the economic state of football are fairly predictable these days, the small band of uber-clubs is well established at the forefront of the game. But these studies can provide some pointers about the clubs on the rise or those in decline. If one assumes the top bracket will remain more or less intact, […]
SERGIO RAMOS, one of the figureheads of the modern Real Madrid, will sit out the second leg of the UEFA Champions League round of 16 tie with Manchester City. At 33, you never know if it will be the last Champions League campaign for the “Svengali of white-shirted bastardism”, to quote a leading UK journalist […]
LOOK at the facts: top of La Liga, in the last 16 of the UEFA Champions League, crowds of 74,000 people packing the Camp Nou every game, and now top of the Deloitte Football Money League for the first time. Barcelona were supposedly, in crisis mode. It’s all relative, of course, as some people have […]
