Loading posts...
  • Boavista and Os Belenenses: The Glorious Exceptions to Portuguese Football’s Oldest Rule

    In the top ten leagues of European football (ranked by the UEFA Coefficients system), there have been a total of 173 different champions. The most have come from The Netherlands and Germany, with 29 separate clubs lifting each title, while 28 account for France, and 24 from England.   A total of 16 have won…

  • 10 Greatest Brazilian Football Players Of All Time

    Brazil has some of the best football players of all time. They are Globally recognized for their national talent and are constantly pulling medals for the teams and individual players.   Today we are going to narrow down these amazing sporting heroes and show you the 10 best Brazilian football players of all time.  …

  • Wayne Rooney: The Street Footballer who Dazzled the Stretford End

    “Remember the name! Wayne Rooney!” bellowed Clive Tyldesley as a young 16-year-old born and bred scouser scored his first Premier League goal.   How did the teenager in question celebrate such a big moment? By playing football with friends in the street. Of course he did.   That summed up Wayne Rooney as a footballer.…

  • Does ‘Second Season Syndrome’ in the Premier League Really Exist?

    We’ve all heard about it: a team gets promoted, performs well above expectations in their first season in the Premier League, and it all comes crashing down in the next year – ‘second season syndrome’.   This season, it seems as if Leeds United are the latest team to suffer from it, having finished ninth…

  • Die Gefallenen Riesen: How the Bundesliga 2 Became a Graveyard of Germany’s Biggest Clubs

    As recently as 2018, the English Championship housed ten of the 24 teams to have lifted the top division of English football – with those sides accounting for 35 of the 122 titles wins since 1889.   Going one step further, if you take away the six ‘Premier League ever-presents’, then the 35 titles from…

  • Vasco: The Brazilian Giant Set for Another Season in the Second Tier

    Bellini, Brito, Mazinho, Ademir de Menezes, Juninho Pernambucano, the great team in the late 90s with Romario and Edmundo. You hear all these names and if you’ve ever had a remote interest in Brazilian football you associate them with one thing and one thing only – Club de Regatas Vasco da Gama.   I could…

  • Tactical Analysis: Leonardo Jardim’s Monaco

    Leonardo Jardim’s career has been defined by scouting and enhancing the resources at a club in order to push it to greater heights and achieve milestones that the club would never have thought about. The Portuguese coach never played professional football.   He entered this arena as an enthusiast who decided to learn the craft…

  • Revisiting Ajax’s Shock Victory over Real Madrid in 2019

    In September 2010, a Martin Jol-led Ajax took on Real Madrid in a group stage match in the Champions League at the Santiago Bernabéu.   This wasn’t the strongest Ajax side – recent times had suggested they weren’t strong enough to compete with the top level of Dutch football, let alone European football, yet here…

  • Tactical Analysis: Jürgen Klopp’s Borussia Dortmund

    After spending the start of the decade in the shadow of the Premier League and La Liga, German football enjoyed a resurgence in the mid-2010s. 2013 saw an all-German Champions League Final between Jürgen Klopp’s Borussia Dortmund and Jupp Heynckes’ Bayern Munich, whilst the following year saw Joachim Löw’s Die Mannschaft write their names into…

  • From Show Games to Ballon d’Or: The Progress of Women’s Football in Norway

    The footballing world was in awe and dwelled in emotion as FCB Femeni won against Atleti Femenino in the Supercopa Femenina on January 23.   Virginia Torecillia’s return to the pitch for the final few minutes after undergoing surgery for a brain tumour was an emotional moment. As for awe, well, who isn’t in awe…