June 25th, 1986. Estadio Azteca, Mexico City. A Diego Maradona-inspired Argentina had ripped Belgium apart for the past 85 minutes, the 2-0 scoreline not quite reflective of El Pelusa’s masterclass. La Albiceleste had all but confirmed their qualification to a third World Cup final.   Manager Carlos Bilardo then lines up a substitution, seemingly an…

Japan are known today as one of the giants in Asian football, their players grace Europe’s top leagues, with their domestic clubs winning Asian Champions League titles on multiple occasions and the national team is widely respected for their technical prowess on the ball.   Yet the reputation Japan have cemented on the football stage…

13 clubs, 229 goals and an illustrious trophy cabinet. Only Alan Shearer and Wayne Rooney have scored more Premier League goals than him, but yet English forward Andy Cole has played for his country fewer times than Matthew Upson. This is by no means to discredit the career of Upson, but the disparity between the…

Ever since Gian Piero Gasperini was appointed manager of Atalanta, his exploits in Serie A and the Champions League have made Italy and the rest of Europe take notice. Attractive attacking football, excellent coaching in elevating once underachieving footballers to elite talents and punching above their weights have won many fans at home and abroad.…

A few things are a trademark of a football club’s identity. Its colours, its crest, its fans, and very often, its stadium. The last is one that sticks around for ages, something fans call their home and something they can associate with for a long time.   Moving stadiums or modernizing them to accommodate the…

European football has a rich history of teams being successful thanks to their academy and homegrown talent – Celtic’s Lisbon Lions of the late 1960s under Jock Stein where every player was born within 30 miles of Glasgow, Manchester United with the fabled Class Of ’92, and Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona which saw the likes of…

Former Manchester City CEO Garry Cook, when tasked with overseeing and facilitating the transition of the club, once requested his representatives to present him a vignette of the club’s defining moments.   What he got back, he says in an interview with The Athletic, “was Bert Trautmann holding his neck in the 1956 FA Cup…

In a career spanning over two decades, securing 219 goals and 63 assists across 573 appearances is no small feat. Yet, injury woes, a global pandemic, and a slightly premature retirement was not how Aritz Aduriz would have expected his final campaign to conclude.  In another world, Aduriz would have played in the all-Basque final…

Football is known as ‘the beautiful game’ by all of its devotees, but there are elements of the sport that are, in some contexts and to some people, wholeheartedly terrifying. During his prime years, Djibril Cissé was one of those elements, fused by a repertoire of attributes that left opposing fans and defenders equally helpless,…

The journey of Anzhi Makhachkala has been one of ups and downs. But nothing quite paints the picture better than this statistic: they finished 3rd in the Russian Premier League in 2013 and 15th in Zone South of the Russian Professional Football League (Russia’s third tier) in 2020.   It all began in 1991 when the…