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What Goes Up, Must Come Down, Must Come Back Up Again – The Rise, Fall and Rise Again of Inter Milan
It has been a roller-coaster few decades for Inter Milan — we’re taking a look at the club’s transformation over the past 30 years. The 1990s – Not Everyone’s Golden Age Ask any Italian football fan and they’ll say football peaked in the 1990’s. It’s easy to see why. The decade started with…
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Teofilo Cubillas – Part 1: The Rise Of El Nene
Name the best South American football players to grace a field and many will cite either a Brazilian (Pele, Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, Zico or Jairzinho) or an Argentinean (Lionel Messi, Diego Maradona or Mario Kempes). But if you were to ask who was the best South American player of the 1970s, the first name on the…
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Tactical Analysis: How Marcello Lippi’s Italy Won the 2006 FIFA World Cup
The mid 2000s oversaw a dramatic shift in European football’s power dynamics as the once-dominant Italian clubs collective crowns started to slip. A combination of ageing squads, the infamous Calciopoli scandal which tarnished the league’s formerly gleaming reputation and the subsequent expulsion of Juventus, Fiorentina and Lazio, who were the best teams in the country…
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Manchester United’s Transformation of 2005/06: When Success Came in Spite of New Ownership, Not Because of It
As Manchester United gear up for a hopefully more prosperous era under the minority ownership (for now) but likely near-full stewardship of Sir Jim Ratcliffe and INEOS, memories of the early years of the Glazers have come flooding back, when success came not because of the new men in charge, but in spite of them. …
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Batigol: The Early Years
Mention the name Gabriel Batistuta and one word springs to mind – Batigol. It was the nickname used lovingly to describe the striker that terrorised defences in Europe during the 1990s and early 2000s. His exploits for Fiorentina and then Roma are well known, but it is his early days that are less explored, a…
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Inside the Politicised World of Hungarian Football
On the 24th of May 2023, the Romanian Cup Final was set to be disputed between current holders Sepsi OSK and Universitatea Cluj. The game ended in a 0-0 draw and extra time was not sufficient to split the two teams. Then in the penalty shootout, Sepsi managed to cling on and reverse their fortunes…
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Mario Zagallo: Adeus to One of Brazil’s Greatest Managers
In the hallowed corridors of football’s history, there exists a rarefied air reserved for the immortals. Every manager and player aspire to sip from the cup of glory, the FIFA World Cup, at least once. Yet, imagine a maestro who not only tasted victory four times but orchestrated a symphony of triumph for a fifth. Such…
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The Greatest Managers in Football History
Pep Guardiola is undoubtedly the best manager of all time! Or is he? With most media outlets falling over themselves praising Pep’s treble win, I think the mania surrounding him is a bit exaggerated. He is no doubt a brilliant manager and tactician, but you cannot look past the prestige of the teams he managed…
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Bulgarian Football’s Harrowing Descent into Corruption and Mediocrity
On July 16th, 1994, 12:30 pm, at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California, the third-place playoff game of the World Cup was about to start between Sweden and the surprise of the tournament, Bulgaria. Even though the Swedes would smash the Bulgarians 4-0, it was nonetheless one of the finest achievements of an Eastern European…
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The Remarkable Rise of the Luxembourg National Team
On the 9th of September, Iceland, the perennial overachievers of the late 2010s were defeated 3-1 by Luxembourg, a team we all grew up watching get hammered by almost everyone. So, what about Luxembourg? Well, what about it? Whether you only see it fit to be used just for storage or know it exists and…
