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The Wizard Of Alvalade: The Magic, the Madness and the Making of Ricardo Quaresma
Alvalade was where the spell was first cast. A boy born in Lisbon, but forged in the chaos of the streets, Sporting CP gave him his first stage, but never the script. He was never meant to follow one. To watch him play was to witness something uncoachable: feints that defied physics, crosses that curved…
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Kevin De Bruyne: Farewell to a Manchester City Legend
“Gundogan… promising … De Bruyneeeeee! “ In what was the club’s fourth appearance in a UEFA Champions League semi final after being 1-0 down to the most recent winners and current record holders at the time Real Madrid, Kevin De Bruyne strikes a 25-yard first time shot to keep his team in it when…
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Diego Armando Maradona: Argentina’s Golden Boy
There’s a Shakespeare quote that says “when this body contained a soul, an entire kingdom was too small to hold it. But now two paces of wretched earth is plenty of room”. Five years ago, we lost an icon in the game of football, one Diego Armando Maradona. Loved not only by his fellow Argentines…
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Temporal Genius of Ancelotti: Football as a Question of When, Not How
Donna Summer’s 1975 hit “Love to Love You Baby” is playing in the background as I write this, the bassline rolling in slow, hypnotic waves, the beat simmering just beneath the surface. It stretches time, makes it elastic. Seconds don’t tick—they breathe. The song doesn’t hurry, doesn’t rush to conclusions. It lingers. Anticipates. It…
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John Obi Mikel: The Magician Who Became A Warrior
It was 2003. I was just a boy, wide-eyed and full of wonder, watching Nigeria’s U-17 team in the FIFA World Cup. The Golden Eaglets didn’t make it past the group stage that year, undone by the cruel toss of a coin. But in that tournament, amid the disappointment, one player left a mark on…
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Ronaldo Luís Nazário de Lima and the Riddle of a God Amongst Men
I would never have written this piece; after all, it concerns a god, and with gods, there is nothing truly needing to be told. Their wonders precede them, their acts follow, leaving awe and sometimes a mess in their wake. However, when the gods are slighted by mere mortals, the heavens do not remain silent,…
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Alex Morgan: Farewell to One of the USWNT’s All-time Greats
15 years after making her senior debut for the US Women’s National Team, Alex Morgan would announce that she was hanging up her cleats for good. Last Thursday, Morgan announced her retirement from professional football. The move was quite the shock that caught many people by surprise and that initial shock took some time to…
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Manuel Neuer: The Goalkeeper of all Eras
In the continuous cycle that is football, where tactics are a back-and-forth that returns to the point of origin; it legitimizes the present as the appropriate thing and rescues the past as a cause of what will come in the future, the goalkeeper escapes that thin line that fuses both chronologies to make room for…
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Pepe: The Last of a Dying Breed
In a world where defenders have become artists, sculpting attacks from the back with delicate touches and deft passes, there was one man who refused to be confined by the brushes of modern football. Pepe — raw, relentless, and unapologetically fierce — was a throwback to a time when defending was an unforgiving craft, carved…
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Sebastián Coates: El Patrón
May 15th 2018. An insignificant day for many, yet the darkest in the rich history of Sporting Clube de Portugal, while significant in marking the legacy of Sebastián Coates, affectionately referred to as “El Patrón” or “Seba” by many Sportinguistas. On this day, a mob of 50 disgruntled vandals launched a brutal attack on…
