A striker can spend 89 minutes frustrating a stadium, misplacing passes and sending decent chances into the stands, then touch the ball once in the right place and become the…
Football clubs often claim to believe in young players, but the real test comes when a teenager scores twice, earns the headlines, and still has to wait for his next…
The richest football club owners in the world operate with financial resources that make even the most expensive transfers look modest, from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund to luxury-goods dynasties…
Some of football’s most successful managers would have struggled to earn a living from the game as players, yet went on to outthink world champions, lift European trophies and build…
The most valuable football clubs have mastered a rather strange trick: convincing millions of people to spend money, emotion, and several perfectly good weekends following a team they may never…
Football fans have a strange relationship with the international break. Give them a World Cup or a European Championship, and they will rearrange their lives to watch it. Give them…
Some footballers have great seasons. Others have a spell when everything they touch seems to turn into trouble for the opposition. Defenders know what is coming and still cannot stop…
Footballers usually have a fairly predictable retirement menu: coaching, punditry, scouting, business, and perhaps a few television appearances where everyone discovers the former centre-back is considerably funnier than he was…
All football's greatest finishers come from wildly different eras, systems, and football cultures, yet they share one irritating habit for defenders: give them half a chance and the ball tends…
Winning the Ballon d'Or usually comes with a familiar supporting cast: a league title, a European Cup, a World Cup, a room full of medals and teammates who spent the…