Most people will be familiar with Orwell’s famous statement about football being another means of war which he postulated in an article in The Tribune in 1945 after Dynamo Moscow came to the UK to play a number of friendly games. Orwell’s own experiences of the game are quite different, though they originate from a…
What follows is a collection of quotes by Hugh McIlvanney who has passed away this week on the World Cup tournament 1966, held in England. More than 50 years ago The Observer, England’s oldest Sunday paper assembled a team of five writers to cover the 1966 World Cup in England. The team were Hugh McIlvanney,…
There are games that are embedded in football folklore, even more than thirty years later. One of these games happened Krefeld, a town not known for its footballing exploits. Yet, in the 1980s the local team FC Bayer 05 Uerdingen were a force to be reckoned with. In March 1986 they hosted East German side…
A brief report on the first international match between Germany and Russia in 1912 during the Olympic Games in Stockholm Read more →
The semi-final between Sweden and West Germany during the 1958 World Cup has had reverberations that no one could have thought of. Read more →
The World Cup is upon us. Everyone who is in the slightest interested in football will tune in and watch, discuss and remember. Juan Carlos Luzuriaga is a Uruguayan and describes what the history and the present have in store for Uruguayan football and football fans. When there are still a few days left until…
A short personal text about FC Magdeburg securing promotion to Bundesliga 2 next season. Read more →
A little film from December 1973 depicting the history of Newton Heath Read more →
England hosted Hungary, the reigning Olympic champion at Wembley on the afternoon of November 25, 1953. After the game, the world was turned upside down for the home side. Read more →
Thirty years ago West Germany were hosting England who had come with a burden to Düsseldorf to play a friendly match: The valley Parade and Heysel tragedies had shed a bad light on English football. The match served as a testing ground for either team to see where they stood a year before the European…