News stations were reporting that Olivia Smith broke the £1m barrier after signing a contract with Arsenal’s womens team. In men’s football, this sum is peanuts. It shows the gap, no the gulf between either games. In 1979 the English club Nottingham Forest, then managed by Brian Clough, paid more than £1m to sign Trevor…
Global football has become somewhat of a joke in recent years. The World Cup was awarded to countries which have to be considered autocracies or oligarchies. The number of teams participating has multiplied since the first post-war edition of 1950, when there were only 13 teams competing in Uruguay. The format with 32 teams appears…
Reputations in football are much quicker dismantled as it takes time to build them. Magdeburg are the latest example in this list. Or rather, their – now – former coach, Christian Titz. Towards the end of last season, Magdeburg were as comprehensively as surprisingly beaten by Münster: 5-0 was the result. The hopes for promotion…
The history of the 2025 UEFA Champions League victory for PSG began in 2011 when the Qatar backed investment fund took over Paris Saint-Germain. It altered the French footballing landscape significantly. All of a sudden, Paris were capable of big signings without thinking twice. For more than a decade the money spent did not deliver…
Superlatives should be used carefully; they wear out quickly. Yet, it is safe to say that Brian Glanville was the best football writer in the English language. He was often copied yet no one reached his level. Additionally, he was the first English writer to take European football seriously. It is bewildering, however, that no…
In a laudable move, the French top divisions, Ligue 1 and Ligue 2 have decided that there will be a special shirt to mark International Women’s Day, March 8. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Red Star FC (@redstarfc) It is an important statement from the league, yet is it enough to…
The German Football Association looks back at 125 years of existence. It is a rich history with many highs and lows, triumphs and tragedies. Many observers would rather the past quarter of a century to be deleted. Anniversaries like the 125th of the DFB are often overseen or overshadowed by more important dates. In this…
The little Paris derby: Paris FC vs Red Star surely has its attention as a record crowd of 17750 made their way to the Stade Charléty on the southern edges of Paris, defying the weather of rain and 10 degrees. This was never an open encounter as the home team took the lead within 10…
“Sport and time can be great healers”, is how Geoffrey Green – somewhat naively – closed his pre-match report in The Times ahead of the first encounter between England and Germany in December 1954. The question that many asked themselves was whether or not the English would show their emotions at a football match. Memories…
Standards I’d kept, in the back of my mind Are now just rules to break from time to time As the singer of The Lemonheads, Evan Dando possesses the magic of turning scenes taken from our daily lives into little pop gems. This applies to the song “No Backbone,” quoted above. We have all been…