A year or so ago, the idea that Barcelona’s current side was the best to have ever played the game was pretty popular. The ball was passed from world-class player to world-class player as Barca would patiently strangle the life out of opposition teams. One tricky season later and it seemed we had been caught…
We have reached the penultimate side on the list, and we are now in the rather odd position where the team we have named second best in history would probably be beaten by every team that came before it in the series. The problem with judging teams from different eras is that it is near-impossible…
Someone like Zdenek Zeman could probably never emerge in English football. An abrasive and confrontational yet quietly spoken man, puffing on cigarettes whenever he can, he cuts far too distint a figure to survive in English football’s sycophancy. One of his outbursts would be enough for him to be driven out of a country less…
Football can be an extremely black and white game at times – goal or no goal; transfer or no transfer; injury or no injury. The butterfly effect can be tracked easier than in many other walks of life. Potential legacies thrown away because of one loss; sport-wide evolution in style disappearing on the back of…
The honeymoon appears to be over for FSG, with those suspicious of the owners now encapsulating more than just fans blindly loyal to Kenny Dalglish. Not succumbing to Gylfi Sigurdsson’s extra wage demands was fair enough, but their tightfistedness over the transfer of Clint Dempsey has left Liverpool’s already faultering attack too thin. John Henry’s…
Total Football might well have been the worst thing to have happened to Dutch football. The greatness of Rinus Michel’s creation hung a weight around the necks of the generations that followed. Having experienced the teams of the seventies, those that followed not only had to win, but do so in style. With the eyes…
French football is a pretty bizarre environment. Their national team doesn’t really need to be discussed: the Raymond Domenech era was a psychiatrist’s wet dream, and the failure of a hugely talented generation seems to have come about mainly because one man, Zinedine Zidane, retired. The oddities extend to their domestic game too, however. For…
After his stint with England, Fabio Capello’s reputation has taken a hit that he has never really experienced before, throwing an interesting spin to his new role as Russia manager. Still, he has shown an ability to come back from failure before. In his only other management failure, Capello returned to a decaying Milan side,…
Anyone ballsy enough to put bets on Wigan to beat Liverpool, Manchester United, Arsenal and Newcastle must have won a decent sum – even more if they were astute enough to make use of the sports betting sites here. Wigan’s success in the second half of last season had a noticeable starting point though: a…
There is a legitimate argument to be made for Adolf Hitler being responsible for one of the greatest sides football has ever seen. Germany never impressed under Nazi rule and they didn’t even have a professional league until 1963 – Hitler paid more attention to the Olympics, using football to his advantage but not to…
