Professor Champions League

Our European guru educates and enlightens



Paul Simpson

Shocks, stalkers and streakers

Monday 05 January 2009, 11:00

“Jeff Stelling will be going mad,” my father-in-law Den said, after Michael Nelson majestically headed Hartlepool United into a 1-0 lead in the FA Cup Third Round against Stoke City. Stelling’s response was uppermost in the minds of jubilant Pools fans...
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The blacksmith, the bobsleigher and the architect

Wednesday 31 December 2008, 12:00

The festive season is a time for cheap nostalgia. And the nostalgia in this blog is free, give or take the cost of your broadband connection and electricity. For reasons that largely elude me, I'm honouring some greats who had the misfortune to play...
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Ibra, Best and a Boxing Day bonanza

Tuesday 23 December 2008, 09:00

His Zlatanic majesty The 2008-09 UEFA Champions League draw was a bit of a peach. Not only does it offer Rafa Benitez and Claudio Ranieri the chance to stroll down Memory Lane, it pits Ferguson against Mourinho or, more importantly, Ibrahimovic against...
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Surplus strikers, hat-trick Hans & belated Golden balls

Monday 15 December 2008, 11:00

Strikers on the dole Being a striker has always been an insecure profession. They have long been afflicted by mysterious fluctuations in form, a variable quality of service from team-mates and ridiculous expectations from fans and directors. But their...
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Champions League: Stats, jibes & Dutch pranksters

Saturday 13 December 2008, 10:00

There’s one UEFA Champions League stat I haven’t been able to track down... how many passes Arsenal didn’t complete against Porto. For Manchester United fans, hoping to retain the UEFA Champions League trophy, the key numbers, as Mystic Meg might say...
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The football ABC: Adolf, Bruno and Chelsea

Thursday 04 December 2008, 15:00

Hitler, The Times and Schalke Having fallen for the Hitler diaries, you would have thought The Times would check its facts before declaring here that Adolf Hitler was the worst famous football fan ever and informing readers that “the Fuhrer had a soft...
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Champions League Round-up: From Dani to Danny

Thursday 27 November 2008, 12:00

Damn Zenit. Especially Dani, a ridiculously talented player whose inability to distinguish between the back of the net, posts and crossbars has sunk my outside tip for the 2009 UEFA Champions League. He and his team-mates squandered opportunities with...
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Battered Bulgars, bereft Belgians and miserable Maltesers

Thursday 20 November 2008, 10:00

The human teleprinter here, with utterly off the cuff reactions to last night’s other results – i.e. not England’s or Scotland’s. Serbia 6-1 Bulgaria . Hristo Stoichkov, Yordan Letchkov, Trifan Ivanov, Dimitar Penev, Georgi Dimitrov: your boys sure took...
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How do minnows stop being muppets?

Saturday 15 November 2008, 12:00

Inter, schmInter. If Jose Mourinho really is The Special One, we should ask Silvio Berlusconi to pass a law that the Portuguese genius must spend the next two years coaching the national team in the Most Serene Republic of San Marino. Giampaolo Mazza...
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Matchday 4: Strong men, wronged women and tongues

Monday 10 November 2008, 10:00

Firstly, an apology. This blog would have been posted much earlier but my computer blew up twice. But I managed my anger, forcing myself to adopt that “I’m more disappointed than angry” look that Trevor Francis always wears on Sky Sports. Anyway, to business...
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No time for losers in east and north Europe

Monday 03 November 2008, 09:30

The fat lady has sung in Belarus, Finland, Latvia, Norway and Russia. These league titles have now been clinched by BATE Borisov (for the fifth time), Inter Turku (for the first time), Ventspils (for the third year in a row), Stabaek and Rubin Kazan ...
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Matchday 3: Trains, ship's whistles and Jeremy Beadle

Thursday 23 October 2008, 10:00

Fewer goals, no great surprises, and one sound thrashing: Wednesday was not a vintage night of Champions League football. It was if the clubs were hungover from Tuesday’s champagne football. Barcelona and Chelsea are effectively through to the last 16...
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Fabulous finishes, heroic comebacks and rockin’ Robben

Wednesday 22 October 2008, 11:00

Has Spain’s triumph at Euro 2008 inspired coaches to play attacking football? Or are defenders and goalkeepers seriously rubbish? In truth, it’s a bit of both (and yes, two of the goals looked offside) but after a night in which 36 goals were scored in...
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Johnny Haynes: Fulham's big headed pass master

Monday 20 October 2008, 11:00

“What are you effing up to?” That was how England and Fulham maestro Johnny Haynes often rebuked team-mates who had just screwed up. Sometimes, he wouldn’t say anything, just stand, hands on hips, in an accusatory manner. Sometimes, a legend’s impatience...
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Dictators, Scolari and Rio the statesman

Friday 17 October 2008, 13:00

Hello, good evening and welcome to our version of That Was The Week That Was . It’s been a great seven days for football dictators, Scolari and the new, statesmanlike Rio Ferdinand. Football dictatorship of the week Constitutionally, the republic of Uzbekistan...
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Norwegian Blue: far from pushing up the daisies

Tuesday 07 October 2008, 16:10

You may be relieved, or disappointed, to discover that Monty Python and the controversial parrot have no place in this blog. The Norwegian Blue in question are Stabaek, surprise leaders of the Norwegian Tippeligaen. Once chiefly famous for being monopolised...
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Obama’s a Hammer, yo-yo clubs and the best team name ever

Monday 06 October 2008, 08:00

Obama’s Hammer blow for McCain... “The beautiful game is democracy in action and reflects American ideals and values like teamwork and diversity.” So says the campaign website Soccer Fans For Obama . There is a dearth of posts on the site. There aren...
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Smells like team spirit at Bayern

Friday 03 October 2008, 12:00

Mumsy Scottish troubadour Lena Martell’s philosophy was “one day at a time, sweet Jesus.” Football managers officially take one game at a time. Yet after this week’s results, some coaches are privately spinning different scenarios. Marseille’s Eric Gerets...
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Minnows 2 Elitists 0

Thursday 02 October 2008, 17:00

This is where I suck up to Michel Platini, the UEFA president who, indirectly, keeps me in a job. When he suggested opening up the UEFA Champions League to teams that the British press, with characteristic open mindedness, dubbed “minnows,” there was...
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Cowards, loony Toons and lucky Luciano

Friday 26 September 2008, 11:00

I didn’t realise how bad Newcastle United’s crisis was until I read that the club had asked Keith Harris to smooth its sale. Were billionaires in the Middle East/India/Nigeria going to be impressed by a man brandishing a green duckling wearing nothing...
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Inter, Chelsea and the third incarnation of Jose Mourinho

Wednesday 17 September 2008, 14:30

The rehabilitation of Jose Mourinho, the world’s most charismatic coach, took a giant step forward in Athens on Tuesday night. Inter’s efficient 2-0 win over Panathinaikos was exactly the kind of result the Nerazzurri so seldom produced in Europe under...
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Suburban euphoria greets England triumph

Friday 12 September 2008, 10:00

When Wayne Rooney slotted home England’s third, even the cynics in the pub started to believe that England would earn at least a draw. At half-time, with England 1-0 up courtesy of the Stanmore Pelé, someone had started up a chant of “We’re on the way...
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Borges, Borring and Billy the Fish

Wednesday 10 September 2008, 08:00

European football in 12 paragraphs... Ironic slogan of the week Newcastle United’s invitation on its homepage: “YOU could be Newcastle’s best signing of the season.” Although, wait zenaba minute, that’s not ironic, it’s true. Anyone of us could be… even...
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Why are footballers so unfit?

Thursday 04 September 2008, 15:00

Or, if Roger Federer can stay in good shape for Wimbledon every year, why are so many top footballers missing crucial games because of torn adductor muscles, torn cruciate ligaments or mumps? Or, to put it another way, why haven’t the hordes of sports...
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Zizou, Zenit and Zzzmiley faces

Tuesday 02 September 2008, 08:00

I was at a party with Zinedine Zidane last week. Granted, Zizou never knew I was in the same room as him – a brush past on the way out was the closest we came to actual contact – but I am still so sad that my pulse raced as he walked past. Zidane was...
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Why did George Soros very nearly buy Roma?

Wednesday 27 August 2008, 15:00

The legendary speculator, philanthropist and pontificator came close to buying the Serie A club this summer just before its president Franco Sensi died after a long illness. Though he was briefly linked with the Washington Nationals baseball team, Soros...
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The good, the bad and the Eredivisie

Thursday 21 August 2008, 14:00

How bad is the Dutch league? It’s a question various punters and thinkers have been mooching over in cyberspace’s most cavernous recesses. The evidence that the Eredivisie is as dire as Police Academy 4: Citizens On Patrol is so scanty that even James...
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The future of football... and how to stop it

Friday 15 August 2008, 11:49

The blazers have done something right. Oh frabjous day, quelle surprise and benissimo – the internet being an interactive medium feel free to add any foreign or indeed made up phrases that signify surprise, joy and relief – UEFA, along with the governing...
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How to win the Champions League

Saturday 09 August 2008, 10:00

On August 4, Gerard Houllier did something he is very good at: he lectured people. As technical director of the French Football Federation, he told French coaches, referees and players it was their duty to encourage attacking play. Such an address reflects...
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Teapots, toilet doors and team play

Tuesday 05 August 2008, 15:05

“I always considered Rodney Marsh a sugar-coated turd.” You don’t expect footballers to write like Oscar Wilde but I had hoped for something more eloquent from Len Glover, whose thundering runs down the wing for Leicester in the 1970s left such an impression...
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Shock of the week

Thursday 31 July 2008, 13:09

What is Chelsea? A simple question with many answers. It is a posh part of London, the name of Bill Clinton’s daughter and a football club. But Chelsea is far more than that. According to the club’s chief executive Peter Kenyon, “Roman Abramovich, the...
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Labels, losers and laughter

Saturday 26 July 2008, 11:00

It’s a bit early to label Pedro Morales the Chilean Beckham but if the 23-year-old keeps scoring goals like this against the Ivory Coast , the label will start to stick. Morales has just signed for Dinamo Zagreb, one of the most productive finishing schools...
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War games

Tuesday 22 July 2008, 11:30

A divided island, Cyprus is united in one thing: its passion for football. Especially English football. Last week, in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, at a café beside St Heraklion Castle, allegedly the inspiration for the Snow White And The Seven...
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Sweden’s Brazilian entertainers

Friday 18 July 2008, 10:00

The Poles like to think of themselves as the Brazilians of European football. At times, they have been known to chant impatiently during games: “We are Polish and we want a goal.” But Sweden, for a Scandinavian nation famed for social democracy, the charismatic...
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The criminally underrated Faas Wilkes

Tuesday 08 July 2008, 10:00

Faas Wilkes (1923-2006) was Johan Cruyff’s favourite footballer. And yet outside the Netherlands – and Valencia – few people have ever heard of him. The football encyclopaedia on my desk describes him, in its best Wolstenholmian prose, as “tall, lean...
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How to fix a World Cup

Friday 04 July 2008, 13:53

Everybody loves a good conspiracy. Dan Brown is so sure of this is he tells us twice in The Da Vinci Code, the biggest selling ‘book’ since the Bible. But it’s hard to know what to make of recent suggestions by Joao Havelange, the former FIFA president...
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Fleas, Freud and football on the box

Tuesday 01 July 2008, 12:39

“The Brazilians do it, the Argentinians do it, the Danes do it…” “Even educated fleas do it.” That famous exchange between Mike ‘should have been a racehorse’ Channon and Brian Clough, recalled by Harry Pearson in The Guardian is a reminder of just how...
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Random Eurovisions

Sunday 29 June 2008, 11:50

You can count on the thumb of one hand the number of central defenders who have seriously impressed at Euro 2008. Against Spain, Giorgio Chiellini gave a master class in the art, snuffing out trouble time after time. The number of holding midfielders...
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Tomatoes, garbage and the Azzurri

Tuesday 24 June 2008, 12:23

There’ll be a national inquest, but no tomatoes will be thrown. The Azzurri’s Euro 2008 campaign ended in disappointment but not disgrace. That distinction may not, though, be enough to save Roberto Donadoni. Italy’s quarter-final exit can be boiled down...
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Czech follies, French snails and long balls

Monday 16 June 2008, 16:00

Oh Karel. A place in the last eight was just 15 minutes away for the Czech Republic and their respected coach Karel Bruckner before Turkey staged the mother of all comebacks. There was nothing remarkable about the way the Czechs wilted and retreated under...
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Multi-tasking full-backs, or The Meaning Of Gio

Wednesday 11 June 2008, 10:06

The Netherlands’ astonishing dismantling of Italy highlighted one fundamental, underappreciated truth about football: the full-back may just be the most important person on the pitch. Replay that game without Giovanni van Bronckhorst and the Dutch have...
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Cristiano and the lions

Sunday 08 June 2008, 14:58

Sometimes, it would be nice if footballers could emulate the brevity of rock stars. It took the Clash just three minutes and six seconds to satisfactorily explore the conundrum of whether they should stay or go. Cristiano Ronaldo’s will-he won’t-he saga...
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The Oranje boom

Wednesday 04 June 2008, 19:00

Some things in life don’t change. Eric Morecambe will always be funny. Arsene Wenger is never going to wear a kipper tie. And Dutch coaches will always be in fashion. Not the height of fashion. Not the new black. But always in demand, while the market...
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A season through the looking glass

Friday 30 May 2008, 07:00

Every year, usually about this time, football goes barking mad. This summer it has gone so berserk that Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice In Wonderland and Through The Looking Glass, would feel deeply proud. So proud I felt inspired – hopefully that...
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Jubilation and despair on mission to Moscow

Friday 23 May 2008, 12:26

Two weeks before the final, the word was that the fix was in. Chelsea were going to win 1-0. Ferguson would not be too upset to lose. The process by which this king of games was to be fixed wasn’t clear – “nothing as crude as a bribe,” one journalist...
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Where the final will be won and lost

Wednesday 21 May 2008, 10:00

Michael Ballack has been talking a lot about pain recently. Not about the agony of injury but the pain of defeat, in a UEFA Champions League final, with Bayer Leverkusen in 2001. There’s a lot of pain about at Chelsea at the moment: emotional for Frank...
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Ignore the pundits... nobody knows anything!

Monday 19 May 2008, 15:07

Nobody knows anything. That was screenwriter William Goldman’s maxim. That is why Irving Thalberg, the great Hollywood producer, turned down the chance to make Gone With The Wind because “no Civil War picture ever made a nickel”. It is also why, as the...
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The spy who loved Russian football

Thursday 15 May 2008, 14:38

Could football have prevented the Russian revolution? The Scottish spy, journalist, diplomat, assassin and footballer R.H. Bruce Lockhart certainly thought so. In chapter two of his memoirs, Lockhart recalls how two Lancastrian mill owners, Clement and...
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The Premier League: perfect for morons

Tuesday 06 May 2008, 09:31

In England, the first all-Premiership Champions League final has been a cause of national rejoicing, self-satisfied chortling and the frequent airing – in inns and taverns across Britain – of the opinion that the Premiership is the best in the world....
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Foreskins and Total Football

Thursday 24 April 2008, 11:09

Blogs aren’t supposed to be confessions of ignorance. But this time, instead of trying to answer a question, I’m asking one in the hope that someone can enlighten me. The question is this: is there a Jewish style of football? The question arose when I...
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Binges, monsters and Hammers. Where are they now?

Friday 18 April 2008, 19:50

Where are they now? is one of the most pointlessly fascinating questions in football. Yet after a trip to a second hand bookshop I embarked on a where are they now binge fully cognisant of the risk that, as a binging Brit, I might end up condemned on...
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White hankies, Elvis and Zico

Thursday 10 April 2008, 14:37

It’s not often you see fans celebrating a place in the last four of the UEFA Champions League by calling for their coach to be sacked. But that’s what happened at Camp Nou where a frustrated minority of Barcelona fans waved their white handkerchiefs at...
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Coaches become a victim of their own success

Tuesday 08 April 2008, 12:53

I scored twice for England last night. In my dream. We were winning 3-2 at half-time. I was talking to a blank faced coach whose impressive dearth of the usual facial features – hair, nose, eyes, etc – made him look like a half-finished Dr Who monster...
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What Lenny Kravitz can teach Man United

Wednesday 02 April 2008, 14:09

As that vastly underrated football pundit Lenny Kravitz used to say, it ain’t over till it’s over. But, after the first legs of last night’s UEFA Champions League quarter-finals, it is very nearly over for two teams and Barcelona and Manchester United...
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Why Belgian football's gone rubbish

Thursday 27 March 2008, 10:02

“In sport,” said Belgium’s greatest footballer Paul van Himst, “you have to be able to handle losing.” The Red Devils, beaten 4-1 by Morocco in their latest friendly, now handle defeat so well that they find it hard to do anything else. Even Van Himst...
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Flonaldo finally calls it a day

Thursday 20 March 2008, 10:55

I was going to write about the magic of the FA Cup – specifically about how the magic of the FA Cup will, if it keeps producing semi-finals containing the likes of Barnsley, Cardiff, Portsmouth and West Brom, destroy the magic of the FA Cup – but this...
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The world’s most insignificant derby game?

Tuesday 18 March 2008, 10:13

If the Argentine fabulist Jorge Luis Borges had ever dropped into the pub next to Nuneaton Borough’s old Manor Park ground on matchday and I had attempted to regale him over a pint of Pedigree with a potted history of our rivalry with Bedworth United...
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Ajax and Newcastle seek solace from legends

Tuesday 26 February 2008, 10:23

Last week, Ajax effectively checked into rehab. Newcastle United, by contrast, are still in the early Amy Winehouse "no-no-no" denial stage. The surprise of the Geordie Messiah’s return to Tyneside pales beside the astonishing twist that sees...
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How the Bundesliga can make England cool again

Friday 22 February 2008, 14:23

“Ten Euros!” said Uli-Hesse Lichtenberger, after he had stopped coughing long enough to light another cigarette and resume our conversation. We were standing in the corner of a smoky bar in Gelsenkirchen, two islands in a sea of blue and white Schalke...
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Celtic vs Barcelona: over to Tarby...

Tuesday 19 February 2008, 10:10

Hallelujah, the Champions League is back! The greatest football show on earth has reached the knockout stage, pitting contenders against pretenders, the best against the slightly above average and promising to humiliate at least one European giant. When...
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Random thoughts on European football

Thursday 14 February 2008, 12:44

1. If Kevin Keegan is the Geordie Messiah, who’s the Geordie John the Baptist? Jim Smith? 2. If Ireland’s ambition is to reach the finals of major tournaments again, why have they hired Giovanni Trapattoni who, for all his vast experience and trophy winning...
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Scudamore's cunning plan to chop his own head off

Monday 11 February 2008, 10:22

Richard Scudamore doesn’t look like Baldrick. But his vision of a new globalised Premiership has all the cunning, merit and intellectual rigour of the most uncunning plan ever devised by Black Adder’s half-witted aide. Unlike Baldrick, whose sole ambition...
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The struggle for sanity: football, depression, OCD

Monday 04 February 2008, 10:44

How many footballers, like Van Gogh in Don McLean’s sloppy, stirring ballad Vincent, struggle for their sanity? And does football make their struggle harder? Football is, as Portsmouth keeper David James noted , an obsessive business. “How normal is kicking...
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If Jose's the new Revie, who's the new Jose?

Tuesday 29 January 2008, 14:34

Mourinho was the new Cloughie. Old Big Ead even said as much in Champions magazine. But with his meticulously prepared dossiers on opponents, the professionalism with which his teams exploit every law and loophole to win and preference for efficient,...
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