All Played Off

And with that, the season was over. That’s your lot – or, at least, it is until the start of the European Championships. The final weekend of the domestic season was, perhaps surprisingly, not quite as dramatic as one might have expected. Because of Euro 2008, the play-offs for the Football League were played in [...]

The Burden Of Expectation

It was simultaneously the most and least surprising decision of the summer. Avram Grant, who has had the gaunt, tired look of the dead man walking since his appointment last year, has been sacked by Chelsea, in a decision that adds further weight to the increasingly widespread belief that Premier League is living the last [...]

Euro 2008 – Group A

It’s that time again. The closing date for the squad lists to be submitted to UEFA for Euro 2008 is the 28th of May, but we already know enough about who will be there and who won’t to be able to start having a look at the groups for the finals of this year’s European [...]

Football League Play-Off Preview

It’s that time of year again, when Wembley fills with expectant supporters for the play-off finals. Over the course of Saturday, Sunday and Monday, three matches will be played that decide who will be in what division next season, and it’s time to have a look forward to those three matches, starting with Monday’s match [...]

Something Is Going To Have To Give

At one end of the scale, of course, there are crocodile tears, hype beyond hype and more money can most people could ever realistically manage to be able to imagine. Manchester United returned to England today, curiously now being lauded as one of the greatest teams in the history of football on account of winning [...]

The Champions League Final – Live!

Well, this is it. This is IMPORTANT. Everyone must pick a side. Blue or red. You must choose. It’s the biggest match in world football since 1966. In about four and half hours time, we will know who is the biggest football club in the world. Over fifty years after the European Cup started as [...]

The European Championships – 2004

Depending on who you ask, Greece’s victory at Euro 2004 was either a victory for the footballing romantic or a dour triumph of defensiveness over attacking flair. Greece, who had only ever qualified for the tournament once before, in 1980, arrived in Portugal with a pretty straightforward philosophy – we know our limitations and will [...]

The European Championships – 2000

So, a new millennium, and a new concept for UEFA – for the first time, the finals of the European Championships would be jointly hosted between two countries. This was an excellent tournament, freed from much of the defensive football that had blighted the previous two competitions in England and Sweden, and would end with [...]

The European Championships – 1996

Time, then, to debunk a couple of old myths about Euro 96. First of all, the tournament was not the stunning success that many of the history books would tell you that it was. It was certainly a success when compared with the worst, most doom-laden prophecies that the media could come up with, but [...]

The European Championships – 1992

The years between 1988 and 1992 were the most eventful in the history of Europe since the end of the Second World War. The collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe meant that the 1992 European Championships saw the first entry of a reunited German team and, in the light of the dissolution of the Soviet [...]