We decided to carry on asking if anyone was going to the football on Twitter after the fun of last month’s Around the Grounds. This time it’s to Yorkshire, Greater Manchester and Washington for the football you cared for enough to tell us about. FC Halifax Town 0 – 0 Aldershot Town – Halifax, Yorkshire […]
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Around the Grounds – February 2019
Why The Away Goals Rule Must Be Abolished
“Europe seemed much bigger in the early 1970s. Iberia was governed by fascist dictators. There were two Germanys, West and East. With no rolling news, Blackberries nor Twitter, a plausible sit-com episode could be written based on the Likely Lads avoiding knowledge of the result of an England match for half a day. Europe’s airlines […]
Bring Your Dinner, Ewan Flynn
John Sitton, the Rwandan genocide and the fabled Leyton Orient documentary Tuesday, 7 February 1995, half-time: Leyton Orient 0 Blackpool 1. Home Dressing Room. “What did I say to you about good players wanting to be good players all the time? Do you not know how profound that is? Have you not examined the fucking […]
Zambia 0* Ivory Coast 0, 2012 – Paul Myers
This week on Greatest Games, Paul Myers joins Jonathan and Marcus to discuss the 2012 Cup of Nations final and one of the most emotional stories in football history. Extraordinarily reaching the final meant that Zambia would compete to win their first-ever Cup of Nations in Libreville, Gabon – the city where 30 passengers and […]
Italy 2 Czechoslovakia 1, 1934 – Herbie Sykes
It’s a World Cup final edition of Greatest Games! Herbie Sykes joins Jonathan Wilson and Marcus Speller to discuss Italy’s first World Cup triumph on home soil in 1934. Mussolini’s Italy greeted the world for the second Fifa World Cup competition, the first to feature teams from three continents. In a tournament designed to highlight […]
Portugal 1 Iceland 1, 2016 – Steve Crossman
Steve Crossman joins Jonathan Wilson and Marcus Speller on this week’s Greatest Games to discuss the Euro 2016 Group F opener between eventual champions, Portugal, and the tournament’s surprise package, Iceland. The Nordic nation had never featured at a major tournament finals before but were unfazed by going toe-to-toe with the 2004 finalists, captained by […]
Foreword (or Forward) by Irvine Welsh
The foreword for Man the Footballer: Homo Passiens by Irvine Welsh. Now I get it! Homo sapiens is a recently arrived imposter in the evolution of the genus Homo – a mountebank, a charlatan, a confidence trickster, a fraud, a fraudster, a rogue, a villain, a scoundrel, a quack! All that academic stuff about consciousness, […]
Issue Forty
Introduction Issue 40: Editor’s Note – Jonathan Wilson Jonathan Wilson’s Editor’s Note from Issue Forty Politics The Years of Lead – John Irving Juventus, Torino and visiting Turin during Italy’s decade of political violence The Green Giant – Leonard Jägerskiöld Velander Sampdoria’s Morten Thorsby and changing football’s relationship with the environment The Rebels – Ewan Flynn The chaotic attempts […]
Tales of My Father (with Jonathan Wilson)
“His memory was gone, ravaged by Alzheimer’s, but when I told him, I saw a flicker in his eyes. ’Do you remember Clough?’ I asked, talking, to be honest, for the sake of talking; he couldn’t have told me, by then, what day it was or what he’d had for lunch. ‘Of course I do,’ […]