“The death of the long ball has been frequently pronounced as football has evolved in the past few years. Playing out from the back has become the standard. Direct teams are the anomaly rather than the norm. The logical tactical evolution after that was the rise of the high press, followed by attempts to deliberately lure the press to exploit spaces in behind those opposition players doing the pressing. …”
NY Times/The Athletic (Video)
Why don’t goalkeepers wear caps anymore?
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“Conventional wisdom has it that being tall is advantageous. The problem with conventional wisdom is that it’s often wrong. There are studies that correlate height with happiness and higher salaries, admittedly at the cost of shorter lifespans. In certain sports, elite athletes are almost exclusively big, such as basketball, rowing (except the cox) and volleyball (except the libero). Successful Olympic swimmers have become 
“Jhon Duran. Villa Park. Champions League nights. It is a combination that has provided nothing but unbridled joy to Aston Villa so far. 
“It was 
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“For long periods of their 2-1 victory over 
“The woman behind the counter hands me a piece of cardboard and tells me to hold it up in the air if I want to bid. I’m number 7002 and that makes me feel uneasy. Is that how many people are going to be involved? Inside the auction room, it is a 
“For the third time in eight games this season, 
“Walking through the streets of Barcelona, there’s a common slogan you are bound to spot among the graffiti around the city: ‘Barca o mort’ (Barca or death, in Catalan). For some of Barca’s most fervent fans there is an almost religious bond with the club. Almost 5,000 kilometres away on the west coast of Africa, a similar expression reflects a very different reality. In Senegal, it is ‘Barca ou Barzakh’. Barzakh is an Arabic word that literally means ‘isthmus’. In Islam, it describes a stage of the afterlife where souls rest until judgement day. The phrase is like a rallying cry. It is an expression of solidarity, of shared hope before a voyage towards peril, leaving peril behind. Reach Barcelona, or die trying. …”
“The thing with 
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“The map shows the 18 clubs in the current season of the French Ligue 1 [2024-25]. The map features the locations and crests of the 18 current Ligue Un clubs, plus the recently-promoted and -relegated teams are noted. (Promoted in 2024: Angers, Auxerre, and Saint-Étienne; relegated in 2024: Metz, Lorient, Clermont.) Also shown on the map are the 10 largest French cities, and the 
“It’s the firmly established anthem for calms before sporting storms — but what’s the maximum number of times you’d want to listen to 
“It is a rarity to see 
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“Life at 
“Football Manager 25, scheduled for release next month, has been delayed until March. This is the first major delay for an edition of Football Manager since 2002 and will impact millions of gamers worldwide. The 2024 edition of the game was played by seven million players within 100 days of its release. Football Manager content creators attract hundreds of thousands of subscribers on YouTube. And Sports Interactive, the creator of Football Manager, had revenues of over £66million in the financial year ending in March 2023, according to Companies House. …”
“What are 
Adi Hütter
“‘At three o’clock on Saturdays, we know who we are, where we belong, and where we should be even when we aren’t,’ wrote Daniel Gray, the author and historian, in his 2016 book Saturday, 3pm: 50 Eternal Delights of Modern Football. Gray calls that sacred point in the English week ‘football time’, the opportunity for hundreds of thousands to escape the humdrum and stresses of everyday life and find a fleeting, common sanctuary. ‘What a privilege that is,’ he concludes. …”
“When Nicolas Jover signed up for an online set-piece course last summer, the tutors initially thought it was a prank. Despite transforming 
Aberdeen and St Johnstone
“It is unwise to 
“The map page shows a location-map for the 18 clubs in the 2024-25 Bundesliga, with recently promoted and relegated teams noted. (Promoted in 2024: FC St. Pauli, Holstein Kiel; relegated in 2024: FC Köln, Darmstadt.) The map also shows the 16 Federal States of Germany, and the 14 largest cities in Germany, with 2021 population estimates listed at the the top of the map. …”
Hungary’s ‘Carpathian Brigade’ before a recent game against Bulgaria 
“The map page has a location-map of the 2024-25 Serie A, along with 3 charts. The location-map features each club’s home kit [2024-25]. The map also shows the 
“Life provides us all with many reminders that we’re getting older. Your body aching for no ostensible reason. The increasing realisation you have no idea what music is cool anymore. Hangovers appearing after a couple of quiet beers, rather than a big night out. Measuring the time since you last visited a nightclub in decades, rather than years. For us football fans, there’s another: managers getting younger. And in the 
“‘He was always the best. He was always a big mouth. He was a little Johan Cruyff with the mouth (giving instructions to team-mates during matches). He was always thinking he knew things better than us.’ Leon ten Voorde is speaking about his childhood friend Erik ten Hag, now the 
“The script was already written. 
Larbi Ben Barek of Marseille and Eloy of Sedan during a French Cup quarterfinals match in 1954.
“The draw for the revamped Champions League league phase is — after what seemed like 
“In the future, looking back on current tactical innovations and unique styles of play will not provide a dopamine hit. By then, they will be normalised. What seemed novel 20 years ago is the minimum requirement to excel in football nowadays — just ask Jose Mourinho and Rafa Benitez. Their meticulous planning before 
“How badly did German football need last season? New champions for the first time in 11 years and a story, in 
“What I remember the most about my visit to the ruins of the Pontiac Silverdome in 2016 is how the place sounded. The way the wind played with the tattered roof panels and whipped past the support cables of the dome, playing them like guitar strings. As I walked across the playing field, I’d occasionally hear bits and pieces of metal hardware falling from above and hitting the ground around me. It was a little unnerving. The stadium in the northern suburbs of Detroit, Michigan, had been disused for years by the time I arrived with my camera. A snowstorm in 2013 had torn the roof to shreds. A year later, much of the equipment was auctioned off, leaving the place an empty shell. At that point, the once-sterile, polished stadium had begun to fall back to nature: I remember gazing downwards at my feet and seeing tiny shoots of natural grass pushing their way up through the artificial turf. …”
“What do Pep Guardiola and Enzo Maresca have in common? Coaches wedded to a certain style of football? 
“The most popular soccer league in the world returns on Friday at the Theatre of Dreams as Fulham visits Manchester United. If it feels like the soccer season is never-ending after the 
“Maybe we should have known right from the start that this was going to take a while. Panathinaikos’ Argentinian midfielder Daniel Mancini stepped up to take the first penalty of their shootout against Ajax, the Greek side having scored a late equaliser to force the 
“The 
“Before an unforgettable footballing adventure had even begun, a nation had one man to thank. Such was the magnitude of 
“It was in the House of Commons eight years ago that Justin Madders, the Labour MP for Ellesmere Port and Bromborough, spoke of his concerns for football’s long-term health. A private members’ bill put forward outlined the case for reform long before the notion of an independent regulator for the English game began to crystalise in 2021. There was a proposal to add a levy to all transfer fees to aid the grassroots game and another to offer matchgoing supporters greater protection against rescheduled TV fixtures. Madders also warned of what he called a ‘demographic timebomb’. The 
“We are just days away from the 
“The map is a basic location-map, with an inset map of Greater London. Also shown are small labels which point out both the three promoted clubs (Leicester City, Ipswich Town, Southampton), and the three relegated clubs (Luton Town, Burnley, Sheffield United). And there are three charts… The Attendance chart, at top-centre of the map page, shows 4 things for each of the 20 current Premier League clubs…A) 2023-24 finish (with promotions noted). B) 2023-24 average attendance [from home league matches]. C) Stadium capacity [2023-24]. D) Percent-capacity [2023-24]. At the right-hand side of the map page are two more charts. The chart at the top-right shows Seasons-in-1st-Division for the 20 current Premier League clubs. …”
“Welcome to the latest edition of the Transfer DealSheet, your weekly guide to what is happening in the summer window. Our team of dedicated writers, including Adam Leventhal and David Ornstein, will take you inside the market to explain the deals being worked on, the players who could arrive and the ones who are on their way out across the 
“There is no escaping the cult of the manager in English football. From Busby to Ferguson, from Chapman to Wenger, from Shankly to Klopp, from Revie to Clough, from Mourinho to Guardiola, it sometimes feels like one of the last bastions of the 19th-century ‘great man theory’ — as if, to bastardise the words of Thomas Carlyle, the history of English football is but the biography of great men. Some of the greatest are commemorated with statues outside their clubs’ stadiums: Herbert Chapman and Arsene Wenger at 
Members of barras bravas are scattered between the flags that they deploy. In the picture, 
The Barras brava section of the stadium is recognizable for their flags, a characteristic unrivaled by other areas of the stadium has more quantity or density of such. In the picture, La Banda de Fierrois an organized supporter group of 
“‘We’ll see beautiful, days kids, we’ll see sunny days.’ This isn’t the kind of song you’d expect to hear chanted at a football game, let alone by one of the most respected groups of ultras in the world. But this group have defied expectations and baffled social commentators for years. 
“How was Euro 2024 for you? 
“There was a chaotic end to the Olympic men’s football match between 
Scissors Kick 