“Constantine, the eastern capital of Algeria, is situated atop two steep plateaus some eighty kilometres inland of the Mediterranean coast. Seven suspended bridges run over and above the menacing gorge below, connecting the two crags at various points. During the colonial era, Constantine was a roughly divided city. One plateau was generally reserved for Europeans and the other for the indigenous. In a reflective letter addressed to everyone and no one, my paternal grandfather recounts how he managed to find work in Sidi Mabrouk, then a neighbourhood exclusive to European police families in Constantine.” In Bed With Maradina

“Bob Marley balancing and bouncing a football on his thighs; dribbling in a spray of dust through some anonymous Jamaican dirt yard; knocking a ball down with his chest, trapping it with his inside foot, hammering it into the net with a flick of the toe. Not the archetypal image of the reggae legend but apt nonetheless. Marley loved music and ganja and Rasta. And he loved football. As a boy in Nine Mile, in the central Jamaican highlands, he was content kicking a dried-up watermelon around the lopsided waste ground scraped out of the hillside. His passion for the game stayed with him throughout his life. Indeed, there were times he seriously considered forgoing a musician’s life for a professional footballer’s.” 8by8

“As we approach the penultimate month of the Premier League season, few would have expected Garry Monk to be in with a shout of collecting the Manager of the Year award when it is all said and done. In fact, the odds on Monk, who was appointed Swansea boss on a permanent basis in July, being one of the first managerial casualties this year stood pretty high. But, amidst all the derision and hindsight 20/20, there was good reason for Monk’s name to be falsely associated with managerial misery.” backpagefootball

“Part I: Crumbling Foundations. ‘LT! Did you see last night? Barcelona FOUR to ZERO against AC Milan! Messi with 2, Villa and Alba all scored. Iniesta said they would win and they did!’ This is what my interpreter, Johnny, said after Barcelona’s 4-0 win at the Nou Camp against AC Milan to overturn a 2-0 first leg deficit in the 2012-13 edition of the Champions League. Johnny isn’t his real name of course. He’s an Afghan national working for International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) soldiers in Afghanistan as a linguist. He was assigned to my platoon during my deployment to Operation Enduring Freedom 13. Champions League football can seem very distant from a Forward Operating Base in Kandahar Province, Afghanistan, but for Johnny that night, he was in the Nou Camp. For him however, football, and in particular Barcelona, is his escape from the harsh realities of his home. And for many Afghans, the same is true. Football is their oasis.” Outside of the Boot – Part I, Part II, Part III