Month: August 2006

Before I go all medieval on the press again… I’m looking forward to this one. More than I’ve looked forward to an England game for several years. For a start, there’s a new look to the team, and I want to see how it gets on. Gerrard is reported to be delighted to have his…

It’s a good feeling to have my own thoughts echoed by Simon Barnes. Of course, he says it so much better. Perhaps I’m echoing him, or just distorting his echoes. But without more ado, the final word: A Life Spent in Limbo .

Our football journalists can’t make their minds up. Do they want a return to traditional footballing values in the England set-up? Or do they want a series of staged PR gestures designed to “signal a break” with “everything that’s gone before”? We already know that John Terry is the new captain, with Gerrard as his…

Forgive me if with these Chapman posts I’m just throwing down ideas as they come. There’ll be a disjointed and unfinished feel to them for the time being. Put together a list of the top coaches in football history and the similarities between them become obvious. If they’re British, they’ll come from the north or…

Herbert Chapman is the chronologically earliest manager most informed football fans can name. Most will be aware that he was the man behind the marble halls of Highbury, and that a bust of him has just moved from there to the new Emirates Stadium. Quite a few will know that he won three consecutive titles…

If you read casually about international football, you’ll quickly pick up the idea that the English Football Association is notable chiefly for xenophobia and backwardness. Ignoring the growth of football abroad, it limited internationals for the most part to games against the home nations, and didn’t enter the World Cup until 1930. The bare facts…

A couple of days ago, I posted a quotation from Marcello Lippi to the effect that because English teams always use the same tactics, the press has to resort to “passion” and “inspiration” to tell one coach from another. In drawing attention to this, I wasn’t casting aspersions on the entertainment value of British football,…

Some newspapers are describing Sir Trevor Brooking’s spat with Dr Brian Mawhinney over the future of youth training “yawn inducing”. They shouldn’t. Get this right now and both our clubs and the national team benefit within a decade. I have personal reasons for regarding Sir Trevor as the right man for this particular job. I…

I’ve mentioned before that Sven is more Italian in many ways than he is Swedish, when it comes to football. Here’s backup for my view from the most interesting football book of the year, Gianluca Vialli’s The Italian Job: ..In Italy, public opinion routinely analyses a manager’s work with a fine-tooth comb. How is the…