Category: England
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England 0 USA 0
Friday 25th November 2022 10pm – The FIFA World Cup – Al Bayt Stadium, Doha (just) Ah the best laid plans. The decision to leave Khalifa and not trying to get in at half-time meant I was on a bus heading north to Al Bayt at 7:45pm. Plenty of time for the 30 mile journey…
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England vs South Africa
Tuesday 19th July 2022 – One Day International- The Riverside, Chester-le-Street It’s normally fun to be a record breaker. As a youngster I grew up on watching Roy Castle and his trumpet on Record Breakers, one of the three TV shows we all wanted to be on (one of which was Mike Reid’s Runaround, the…
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The Road to Doha Opens For England
IFor English fans they may struggle to get to see the Three Lions, assuming COVID-19 restrictions are eased, in Andorra-la-Vella and Serravalle, the homes of the lowest-ranked UEFA countries. The days of UEFA agreeing to switch venues for the smaller countries has long passed, with Gibraltar being the final nation to be allowed to host…
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The most passionate football nation in Europe
But this meeting got me thinking. Which nation are the most passionate about their own domestic league? My new “friend” in the thumbs up Inbetweeners way had claimed the Icelandics were – with just 12 clubs and a population of 328,000 he thought that more people watched top flight football in Iceland as a percentage…
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Notts County facing uphill battle to regain EFL place
Anyone thinking that Notts County would breeze straight back into the Football League received a major wake-up call on Saturday afternoon. County’s long history counted for little as a physical Eastleigh side sent the Midlands outfit tumbling to a 1-0 defeat on the opening day of the National League season. Neil Ardley’s side failed to…
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Whatever happened to the likely to be very good lads?
Ten years ago the English media waxed lyrically about our “Golden Generation”, the core of players who would go on to dominate world football. Beckham, Ferdinand, Lampard, Owen and Rooney. We went into the 2004 European Championships in Portugal full of hope that this time we would get it right, finally delivering some glory after…
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Best Song Ever
We have one more stop. One more song for debate and could there be any better place or any better beer than we have for our final destination. A pint of Thornbridge Jaipur in the Cutters Arms, a bar opened in honour of Sheffield FC, the founding fathers of football as we know it today.…
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Is the Chinese cash a bad thing for English football?
With Chinese clubs happy to raid the Premier League on a regular basis perhaps the clubs will invest more in the pathway for the development of their players. Instead of simply stockpiling young players who are loaned out until their value drops to a point where they are simply released, clubs will give the youngsters…
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Master of none
A normal pre-match for me involves a pint, chatting with some of my fellow fans, an in-depth discussion with Darren on our opponents and where the strengths/weaknesses are before preparing myself for any tricky names to read out on the team sheet. Today I’m having to find the charger for the substitutes board, that should…
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2016 – A year in football
Even so, 2016’s haul hasn’t been bad. 82 games, an average of one every 4 1/2 days in seven countries at 45 different grounds including 24 new stadiums. In the process I witnessed 255 goals, an average of 3.1 goals per game, 36 home wins, 28 away wins and 17 draws. Some games will be…
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Who benefits from Stadium naming rights?
There’s a fantastic new book that’s been published by Leon Gladwell called “Beyond the turnstile” which is full of oustanding pictures from his quest to capture the beauty of the game around the world. Leon contacted me about 18 months ago and asked me to write the forward for his book, which I was absolutely…
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1966 and Not All That
The England squad that travelled to the 1962 World Cup in Chile had to endure a flight with two separate changes to Lima where they played a warm up game against Peru before moving onto Santiago, then Rancagua where they would play their group games and then bus to their base in the Braden Copper…
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Teargas and tantrums in the South of France
It’s also true that some of the England fans involved were out of their depth, attending a major tournament fir the first time and thinking it would be like Green Street on Sea. Those who are aged 18-21 may have been attending a tournament for the first time – with Brazil being too far to…
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For sale – one England goal keeper’s kit – as new
With 68 minutes on the clock Joe Hart got his hands on the ball for the first time since the break, and the third time in the whole game. Even in the most one-sided of FA Cup games where Non-League minnows are pitted against a Premier League side the keeper will see more of the…
The Ball is Round 