Category: European Football
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Panathinaikos 3 PAS Lamia 1
14th April 2024 – Super League – Stadio Apóstolos Nikolaidis, Athens, Greece In December, the Greek authorities ruled that all Super League games would be played behind closed doors, for the foreseeable future after escalating violence between clubs which culminated in a police officer being killed in a volleyball match between Olympiacos and Panathinaikos. Trouble…
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AEK 2 Aris Thessaloniki 0
14th April 2024 – Greek Super League – OPAP Arena, Athens, Greece Despite being only separated 4 miles, the stadiums of AEK and Panathinaikos might as well be in playing in different decades. For all the run down charm of the Stadio Apóstolos Nikolaidas, you can only imagine what the club could be possible of…
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NK Bravo 1 Olimpia Ljubljana 1
16th March 2024 – SNL PrvaLiga – Športni Park Šiška, Ljubljana, Slovenia Last week was the Eternal Derby, the meeting of the two giants in the Serbian capital as Red Star hosted Partizan Belgrade. Back in the day when Yugoslavia was one of the biggest countries in Europe, at least by size, there were massive…
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Vejle 2 Silkeborg 0
Sunday 25th February 2024 – Danish SuperLiga – Vejle Stadium, Vejle, Denmark There’s a myth that Denmark has no hills. Flat as a pancake goes the story, but don’t believe that. During my time living in Copenhagen, I once came across such a steep decline that someone was dry skiing down it. I found out…
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AGF 2 FC Midtjylland 3
Sunday 25th February 2024 – AGF 2 FC Midtjyllland 3 – Danish SuperLiga – Cere Park, Århus, Denmark Football is a game of two halves of 45 minutes, but recent changes to the laws of the game Often means that a match will end up lasting an extra 10 or 15 minutes. As Sunday’s SuperLiga’s…
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Ballymena United 0 Loughgall 1
Saturday 27th January 2024 – Sports Direct Premiership – The Showgrounds, Ballymena I know everyone has to be born somewhere but it always makes me chuckle when I see someone really famous born in provincial towns. Ballymena, sitting almost slap-bang in the middle of Northern Ireland has three notable people “sons”. The actor James Nesbitt, the former…
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Carrick Rangers 0 Cliftonville 1
Friday 26th January 2024 – Sports Direct Premiership – Taylors Avenue, Carrickfergus Friday night football is an established “thing” in Northern Ireland. A few of the Premiership teams, notably the champions Larne and Newry City favour a Friday night under the lights as their preferred game day, whilst every week BBC Northern Ireland show a…
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Celta Vigo 0 Real Sociedad 1
Saturday 20th January 2024 – La Liga – Estadio de Balaires, Vigo If Sky and the Premier League announced a 9pm Saturday night kick off, there would be outrage. It would be inconceivable that such a kick off slot would be chosen for a local derby or high profile game, with the police wanting to avoid…
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Cliftonville 3 Crusaders 0
Saturday 25th November 2023 – Northern Ireland Premier League – Solitude, Belfast On 21 August 1979 over 1,900 police officers were on duty for a football match, the most there had ever been in attendance at a football match in the UK. This was no Manchester, North London, Merseyside or even Old Firm derby, but…
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Lewes 1 FC Oslo 0
Tuesday 7th November 2023 – The Fenix Trophy – The Dripping Pan, Lewes Aside from a couple of Isthmian South league games against Guernsey and an FA Trophy tie against Merthyr a few years ago, there’s not been many opportunities to play against teams outside of England. But this summer an opportunity arose for us…
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FC Teutonia 5 BWLohne 0
Sunday 22nd October 2023 – Regionalliga Nord – Stadion Hoheluft It’s been a while since I’ve been able to sneak a game in whilst travelling for work – blame global event organisers who schedule conferences I need to attend outside the relevant domestic seasons. But finally, I had a chance to combine the two,…
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Olympique Lyonnais 0 Le Havre 0
The ground was about 2/3rd full, with most of the top tier closed off on the opposite side of the stadium closed off, except the smattering of away fans who had made the 800 mile round journey from Normandy.
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US Cremonese 0 Fiorentina 2
Task number one was to find Cremonese on the map. Well, you can’t. They hail from the city of Cremona, Lombardy, not to be confused with the town of Crema, Lombardy, just a twenty minute drive up the road. Task number two – find a suitable game to attend – with a relatively small capacity…
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Valur 1 HK 0
The performance of the national side in the last few major tournaments, both Men’s and Women’s is attributed to providing community facilities based around 3G pitches around the country, both indoor and outside, encouraging more youngsters to play the game. At this point the Football Association will skip to another website rather than facing an…
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Udinese 1 Hellas Verona 1
Having taken more than a reasonable amount of wrong terms on our walk, we finally arrived and did the customary “window shopping” of the merchandise stands outside the ground. Either the Udinese fans were fickle or it was the trend in these parts to buy merchandise for a host of other clubs when you came…
The Ball is Round 