I've been commentating on football since the late 1980s, having previously been an entertainingly inept goalkeeper for Wrexham Schoolboys and, clearly in an era of national shortage, Wales Schoolboys.
Scouting isn’t rocket science! Every time a Premier League side signs a good foreign player the nation goes crazy. Who is this mystery guy? Where did he come from? Anyone with a decent knowledge of the game outside the UK would have known that the likes of Santi Cazorla, Oscar and Papisse Demba Cissé were … More Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang (Saint Étienne)
These days there are no surprises in football. Unexpected discoveries are rare in the World Cup because we’ve been watching most of the players week-in week-out on the sports channels. But it wasn’t always like that: players used to come from left field to grab our attantion, and one of the most obscure was came … More The USA’s Unlikely World Cup Hero
From Soccerlens When Jose Antonio Reyes scored the fastest goal in the history of the Seville derby last weekend, snatching that record from opposing manager Pepe Mel in the process, it seemed too good to be true. Jose Antonio Reyes celebrates during Sevilla’s remarkable derby win When he added another goal and an assist before … More The Inevitable Demise of Jose Antonio Reyes
The dreadful events in the Dynamo Moscow-Zenit match last weekend were bad enough. The reaction to them has hardly covered the Russian game in glory. Last weekend the match of the round in the Russian Premier League took a grim turn and had to be abandoned. A flare, thrown by a female Zenit fan who … More Russian Football’s Image Problem Not Helped by Zenit
The intangibles of football are hard to get a grasp of, funnily enough. I’m writing this, for example, in the pub in Malta (wittily named “The Pub” and a welcome source of decent beer on the island that barley forgot, although Chris Rea was a dose of Britishness to far though, barkeep!) where Oliver Reed … More Oliver Reed, Wrexham FC, Malta and the Olympics. Of course.
Old footballers never die-they just reappear in widescreen slow motion. The Football Masters is a tournament for those of us who are happy to venerate the names of our ersthile heroes, rather than be saddened by what they’ve become! A circuit for players past their sell-by date, it’s a seven-a-side competition which does roll back … More Masters of the Universe
Peripheral Vision 