Stan Sport becomes the Premier League’s new Australian home following the closure of Optus Sport. Football has always changed on the pitch. Tactics evolve. Players evolve. Even the shape of the game evolves. But the most important change of the last forty years did not happen between the...

"La Vieille Dame" - The Old Lady of French Football Kylian Mbappe looks at the French Cup trophy after winning the final in his last game for PSG. The Coupe de France is affectionately known as "La Vieille Dame" - the Old Lady, a nickname that captures both its age and its prestige. Born in...

There are footballers who define eras, and there are footballers who seem to sit just outside time. Observers. Archivists. Presences who make sense only when the game is slowed down, when the crowd hushes, when the ball inches toward the space between chance and catastrophe. Mark Schwarzer...

Son Heung-min always dreamed of being a footballer. Growing up in Chuncheon, South Korea, he was surrounded by the game from an early age and his father, Son Woong-jung, was a former professional player who became both mentor and strict coach. While other kids were playing for fun, Son was...

Over the past 30 years, no country has produced more top-flight European footballers than France, especially when measured by sheer volume of talent. France consistently exports more players to Europe’s top five leagues than any other nation. In many seasons, French players rank No. 1 for total...

Football used to belong to the mad ones. The misfits, the poets with mud on their boots and a cigarette tucked behind their ear. Once upon a time, every dressing room had a wild card, the player who arrived late, ignored the manager’s plan, scored twice anyway, and then went out until Tuesday...

When discussing football in Scotland, the conversation almost always revolves around Glasgow’s two giants. And rightly so, Glasgow Rangers and Glasgow Celtic have dominated the Scottish football scene for what feels like forever. It’s a huge rivalry, one of the most intense in world sport. Of...

It was Jimmy Greaves, the former Chelsea, Tottenham, West Ham and England centre-forward, who I first heard coin the phrase, "Football? It’s a funny ol' game!" When Greaves retired from his illustrious career in the mid-1970s, he avoided management and instead spent a couple of seasons in the...

There is something uniquely romantic about France. Firstly, there's Paris - the 'City of Love'. It's a phrase first thought to be coined in the mid to late 1800s, by wealthy young American tourists and students who ventured across the Atlantic in the new fast-moving steamships to indulge...

For the uninitiated, Middlesbrough is a once-thriving industrial town in the north-east of England. Not the most glamorous of places by any stretch of the imagination. Shipbuilding, chemical production, steelmaking and heavy engineering dominated the town’s economy for over 150 years. One of its...

After a slight disagreement during a few postings -on what is quite an interesting Big Ange thread on the UEFA board- I thought I’d broaden the discussion and do a little piece on football’s beautiful aesthetic. For some fans, watchers, commentators, and analysts, football is more than a...