A Sticker's Worth 500 Words

This week sees another request post for Cesar and we return to Chile albeit at the other end of the pitch and with fewer armoured cars. That being said today’s subject was briefly the face of Santiago’s ambitious new transport venture which made the Elizabeth Line look like a successful timely project. Maybe the lesson here for any Chilean footballers is to stay away from vehicles and stick to mathematics. Hope this post does the trick Cesar. And for those of you eagerly awaiting request posts from aeons back they are coming in the near future. Honest. The academic year has come to a close and I think it’s fair to say that, by July, staff and students are limping towards the finish line. Public exams are done, internal assessments are all marked and lessons are subject to a combination of school concert rehearsals, extracurricular trips and a fair few mysterious bouts of illness which coincide with cheaper international flights. The tried and tested response to this situation is to fi...

This week Mat Jolin-Beech takes us through a nostalgic look at football’s silly season and the endless rumours and speculation that dominate the headlines at this time of year. Your club is probably looking for a quality centre-half, a holding midfielder and a prolific striker to launch a title challenge, push for European football or stave off relegation once again. That as may be you might want to prepare yourself for the arrival of an unheard of winger modelling your new third kit and a contract extension for your third choice goalkeeper . Over to Mat with BREAKING NEWS. It’s the summer and that means football goes mad. For many a sports journalist, especially those on Sky Sports News, it’s a better time than the actual season. They get to fill air time with stories of transfer rumours, clandestine deals, last minute panic buys, and obvious and predictable transfers. All of this makes them household names like Fabrizio Romano. Or they do to us football nerds at least. For the clubs’...

Whenever Emlyn Jones refers to classic strikers he tends to alternate between the phrases “prick in the mixer” and “big goals c***” . The fact that these two excellent terms do not feature in the following post give an insight into how fondly today’s subject is viewed by followers of the Welsh national team not to mention a handful of clubs for whom he gave his all in front of goal. Over to Emlyn. The big man up top is a well-known trope in the football world and the subject of this article is one of the most successful in both England and Scotland, and for the Welsh national side. He also provides a rare positive in my ever-increasingly demoralising support of the Welsh on S4C. Many people remember him as a slightly unsophisticated player, relying on brute strength, and a couple of unfortunate training ground events, but over 150 goals and five varied footballer of the year awards suggest that there was quite a bit more to John Hartson on the football field, and his off field story i...

This week we take on a request post from the good people at the My Best Eleven podcast which is about as close as we have come to a former professional footballer requesting a post about themselves. Today’s subject sits seventh in the list of Luton Town’s all-time appearances, served as the Hatters’ captain and was instrumental in the development of several academy graduates during his time as the club’s Youth Team manager. He was also keen for us to make it clear it was his co-host who requested this post. We hope this does the trick for both of you. I was one of four boys in my English Literature A Level class of around twenty. This might sound like a dream come true for any would be Casanova but for an increasingly spotty bloke with a dodgy beard it was far more ‘Inbetweeners’ than ‘Skins’. Especially when we were studying Margaret Atwood’s ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’. Rather than knuckling down and wowing our classmates with our literary analysis my mate Tom and I spent a worrying amoun...

Mat Jolin-Beech takes A Sticker’s Worth 500 Words to new cultural heights today with a look at a German striker whose career highlights were soundtracked by two of the most stirring pieces of music known to man. The most recent winners of Europe’s premier club competition (sadly not the Cup Winners’ Cup ) may well choose to boo one of these and it did seem odd that the coronation of King Charles III failed to remind us it was being brought to us by a premium brand of lager but the vast majority of us would struggle to deny their emotive impact. Over to Mat. Vincera! Italia ’90 . The best World Cup ever? Possibly. I guess it depends on who you ask. Maybe not if you’re Chris Waddle , Stuart Pearce , or anyone Argentine. It certainly wasn’t a bad one for Rudi Völler, with his mullet gaining infamy thanks to the two globules that were fired from Frank Riijkard’s mouth! As I’ll explain, Völler and Italia ‘90 both have linked histories and legacies. But back to Italia ‘90, and let’s settle o...