A Sticker's Worth 500 Words

Mat Jolin-Beech once again sets his sights on Asia albeit without an enviable travelogue attached with a look at a former Manchester United striker you may not have even realised was there. He raises some interesting questions, especially in light of the rise and relative fall of the Chinese Super League, but perhaps overlooks the fact that, as a result of signing Fan Zhiyi and Sun Jihai, Crystal Palace were briefly the most watched football club in the world in the 1998/99 season. Didn’t stop us being monumentally shite mind. Over to Mat. Workplace lunchtime conversations are an odd thing. They can often be dull, focussing on work stuff, the weather, or at certain times of the year, what everyone’s plans for Christmas are going to be. Seeing family? Going away? Rinse and repeat. If you’re lucky, however, they can take more interesting paths. Somehow, and I genuinely can’t remember how it got onto this, the fact that China had athlete factories ahead of the Beijing 2008 Olympics cro...

The cultural impact of David Baddiel, Frank Skinner and The Lightning Seeds’ Euro 96 anthem ‘Three Lions’ is undeniable as proven when any England side in the Gareth Southgate era progressed beyond the group stage of a tournament. If Thomas Tuchel enjoys the similar stratospheric joy of barely surpassing expectations then it will be impossible to hold a conversation in the summer of 2026 without someone informing you “it’s coming home”. That being said it is rarely heard outside of England internationals and only then when there’s more at stake than a Nations League point. Perhaps the real breakout musical success of the football tournament genre was Dario G’s ‘Carnaval de Paris’ released ahead of the World Cup in France in 1998 . Not only did the instrumentation for the song cover more nationalities than a Benetton advert but the earworm melody has been adopted by multiple clubs, and the England team, as a stirring terrace anthem. The dance trio actually gained inspiration for this a...