A Sticker's Worth 500 Words

Coursework season has recently come to a close at work and it’s hard to tell who is more relieved. For students there is the catharsis of handing in a significant piece of work which has caused several sleepless nights while for teachers it means we can actually finish up the content for the upcoming public exams. The tight word count often leaves students needing to cut towards the deadline and my advice is always for them to read their work aloud as it often highlights repetition, typos and waffle. Despite the word limit for this particular blog being forgotten a long time ago I still ask my long suffering wife to listen to my posts before I upload them for the aforementioned reasons. She’s only fallen asleep a couple of times in the last six years. She did have a little chuckle for herself at the mention of Swiss side BSC Young Boys’ home ground, Stadion Wankdorf, last time out which led me to reference an American Football team my old man had mentioned having the nickname ‘the Wa...

EA Sports FC 26 was released in September 2025 and, by the end of the following month, had sold twelve million copies. The latest edition of the successor to the infamous FIFA series apparently included “a complete overhaul of dribbling mechanics”, “more lifelike goalkeeping animations ” and the ability to make your Career Mode starlets experience homesickness. I’m sure all of this is great but as someone who hasn’t played a football game released since 2008 it isn’t exactly making me want to remortgage and buy a PS5. FC 26 can boast incredible attention to detail, however, with more than 20,000 licensed players and a host of realistic stadia including Everton’s new offering and the, never not amusing, Stadion Wankdorf home of Swiss side BSC Young Boys. Graphically it also looks frighteningly realistic and a far cry from Chris Kamara ’s Street Soccer but probably doesn’t let you play in a medieval castle. Access to such licensing was not always a given for the franchise formally known...