A Sticker's Worth 500 Words

A new domestic season is upon us following the traditional curtain raiser of a Friday evening kick off in the Championship. With four weeks having passed since the end of the World Cup it’s probably a good thing that things are back up and running as Harry Kane and Declan Rice definitely looked a bit bored towards the end of proceedings and have no doubt really enjoyed their respective pre-season trips to China and Italy. The latter may get to get a few more miles on the clock in the more traditional season opener, the Community Shield, where Premier League champions Arsenal will take on FA Cup winners Manchester City. The game will take place at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff to really hammer home the early-2000s nostalgia of the Gunners winning the league and will provide a first opportunity for Enzo Maresca to prove he didn’t just get the City job because he looks a bit like Pep Guardiola.  The first major trophy ( as of 2025 ) up for grabs in the English season has been ...

The recent FIFA World Cup brought everything one could want from a major international tournament and, despite the best efforts of Gianni Infantino and Donald Trump, was not a month long MAGA rally with a bit of Shakira thrown in for good measure. At the time of writing the President of the United States has not declared all out nuclear war on Belgium for taking the piss out of his bizarre little dance during their dismantling of the hosts in the knockout stages and this was one of a decent handful of feel good moments. Debutants Cape Verde went through the group stages and pushed Argentina all the way in the second round. The big stars all turned up with Erling Haaland, Kylian Mbappe , Harry Kane and the world’s favourite tax evader all among the goals. We got to see all of Cristiano Ronaldo, Neymar and Luis Suarez cry which was even more impressive considering the latter was only watching from the stands. England saved their best performance for the third place playoff while the fi...

With the World Cup behind us Rich Allinson is here to muse about the future of English football following the most recent failure of the men’s team to bring it home. This blog’s WhatsApp group over the last few weeks is evidence that the world needs more of our excellent punditry. Five minutes before today’s subject briefly inspired a nation I told the lads that “Gordon has been awful. Getting closed down very quickly but doesn’t have a Scooby when it happens.” If anything England needed more defenders on the pitch. Over to Rich with some more insightful analysis. Now that the dust has started to settle on the rejected immigration visa applications, the hydration break drinks bottles and Donald Trump’s FIFA speed dial handset, my mind is already looking ahead to the next World Cup and whether England will, to use a modern phrase, finally get over the line. I caveat this with the hope that I am wrong, but it very much feels like 2026 could be the end of the road for England reaching the...

The last time the World Cup was hosted in the United States the players had more to battle than their opponents and a nation with little love for the sport they call soccer. Temperatures soared during June and July, touching forty degrees for some games, which might provide some explanation for the likes of Roberto Baggio , Dan Petrescu and Diana Ross fluffing their lines from the penalty spot. For the Republic of Ireland team the heat even hit on the sidelines with John Aldridge famously getting hot and bothered and Steve Staunton donning a baseball cap to stave off the sun during the national anthems. No doubt this summer’s edition will see similar headwear on show owing to the winning combination of sweltering heat and the host’s penchant for using his own to remind him of what nonsense he’s going to spout. While baseball caps have become en vogue for everyone from roadmen to East London parents they have been an increasingly rare sight on the football pitch. In the early days, wh...

Mat Jolin-Beech provides us with a break from Donald Trump’s Super Awesome Soccer Showdown with a look at an historic World Cup stadium. Built in 1950 for the first post-Second World War tournament, and prepared for the host nation’s coronation that never came, it became a symbol of sporting hubris as much as a national landmark. Whether global politics’ most risible tangerine takes this to strange new places is yet to be seen but the trophy will probably end up in the Oval Office even if the Septics crash out in the first knockout round. Over to Mat. Since my subscription to Mystery Jersey King has lapsed, I’d not thought anything about it. Then, a couple of weeks ago, the latest, slimline, navy blue packaged had been shoved part way through my letterbox. Perplexed, I opened it. Now, call this cynical marketing, loss leading, or just a nice gesture, it was a freebie and included some goodies. And some not so goodies. There was an Inter Milan t-shirt - not a kit, but one of those tops...

In May 2025 my beloved Crystal Palace won their first major trophy in their 120 year history when Eberechi Eze’s exquisite strike downed Manchester City in the FA Cup final. Just over a year later a club that had only ever experienced European football in a short lived Intertoto Cup campaign and the Anglo-Italian Cup celebrated victory in the Europa (Vauxhall) Conference League final with a nerveless 1-0 victory over Rayo Vallecano. This seemingly linear progress came with several caveats. Palace only ended up in the Conference League due to some poor admin, a miserable bastard at Nottingham Forest and the shady world of multi-club ownership. The drawn out process of finding out which obscure clubs would be heading to South London on Thursday nights hampered recruitment and did little to convince the likes of Eze and captain Mark Guehi to stick about. The former headed to Arsenal while the latter’s aborted move to Liverpool saw manager Oliver Glasner personally intervene in the tran...

Emlyn Shepherdson-Jones explores the class divide and gentrification in a wide-ranging post which may also serve as a useful guide on where’s best to pick up a Steak Bake and/or some potato and rosemary sourdough. Clearly West Ham United fans have been crying out for both judging by the new addition at the nearby Westfield shopping centre. Over to Emlyn. Football social media has recently hit upon a trend of ranking league grounds by how close they are to certain amenities, with notable examples being McDonald’s, Greggs and Wetherspoons. These have been useful to spark debate, including whether you can get from St James' Park in Exeter to the Chevalier Inn in eight minutes (absolutely not), and why they haven't done one for Domino's, given that Leyton Orient have a dugout serving halftime pizzas from the brand. This naturally ended up in a discussion in our WhatsApp group about other potential measures of ground location value, eventually settling on who was likely to win...

In 1879 schoolmaster James Allan decided to gather his colleagues together for a kickabout and, by October 1880, Sunderland AFC had come into existence. Based on personal experience of teachers’ kickabouts I can only assume there were some ultra-competitive members of the PE department, some surprisingly decent elder statesmen and one member of the Senior Leadership Team who everyone was worried about tackling. Unlike the various Friday misuses of sports halls I have taken part in Sunderland joined the Football League in 1890 and had won the whole thing three times in their first five seasons. Long before Chelsea were given something shiny for a couple of minutes by Donald Trump the Black Cats had also been crowned ‘Football World Champions’ on three occasions by virtue of victories over Scottish champions Celtic, Queen’s Park and Heart of Midlothian. When the First World War brought a temporary pause to league football in 1915 Sunderland had won five league championships, finished a...

Emlyn Shepherdson-Jones heads north of the border to have a look back at the good old days when footballers had proper mullets and could do a job up front and at centre half . This post’s subject earned the nickname Braveheart partly due to his fearless performances for club and country but, more realistically, because he happened to be at his peak around the same time the film came out and had an excellent haircut. Over to Emlyn. For plenty of people, myself included, their love of football is formed in childhood, and the modern iteration doesn't hold quite the same charm as their first exposure to the beautiful game. I'm sure this was true for people from every era, with innovations from goalie gloves to coloured boots all being surefire signs that 'the game's gone'. For me, early memories of Eric Cantona bamboozling opponents, or the cultured play of Dennis Bergkamp or David Ginola coming up against the grit of Julian Dicks and Neil Ruddock , will always hold...

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...

Whether you love it or loathe it the tabloid press is an integral part of both British society and the beautiful game. While the decline of print media, and the Leveson Enquiry, has curbed its power its influence extends far beyond its dwindling readership and, perhaps, no more so than in its contribution to the English language. Robert Hutton’s excellent ‘Romps, Tots and Boffins…The Strange Language of News’ goes further to define the language of the press as a separate entity, known as ‘journalese’, where formal discussions are always “crisis talks”, large sums of money are routinely “trousered” and all award ceremonies are “glitzy”. In amongst these are the “bigwigs”, “chiefs” and “tsars” who dominate the worlds of law, business and the civil service, the “crooners” and “rockers” who make up the music industry and the “playboys”, “vice girls” and “love rats” held up for public disdain. Football (or, more often for the press, “soccer” or “footie”) has accordingly always provided a nu...

It’s amazing what a global pandemic, several boxes of old football stuff and Peter Fear ’s curtains can do but, 399 posts after an attempt to stay sane, here we all are. Throughout this time the UK has had four Prime Ministers, two monarchs and economic twists and turns that mean buying a Freddo now probably requires a mortgage. In the footballing world England’s men have reached two consecutive European Championship finals while the Lionesses have won two consecutive European Championships , Leicester City and Crystal Palace have won the FA Cup and Watford have had fifteen different managers . Plenty of other stuff has happened too and whether or not any of us here has remained sane is probably best put to our long suffering partners, children and friends. When live football was taken away from us its absence convinced the four of us that we really missed it. This ignores the fact that my attendance at Selhurst Park since Palace returned to the Premier League is worse even than m...