A Sticker's Worth 500 Words

Mat Jolin-Beech has been on holiday and all he’s brought back for us is this lousy blog post. Today Mat takes a look at a player Wayne Rooney described as pivotal to his club’s success, Andrea Pirlo stated “rushed around the pitch at the speed of an electron” and Sir Alex Ferguson believed was one of few out there capable of man marking a certain tax evading Argentinian. High praise from some of the game’s royalty. Over to Mat. South Korea is an interesting place. Having just been there on holiday (I know, lucky me) there is a lot to say and to like about it. It’s a lot more Southeast Asian in feel than I had been expecting. In my mind, Seoul especially, was going to feel very much like Tokyo. Modern, clean and fairly buttoned-up, conservative and grown up. A bit regimented and serious. I was in for a pleasant surprise. They love their 90s American retro fashion, street singers and K Pop dancers. There is neon everywhere – of course there is, and many, many modern, electric cars. But ...

On Easter Sunday morning I headed to Walthamstow’s Lloyd Park for, what I hope, becomes a semi-regular game of small sided football with some gentlemen of a similar age. Having ascertained the night before that we were using seven-a-side goals I packed my goalkeeper gloves and made it clear that’s where I would be happiest playing. I have had a couple of decent games in nets at my work’s Friday indoor kickabout this year so was, if not confident, happy to continue this vein of form. Around ten minutes in I was beaten at my near post by a shot I should have got more behind. Any hope of redemption disappeared quickly when a backpass bobbled over my foot and rolled into the side of the net. I spent the rest of the game’s eighty or so minutes running about avoiding any further goalkeeping duties. In part due to the critical results of goalkeeping errors, and also down to the generally poor quality of punditry on the position, the job of guarding the net is often lonely and underappreciated...

This week Mat Jolin-Beech takes a look at a former Premier League star who you may be staggered to find out what he looks like now. At least according to a major national newspaper anyway. In reality today’s subject is currently back in his hometown managing Scarborough Athletic in the National League North and doing a pretty good job of it. That might not get you clicking quite so much though. Over to Mat. The Daily Mail. Depending on your viewpoint, a staple of reliability in the English media, or a right-wing rag. What it also is, is the home of the sidebar of shame. Moving away from its middle aged, middle class, right leaning home of the physical paper’s heartland the sidebar of shame attracts a younger audience with classic clickbait headlines. Headlines as I write this include: • “Tom Hiddleston and his fiancée Zawe Ashton look every inch the doting parents as they enjoy day out in Paris with their baby” • “Heidi Klum’s ‘nepo baby’ Leni, 18, shows off her casual style in lat...

On my way back from seeing the inimitable Dave Hause in Islington last September I saw a poster on the platform of Seven Sisters’ station with an advert for ‘Top London Schools. No Fees.” Perhaps it was the unwise Sunday night pints or the impact of a night of genuinely moving music from Philadelphia’s finest but the advert triggered me on a number of levels. As a product of and long time employee of comprehensive schools in London I was offended by the notion that you would need to list such establishments as, to borrow Arthur Conan Doyle’s words, “beacons of light” amongst the capital’s educational establishments. It also angered me that none of the schools listed were anywhere near the station itself implying that this particular corner of Tottenham was in someway not where you would want to let your kids do their learning. Who was this advert really aimed at? As the doors closed and I continued on up the Victoria Line the words of Hause’s ‘ The Great Depression ’ snuck into my hea...

Another week and another request post this time for Meadow Memories . In fairness the request itself was only for one of the esteemed gentlemen depicted below but that might make more sense as we get into it. Anyway Shrewsbury Town fans it’s time to reacquaint yourselves with both the man known affectionately as ‘Pointer’ due to his love of giving directions on the pitch and a genuine club legend who “typified Shrewsbury” and “made sure no winger would ever say they had an easy time against him”. Hope this does the trick! When the Premier League launched in 1992 Sky’s “whole new ball game” brought many footballing traditions to an end. Among these was the emergence of Merlin as the provider for the English top flight’s official sticker collection after fifteen years of Italian giant’s Panini leading the market. Undeterred by this significant dent to their prestige the company ploughed on with some questionable collections in collaboration with the Professional Footballers’ Associatio...

Mat Jolin-Beech delves into the toy box for this week’s post on a fantastic footballer whose peak years came before his immortalisation in plastic. The Corinthian figures of the late 1990s were as much a part of football fan culture as the sticker books we owe our blog to so it’s nice to finally commit one to our pages. Thanks to the excellent Premiership Years account for providing today’s visuals and apologies to any figure aficionados for its present state but he’s become one of my son’s favourite things to play with. Over to Mat. This post is going to deviate slightly from the sticker premise you’ve all come to know and love. Well, at least know. This has been a forum for us all to go on nostalgia trips, so indulge me with this one. I have two points to start with. The first is a clue as to who this is about – although the title of the post will probably have informed you. So here we go: English. Manchester United. Fullback. Title winner. Gary Neville ? No. Want another go? And ...

We have another request post today – this time from the excellent LFC Players account . Firstly we’d like to thank them for their patience as this particular request came over a year ago around the time today’s subject was announced as the new manager of Lincoln City. For some of us though he will always be “the most expensive teenager with the dyed blonde hair”. Hope this does the trick mate. The Football Association Challenge Cup is the oldest national football competition and, until the turn of the twenty-first century, served as the centrepiece of the English game. The ‘Magic of the Cup’™ still comes to the fore when a non-league side reaches the Third Round or a lower league club bloodies the nose of a Premier League big boy but sadly the tournament has mainly existed in recent years for those delightful ‘Big Six’ clubs to moan about as a cause of fixture congestion. Sadly this doesn’t seem to stop the buggers making a decent fist of winning it thus denying those of us outside of ...