A Sticker's Worth 500 Words

Mat Jolin-Beech addresses the elephant in the FA’s room at the moment with a look at some of the runners and riders for the vacant England men’s team job. Our subject did great things in South East London once upon a time and, as an aside, his brother has been manager of The Who since the 1970s so clearly has the necessary skills to deal with rockstar attitudes. Over to Mat to plead his case. Now the dust has settled on another England failure, although getting to the Euro 2024 finals and being beaten by a promising and already good Spain team, the Three Lions are looking for a new manager. Gareth Southgate , for all the hate he received, did a decent job with the national team. Two finals, a semi-final and a quarter. Not bad for a national that failed to qualify for the Euros only back in 2008 . Yes, he probably should have been more adventurous with his tactics, style, and substitutions. Yes, the football was the most turgid and stodgy thing I have seen in a long, long time, and rem...

Football as we know and love it is back. Gone is the unity of major international tournaments in place of nine months of social media beef and screaming obscenities at that bloke you professed your undying love for in the summer. The optimism you may have, briefly, experienced as Ollie Watkins crashed his shot past Bart Verbruggen can now be put aside for the misery of a barren run in the winter months or a humiliating FA Cup exit. Moreover the men in the middle come back under the microscope after a summer of almost frightening levels of competence. Despite spending my formative years suggesting that the nation’s referees enjoyed a bit too much extracurricular self-love there were very few who stood out as individuals. As a Football Italia obsessive I recognised the imperious Pierluigi Collina and enjoyed the flourishes of John Toro Rendon, whom we imaginatively nicknamed ‘The Colombian Ref’ in the primary school playground , at France ’98 but the vast majority of the men in black we...

Mat Jolin-Beech today looks at the managerial merry-go-round which is oiled and ready to go ahead of a new season through the lens of an underused Belgian defender who played three times as many games as one of his managers oversaw in the 2004/05 campaign. His club career saw him play in his native Belgium, the Netherlands, England, Germany and the USA before retirement in 2021 but he is yet to throw his hat into the management ring. He is, however, bald, bearded and European so watch this space should your club make an early personnel change. Over to Mat. The Euros are over , it still isn’t coming home, and pre-season is already underway. This is the time when hopes and dreams build for your team. The optimism for the new campaign takes root and begins to grow. It is a new season, and with it comes new hope. There also comes new kits at £200 a pop, new ticket prices, always up, never down, and the hope of new signings that will lead your boys to glory. For some, there are new manage...

Well who could have predicted we’d be on the verge of yet another England appearance in a European Championships final a few weeks ago ? John Stones may not have played a single pass forward, Harry Kane may look like he’s not slept in three months and Phil Foden may have managed to hit every part of the goal frame besides the back of the net but Gareth Southgate has once again guided his charges successfully through a major international tournament. All that now stands in the way of football coming home from Berlin is a very talented Spain side who apparently have a decent history in this competition. As this summer’s feast of football comes to an end it’s time for the far more exciting and headline dominating transfer window. As clubs across Europe (and Saudi Arabia) look to solve their various dilemmas the recent European Championship has provided the continent’s finest with the perfect shop window and, unfortunately, made Fabrizio Romano busy again. Could Lamine Yamal be the ne...

The Euro 2024 knockout stages are upon us and we’ve been served a veritable feast of football so far in Germany. Scotland once again suffered a group stage exit while Austria topped a tricky group after securing a famous win over the Netherlands to prove that maybe Ralf Rangnick wasn’t the problem at Manchester United after all.  The last remnants of Belgium’s ‘Golden Generation’ snuck through Group E while debutants Georgia pulled off the shock of the group stage with a 2-0 win over Portugal which Cristiano Ronaldo was absolutely fine with. Gareth Southgate ’s England, meanwhile, have taken a unique approach to winning a group by boring their opponents, travelling fans and supporters at home into such a vegetative state that it makes you wonder if they are taking the game to strange new places rather than bringing it home. Football had no chance of coming home in 2008 as, due to a certain “wally with a brolly”, the Three Lions were not even heading on the plane to Austria and Sw...

The European Championship is back in Germany for the first time since 1988 and if that tournament was anything to go by we might be in for a fun few weeks. Those present and watching along at home didn’t see a single red card and no game went beyond ninety minutes sparing all involved the ennui of extra-time. The Netherlands finally overcame their major final demons thanks to Ruud Gullit ’s header and Marco van Basten ’s iconic volley against the Soviet Union. Jack Charlton ’s Republic of Ireland reached their first international finals and earned a cathartic win over an England side who flew home following subsequent defeats to both finalists.  Gareth Southgate ’s men have a kinder group than Bobby Robson’s but they are also long overdue a humiliating exit with Serbia and Slovenia providing potential banana skins. Meanwhile the hosts are looking to go ahead of Spain as the competition’s most successful team with a fourth win and begin their campaign against Scotland tonight. The...

Since October 2023 Joey Barton has had a fair amount of time on his hands. Never one to shy away from sharing his views the former Fleetwood Town and Bristol Rovers’ manager has followed in the footsteps of many a former footballer and launched a podcast which, in turn, has increased his already extensive use of Elon Musk’s social media experiment. Rather than leaning on the Nietzsche and Morrissey quotes that got him on Question Time back in 2014 Barton has gone down a more tried and tested route of dishing out controversial barbs at female pundits, Jeremy Vine and Gary Neville to name but a few. Having played a full twelve minutes of international football he also shared his views on the current crop of England stars. Particular vitriol was levelled at Kyle Walker for being “more arsed about looking like the rapper Drake than the great Bobby Moore” while midfielder Jude Bellingham was praised for his lack of earrings or leggings in training in comparison to his team mates “all wanti...