Breaking The Lines

Arsenal score too many goals from set pieces. It’s cynical. It’s not proper football. Wins feel hollow. Something something Arsène Wenger would be disappointed. If a team is exclusively reliant on set pieces, ignores open play entirely, and builds their whole identity around dead ball situations, that’s a legitimate tactical concern. It suggests fragility, raises quest...

The treble, probably the most coveted achievement in club football, besides your club getting bought out by people who have done crimes against humanity to artificially pump it full of cash. But I digress. Only 9 clubs have ever managed this tremendous feat in Europe and only Bayern and Barcelona have done it twice. Interestingly enough Barcelona has two trebles for men’s and...

Prevailing images. The pictures that will always be associated with one person due to their iconic nature. Some have enough and, of those, with enough importance to build a mosaic that paints a canvas as colourful as a painter’s palette. Indelible, synonymous, unforgettable. Which one would this be for Granit Xhaka? 

There are so many places to start with...

‎Football has always been attracted to a simple idea. The more talented players a team possesses, the closer it moves towards success. It is an assumption that shapes transfer strategies, fuels supporter optimism and drives media narratives whenever a major club assembles a collection of elite footballers.

On the surface, the logic appears impossible to challe...

It’s very telling about the trajectory Dutch football has taken over the last two decades that its defence is its strong point right now. Few sides have had as strong a portfolio of defenders as the Dutch over the last three tournaments, which is a far cry from the Netherlands’ wonderful attacking teams of the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s, and their back-line is now seen as t...