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So, the Qatari sportswashing project in Paris finally paid off. After all that time and money, Paris Saint-Germain finally confirmed itself as the best team in Europe last season, beating Internazionale by the widest margin ever seen in the final of the European Champion Clubs’ Cup — or Champions’ League, as UEFA now calls it. Seeing an authoritarian government’s propaganda tool conquer the competition wasn’t fun; but in pure football terms, there was something nice about tha

Introduction In 1955, when the Sunderland A.F.C. was in the running for both the FA Cup and the League Championship, the club’s first-team players held a meeting in which they discussed which competition they should concentrate their efforts on. When one player suggested that they should go all out for both, captain Len Shackleton dismissed the proposition. “Can’t be done,” said the international inside-left. “Never been done.” The players agreed that the Cup, then the compet

Association football is famously known as The Beautiful Game; yet its language, at least among the English-speaking peoples, must by now have become the ugliest attached to any sport anywhere. I refer not to the rude words roared at each other by spectators and players alike, of which I myself make liberal use during matches, but of the technical vernacular of the game itself, in particular the terms used to describe playing positions. These, it seems, have been growing progr