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So, international football resumed recently, and while Harry Kane chased down Peter Shilton’s record of 125 England caps, it seemed as good a time as any to revisit an idea I had before the World Cup but could not execute: that of working out a way to compare the records of international players across time. International matches are much more frequent than they used to be. At first, in the 1870s, the only international match in the football calendar was the annual encounter

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