Subscribe to the podcast onSpotify here,on Acast hereoron iTunes hereEuro 96 took place in a different world. It was a time closer to the three-day week, the Vietnam War and the eradication of smallpox than the present day.English football had welcomed the start of the Premier League only four years earlier, but had endured embarrassment at Euro 92 and absence from USA 94.Despite that, the tournament captured the national imagination and came to sum up a moment in both our footballing and cultural history.Conor Pope is joined by Gary Parkinson, James Andrew, and Chris Flanagan to discuss the whole tournament.Buy the FourFourTwo magazine Euro 96 specialSubscribe to FourFourTwo magazine for less than £4 an issue
Brahim Diaz, Real MadridBrahim Diaz was not a Zinedine Zidane signing: the young Spanish winger was purchased in the last winter market from Manchester City when Santiago Solari was in charge of Real Madrid. When Zidane took over late last season, he was impressed with Brahim’s play, but none of that public fawning actually translated into meaningful playing time. Brahim is a fringe rotational player, and has made just four appearances (all off the bench), this season.With James Rodriguez and Lucas Vazquez back from injury - and Eden Hazard and Gareth Bale returning soon - it’s hard to fathom any change in Brahim’s playing time. Though the player wants to stay and fight for his place, he’ll eventually just need...
The last time Manchester United visited Anfield, Jesse Lingard scored. Of course he did. It was Jose Mourinho’s last stand, and he picked a bizarre team including Matteo Darmian as a centre-back and excluding Paul Pogba. Liverpool racked up 36 shots.But Lingard scored, and it scarcely ranked as a surprise. Back then, he was United’s big-game Jesse, a player who scored a disproportionate proportion of goals on the major stages. A couple of weeks earlier, he had scored against Arsenal. A month later, he did again, in the FA Cup.In a three-year period, he scored four times against Arsenal, twice against Chelsea, once each against Liverpool, Holland and Croatia, as well as finding the net in the FA Cup final,...
We’ve all been taught to believe that more football is a good thing. In the days before television took complete control of the sport, when games on terrestrial channels felt like a rare treat, the idea that there could ever be too much football was ridiculous.The more the merrier, always and forever.That’s being increasingly exposed as a fallacy. Long pre-season tours have been around for some time. The newer, post-season tours are relatively new, but are already an established part of the calendar too. Elsewhere, competitive games are also on the rise.The World Cup will be expanded to 48 teams by 2026, the Club World Cup will grow to 24 teams in 2021 (despite FIFA president Gianni Infantino wanting a...
Manchester City signing Riyad Mahrez felt like “one of those” transfers. Like Fabian Delph before it, or when Pep Guardiola brought Mario Götze to Bayern - a big club pulling the rug from a smaller one to pad their squad. Because they can. Not because they need to.Sometimes though, good moves only become apparent in the long-run. Mahrez has blistered the soles of left-backs this season, becoming more than just a featured artist on a best-selling concert tour. This is the Riyad Mahrez we all knew and loved from Leicester - from the Arjen Robben-like runs to the angle-defying finishes, perhaps best summed up with his virtuoso solo goal against Aston Villa.The winger is now integral to Manchester City, because...