In events such as Eurovision and the Olympics, the British home nations come together to compete as one single team, but when it comes to football it’s a totally different story. In fact, in football, there’s a bit of a rivalry, to say the least, especially so against the English; with Scotland regarding their southern…
Point deductions have been a sanction used against football clubs for almost as long as football’s been around. The earliest recording of a points deduction in English football occurred in 1891, when Sunderland were deducted two points after ineligibly fielding goalkeeper Ned Doig. Nowadays, the most common occurrence of point deductions are against clubs facing…
NFTs, or non-fungible tokens to use their full name, have enjoyed a meteoric rise in popularity in recent years. Established in 2015, they did take some time to get going but in more recent times they have been gaining the attention of journalists, the general public and investors alike. In just the first quarter of…
England fans regularly sing about football ‘coming home’ during World Cups and European Championships, paying tribute to a notion that football is an English invention. Massively popular and accessible, with reportedly 517 million viewers watching the 2018 World Cup final and, according to FIFA, an estimated 250 million people regularly playing football worldwide. It is…
Pleasing the fans is one of the hardest tasks for any football manager, but for managers with a history of managing rival clubs, it’s a task made even harder. During their time at Everton and Newcastle respectively, managers, Rafa Benitez and Steve Bruce have struggled to get their own club’s fans on side in light…
It’s easy for football fans to get attached to certain players, admiring their on-pitch skills and the tendency to kiss the badge, but it’s equally easy to forget that not every footballer is in the game for loyalty towards a certain club, and with footballers’ careers tending to be short-lived, some players may instead be…
Football teams being on the receiving end of punishments due to the behaviour of their own fans is quite a common occurrence these days. It is so engrained into footballing life now that we rarely even question it, even though it is not consistent with a standard legal approach. If you were to end up…
The Premier League began on the 15th August 1992 and as every good pub quizzer or football anorak knows, Sheffield United’s Brian Deane scored the first-ever goal. In the inaugural season, Man United went on to win the title and Crystal Palace, Middlesbrough and Nottingham Forest were relegated. Forest were the worst side that year,…
When it comes to buying shirts there are two main groups of fans. There are those that will buy the latest version every season without fail, no matter how it looks like or who the sponsor is. The other group, however, contains people who are a little more choosy and will only buy shirts when…
Football began life purely as a sport but for many, especially at the elite level, it is now very much a business. How people feel about this varies, although the reaction to the European Super League proposal in 2021 suggests that at some level at least, most fans still feel sporting principles have to be…
