The 2012 Olympic Games: France & Japan Light Up Wembley
There has been quite a lot written over the last few days on the subject of the Olympic Games and its various interactions with association football. A lot of this...
Category "International Football"
The 2012 Olympic Games: The Mens Quarter-Finals
Of course they did. How could they do anything else? If the Olympic football tournament wasn’t a “proper” international football tournament already, it became one after what someone will surely...
The 2012 Olympic Games: Womens Football – The Quarter-Finals
Those pesky quarter-finals do their worst yet again. By the time Hope Powell’s Team GB got any cohesion into their game against Canada, they were already a (terrific) goal down...
The 2012 Olympic Games: The Mens Event, Group Stage Round Three
Anything the Team GB women’s team can do, the men can do too, if with a good deal less style. After his side’s 1-0 win over Uruguay yesterday, the Hope...
The 2012 Olympic Games: No-one Expected The Spanish Elimination
Re-write the football coaching manuals, the Olympic football tournament suggests. Power leads to glory…not all that tiki-taka nonsense. The United States womens’ march to Gold, and the Spanish men’s march...
A Defining Evening For Womens Football In Britain?
In front of a crowd of over 70,000 people at Wembley last night, women’s football in Britain was given the perhaps the biggest boost that it could have been given....
The 2012 Olympics Games: Womens & Mens Football – Group Matches, Round Two
Re-write the football coaching manuals, the Olympic football tournament suggests. Power leads to glory… not all that tiki-taka nonsense. The United States womens’ march to Gold, and the Spanish men’s...
The 2012 Olympic Games: Mens Football Day One
After a dream of an opening round in the women’s Olympic football, the men showed how international football tournaments SHOULD be done; three dismissals, plenty of playacting, a group of...
The 2012 Olympic Games: Womens Football Day One
Like the line-up on the Thursday evening before my first Glastonbury Festival officially started, the actual opening day of the Olympics proved an unexpected bonus, with a day of entertaining,...
Olympic Football – The Real Thing?
BBC football commentator Jonathan Pearce got through last Friday evening without once name-checking his current love…Cristiano bloody Ronaldo. He also avoided one word you would have thought key to his...
Olympic Disinterest In Football
Considering the hysteria which surrounded the release of tickets for this summer’s Olympic Games last year, we might have expected that sales for the football tournament would be high. After all,...
A View From The Armchair: Our Final Word On Euro 2012
During a fine European Championship finals tournament which had its shocks, the revelation that BBC co-commentator Martin Keown once captained England was possibly the most disturbing shock of all. Keown...
Euro 2012: The Final – Spain 4-0 Italy
Football writers the world over will be frantically thumbing through their thesaureses this evening, desperately searching for new superlatives for a performance from Spain that we may well one day...
Euro 2012: The Semi-Finals – Germany 1-2 Italy
On the seventeenth of June 1970, Italy and West Germany played out a World Cup semi-final at The Azteca Stadium in Mexico City so epic that earned itself the soubriquet...
David Beckham Misses The Olympic Cut
People may, as we speak, be lighting candles outside Leytonstone Town Hall this afternoon. David Beckham, one of the more public faces of the London bid to host this summers...
Euro 2012: The Semi-Finals – Spain 0-0 Portugal (Spain Win 4-2 On Penalty Kicks)
So it was all about Cristiano Ronaldo doing nothing. And I pilloried BBC commentators for fawning over him even while he was doing nothing, when they’d actually spotted the defining...
England At Euro 2012: A “Neutral” Speaks
Eamon Dunphy got it right. The “outspoken” pundit for Irish state television (RTE) said on Saturday night that “England won’t score, they have no creative players…it’ll go to penalties and...
Hopes, Dreams & Reality: On England At Euro 2012
The St George flags will be hanging limply this afternoon. It was after midnight in Kiev last night when the final kick hit the back of the net and confirmed...
Euro 2012: The Quarter-Finals – England 0-0 Italy (Italy Win 4-2 On Penalty Kicks)
So, then, to Kiev and to the quarter-finals of the European Championships. It’s the final match of the round this evening, featuring an Italian side that is something of a...
Euro 2012: The Quarter-Finals – Spain 2-0 France
If Germany versus Greece or Portugal versus the Czech Republic didn’t quite scratch the itch after the end of the group stages of this summers European Championships, then this evenings...