Soccer

The amorphous mess that is the Champions League group stage is now taking shape. Most of the usual suspects are through, give or take the collywobbles being suffered by Arsenal, and, with one matchday left, we will soon be mothballing the competition u...

Craig Bellamy's decision to return "home" to Cardiff City has been hailed as a throwback to the days when big-name players would step down a division to revive the fortunes of a provincial club. Memories of Dave Mackay being persuaded to join Second Di...

A long, long European season has ended, giving us barely a couple of weeks to recharge our batteries and retune our engines for the World Cup. Mine's a pint of engine oil... Time then to list my top players of the European season, and compare them to the rankings my selections gained from our friends...

Just the Champions League final to go before European club football wraps itself in a tight ball for the summer? Not a bit of it if you happen to follow a team wrapped up in the agonising process of the Football League play-offs. Saturday's somewhat...

Using public transport in London often means you come into unwanted contact with the personal views of some of the capital's great thinkers. And so it proved on Wednesday evening when yet another crash of my rapidly ailing iPod left me unable to escape the inanities of others' conversations as we crawled along the dread...

"Més que un club" is the motto of FC Barcelona, the self-appointed guardians of that rather tiresome cliche "the beautiful game". Roughly translated as "more than a club", the phrase is described by the club's official website as being "open-ended in meaning". It goes on thus: "It is perhaps this flexibility that makes it so appropriate...

Red Bulls sing of tossed salads and lacks of skill © Getty Images

As a result of the extended global terrorism being carried out by the country who brought you Einar from the Sugarcubes, Eggert Magnusson and...

Last week, I was granted the privilege to vote in this year's Golden Foot Awards to follow my attendance at last year's ceremony. I will not reveal my nominees but, as a side question, I was also asked for my favourite footballers of all time. My answers? Eric Cantona, Johan Cruyff, Zinedine Zidane and...

"At Stamford Bridge, I don't expect anything other than people to be glad to have me back as we worked so well together. This time I will go back to a different dressing room, a different dugout and but I know normally Mourinho is lucky at Stamford Bridge." With typical self-reverence, Jose Mourinho tried his best...

Before Tuesday, the last time David Beckham was involved in a European game of such magnitude involving Manchester United, he made an exciting but by no means decisive late contribution to the 4-3 classic with Real Madrid in 2003 - scoring two goals fr...

For at least seven days, ‘Staying Alive’ may soon be superseding the ‘Pompey Chimes’ at Fratton Park. Sympathy must go to the poor souls who find themselves within earshot of John ‘Portsmouth Football Club’ Westwood's attempts at emulating the Gibb brothers' falsetto. Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs seems to want to land the felling blow...

Which route to take through the John Terry moral maze? Unless you have an admiration for highly-paid supposed role models behaving with the same devil-may-care attitude to monogamy as the courtiers of Caligula, it's fair to say he's been a very silly b...