Soccer

English football's unwanted American families again dominate our headlines and it is a delicious irony that the country's greatest footballing rivals share such similar problems. Around the time Tom Hicks Junior's email abuse of a member of a fans activists group forced him to resign from the board of Liverpool FC came news of the...

There are many dissenters of the transfer window system. Not least those of us who are in the business of generating football news stories. The intrigue surrounding the type of megadeals that used to happen mid-season was always a reliable way of filling column inches. Andy Cole's move from Newcastle United to Manchester United in...

It has been a week for the veneration of legends. Ryan Giggs was honoured on Sunday as BBC Sports Personality of the Year for 2009, voted for by the people of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. An additional reward was his being scoffed at by many a critic. Giggs' winning of PFA Footballer of the...

One win in nine matches tells a story. And it should be a horror story as far as Liverpool supporters are concerned. Yet their faith in their manager remains strong. Monday night's 2-2 draw with Birmingham will be chiefly remembered for David Ngog's winning of a dubious penalty yet there were far stronger undercurrents at...

Fernando Torres' ultimately decisive strike in Manchester United's defeat at Liverpool has further sharpened the pencils of those wishing to proclaim the waning of Rio Ferdinand. Last week saw the man himself declare that he needed a run of ten games to pull himself back to the required levels of performance and fitness. However, the...

Craig Bellamy has never been one of the game's sympathetic characters. He is a grandmaster at stealing PR disasters from the jaws of personal victory - see that fist-fight in Sierra Leone when visiting his own charity foundation last summer - and last Sunday followed the usual pattern. Written off as a bit-part of the Manchester...

During those weeks of the season when we're concentrating on domestic action you'll be able to catch our regular "Premier League Heroes" feature. This week, however, sees international football take centre-stage as World Cup qualifying nears its business end. One team with hopes just alive of being in South Africa next summer are Ukraine, in...

The newspaper headlines were much as expected, with The Sun's "Scum" being the prime sample of media outrage at the goings on at Upton Park on Tuesday night. That a man was stabbed in the chest reflected a seriousness to the situation, so too the tears of Jack Collison as he left the field at...

David Beckham's contretemps with a group of angry LA Galaxy fans has seen the ailing of his Stateside move brought into sharper focus. Two games into his return to soccer in the USA and his fraying temper has been on public show. Hollywood scripts are not supposed to end this way. While his post-match comments following...

John Terry, the man often described by burbling Sky pundit Jamie Redknapp as a "modern-day gladiator" seems to have got himself involved in some kind of Mexican stand-off between himself, Manchester City and Chelsea. And "JT", the man described as "Mr Chelsea", seems unwilling to go for his gun. After a decade as a Blues...

The Carlos Tevez conundrum has continued in the firing of the latest in a series of parting shots at Manchester United and Sir Alex Ferguson. Tevez’s latest complaint is his omission from United's starting line-up in the Champions League Final they lost to Barcelona in May. "You cannot argue with Alex Ferguson," said the striker...

A cherished possession in the Soccernet office is a not-so weighty tome entitled "Michael Owen: In Person". Its publishers sent us a copy in the autumn of 2000 and we rejoiced in the chance to hear how "football's hottest property lets you into his private world and reveals all". Mike tells us his favourite dish...