This article is part of The Athletic’s series marking UK Black History Month. To view the whole collection, click here. Lassana Diarra was preparing for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. The midfielder, who had spells with Chelsea, Arsenal, and Portsmouth in the Premier League, was coming off the back of a difficult first…
Ask any forward tagged with the ‘super sub’ label if they take pride in it, and you’ll get the same response. “I hate it,” says Adam Le Fondre, who scored eight of his 12 Premier League goals after starting as a substitute. “I have always thought I am good enough to impact the game from…
The future King of England, William, Prince of Wales did not leave quietly into the night. “I’ve lost my voice,” he said. “I can’t quite believe it — 42 years…” Aston Villa supporters had started to filter out of the stadium even if no one wanted to move. Villa Park was still drinking in Jhon Duran’s…
Maarten Paes is the starting goalkeeper for Major League Soccer team FC Dallas. Yet he can walk down a busy street in Dallas, Texas, and nobody will notice him. That is not the case online. Or in Indonesia. Like his team-mates in the Indonesia national team, Paes is mobbed when he visits the country and…
Football shirts were once an item of clothing for a) players to wear at work, and b) fans to sport on the terraces in solidarity with the lads out on the pitch. Now, what must seem abruptly to the uninitiated, they have become the uniform for British music festivals and a source of inspiration for…
It had to be Rodri, didn’t it? The man who, before this season, according to football data website Transfermarkt, had missed just five games through injury for Manchester City since joining the club in 2019, is out — and possibly for the rest of the season. Why did it have to be Rodri who suffered…
It is the training drill that helped transform Raheem Sterling from a zippy winger who narrowly reached double figures each season into a back-post assassin who was among the most lethal goalscoring wingers in Europe. The change happened in the 2017-18 season, Pep Guardiola’s second in charge of Manchester City, the club Sterling returns to…
When Aitana Bonmati won the Ballon d’Or last year, it brought a global spotlight to a player whose genius was crying out to be recognised. Even now, it would be hard to argue that there is a better female footballer on the planet. Over the past 16 months, Bonmati has won the Champions League twice…
As Wrexham’s lap of honour after clinching a second promotion in as many years reached the Tech End, where the Racecourse Ground’s most vociferous supporters can be found, Paul Mullin decided to take charge of the PA microphone. “I saw my mate the other day, He said to me he’d seen the ‘white Pele’, So…
The celebration was almost as glorious as the goal itself. The fuzz of chest hair, the twirling shirt, the body swerve to evade the Manchester United fans who had run on the pitch in their euphoria. On Sunday, it is 25 years since Patrick Vieira, a genuine great of Arsenal’s midfield, played a wayward pass…
