Innehållsförteckning för May 2023 från FourFourTwo UK

The year 2020 was a strange one for everyone across the globe – a pandemic sweeping across the world, countries being plunged into lockdown, life grinding to a halt. The immediate future was bleak and uncertain. School PE lessons were led by Joe Wicks, while a 99-year-old walked around his garden to raise money for the NHS. Then there was Marcus Rashford, a young footballer from a working class Manchester background who was a regular on the back pages, but crossed over to the front pages after taking a stand. With schools shut, children couldn’t access any free meals – Rashford challenged the government and was rightfully lauded for his efforts. Now, following a difficult period on the pitch, the England forward is in the form of his life and…

Tammy Abraham beams with health and happiness as the leonine forward strides gracefully into a small meeting room at Roma’s training ground. Life is good. This isn’t, admittedly, the usual effect that FourFourTwo has on people – the marksman became a father for the first time a few days before we meet. “I don’t think the feeling has kicked in yet,” he grins proudly. Baby Amari’s arrival brought even more joy into a life that has looked rosy ever since the 25-year-old decided to – as Jose Mourinho put it – swap the rain of London for the sunshine of Rome in the summer of 2021. Adapting to a new team in a new league presented few complications as Abraham plundered 27 goals in all competitions in his first season…

Were people surprised when you got the part of an aggressive footballer? I think everyone was. I put myself on tape for it secretly and didn’t tell anyone in the writers’ room, because I knew that no one was thinking of me for it. But I knew inside me was a deep volcano of rage that I’d been suppressing for all of these years. Kent is partly based on the former Manchester United hard man, Roy Keane. Has Keano watched any of it? I’ve not had a chat with him. I believe Sky Sports did a clip where they showed him some of it and said, “Is that you?” He said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Why do you reckon Kent became such a phenomenon? I think that…

“Do you know what I really enjoy doing in England? Going to Nando’s.” Khadija Shaw’s footballing journey has taken her halfway around the world, from her origins in Jamaica to the land of fish and chips, steak and kidney pie and bangers and mash. In the end, though, a South African chicken chain has most caught her attention since joining Manchester City in June 2021. “I remember having a chat with [captain] Steph Houghton,” the goal-getter chuckles now. “She said, ‘Have you ever tried Nando’s?’ I was like, ‘What’s that?’ She told me I had to try it, so I went home to my uncle and told him I wanted to go to Nando’s!” If moving to a country where some of her relatives already lived “five minutes down the…

CREDENTIALS Midfield anchor Eydelie had bagged a Ligue 1 and Champions League double in his debut campaign at Marseille in 1992-93. FIFA sharply banned him for a year, with another 12 months suspended, after he was found guilty of bribing three Valenciennes opponents to “go easy” in their fixture three days before the Milan final. He even served 17 days in jail for the misdemeanor. Five years later, though, the then 32-year-old joined Walsall, in the third-tier of English football, on loan from Sion. HOW’D IT GO? Debuting in a 2-1 March win against eventual league champions Watford – alongside compatriot Didier Tholot, who had played in the 1996 UEFA Cup Final for Bordeaux – Eydelie impressed in Walsall’s bid to avoid relegation. Former Saddlers defender Chris Marsh described the…

THE PLAYERS LOUNGE STILIYAN PETROV CHRIS HUGHTON SUNDAY OLISEH TONY DORIGO How did your 1999 move from CSKA Sofia to Celtic, when you were 20, come about? At the end of the season with CSKA, I played really well in an international match against England which we [Bulgaria] drew 1-1. Celtic enquired about me and the negotiations went very quickly. My phone wasn’t working, so the club couldn’t find me – they had to call friends and send a driver to pick me up. People were rushing about, because it was a big fee for the club [around £2.8 million], but I wanted to wait until I’d finished my holiday. I went back to Sofia with a change of clothes and flew to Scotland the next day. Young Stan was…

1 Which club invited local prisoners to watch a game to boost gates 2 Who was once fined after overtaking Fergie on a public road 3 Which club owner was threatened with a severed pig’s head 4 Which League Two star also used to be a beach soccer international 5 Who escaped via a window to play in a 9-3 thrashing at Wembley SUBSCRIBE FROM £3.93 PER ISSUE Get FFT sent direct to your door every month for £12.75 per quarter – with 13 issues published each year, you’ll make great savings. Head to magazinesdirect.com and find FourFourTwo, or phone 0330 333 1113…

THE SILENCE OF THE STANDS Daniel Gray (Bloomsbury Sport, £12.99) For the majority of supporters, watching football in lockdown meant listening to the shrieks of players and backroom staff rattling around deserted stadia via the medium of television. The intrepid Daniel Gray on the other hand – warned by his mother ‘not to hug anyone if they score’ – ventured to a raft of outposts to gauge how clubs and their communities coped during the strangest of times. His gumshoe research means the book, which takes in Kendal, Lancaster, Cowdenbeath and Raith, is part-travelogue, part social history. At Workington’s Borough Park, the spirit of Bill Shankly, who managed the club in the 1950s, is skilfully brought to life by Gray’s gift for casting a fresh perspective on stories from the…

In 2021, you left Manchester United to sign for Boca Juniors. How did the fans welcome you? Fantastically well. The fans are crazy – the Bombonera is a permanent party. The passion of the Argentine people is incomparable, even more than the English. In the street, they let you know how much they love you. I’m injured now and every fan tells me that they miss me, which gives me strength. In Buenos Aires, it’s much more complicated than in England to go out for a quiet dinner. In England, they respected you in that private space. Here, they ask you for photos or a greeting at every step. It’s nice. You mention injury – the one to your cruciate ligament in October, yes? The moment it happened, I was…

50 HANNIBAL MEJBRI BIRMINGHAM CITY POSITION MIDFIELDER AGE 20 In another challenging season for Birmingham, the Manchester United loanee’s intense pressing has won him many a fan, either side of 10 minutes at the World Cup with Tunisia. If he channels his aggression better, he’ll go far. HIGHLIGHT Pulling off a clever and perfectly-executed free-kick against West Brom to catch out David Button at his near post. 49 ANDY COOK BRADFORD CITY POSITION FORWARD AGE 32 Strong enough to be a focal point, skilled and mobile enough to thrive individually, ‘Cookie’ did threaten in patches last season but is now more consistent, with 18 league goals before March. HIGHLIGHT Showing strength, spirit, technique and composure to score against Gillingham after nicking the ball on the touchline. 48 PAUL SMYTH LEYTON…

ETHAN AMPADU The Welsh stopper joined Venezia on loan from Chelsea in 2021-22, but was unable to prevent an instant return to the second tier. Back in Serie A this term, at Spezia, he’s again fighting relegation. JOSH DOIG The 20-year-old Scot left Hibernian for Hellas Verona last summer – by March he’d scored twice and provided four assists from left-wing-back as the Gialloblu battle to beat the drop. LEWIS FERGUSON When Aaron Hickey exited Bologna last July, the Rossoblu needed just three days to lure another Scot – Aberdeen talent Ferguson. The midfielder scooped Serie A goal of the month in November. LIAM HENDERSON The former Celtic youngster initially moved to Italy in 2018, joining Bari in Serie B. He steered Hellas Verona into the top tier a year…

The afterglow of Tottenham Hotspur’s most recent FA Cup triumph faded quickly. It was the summer of 1991, Spurs had captured football’s oldest competition for a record eighth time, and yet the club was in a total mess. Though a debt of £20 million seems piffling today, back in ’91 it represented a crippling millstone around Tottenham’s neck. Worse still, the financial lifeline due from selling Paul Gascoigne, with Lazio offering a world-record £8.5m fee, had just been jeopardised by Gazza injuring himself at Wembley with an extraordinarily bad tackle on Nottingham Forest’s 21-year-old full-back Gary Charles, who ironically got to his feet immediately. Spurs needed money and fast. Their saviour was a former barrow boy from the East End. Alan Sugar had made a fortune with his electronics company…

XI BEST: Lionel Perez, Kyle Knoyle, Josh Coulson, Andy Duncan, Clive Wilson, Paul Wanless, Luke Chadwick, Wes Hoolahan, Alex Russell, John Taylor, Dave Kitson. WORST: David Forde, Stuart Bimson, Jordan Jones, John Dreyer, David Chick, Paul Raynor, Justin Walker, Richard Prokas, Kingsley Mbome, Danny Webb, Jonas Axeldal. PLAYER B: The Irish Messi, Wes Hoolahan [right]. Undoubtedly the finest player ever to pull on the amber and black. W: Sully Seychelles was going to fire us to glory in 2004-05, but got injured in his one game for us and we wound up relegated. MOMENT B: The final whistle in the 2014 Conference Play-off Final [right], after 10 nerve-racking minutes of injury time with the U’s a man down. Nine long years in the non-league wilderness were over. W: A 0-0…

HEURELHO GOMES “He and Hugo Lloris were among the finest goalkeepers I’ve played with, but as a shot-stopper Gomes was something else. Today, teams want to see how good keepers are on the ball – which is brilliant – but back when I was playing, Heurelho was unbelievable.” KYLE WALKER “No debate: the best right-back I’ve played with. Kyle will go down as a Premier League great. He looks like he isn’t slowing down, in terms of pace and the performances that he still puts in, which is so impressive.” TOBY ALDERWEIRELD “I only got to play a handful of matches with Ledley King, so I’m not sure it’d be fair to pick him even though he’s unquestionably one of England’s elite. However, I spent many years alongside Toby, and…

How did you become a Brighton fan? I was born in Brighton. I moved to Jamaica with my parents when I was eight – while we were there, we could only watch Premier League football, and Brighton were far from the top flight back then! But I came back to England aged 15 and lived with my cousins, who are mad Albion fans. When the Amex Stadium opened in 2011, I got a job giving out match programmes, and I would always hang around to watch the games. Do you have a matchday routine? If I’m going along as a fan, I’m one of those people who likes to get there ridiculously early – three hours before kick-off. It always annoys my mates! Who was your childhood hero and did…

KENNY BURNS The Scot won two European Cups under Brian Clough at Nottingham Forest, but once infuriated his boss by attempting a square pass across his own penalty area during a game. Clough immediately sent someone to his office to write out a £50 fine, then handed it to Burns at half-time. JOHN HEWITT Alex Ferguson was easily irked, too, as Hewitt found out at Aberdeen, merely by overtaking his manager on a public road in perfectly legal fashion. Fergie – who would later use the hard shoulder illegally when he had the runs – gave the Cup Winners’ Cup final legend the hairdryer, followed by a £20 fine. ROBBIE SAVAGE Few footballers have been fined for using a toilet, but Savage managed it with Leicester. He was forced by…

There’s an episode near the end of Ted Lasso’s second season – no big spoilers; it’s an odd standalone one – where Coach Beard, Ted’s assistant at fictional club AFC Richmond, goes on a mighty post-defeat bender, gatecrashes a private club, gets chased by a jealous lover, fights one of his players’ parents and throws shapes to electro-house banger Hello by Martin Solveig (featuring Dragonette) while hallucinating about Thierry Henry. Top fun, although you can’t imagine that happening to Ray Lewington or Pat Rice. Lasso is not an entirely faithful portrayal of life in the upper echelons of English football, then – but it’s working, gosh-darn it. This unlikely sitcom about a US college football coach (played by Jason Sudeikis) managing an English soccer team has just begun its eagerly-awaited…

You took charge of Northern Premier League side South Shields in January 2022, with the club in third and big expectations to go up. That’s a lot of pressure for a first managerial role… Pressure comes with managing a team with great crowds, good infrastructure and investment – that’s what most managers want. My goal is to get this side promoted. We made the 2021-22 play-offs but didn’t quite have enough to go up. Luckily, my chairman backed me to lead the club through a transfer window and judge me on my first full season. I know this job is a big gamble as, if you don’t succeed in the seventh tier, further opportunities aren’t likely to be thrown at you. South Shields have been absolutely flying this season, topping…

THE LOWDOWN Born in Nuremberg to a German mother and American father, Tillman joined Bayern Munich aged 13 and earned a senior debut in August 2021. The graceful 20-year-old attacking midfielder moved to Rangers on loan last July, just after switching his allegiance to the USA. HIGHLIGHT Two Ibrox headers in the space of four days last August: one against Royale Union Saint-Gilloise in Champions League qualifying, the second in beating St Johnstone 4-0. DID YOU KNOW? Tillman sparked controversy in Rangers’ 3-2 Scottish Cup victory over Partick Thistle. After pinching the ball from Jags skipper Kevin Holt, who was returning it to the Gers after Tillman had received treatment, the midfielder ran through to score. Cue Ibrox fisticuffs before gaffer Michael Beale made his team let the second-tier Jags…

1 CURSE OF THE CUP Killie played in the first official Scottish Cup match, losing 2-0 to the now-defunct Renton in 1873. Despite having played in each of its 150 seasons, they’ve won the cup just thrice: in 1920, 1929 and 1997. 2 GOING STATESIDE Kilmarnock topped their group ahead of Bayern Munich, Burnley, Nice, Glenavon and, er, ‘New York Americans’ in the inaugural 1960 season of the International Soccer League, the USA’s short-lived punt at a pseudo-Intercontinental Cup which launched in the same year as… the Intercontinental Cup. Alas, Killie lost the New York showpiece to Bangu, who now play in Brazil’s fourth tier. The match highlights are online if you don’t believe us. 3 FINE MARGINS In one of football’s closest title races, Kilmarnock went to Hearts on…

Few footballers add an Olympic medal to their trophies – where does Nigeria’s gold at the 1996 Games in Atlanta rank for you? Winning the gold medal in Atlanta was very special for me, as it was for Nigerians back home and all over the world. I’m grateful every single day for my football career and the fantastic clubs I had the chance to play for, but to also be an Olympian and Olympic champion is something I’ll always treasure. You had moved to Reggiana in 1994, from Belgium – what did you make of calcio? I was instantly struck by how competitive a league Serie A was then. During the 1990s, some of the best players were in Italy, such as Zinedine Zidane, Roberto Baggio, Gabriel Batistuta, Paolo Maldini…