Innehållsförteckning för Summer 2023 från FourFourTwo UK

@JamesAndrew_ @FourFourTwo Last summer the Lionesses roared their way to victory in the Euros on home soil, and now 12 months on they are aiming to conquer the world Down Under. It hasn’t been a straightforward build-up for Sarina Wiegman’s side, with a number of high-profile injuries, but England remain one of the favourites to win the tournament in Australia and New Zealand. In this issue, we chat to Alessia Russo, Georgia Stanway and Alex Greenwood about the Lionesses’ quest to lift the World Cup. We also have a full team-by-team guide to the competition, so you’ll be fully prepared for the big kick-off. Elsewhere, we look back on David Beckham’s time at Real Madrid, two decades on from him swapping Manchester for the Spanish capital, and we sit down…

LIONESSES: GAMECHANGERS Abdullah Abdullah pitch publishing £12.99 Victory in the Euro 2022 Final last summer was a watershed moment for women’s football in England and spawned a proliferation of literature, including a raft of autobiographies and celebratory tomes. Here, Sarina Wiegman’s trophy-winning tactics come under the microscope. As well as each and every game, the performances of individuals including Fran Kirby and Lucy Bronze, and the fierce competition for places within the squad, are analysed closely. Such studies can overlook the excitement and passion of football festivals, but there’s colour and verve in Abdullah’s writing and he sets the scene well, not least for the final against arch rivals Germany at Wembley. The author’s focus on the squad’s prospects at the forthcoming World Cup in Australia and New Zealand is…

What are you hoping to achieve at this summer’s European U21s Championship? Ultimately, we want to try to win it. But, more importantly, we want to go there and perform, which we haven’t done in the past. We’ve gone into tournaments with a lot of expectation and not been able to live up to it. Our past doesn’t point to success – we’ve not won this tournament since 1984 – but it’s about making our own history by removing the result and focusing on the performance. How important do you think it is for young players to experience the unique pressures of tournament football? I see that as a big part of their development. You’re away from home for two or three weeks, playing games you need to win, and…

Pitch invasions are getting ever weirder. If a child on a bicycle wasn’t enough, a club president has now stormed the playing surface on a mobility scooter. Finland was the scene for the first intervention. In one of the more adorable pitch invasions, a toddler rode across the field during a Suomen Cup match, halting play so he could wave to his uncle, who was playing. In Italy, Lecco’s veteran chief hobbled on to the pitch with a walking stick after a penalty was given against his side in a Serie C play-off with Pordenone – it wasn’t overturned, so he got his scooter and drove around the grass for a bit. It’s his pitch, and he’ll do what he wants… • A Venezuelan top-flight fixture between Deportivo La Guaira…

GROUP A NORWAY The Grasshoppers are looking to bounce back from a humbling Euro 2022 in England, which ended in the group stage after a devastating 8-0 defeat to the hosts. Hege Riise (right), the Norway legend and one-time Lionesses head coach, is now at the helm. After picking up form at the end of last year, however, it’s been a difficult 2023 so far, losing to both Sweden and Denmark. As Norway’s most-capped player with 188 appearances, and one of only three players to win the World Cup, Euros and an Olympic gold medal, she has the pedigree to pick her team up off the collective floor. For the talent at their disposal, especially in attack, Norway have disappointed for a while now, failing to reach the last four…

RICARDO INFANTE Long before Erik Lamela came along and scored not one but two ludicrous rabona goals for Tottenham, the skill was originated by fellow Argentine Infante, who reportedly first used the move for Estudiantes in 1948. Did he win BBC Goal of the Season for it, though? No, he certainly did not. Lamela 1 Infante 0. CUAUHTEMOC BLANCO For a glorious period of football history, the main fun of watching Mexico at any World Cup was seeing if Blanco would perform his Cuauhtemina move during a match – the striker would grab the ball between both feet, then jump between two defenders with a bunny hop. Utterly bonkers, but somehow brilliant. KERLON When you hear the name Kerlon, who immediately thinks ‘seal dribble’? Most of you? Good. The Brazilian…

1 HUMBLE BEGINNINGS Howard Wilkinson led Leeds to the final top-flight title before the Premier League launched, but he began his managerial career with the Pilgrims way back in 1975. It was the first step on a long road to the ultimate glory: being England’s caretaker manager for one match. 2 CUP TRAILBLAZERS Boston’s 6-1 second-round win over Derby in 1955 is the FA Cup’s largest victory by a non-league side away to a Football League club. It earned them a trip to Tottenham, where 10,000 Pilgrims made the pilgrimage to London for a 4-0 loss. 3 GAZZA IN THE HOUSE With an eye on management, Paul Gascoigne, then 37, joined Boston as a player-coach to great fanfare in 2004. He made a handful of appearances and turned down I’m…

THE GAFFER JACK CHARLTON “Easy: I loved him. Even now, I miss him. I owe him so much, as his first ‘Granny Rule’ capture, because I had the greatest 10 years playing for the Republic of Ireland and winning 69 caps.” THE SUBS 01 BILLY 02 STAUNTON 03 RONNIE WHELAN +STEVE McMAHON BRUCE GROBBELAAR “My goalkeeper would have to be Bruce. He was an eccentric guy, but so agile – some of the saves he pulled off were just ridiculous. He was probably one of the first keepers who was also decent with his feet. He’d come out and win the ball, and was extremely good at it. He’d play outfield in five-a-side matches at training, and did well at that too.” STEVE NICOL “Steve could drink like a fish…

More than 400 England caps. That’s what will be missing from this Women’s World Cup compared to last year’s triumphant Lionesses team. Captain Leah Williamson, Euro 2022 Golden Boot winner Beth Mead and elite talent Fran Kirby are injured, while legends Jill Scott and Ellen White have retired. It’s a lot of experience to lose ahead of a major tournament. However, it hasn’t made the nation doubt that Sarina Wiegman can lead England to glory again, just 12 months on from lifting their first trophy. It’s impossible to replace the likes of Williamson, Kirby and Scott, but Wiegman has still put together a squad with versatility, depth, quality, and a mixture of youth and tournament know-how. There are six players who have never been to a tournament before – Katie…

AIDY BOOTHROYD 2016-2021 The former Watford gaffer came up from the U20s and won at Toulon in 2018 after a semi-final at Euro 2017. Then came group exits in 2019 and 2021, laments about losing his stars to the seniors, tactical criticism and, inevitably, the exit for ‘Hoofroyd’. GARETH SOUTHGATE 2013-2016 Four years on from overseeing Middlesbrough’s Premier League relegation, Southgate took over the England U21s. He led them to the final of Euro 2015 and Toulon glory a year later, before a pint of wine hastened his ascent to the big job. STUART PEARCE 2007-2013 Psycho’s record 63-match reign did end with three defeats at Euro 2013, but making the 2009 final was a feat given the mismatch in that 4-0 loss – Messrs Neuer, Boateng, Hummels, Khedira and…

YES RYAN DABBS STAFF WRITER @ryandabbs_ “With the ball currently being in play for less than 60 minutes in an average Premier League match, and occasionally even as few as 45, then introducing a stop clock and reducing 45-minute halves to 30-minute halves ensures, plain and simply, that more football is played. And what’s not to love about that? “As an international futsal player myself with Northern Ireland, playing a sport which does utilise a stop-clock, my experience leaves me feeling that football is missing a trick by choosing to dismiss any notion of accurate timekeeping. In a world where goal-line technology, VAR and stats dominate the footballing landscape, we still rely on a referee to shrug his shoulders at the end of a half and guess, ‘That’s four minutes…

XI BEST: Asmir Begovic, Mikael Hansson, Syarhey Shtaniuk, Ryan Shawcross, Andy Griffin (the first time), Glenn Whelan, Steven Nzonzi, Xherdan Shaqiri, Bojan Krkic, Marko Arnautovic, Ricardo Fuller. WORST: Jakob Haugaard, Cuco Martina, Paul Williams, Kevin Wimmer, Ibrahima Sonko, Marlon Broomes, Wilson Palacios, Giannelli Imbula, Jesé, Saido Berahino, Brek Shea. PLAYER B: Bojan, Arnautovic and Shaqiri were outstanding on their day, but I have a real sweet spot for Steven Nzonzi [right] – a snip at £3 million who could control games with a calmness we just weren’t used to. Tony Pulis can’t have been too familiar with that, either. W: Wimmer wasn’t as technically poor as others, but we did decide to spend a club-record £18.5m on him to find out that he was overweight and slow. He even had…

JUVENTUS 2023-24 HOME KIT £80 adidas.co.uk Playing by the rules isn’t really in the Juve DNA, is it? Their execution of ‘stripes’ here is loose at best. Adidas claim that the fuzzy lines are a deliberate print effect designed to replicate the fur of a zebra. They’re also calling that yellow trim ‘bold gold’. None of it should work, and yet it kind of… does? DIRE STRAITS X NEWCASTLE UNITED VINYL ART tolhurstvinylart.com £59.99 What you’re looking at here is Newcastle United’s club badge from the 1980s cut into an original 7” record of Local Hero by Dire Straits. Local Hero is played before every kick-off at St. James’ Park, so this is hitting music, nostalgia and football all at once in a strong bid for supporters’ credit card details.…

What was the first football match you ever saw live? It was at QPR – I lived about 500 yards from the ground. I used to go there and I loved it, but I went off football for a while when the band took over. At the end of the 1960s, I witnessed some really terrible violence when the Suedeheads came in. After that, I walked away from the game – the last match I watched was actually the 1966 World Cup Final – because I felt at the time that if the FA didn’t get to grips with it [hooliganism], then football would be finished. How did you end up becoming an Arsenal fan? It was about 1987: I was picking up my son from school, he got in…

North Macedonia (H) W 8-0 Luxembourg (A) W 10-0 Northern Ireland (H) W 4-0 Latvia (A) W 10-0 Austria (H) W 1-0 Latvia (H) W 20-0 Canada (H) D 1-1 Spain (H) D 0-0 Germany (H) W 3-1 North Macedonia (A) W 10-0 Northern Ireland (A) W 5-0 Belgium (H) W 3-0 Netherlands (H) W 5-1 Switzerland (A) W 4-0 Austria (H) W 1-0 Norway (H) W 8-0 Northern Ireland (H) W 5-0 Spain (H) W 2-1 Sweden (H) W 4-0 Germany (H) W 2-1 Austria (A) W 2-0 Luxembourg (H) W 10-0 USA (H) W 2-1 Czech Republic (H) D 0-0 Japan (N) W 4-0 Norway (N) D 1-1 South Korea (H) W 4-0 Italy (H) W 2-1 Belgium (H) W 6-1 Brazil (H) W 1-1 (4-2p) Australia (H)…

It all began in the ‘Little Hell’. That’s the name given to the favela where Antony grew up, in the north of Sao Paulo. It’s where the 23-year-old first learned his dribbling skills, the most striking characteristic of his game. There, the Brazilian needed to dribble past foes far tougher than those he’s encountered on Premier League pitches so far. In the Little Hell – or Inferninho, to give the favela its Portuguese name – Antony saw people’s lives ruined by crime. His family, too, were facing their own issues. “I saw a lot of people going down a path that wasn’t right, do you know what I mean?” he tells FourFourTwo now. “I saw people losing their lives – it was our reality back then. There were days when…

Beneath the floodlights on a stormy night at Old Trafford, Manchester United’s No.7 draws a breath, 30 yards from goal. The scoreboard reads: Manchester United 4 Real Madrid 3. Still trailing on aggregate, United need this free-kick to go in, plus one more goal in stoppage time, if they’re to reach the semi-finals of the 2002-03 Champions League. He’s already put two goals past Madrid’s Iker Casillas, including, in his own words, “the best free-kick of my United career”. A hat-trick would make his 60th-minute introduction seem even more misguided. The trademark run-up commences, left arm arcing into the night sky. His adidas Predator boot strikes leather. A stadium holds its breath… Illuminated only by a television screen, he watches the moment back, four hours later, on the sofa of…

In February, you departed Wycombe Wanderers after a decade in charge there. Just how tough was it for you to say goodbye? Unbelievably tough, and the reason was all of the players and the people there. We had spent 10 years building something and, by the time I moved on, we had become a real family. You had to be a really special person to be allowed to come in and join what we had. Everything just fell into place over the years. We had an underdog tag. We didn’t have the money but that always suited me down to the ground, because humility is one of my crucial values in life. We created a culture out of that and built the squad on those values. I made a very…

How did your career get started, up to joining Wimbledon as a teenager in 1983? After leaving school, I signed for Birmingham when Jim Smith was manager. But Jim got the sack in my second season, Ron Saunders came in, and he basically told a lot of players in the reserve team that they weren’t good enough. I was one of them. So, I called Jim after he’d gone to Oxford and asked if I could come for pre-season training. I’d been there for three weeks when Jim heard Wimbledon were looking for a left-back. He said, “Do you want to go and see what Wimbledon’s like?” I said yeah, then I met Dave Bassett down in south London and it progressed from there. What was it like, going straight…

You came through the ranks at Everton before moving to Manchester City in 2000, aged 21. What prompted the transfer? I played almost every game under Walter Smith at Everton. I was enjoying it, but an offer came in from Wimbledon and Everton accepted it. I had my medical, visited the training ground, met the players, then went home to get my stuff and flew to London the next day. One of the directors met me at Heathrow and said, “Sorry, the deal’s off; we have no money.” I was like, ‘What the f**k am I supposed to do?’ As we waited for the next flight back, my agent got a call from Joe Royle. We sorted it that day. It was strange: I thought I was going to Wimbledon,…