Innehållsförteckning för July 2024 från FourFourTwo UK

In 1994, Oasis released their debut album Definitely Maybe, which has gone on to sell more than 8.5 million copies over the ensuing 30 years. The success of that record isn’t solely based on sales, though, it’s also down to the number of bands formed off the back of being impacted by the songs. The Libertines, Arctic Monkeys, Kasabian, Blossoms and even Las Vegas rockers The Killers all cite the Gallagher brothers as an influence – all have flogged millions of LPs themselves. Football isn’t dissimilar. Before he rocked up at Elland Road with his bucket, Marcelo Bielsa was regarded as one of the most inspirational gaffers in the game. In Europe, it’s hard to look past Johan Cruyff, whose methods live on through the likes of Ronald Koeman, Luis…

“THE AUSSIES WENT QUIET FOR A BIT WHEN I SCORED – TO REACH THE WORLD CUP FINAL IS EVERYONE’S DREAM” England 6-0 N Ireland February 23, 2021 Friendly “Playing for your country is the most unbelievable rush. I made my debut in lockdown, so no one was actually there watching, but it was on the telly. I came on for Jordan Nobbs at half-time and then scored a penalty. It was one of the greatest feelings of my life. Transforming from that young girl who fell in love with football, dreaming of playing for England someday, to finally achieving it was special. My phone was blowing up on the drive home. I had so many messages from family, friends and coaches – people who knew what it meant for me…

Arne Slot was 18 hours from one of the biggest disappointments of his career when a match took place that would inspire him. In May 2011, while Jurgen Klopp was celebrating his first Bundesliga title with Borussia Dortmund, Slot played in midfield as FC Zwolle lost a play-off to VVV-Venlo, denying them promotion to the Dutch top flight on that sad Sunday afternoon. The previous evening, however, the 32-year-old had seen the example that he was determined to follow. Barcelona had beaten Manchester United 3-1 at Wembley with the greatest performance ever delivered in a Champions League final, engineered by Slot’s biggest coaching idol: Pep Guardiola. “In the past 20 years, there has been one person who stands above others,” declared Slot in 2022. “He has inspired lots of coaches.…

The bar erupts. Patrons scream “LET’S GO!” New York City is utterly supercharged by sport right now. This small watering hole, at 38th and 2nd Street on Manhattan’s East Side, is a microcosm of the mood. But it’s not MLS, the Premier League or even a sport involving a ball on the screens. It’s the New York Rangers ice hockey team, who have just struck four unanswered goals in the final 15 minutes of a vital play-off game to beat the Carolina Hurricanes 5-3 and reach the Eastern Conference final – a semi-final, in effect – of the unfeasibly large Stanley Cup. In the week FourFourTwo land in New York, the city is approaching it’s-coming-home levels of excitement – the local basketball team, the Knicks, are in the play-offs, too.…

Featuring Thierry Henry, protesting sailors and a very angry Hitler Great Britain don’t have a football team at the 2024 Olympics, but three British bosses will be there – as well as some little-known bloke called Thierry Henry. Installed as the manager of France’s under-21s last year, Henry is also in charge of their Olympic men’s team, who are hosting the Games and heavy favourites to win gold. No pressure, Titi… Alexandre Lacazette, Jean-Philippe Mateta and Michael Olise were all selected for the preliminary squad – Lacazette and Mateta as designated overage players – with young PSG talents Warren Zaire-Emery and Bradley Barcola named in both the provisional roster and France’s Euro 2024 squad. Les Bleus’ first game is against the USA on the opening day of the football tournament,…

If you’re a pub quiz fan, you’ve probably heard the question about the biggest city in England to have never had a club in the Football League. The answer, if you happen to have avoided it, is Wakefield, with its population of 109,000. That pub quiz answer could soon change. That’s if relatively new owner Guilherme Decca gets his way. Gui, for short, is the founder and CEO of VO2 Capital. But how did a Brazil-born businessman with a company based in Connecticut come to own a non-league club in West Yorkshire? “A combination of a couple of things,” explains Decca, who is based in the USA while chief executive officer Adam Lockwood, the former Doncaster Rovers defender, runs the show from this side of the pond. “I was absolutely…

An outsider might glance at Salford City’s current status, or stasis, and fairly conclude that the club has hit a plateau. A period of rapid progress has been followed by a spell treading water. Ten full seasons have passed since Gary and Phil Neville, Paul Scholes, Ryan Giggs and Nicky Butt bought Salford with Singaporean billionaire Peter Lim. Five years in, David Beckham joined the club’s golden period, which began in Division One North of the Northern Premier League and ended four promotions later with entry to the Football League. Manchester United’s Class of ’92 was weaving dreams again. But what of the five subsequent campaigns? A pair of play-off flirtations aside, Salford’s well-vocalised aim of reaching English football’s top tier has hit a wall. In fact, 2024 began with…

From the very start of his life, Daniel Sturridge has always been surrounded by football. His dad (Mike) and uncle (Simon) both played for Birmingham City, and uncle Dean spent a decade with Derby County. There was only one path young Daniel was likely to follow, then, but it nonetheless required dedication and a mantra from Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Outliers. “It says anything takes 10,000 hours of practice, and it’s like that in every aspect,” Sturridge tells FourFourTwo. “You need 10,000 hours on the right foot, the same on the left foot, on stepovers – on everything.” Practice paid off as he broke through at Manchester City, before joining Chelsea and Liverpool, winning the Champions League with both. While he featured in neither final, it was Sturridge who scored the…

Before big games, it’s common for supporters to unveil a giant tifo to show their allegiance – in Stockholm, Hammarby fans reserved their spiciest one for the final whistle. Hammarby took on bitter city adversaries Djurgarden in June – the Allsvenskan campaign runs from March to November, and Sweden’s national side weren’t at the Euros having not qualified for the first time since 1996. No Zlatan, no party. Hammarby and Djurgarden share Stockholm’s Tele2 Arena, but there has been no lack of incidents in derby matches over the years – in 2016, one fixture was suspended for half an hour when Djurgarden fans chucked flares and invaded the pitch, then there was further trouble in the stands during another game two years later. Violence has proved a problem in Swedish…

30 CARLOS MAC ALLISTER THE PLAYER Father of Liverpool’s Alexis Mac Allister and one-time Alex McLeish lookalike, who played as Argentina qualified for USA 94 but wasn’t picked for the World Cup itself (unlike his son, who won it 28 years later). At least he might’ve avoided a drugs ban, Diego. THE POLITICIAN Carlos was elected as a member of Argentina’s parliament back in 2013, then spent the best part of three years as the country’s secretary of sports. 29 OLEG MALYSHKIN THE PLAYER Defender for the mighty Torpedo Taganrog in the Soviet second tier, and also a boxer who won a dozen fights by knockout. THE POLITICIAN Oleg joined the country’s Liberal Democrats after the fall of the USSR, then became a member of the Duma before running for…

XI BEST: Campbell Money, Davie Lapsley, Jackie Copland, Norrie McWhirter, Iain Munro, Tony Fitzpatrick, Hugh Murray, Stephen McGinn, Lewis Morgan, Mark Yardley, Steven Thompson. WORST: David Cornell, Pal Fjelde, Josh Heaton, Cole Kpekawa, Mo Camara, Kyle Hutton, Eric Djemba-Djemba, Stuart Carswell, Jeff King, Nicolai Brock-Madsen, Stephane Bahoken. PLAYER B: I have to go with who I’ve seen with my own eyes, and Steven Thompson ending his career with his boyhood club ticks all the right boxes. He came home while still at a high level and scored in the semi [right] and final of our 2013 League Cup win. Hero status. W: Josh Heaton signed for a reasonable fee and was touted as the jewel of the Vardy Academy scheme. He lasted two cup ties against fourth- and fifth-tier opposition…

The winger on Leicester’s title, Saudi Arabia’s Ronaldo-mania and how he’ll ‘steal’ some more English players for Jamaica… Aged 17, after your Birmingham debut in 2013, you were in FourFourTwo’s ‘Top 10 Football League stars of tomorrow’. Did it feel as if you had the world at your feet? Back then, I was so fearless. I was playing for England youth and felt way ahead of the other boys, even top players from Chelsea and Manchester City, because I was playing in the Championship. Men’s football forces you to mature much earlier, which is good. I’ll watch my Birmingham highlights sometimes to remember how it started. It was a good time. I could have gone wherever I wanted. Joining Leicester during their 2015-16 title-winning season wasn’t a bad choice… I’d…

THE BEAUTIFUL GAME EL DIEGO, REBORN GELSENKIRCHEN, GERMANY Jude Bellingham does his best Diego Maradona impression – surrounded by red jerseys, a la the Argentine icon at the 1982 World Cup – against Serbia at Euro 2024. His game-winning heroics in an otherwise hesitant Three Lions display ensured the comparisons didn’t stop there. Photo Friedemann Vogel/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock ANCELOTTI SOARS LONDON, ENGLAND A levitating Don Carlo proves his miracle-making isn’t limited to the dugout after Real Madrid’s Wembley win against Borussia Dortmund in June. That success sealed the Italian gaffer’s fifth Champions League title from six finals – no other manager has lifted the cup more than thrice. Photo David Ramos/Getty STOP THE CLOCKS OOSTENDE, BELGIUM Belgian second-division side KV Oostende declared bankruptcy at the end of last season, folding after 120 years of…

01 Kylian Mbappe (right) netted how many goals in his spell at Paris Saint-Germain: 256, 306 or 356? 02 Which Spanish surprise package came third in La Liga last season and qualified for the Champions League? 03 Which Serie A club’s home will have the smallest capacity in 2024-25? 04 After beating which side in a major final did Sir Alex Ferguson famously blurt out, “Football, bloody hell!”? 05 Which English outfit has ‘Consectatio Excellentiae’ inscribed on their crest? 06 Obafemi Martins and Bobby Zamora are the only two players in Premier League history to do what: score penalties with both feet or hit hat-tricks in defeats? 07 What nationality is ex-Rayo Vallecano, Celta Vigo and Swansea forward Michu? 08 Which Eredivisie team did Arjen Robben, Romario, Ruud van Nistelrooy…

MANCHESTER UNITED JAMES ANDREW EDITOR @JamesAndrew_ At the end of last season, there was a meme doing the rounds on social media (as there is for everything these days), with pictures of Jurgen Klopp, Pep Guardiola, Erik ten Hag and Mikel Arteta. Under Klopp were the words ‘Won League Cup’, beneath Pep was written ‘Won Premier League’ and underneath Ten Hag was ‘Won FA Cup’. Under Arteta, it said ‘Trust The Process’. The meme was created to mock Arteta and Arsenal for finishing trophyless in 2023-24, but the fact is that under the Spaniard, the Gunners are improving. In 2022-23, they were runners-up on 84 points, five behind Manchester City. In 2023-24, they were five points better off on 89, cutting City’s winning margin to two points. The process is…

“Before that summer, the Netherlands was known for tulips and windmills. After it, we were known for football.” Rinus Michels was nearly right. In the decade preceding 1974, the Dutch coach’s once conservative and proudly unremarkable homeland had buzzed with counter culture invention, from art and music to architecture – he just didn’t know where to look. Clearly not the Amsterdam Hilton, the venue for John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s anti-Vietnam war bed-in. Michels’ revolution was every bit as important. Dutch football wasn’t even professional throughout much of his own middling playing career, but the young Ajax coach would go on to change the face of the sport after taking charge in the summer of 1965. “He replaced ageing pros with youngsters from amateur teams, like myself,” recalls left-back Ruud…

True insanity, it’s often said, is “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” The quote has frequently been attributed to Albert Einstein, wrongly as it turns out. Yet one society’s madman is another’s genius, their brilliance mistrusted and ridiculed until it’s finally accepted as being self-evident. The young Rene Higuita wanted the same as every other kid in Medellin’s crime-infested barrios in the 1970s. To play centre-forward for Colombia. To score at the World Cup. To become a national hero. “When I was a boy, I played as a striker,” Higuita tells FFT now. “I scored goals, but destiny had other plans. It was only by chance, at a tournament when our goalkeeper didn’t show up, that they put me in goal.” Needless to say,…

How’s your summer been? Relaxing? I went away, and we also did a little charity thing as a group of staff. As a club we visited a children’s hospice before Christmas, then again in March or April, and we spoke about doing something to raise money – so we climbed the Pen y Fan mountain in Wales 10 times in 24 hours. Ten times up, ten times down. That’s fantastic. No, it wasn’t, it was brutal! [Smiles] But it was for a good cause. It was worth it. How have you found your time at Bristol City, starting last November? We have a great group of lads – really honest, hard-working and ambitious. We’re looking to build on positives from last season. You have a philosophy of how you want…

Livestock fired out of cannons, sponsorships with military drone manufacturers and Queen ElizaBET, and having their social media accounts hacked by Enya Fans 4 Communism – just a few of the zany goings-on at non-league club Streatham Rovers. There’s never a dull moment following the South London club, who finished 11th in the Xtermin8 Rat Poison League last season under the guidance of long-suffering manager Taff Goose. ‘Following’ is the key word: the Greyhounds exist only on social media. The comedy genius behind the parody club is Robert Vaughan, who was in the process of relocating to Belfast from his native Streatham when he set up its X (then Twitter) account eight years ago. He tells FFT, “I couldn’t really afford to stay in London any more, so it was…