Innehållsförteckning för January 2025 från FourFourTwo UK

X @JamesAndrew_ E james.andrew@futurenet.com When Manchester City got in touch and asked whether we fancied interviewing newly-crowned Ballon d’Or winner Rodri in Madrid, we dropped everything, jumped on a plane and flew to the Spanish capital. There were a few obstacles in our way, but overcoming them was worth it when the Premier League and Euro 2024 winner arrived at the serene setting of the Rosewood Villa Magna Hotel, sitting down with us for a chat about his amazing year, trophies and career to date. It was abundantly clear that the midfielder was very proud of his award – and rightly so – as he made sure he used a special cloth to wipe away any fingerprints on the glistening gold orb. Beyond that though, he was just a normal…

01 Which two EFL clubs have a rivalry dubbed ‘the university derby’? 02 Which club did Paul Gascoigne (right) begin his career with? 03 What nationality is cult Premier League star Temuri Ketsbaia? 04 Joe Mercer, Ron Saunders, Tony Barton, Graham Taylor and Ron Atkinson all managed which team? 05 Bosses Nuno Espirito Santo and Julen Lopetegui both played in what position: goalkeeper, centre-back or centre-forward? 06 Future Manchester United gaffer Sir Matt Busby, a European Cup winner in 1968, led Great Britain’s men’s team at the football event of the 1948 Olympic Games in London: true or false? 07 Which commentator famously declared South Africa star Siphiwe Tshabalala’s opening goal of the 2010 World Cup a “goal for all Africa”? 08 Which current Championship club introduced a combi boiler…

TORQUAY 6 NEWPORT COUNTY 1 Fourth Division, 1988 “I made my debut aged 16 that season, and had been attracting a lot of attention from clubs. I agreed to sign for Manchester United and went up there for a few days to train with the reserves and meet the first team. Brilliant things were happening to me and I was so excited. I went back down south to finish the season – in the next game, we played Newport County on a Tuesday, won 6-1 and I scored two, created two and had a particularly good game on a farmer’s field of a pitch, covered in mud and sand. I thought, ‘I won’t be playing on many more pitches like this one next season’.” ARSENAL 2 MANCHESTER UNITED 6 League…

MOMENT OF THE YEAR “It only takes a second to score a goal,” Brian Clough famously said. At the Westfalenstadion in Dortmund, Ollie Watkins timed it to perfection. On July 10, the scoreboard clock read 89:59 when Aston Villa’s talisman fired his shot towards goal… For many players, taking aim in front of the 25,000-capacity Yellow Wall, turned Oranje for the evening by expectant Netherlands fans, in the death throes of a European Championship semi-final would be too intimidating to tolerate. For this lad from Devon, though, it seemed anything but. Watkins had replaced Harry Kane with just nine minutes to change the game. It proved plenty. Cutting through the heart of the defence with a penetrating run, the 28-year-old controlled Cole Palmer’s pass with his back to goal –…

MANAGER OF THE YEAR When Emma Hayes started out as a manager more than 20 years ago, she didn’t anticipate that, one day, her team would score a goal that made Tom Cruise scream at the top of his lungs and punch the air with both fists. The girl from Camden, forced to cut short her playing career due to an ankle injury sustained aged 17, was now at the Parc des Princes in Paris, three months after lifting her seventh Women’s Super League title as Chelsea boss. It was the final of the Olympic women’s football tournament and Hayes was leading the United States to gold, thanks to Mallory Swanson’s 57th-minute strike. Ahead of his abseiling appearance at the closing ceremony a day later, Cruise was among the celebrating…

IN MEMORIAM To live is the rarest thing in the world. For a time it must have seemed to Sven-Goran Eriksson that he might not get to. Born in the tiny Swedish village of Sunne, Svennis – a nickname chosen by his little brother – grew up dreaming of playing for Liverpool. Unfortunately, a “distinctly average defender” (his words), Eriksson retired at 27, having spent the entirety of his career in the Swedish lower leagues. Yet it was at his final stop, second-tier Karlskoga, where a desire to coach took hold, thanks to the influence of player-manager Tord Grip, who went on to have a long-standing association with Eriksson. When Grip took charge of third-tier Degerfors in 1976, he invited Eriksson to become his assistant. The pair would spend evenings…

Inverness Caledonian Thistle have been one of the great Scottish football stories. Now, after a nightmare 2024, they find themelves locked in a survival battle on and off the pitch – a possible drop to the fourth tier overshadowed only by the fight to secure their very existence after entering administration. ‘Super Caley Go Ballistic, Celtic Are Atrocious’ was the famous headline when the underdogs dumped the Bhoys out of the Scottish Cup in 2000, and the Caley Jags won the competition in 2015, also bagging third place in the Scottish Premiership, but another cup final during 2023 masked the early stages of a downward spiral. They kicked off last season with eight defeats from their opening 10 games. Manager Billy Dodds was replaced by Everton cult hero Duncan Ferguson,…

Robbie Savage leans across the table tapping at his fitness watch screen. “My resting heart rate is 49, and my maximum heart rate is around 170,” Macclesfield FC’s manager tells FFT. “I play [newfangled racket sport] padel for two hours and it peaks at around 115. But I’m an emotional guy. It slowly goes up and averages around 130 on a matchday. For my first game away to Worksop, it was 147. It’s a worry.” Savage, who turned 50 in October, may now have the odd grey strand among the blonde, but he’s still physically fit. A veteran of 346 Premier League games, 39 Wales caps and even an appearance on Strictly Come Dancing, he’s presented BBC Radio 5 Live’s flagship 606 phone-in for nearly 15 years and is a…

STREET APPEAL LUTON, ENGLAND Life back in the second tier started pretty awfully for Luton Town – maybe things went awry when their quirkly away turnstiles depressingly went all commercial last year, via a sponsorship sign for Domino’s. Is nothing sacred any more? The local kids are still keen, at least. Pic Ryan Pierse/Getty “YOU DON’T LOOK WELL, OMAR?” FRANKFURT, GERMANY With a pale face and two black eyes, the tag of ‘the new Mo Salah’ looked to be affecting in-form Egyptian Omar Marmoush after he scored for Eintracht Frankfurt against Monchengladbach. It was only a mask, thankfully… Pic Christian Kaspar-Bartke/Getty Images RACING CERTAINTY PROVINCIA DE BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA Racing Club hadn’t made it to a continental final for 57 years when they hosted Corinthians in the semis of the Copa Sudamericana…

FourFourTwo are deep inside the 62,000-capacity King Abdullah Sports City Stadium in Jeddah, and a saxophonist is wistfully playing Celine Dion’s My Heart Will Go On in the corner of the room, an hour before kick-off. Few people are paying any attention, and he looks almost worried as we wander over – the pressure is on, now we’ve just doubled his audience to two. We aren’t sure what we expected when we headed to Saudi Arabia, but a Titanic fan of a sax man wasn’t it. We’re here for the first of two derbies in two days: Karim Benzema’s Al Ittihad vs Ivan Toney’s Al Ahli, before we fly 600 miles east to watch Cristiano Ronaldo’s Al Nassr face Neymar’s Al Hilal in Riyadh. They’re the Saudi Pro League’s two…

XI BEST: Martin Taylor, Jason Cousins, Roger Johnson, Mike Williamson, Joe Jacobson, Dave Carroll, Keith Ryan, Matt Bloomfield, Steve Brown, Adebayo Akinfenwa, Nathan Tyson. WORST: Brian Parkin, Leon Crooks, Michael Duberry, Carlos Lopez, Alan Beeton, Martin Bullock, John Halls, Stewart Castledine, Lewwis Spence, Richard Logan, Dennis Oli. PLAYER B: Joe Jacobson, ever-present in our rise from League Two to the Championship, playing 400 times. A left-back and set-piece expert with a penchant for shooting direct from corners. W: I wasn’t at the game, but the story goes that Carlos Lopez was so bad in his solitary Wanderers appearance that when he picked up a booking, our fans were begging the ref to send him off. MOMENT B: Winning the League One play-off final in 2020 to secure promotion to the…

The legendary Italian defender recalls Arrigo Sacchi’s teething problems and winning five European Cups – plus losing a certain final in Istanbul… TEAMS Milan Monza (loan) Italy You spent 21 years at Milan, making more than 650 appearances for the club. Did you ever consider leaving? I had some thoughts about moving to England. The English league was always attractive, especially for the atmosphere in stadiums. But the Milan side I played for was the best in the world, so it was difficult to abandon the team and the city where I was born and grew up. It was a different era: better players came to Italy, so being in Italy meant playing in an important competition. That isn’t quite the case anymore. When Arrigo Sacchi arrived in 1987, was…

The Scottish goal-getter tells FFT about joining El Tel at the Camp Nou and how he inspired Alex Ferguson’s 1999 Champions League Final team talk TEAMS Clyde Aberdeen Tottenham Barcelona Blackburn (loan) Hibernian Espanyol St Mirren Reading Ayr United Fulham East Fife Scotland You were a youngster at Aberdeen when Alex Ferguson took over in 1978 – what was he like in the early days? It was that mental toughness. That was how football men were brought up in his day. He had something in his head that was a little bit different. We’d be going to play at Ibrox and he’d instil in you how much we all had to want it. You couldn’t dilly-dally – you needed to go into those matches and be aggressive, wanting to come…

There’s a brilliant Simpsons episode in which Homer is given free rein to design a car by his long-lost brother, Herb (voiced by Danny DeVito). Herb empowers Homer because he is “an average schmo”, so in touch with the common man that his design is sure to be a hit. The end product is hideous, from the soundproof bubble for kids (“with optional restraints and muzzles”) to the multiple horns that all play La Cucaracha. It retails for $82,000 (£150,000 nowadays) and drives his brother’s company out of business. The moral? No matter how in-tune you are with your audience, designing a product isn’t as easy as it looks. With this in mind, FFT headed to a small market town 10 miles south-west of Manchester, where Admiral are based, hoping…

Martin Keown is explaining how he ensured that his club’s attacking talents never became complacent. “I used to kick our strikers’ arses in training,” he tells FourFourTwo with a smile. “I wanted to let them know about the demands that were coming. Better they find out from me in training than in the game a few days later. I used to really love pissing them off. If I felt they were having themselves, I would just man-mark them. They hated that. But they learned. They probably found relief on the Saturday.” Keown was called many things on the top-flight pitches of English football, but one particularly common nickname was ‘The Rash’, alluding to the enjoyment he took in man-marking. He could stick to the greatest talents in the game. But…

FOOTBALLER OF THE YEAR “To be named the best player in the world, it’s a bit… scary, to be honest,” Rodri confesses, as he sits opposite FFT in Madrid, his Ballon d’Or perched next to him on the table. “It’s quite heavy – 10 kilogrammes, I think,” explains the Manchester City midfielder. Carefully, with the sort of diligence he has shown while protecting defences throughout his career, he removes the gleaming golden orb from its black box. A couple of weeks have now passed since the ceremony that confirmed Rodri’s footballing pre-eminence, but like a ’90s toddler at Christmas, looking at their shiny new Scalextric, he’s still getting his head around the idea that the trophy in front of him really is his. “It’s scary because of what it means,”…

TEAM OF THE YEAR “Werder f**king Bremen – it just had to be them” Otto Buhm and his fellow Bayer Leverkusen fans could be forgiven for cursing the fixture computer. With Xabi Alonso’s surprise Bundesliga leaders closing in on a maiden title in late April, the timing seemed ominous. After all, it had been a visit from Die Grun-Weissen, almost 22 years earlier to the day, that had triggered the greatest meltdown in German football history. Back in April 2002, Klaus Toppmoller’s Leverkusen were five points clear at the Bundesliga summit with three matches remaining, only for the unthinkable to happen. A surprise 2-1 home defeat to Bremen, followed by a loss at struggling Nuremberg, saw Leverkusen overhauled by Borussia Dortmund going into the final day. “Everything started to unravel…

FFT HEAD OF VIDEO @AdamClery CHAMPIONS LEAGUE MANAGER OF THE YEAR Why Carlo Ancelotti is still The Don after 30 years as a gaffer The Italian may not be famed for his tactics like Pep Guardiola, but he didn’t exactly win a record fifth Champions League crown by accident, you know… Close your eyes and picture the world’s most notable managers in their most iconic poses. Jose Mourinho sprinting out of his technical area and shushing the crowd. Pep Guardiola with his arm around a startled-looking young player, talking at 100mph. Then there’s Carlo Ancelotti, eyebrow cocked, one hand casually placed in the pocket of his expensive trousers and the other… holding a cigar. You cannot imagine this man and not see some hallmark of effortless success, and 2023-24 might have been…

UNDERDOGS OF THE YEAR You swapped playing for coaching in your teens while at college. Did that always feel like your true calling? Not initially. I got involved in coaching through a youth team coach I played under at Oxford United – a guy called Mickey Lewis, who is sadly no longer with us. He fascinated me, not just in terms of his ability to teach footballers, but also his mannerisms, how he engaged people and how he motivated. It had me hooked and went from there. Your big break came in 2013-14, aged 28, as first-team coach under Chris Wilder. What did you learn from him? I’d been at Oxford for 10 years, working through all the academy age groups and the reserves. Chris had been at the club…

The former striker on Gareth Southgate’s class, a continued lack of black managers in the game, and how the Crazy Gang “made me who I am” TEAMS Wimbledon Charlton Middlesbrough Southampton Blackpool Doncaster AFC Wimbledon Jamaica What did you learn coming through the ranks at Wimbledon towards the end of the Crazy Gang era? It was a school of hard knocks. It made me who I am as a person and who I was as a player. It was a close-knit club, and we lived that underdog story. You had a little bit of intimidation from the senior professionals, walking in corridors with Vinnie Jones and John Fashanu. Marcus Gayle, Robbie Earle, Dean Holdsworth, Mick Harford – they were big characters, but good people. We’re still in touch. It was…