Category Archives: Football

The Guardian Footballer of the Year Marcus Rashford: ‘My mum is everything’

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The Manchester United forward reflects on an extraordinary year where he improved the lives of millions of people – all, he says, inspired by his mother, Mel

The Guardian Footballer of the Year is an award given to a player who has done something remarkable, whether by overcoming adversity, helping others or setting a sporting example by acting with exceptional honesty.

Marcus Rashford is mulling over a quite extraordinary 2020 when his words and deeds have made him the only choice to be named as the Guardian’s Footballer of the Year. The Manchester United and England forward has excelled on the pitch, as usual, but the day job no longer defines him. How can it do so when he has done more than anyone to look after the poorest and most vulnerable children in the United Kingdom?

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Football, flights and food: how the EU reshaped Britain

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As Brexit’s tangible effects kick in, we look at the impact the EU’s most far-reaching project has had on British society

Historians of the future will judge the politics of the half century before the Brexit transition ended on 1 January 2021. What, though, of social and cultural historians, those who study how we live?

Perhaps the most symbolic cultural artefacts of the last 50 years will turn out not to be a blue flag but a bottle of Blue Nun, a block of mozzarella, a Ryanair boarding printout or a ticket to a Bayern Munich v Manchester City football game.

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Far-right Israeli football fans rebel over Beitar Jerusalem’s new Arab owner

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Hardcore group threaten boycott and hold protest at training session after Abu Dhabi sheikh buys 50% stake in top team

An Israeli premier league football team whose most hardcore fans chant “Death to Arabs” faces a crisis of introspection following a landmark deal that saw the club part-sold to an unlikely new owner: an Arab sheikh.

Beitar Jerusalem – the only Israeli team never to have fielded an Arab player – has been grappling with the news that, as of this month, a member of Abu Dhabi’s ruling family, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Nahyan, now owns 50% of the club.

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Maradonaland: Naples plans statues and museum to honour ‘Saint Diego’

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City’s murals of Maradona have become pilgrimage sites since footballer’s death in November

A month since the death of Diego Armando Maradona and the southern Italian city of Naples is looking more like a Maradonaland each day.

After renaming Napoli football club’s San Paolo Stadium and a train station in his honour this month, local authorities are planning a large museum, commissioning statues and dedicating an entire square to the Argentinian who took the city’s football team to glory and is regarded as one of the greatest players of all time.

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Gérard Houllier, former Liverpool and France manager, dies aged 73

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  • Houllier had undergone heart surgery in Paris before his death
  • Michael Owen leads tributes to treble-winning manager

Liverpool have paid tribute to their former manager Gérard Houllier after his death was confirmed at the age of 73.

RMC sport and the sports daily L’Equipe confirmed that he had died after having a heart operation in Paris, with Liverpool issuing a statement in recognition of the manager who led them to the FA Cup, League Cup and Uefa Cup treble in 2000-01.

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The Maradona and child: Naples honours its hero with nativity figurine

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A new addition to the Christmas scene in artisan shops shows city’s love for footballer

The southern Italian city of Naples usually enjoys a fervent lead-up to Christmas, with one street in particular – Via San Gregorio Armeno – buzzing with people buying handcrafted cribs and terracotta figurines for their nativity scenes at home.

There is also much anticipation each year over which new figurine they can buy. Traditionally, it was a shepherd or an animal that would join baby Jesus, Mary and Joseph, but now it is usually a figurine of a personality of that year. Recently crafted statuettes include tributes to doctors and nurses who have worked throughout the pandemic as well as ones of the US president-elect Joe Biden and his deputy, Kamala Harris.

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‘Now it’s the girls’ dream’: Mara Gómez on becoming Argentina’s first trans footballer

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Gómez made her professional debut this month, and wants to break barriers in a place where football and identity are entwined

To get a call up to your club’s first team is every Argentinian boy’s dream. Or so the traditional tango goes.

“Now it’s the girls’ dream … too,” Mara Gómez, who became the first trans footballer to play in a top-flight Argentinian league earlier this week, tells the Guardian. Gómez signed a contract with Villa San Carlos in the recently professionalized women’s Primera División, after years of journeying through the amateur leagues.

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Paolo Rossi: Italy’s World Cup hero whose quick feet earned redemption | Nicky Bandini

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The forward’s goals made him a national hero in 1982 after a two-year ban threatened to destroy his playing career

Paolo Rossi scored more than 150 goals in his career but if you wanted to understand the brilliance of a player whose death at the age of 64 sent Italy into mourning on Thursday, it may be enough to watch the one he grabbed in the 1982 World Cup final.

Or, more realistically, perhaps a slow-motion replay. The Italy striker does not appear to have position on his West Germany opponent Karlheinz Förster as Claudio Gentile prepares to send in a cross from the right. Only with repeat viewings does it become clear Rossi has started his run a frame or two sooner, building velocity, anticipating the delivery before it has even been dispatched. He beats Förster, and his own team-mate Antonio Cabrini, to the ball by a fraction, heading in from close range.

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Against all odds: South Sudan’s daring drive on women’s football

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The country’s FA is launching an ambitious strategy for a sport that has been considered a taboo for girls

South Sudan gained independence in 2011 and its history is so short that it is a regular low-scoring answer on the popular quiz show Pointless. Much less trivially, for a majority of its existence the country has been in civil war, with peace and a new national unity government in place only from February of this year.

For a country clawing its way back from the devastating effects of a conflict that has seen hundreds of thousands killed and 1.5 million internally displaced, where nearly half of girls are married by 18, child marriages are increasing and sexual violence was used tactically during the war , it would be easy to assume that football, let alone women’s football, would be nonexistent.

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‘Singing and dancing to their deaths’: football’s forgotten tragedy

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In 1971, an Old Firm derby at Ibrox ended with the death of 66 fans as they celebrated a late goal. John Hodgman survived the terrifying crush and, 50 years on, asks how Rangers avoided taking responsibility

Rangers and Celtic, the dominant Glasgow football clubs, go back a long way in their sectarian hatred. The deep and violent rivalry between the traditionally Protestant Rangers and Celtic’s overwhelmingly Catholic support continues today, with total segregation at clashes between the two sides, known as the “Old Firm”.

Born a Protestant in 1947 and raised by Catholics in Glasgow, I had something of a conflicted childhood. Catholic kids had chapel and a separate education, while my birthright decreed I that was sent to Sunday School and got to wear my blue scarf to see “the Gers” at Ibrox Park every fortnight.

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Papa Bouba Diop, Senegal’s World Cup hero and FA Cup winner, dies aged 42

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  • Former midfielder dies after reportedly suffering long illness
  • Diop played for Fulham and Portsmouth after 2002 heroics

Papa Bouba Diop, the former Senegal midfielder who scored the first goal of the 2002 World Cup against France, has died at the age of 42.

World football’s governing body posted a tribute to Diop on Twitter. “Fifa is saddened to learn of the passing of Senegal legend Papa Bouba Diop,” Sunday’s statement read. “Once a World Cup hero, always a World Cup hero.”

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Diego Maradona’s personal doctor denies responsibility for death

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Leopoldo Luque in tears after officials search his home and office in Buenos Aires

Diego Maradona’s personal physician has denied responsibility for the former footballer’s death after police raided his home and surgery on Sunday, seizing laptops, medical records and mobile devices.

Argentinian media reported that police were trying to establish if there was negligence in Maradona’s treatment and that searches of premises belonging to the neurosurgeon Leopoldo Luque were carried out as part of an investigation into involuntary manslaughter.

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Director Asif Kapadia: ‘Diego and Maradona were two different people’

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Film director recalls the long and rocky road to meeting the mercurial subject of his film

Football is a huge part of my life. I was 14 when Diego Maradona scored the two goals against England – the hand of God and the wonder goal. Despite the first goal, I always thought he was the best player in the world. I’ve always been a fan of outsiders, rebels.

Everyone wanted to be Maradona. He was the global phenomenon. The pope wanted to meet him. Fidel Castro would sit and listen to Diego tell a story.

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‘It’s like my old man died’: Argentinians flock to palace for Maradona goodbyes

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  • Thousand queue to pay their respects to national hero
  • Tears, football chants and tributes ring out for El Diego

The death of Diego Maradona brought Argentina to an almost complete standstill on Thursday as the nation turned its gaze to the Casa Rosada presidential palace where thousands of people queued up to file, slowly, reverently and one-by-one, past the iconic footballer’s coffin.

Tears and sobbing could be heard from the mourners of all ages and classes who had gathered from the early morning to pay their respects to Maradona as his body lay in state. Among the lamentations, football chants rang out, chief among them: “¡Olé, olé, olé, olé, Die-go! Die-go!”

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Diego Maradona: the achingly human superstar who embodied Argentina | Marcela Mora y Araujo

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Maradona was a perfect representation of the human ability to be contradictory, to convey ugly and beautiful at once

“A man of genius is unbearable, unless he possesses at least two things besides: gratitude and purity” – Friedrich Nietzsche, on love, perseverance, and moving beyond good v evil.

Diego Maradona said that when you’ve been to the moon and back, things get difficult. “You become addicted to the moon and it’s not always possible to come back down.”

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