Footballing Transitions
An Interview with Kenny Dougall, left-back of Sparta Rotterdam It wasn’t the game I expected it to be. I left home with the expectation of witnessing a 90minute-long celebration of Sparta’s successful season in the Jupiler League, which had seen them become Champions and earn automatic promotion to the Eredivisie. I saw their last game […]
Always Sparta Rotterdam
The fan shop was had just opened. The lights on the towers had not yet been turned on. On the way from Marconiplein RET trains top, a teenager had accelerated down the footpath on his bicycle doing a wheelie. Someone else had parked their (non-motorised) scooter on the footpath as they waited for their Chinese-Indonesische […]
Going to Belgrade
A friend of mine, who is an FC Augsburg-Fan searched in our Facebook-Football-Group (some kind of a private groundhopping group to plan trips with friends of mine and also for football information), for people,who want to join him for the Europe league away game in Belgrade against Фудбалски клуб Партизан (Cyrillic spelling of Partizan Belgrade). […]
Citymania
(notes after reading David Conn’s, Richer than God) ‘it is typical City’ […] ‘In goes Dzeko…hope rekindles here. […] ‘Ag-uuueer-ooooooohhhhh. I swear you’ll never see anything like this again. So watch it. Drink it in. They’ve just heard the news at the Stadium of Light. … Premier League dreams have come true in blue.’ Martin […]
Watching Quick of The Hague
“So, do they come to Quick thinking it is a Dutch, establishment club?”, I asked Dennis regarding SC Remo. “Yes, of course. But, they don’t come to the club, looking for a fight, or to square off. There are always some tensions – but, that is just the same against other clubs. And, there are […]
Watching Quick Boys
*An edited version of this article appeared on Shoot Farken, here: Dutch football by the Dunes, Escaping Carnival Chaos to Watch Quick Boys Ned woke up at 6am for the 6:30 Grand Final start in his hotel on Ibiza. Fifty minutes later the AFL’s international streaming website was still loading and he had missed the […]
Kate Birrell and Painting the Tiges
I first saw Kate Birrell‘s paintings on The Footy Almanac‘s website. Her painting was of Luke Hodge, in one of his classic postures: his right arm raised for balance, the other guiding the ball perfectly on to his left boot. Birrell has not only contributed to the Footy Almanac anthologies but is also an active […]
Compromised Goodwill
*Samandeep Chouhan looks at the ill-fated goodwill tour of Leicester City to Thailand in July 2015. How does foreign ownership impact the local ambitions of an English Premier League Club? When we think of the English Premier League we tend to think of passion, history, skill, celebrity and so forth. We think of players such […]
Watching ASC Oegstgeest
I turn left onto Langegracht, on one side of the street is a police station and on the other side are some junkies sitting, talking. There is a safe injecting facility nearby – apparently. My bicycle moves slowly and almost in a straight line. A woman ahead of me, riding quickly, has something fall from […]
Watching MVV Maastricht
*Originally published on Shoot Farken as “Modern Football and Urban Alienation Under the Golden Arches in Maastricht” An underground freeway is being built on the eastern edge of Maastricht. The current site is a broad expanse of dust. Middle of the range sedans and trucks speed along the four lane, two-way road. There are as […]