Transfer speculation dominates football like never before. An incredible amount of coverage is dedicated not to games themselves, but to the possibility that footballers might one day play them for another team.
At this point of the year, it makes sense. The World Cup has finished, the club season i...
With the World Cup to distract us, it's fair to say that a number of high-profile transfers have not been given the airtime they would have usually received. With one month go until the new Premier League season begins, however, the focus has now switched to the upcoming campaign and the new arri...
Once upon a time, the World Cup featured genuine tactical innovations, with far-flung countries arriving at the tournament with something the rest of the world had never previously encountered.
These days, that simply doesn't happen -- there's too much knowledge about world football in general, and ...
Sixty years ago, tactics were transformed. Opponents were dumbfounded. "It was like playing people from outer space," said England defender Syd Owen, who had actually faced people from behind the Iron Curtain.
Hungary's team of the 1950s fielded a false nine, Nandor Hidegkuti, long before the term...
Germany were not involved in the World Cup final four years ago but they competed in the tournament's most telling, tactically intriguing game: a 1-0 defeat by eventual winners Spain in the semifinals.
It was a more absorbing, technical and high-quality contest than the final, which was a scrap...
The previous three World Cup finals can be summarised neatly by three individual battles.
In 2002, it was Ronaldo versus Oliver Kahn, the Golden Boot winner getting the better of the Golden Ball winner in Brazil's 2-0 win over Germany.
The 2006 final was about Zinedine Zidane versus Marco Materazzi,...
