With parliament in recess, silly season is in full swing. In fact, silly season would be an apt name for the transitional period between the dying days of the previous Premier League season, and the Bacchanalia that greets the opening weekend of the next one. Football’s silly season is a time when Slovenian journalists can
They call him Big Sam. At 6’3 that’s not an unlikely nickname, especially when you’ve spent most of your professional career crunching through opposition centre-forwards. But the mythology of Big Sam goes beyond mere volume. Sam Allardyce has just been appointed to the role of England football manager. The great poisoned chalice of international sport,
The Boleyn Ground, commonly known as Upton Park, has been home to West Ham United since 1904. It stands on Green Street, a road in London that bisects the parishes of East and West Ham. With its slightly tacky fortress-inspired design, it has become a symbol of East London’s resilience against the tide of gentrification and development. Until
[audioplayer src=”http://feeds.soundcloud.com/stream/262486539-the-spectator-podcast-erdogans-europe.mp3″ title=”Roger Alton and Nick Hilton discuss Leicester’s title win” startat=1063] Listen [/audioplayer] Jean-Philippe Toussaint, in his recent book Football, observes that the sport is ‘measured and appreciated’ in the imagination. Toussaint, an intellectually fanatical supporter of the Belgian national team, is used to failure. Indeed, he is an acolyte of the view that football support is
