Do a Lamela: Throw a Rabona
No, I didn’t watch Erik Lamela’s astounding goal as it happened on Thursday evening. I was drinking and I don’t drink and watch the Europa League at some godawful hour at the same time. As...
View ArticleGo BoDo
Take out those Netaji-INA memorabilia. Empty out all those single malts from your bar and stuff it with bottles of Uerige Sticke (“an opulent and robust beer, with an attendant bitterness matched by a...
View ArticleSaturday Night Clash of the Titans: Bayern Munich vs Borussia Dortmund
Take out those Netaji-INA memorabilia. Empty out all those single malts from your bar and stuff it with bottles of Uerige Sticke (“an opulent and robust beer, with an attendant bitterness matched by a...
View ArticleFootball Managers vs Cricket Coaches
I wake up today and hear that there’s some sort of kerfuffle over some ex-cricketer serving up an arsenic-laced cuppa about his ex-ex-coach in an autobiography that’s bound to sell a godzillion copies...
View ArticleThe Mysterious Case of Lukas Podolski
I’ve just finished re-reading Håkan Nesser’s 1993 novel, ‘The Mind’s Eye’. There are very few things better-matched in life than a top-notch Scandinavian crime novel and lying on an electric mattress...
View ArticleManuel Neuer Zindabad!
By tonight, you’ll know who the fat cats in Fifa have decided to name the world’s best footballer of 2014. The last time the Ballon d’Or — Golden Ball in French, and confusingly the same...
View ArticleLionel Messi has Barcelona, Cristiano Ronaldo doesn’t
As according to the script that has been playing out for a while now, on Sunday night, Cristiano Ronaldo was brilliant, but Leo Messi was brillianter. The truth is, if one does a comparative study...
View ArticleWhy it’s worth waiting for a miracle even if it isn’t Barcelona but Mohun...
‘The ones that counted us out Regret that they picked the fight. We sit on top of the world And we’re proving it every night. We got it right, you got it wrong, We’re still...
View ArticleBefore Berlin, Bengaluru
Titter as much as you want in your Chelsea or Barcelona jerseys (in this heat, really?), but Sunday’s I-League season-ending match is what they call in mountaineering parlance a hiffclanger. The last...
View ArticleWe love you, goodbye: Fans
Football fans can teach the commitmentphobe one or two things about lousing up a long-term relationship and then displaying loud mixed signals that’s surely separation anxiety. Over the next two...
View ArticleFoot(ball) in the mouth! Why does the AIFF want to fight a player organisation?
By Sam Abraham Last week or so, All India Football Federation general secretary Kushal Das said that they do not ‘recognise’ the Football Players Association of India. Why? The FPAI had written a...
View ArticleOf Naples and Neymar
By: Indrajit Hazra I know, I know. It’s like comparing Naples and oranges, but it may not be totally worthless to remember, at this juncture, another footballer moving from Camp Nou to less sanctified...
View ArticleGuinea’s anarchy version of Total Football
By Sam Abraham For all the pressure football ‘doesn’t’ put on teenage players — they’re supposedly here to learn to play the game better — winning seems to matter a lot. Yesterday, Germany — of...
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