Diego Armando Maradona was born in 1960, the child of two working-class parents, and brought up in the Villa Fiorito slum of Buenos Aires. Few professions achieve such ascents from this poverty as football, and it was the speed of this ascent that, in the end, proved too much for...
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Leamington FC’s first competitive game of the season ended in disappointment as they went down to Banbury United in the second qualifying round of the FA Cup. Banbury, who have already played three games in the league so far this season, made their superior match sharpness show throughout the game,...
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It was confirmed this week that Sergino Dest, the 19-year-old Ajax right back, has moved to Barcelona for an initial fee of €21 million, potentially rising to €26 million. Dest, a USA international, is one of those young players whose reputation has burgeoned over the past season, despite him making...
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When Rose Lavelle scored the USA’s second goal in their 2019 World Cup final victory over the Netherlands, she firmly consolidated her position as one of the top players in the women’s game. At the age of only 24, the sky was the limit for the tenacious midfielder, with Lavelle’s...
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Over the past few days, a picture has been doing the round on social media of three supremely talented players in their late teens and early twenties, all standing proud and resplendent in the red and white of Ajax. It was these starlets who provided the spine of the outstanding...
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Last week, when it was announced that Ronald Koeman had decided to leave the role of the manager of the Dutch national team to take charge of FC Barcelona, I was livid. Here was a coach who had taken a team that had reached the bottom of the rubbish pile...
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It was announced yesterday that Coventry City and the University of Warwick had come to an agreement that will see the University provide land for the construction of a new, 20,000-seater stadium. From Coventry’s perspective, the construction of a new stadium will finally mean a move away from the Ricoh...
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On Wednesday 15 July, Leeds United could finally confirm their place back in the Premier League after an absence of 17 years. This has been a depressingly barren period for the club, as financial mismanagement and poor leadership has meant they had seemed doomed to oscillate between League One and...
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On a windy day in a deserted Wembley Stadium, it was Northampton Town who triumphed over Exeter City and secured promotion to League One. It was a match that epitomised the phrase ‘they simply wanted it more’. Northampton’s 4-0 victory was well-deserved. Northampton were, for many, the underdogs in these...
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Who knew that a game behind closed doors, played in a stadium where the noise of everyday traffic competed with the shouts of footballers, between two distinctly average football teams, could have such a heart-breaking effect? And yet, when 8:00pm approached, and the final whistle at St James’ Park blew,...
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The lowest rung of the English professional football ladder was the trail-blazer for the rest of the EFL as the League Two Play-Offs began behind-closed-doors. Colchester United and Cheltenham Town were the teams to put one foot towards Wembley before the second legs on Monday. The day began with something...
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The decision that everyone knew would come eventually was finally confirmed on 9 June: clubs from League One and Two voted to curtail the 2019/20 season, with the final league table decided by an unweighted points-per-game (PPG) system. As I said in a previous article for The Boar, this decision...
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Pending ratification by the EFL and the FA, it was announced on 15 May that the League Two season was over, with the final table to be determined by an unweighted-points-per-game system. This was a unanimous decision taken by the owners of all 24 clubs in the division, and, although...
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