The End is Nigh. Match preview: Leicester City v Atletico Madrid

"10% possession lads. That's all"

It’s not very often that Life throws us a bone here at Spongers HQ, probably because if that hateful bastard did decide to throw one at us it’d somehow break all our windows just as we’d agreed to sell Spongers HQ based on its incredible windows. That’s the kind of relationship we have – Life is generally only interested in building us up to tear us down.

What If? #5 Everton in the 80s

The fifth installment of our What If? series sees Spongers' own Adam Bushby look at the impact the five-year European ban had on the great Everton side.

After convening for an emergency session in Switzerland on June 2 1985, Uefa chiefs issued a statement that would have immediate and lasting consequences: English clubs were banned from Europe, indefinitely. At Goodison Park in particular, home as it was of reigning First Division champions Everton, the news was greeted with anger and dismay. Following the tragic events a few days earlier at the crumbling Heysel Stadium in Brussels, the sentiment was pretty much universal; enough was enough. Thirty nine Juventus fans went to a football match that day and never came back. The European showpiece between Liverpool and the Bianconeri will forever be remembered for events that happened in the stands, rather than on the pitch, and set in motion much-needed introspection as an English disease threatened to become a Europe-engulfing epidemic.

El Clasi-coach

Amid the almost plaintive geeing up from the stands at White Hart Lane, Real Madrid fans at one end of the ground could be heard bellowing Jose Mourinho’s name. Forget that 5-0 humbling, forget the eight point gap at the top of the league. Forget that Mourinho’s proud unbeaten record at home (nine years incorporating 150 matches) was demolished by a team currently 11th in La Liga. Forget that four clasicos now await us in the space of 18 days. Madrid fans now believe that a team so comprehensively battered by Barcelona can become its superior in Europe.

This is unquestionably Mourinho’s favourite time of the year. This is also his favourite way of operating. While we all get carried away with the prospect of seeing four matches involving Spain’s top pair, the likelihood is that the Portuguese will see only two.

Teams That Made Us Fall In Love With Football #10: Olympique de Marseille 1991

Diamond highlights

Unashamedly self-indulgent, here's friend of Magic Spongers James Longhurst on his love affair with Marseille and a Geordie winger

First a confession

I’m a Wimbledon fan. In fact nowadays I’m an AFC Wimbledon fan and Trust member, and when the Magic Spongers asked me to chip in on the team that made me fall in love with football, they naturally thought it would be the ’88 cup final team.

It would be pretty easy to write a piece extolling the virtues of that legendary (in almost every sense of the word) Crazy Gang team, but I was only seven at the time of final and while I remember it clearly, that’s probably as much from the amount of times I have rewatched my VHS, DVD and now Sky+ versions of the game as from any contemporary viewing.