THAT interview with Andrea Dossena

The greatest story never told

When Andrea Dossena was a little boy growing up in Lodi, northern Italy, he would spend hours sat cross legged outside the cathedral on the historic Piazza della Vittoria, telling strangers how he would change the world one day, many miles away from where he now sat.

Things we learnt about the football during lockdown: a note to the reader of the future

The future, brought to you by Ask Jeeves

This can go one of two ways. In 80 years’ time, the reader of the future takes one look at this blog and is utterly baffled by talk of pandemics, lockdowns and The Queen’s Nose*. Or else said reader of the future becomes all at once furious, seething over the trivialities of a) having a blog and b) dealing only with pandemics, lockdowns and fondly remembering ‘90s TV shows that showcase Gary Mabbutt scoring a hat-trick.

When is the FA Cup not the FA Cup?

Apparently much more important than you'd previously thought 

It’s been much maligned over the course of the past few years as an inferior relation to the other, more popular, more rewarding versions on which it’s modelled, and for once we’re not talking about our Tinder accounts. 2016’s never-ending festival of football hoves into view this week with the League Cup semi-finals, which see Liverpool travel to Stoke and Manchester City to Everton.

Falling for Football II: Fall Harder

A 'delightful book'

Another day, another extract from Falling for Football - and this time it's a bit we've actually written. Many thanks if you've already bought the book, told your friends, or tweeted about it - it's much appreciated. We officially launched on March 10th and the book is available in paperback at www.ockleybooks.co.uk and electronically at http://amzn.to/1i2yDOx. And if that doesn't tempt you, here's the introduction to the book:

It’s easy to talk of high water marks. It’s arguably more difficult to encapsulate what made a period of time so special.

When we decided to stop merely ranting about football in one of London’s many watering holes (usually a Sammy Smith’s) and commit fingers to keyboards in 2010, little did we know what a fantastic journey we were about to embark upon.

A (very selective) review of the year

Oh boy...

It was most refreshing to see 2013 become the year in which football finally started to move away from the hysteria over managerial movements, controversial on- and off-pitch incidents, minute scrutiny on even the tiniest perceived slight or indiscretion, ridiculous transfer fees and generally threatening to disappear forever up one of those particular proverbial arseholes at any given moment. EXCEPT THAT DIDN’T HAPPEN, DID IT.

Never Mind The Bollocks

"Yes, I WILL be doing this every week."

Close season transfer speculation/gossip/bullshit, for me, reached its zenith in the (probably balmy) summer of 1996. When my peers and I were young enough not to know better and had yet to be infected by pessimism, especially as England had come desperately close to their first final of my lifetime until that ultimate of bastards Andreas Moller snatched away the dream in a way only a bastard of German heritage can.

Passing In The Wind

Andres Iniesta's cameo performance in The Illusionist

Throwing the decent journalism rulebook out of the window (because when has that ever encumbered any of Magic Spongers’ output over the past two-and-a-half years?), we’ll begin with a question. Is passing a tactic? We’ll seek to answer this in the next few paragraphs, but let’s continue with a second question. Is pressing a tactic? We ask because passing and pressing were up there in the dominant themes section of Jonathan Wilson’s ‘The Football Tactical Trends of 2012’ article in the Guardian.

If It Looks Like A Duck And Quacks Like A Duck, It's Probably A Philosophy

Nietzsche watching Macclesfield Town

It’s no secret, when you’re in the market for a new manager (as most clubs seem to find themselves at some point over a 12-month cycle) that certain employees come complete with stereotype and style. Or, as it’s sometimes more politely put, identity. OR, as it tends to be put when owners want to convince fans of shit teams that things can only get better, a ‘philosophy’.

Cole-de-Sac

"I used to be Joe Cole."

When Brendan Rodgers was appointed manager of Liverpool, one member of the Magic Spongers fraternity (population: two) – a full-time York City fan, part-time Liverpool fan – was pretty happy. ‘Just think’, he crowed, like a crow that had just won a £30 accumulator despite not having arms, opposable thumbs or a brain big enough to put one on in the first place; ‘Just think of Joe Cole in a Brendan Rodgers team. It’ll be f*****g class’.

‘You c**t’, he added, for good measure.

The Real Meaning of Respect

In an era where the empty gesture is deemed eminently newsworthy in the absence of anything of note actually occurring, perhaps the most vacuous of the lot is the pre-match football handshake. Presumably cooked up by a coven of hacks to lighten their workload, how they must rub their hands together greedily (and ironically, last weekend, given the dearth of hand-to-hand contact) every time Chelsea play QPR or Liverpool and Manchester United reactivate rivalries.

Pod Almighty

The pod returns on Transfer Deadline Day - will Bushby stay at Magic Spongers despite various indiscretions? Will Rob be sent out on loan to gain some much-needed experience? Will Jonny get 'Wilman's Big Headers' - HIS OWN FEATURE - right this week?

Just click the cheeky Caravaggio below to find out.

The Road to Contrition

Disappointed by this, Dan Forman imagined this [pours on fuel, lights match, stands back...]:

Having had the appropriate time to consider the FA's full report into Luis Suarez, Liverpool FC would like to make the following statement:

We accept the FA's findings in full and also accept the suspension from football given to Luis which we will not appeal. While we would legitimately have had the opportunity to further consider our response and delay the suspension, we think it is only right that to avoid any impression of 'playing' the system that the ban should begin with immediate effect.

On Gary Neville and Forgiveness

Gary Neville kisses a badge and the world shits itself

Adam Bushby hates Gary Neville. Or does he?

Let me make something absolutely clear. I am not seeking the forgiveness of Gary Neville. If anything, this piece is about applying some fundamental rules of the New Testament to football and, perhaps more specifically, how these rules relate to someone who I once hated. ‘Hated’ of course in the ‘footballing sense’, which is to say ‘dislike severely’, but not ‘to wish sudden death upon’. Hate in a vacuum, if you will. With the hatred dissipating Monday Night Football by Monday Night Football, something curious happened in December 2011. I learned to forgive Gary Neville.

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.

A Tale Of Two Owens

'If I can... just... get...the... *TWANG*'

Much like being on a night out with Magic Spongers, the prevailing attitude towards the third round of the Carling Cup among the so-called ‘big clubs’ often appears to be sniffy indifference; something to be endured and survived with as little serious investment of energy as possible. In the last few years, certainly, this has meant throwing bit-part and reserve players into the mix and tailoring a post-match response around how much potential they’ve got or how it was good experience but priorities lie elsewhere, really. ‘No disrespect to the lads that have come in’, one might say, completely disrespecting the lads that have come in.

The English Patience

You can’t hear it in the car park. You poke your head around the door to the club shop, but nothing. Through the sliding glass doors and into reception, you can’t hear it. Going up the stairs and into the bowels of the stadium, slowly a dull thudding starts to play on the eardrums. Along the corridor, it’s now clearly in earshot. Past the gym and along to the manager’s office, a repeating bang-bang-bang, of forehead on wood, is clearly audible. Through the door and the manager is sitting there, Premier League scout opposite, looking exasperated.

“I don’t understand”, the manager says. “He’s a kid who’s hardly ever played for the national team, who’s never played in the Champions League, who doesn’t have any medals, who’s never moved clubs so has no sell-on clauses and who hasn’t played 100 club games in his career yet. And he’s worth MORE than £10m?” “But boss”, the scout says, exhaling with the air of a man about to attempt to explain the finer points of physics to an intellectually reticent monkey – this isn’t going to make sense, but it’s fundamental truth – “he’s English.”

Euro Revision #4: Liverpool v Chelsea 2005

My intention is to ruin everything

...and here's the other half of Magic Spongers Adam Bushby

Liverpool 1 v 0 Chelsea: Champions League semi final 2nd leg, May 2005

Mine is a tale of heroes and villains. I’m looking at YOU Ľuboš Micheľ with your stupid squiggly bits on the letters of your name, with the apostrophe at the end of your name. “Why do you mock this poor man so savagely?” I hear you all ask. "I’ll tell you", I sneer, in a really smarmy kind of way. Ľuboš Micheľ is a former professional referee. Ľuboš Micheľ was in fact ranked the world’s second best referee in 2006. Ľuboš Micheľ was the man in charge of the second leg of Liverpool v Chelsea and ruined it for everyone by not sending off Petr Cech in the fourth minute of the match and consequently awarding Liverpool a penalty which, I think I’m correct in saying, Steven Gerrard would have placed to the left of substitute goalkeeper Carlos Cudicini and thus provide the catalyst for the largest win the Champions League semi-final stage had ever seen. Bear with me.

Odd Talisman Out

Without wishing to alarm anyone, Liverpool fans are pregnant. All of them. Not with lazy, curly-haired stereotypes (although you never know, I suppose), but with expectation. The potency of the second Kenny Dalglish era is powerful stuff.

The rise to fifth (now down to sixth after the Spurs defeat) from 12th in the space of four months has been achieved without former talisman Fernando Torres and, more recently, with club captain Steven Gerrard sat in the stands. While Gerrard came out all guns blazing last week, he hasn’t played a game since 6 March and can only ‘pencil in’ a return for the first day of pre-season. The big question for Liverpool is how Gerrard fits back into what has become a very efficient, very effective starting XI.

Teams That Made Us Fall In Love With Football #5: Liverpool 1988-90

Rob might delight in bullying him for it, but friend of Magic Spongers Alex Bingle really does love Liverpool. They did used to be quite good, after all...

Sometimes, I sit racking my brains as to why I love football. Why does the result of one football team starkly determine my general mood for the following week? Almost a fortnight ago, for example, I sat there scratching my head after Liverpool’s dire showing at West Ham. After all, we have looked rather good in recent weeks, with a certain style to our play that reminds me why I love football in the first place. Football, though, has a funny way of turning my normal calm composure into an angry tirade of expletives. I was screaming at Kenny Dalglish (well, the television) to substitute Steven Gerrard, who was woeful. All the good work of the last few weeks undone in 90 minutes and there was me shouting at the two people voted Liverpool’s greatest ever players because Scott Parker was running rings around them.

Teams That Made Us Fall In Love With Football #4: Wolves 1990

Bet you thought we'd use a picture of Bully, didn't you?

To domestic matters now, and a warm welcome back to Magic Spongers for Drew Kearns...

In a recent radio interview, Robert Plant, rock god and lifelong Wolves fan was asked to describe the best and worst aspects of supporting Wolverhampton Wanderers Football Club. He paused, thought and replied, “Realising you support Wolves… and realising you support Wolves”. The man has sung many lines, but never has he spoken truer words.