Players & Legends
Articles
Australia’s Teenagers, Counted Carefully
Garang Kuol was the sixth-youngest Socceroo. Mary Fowler was the fifth-youngest Matilda. Which means that neither the youngest Socceroo nor the youngest…
Young StarsThe New Pele Problem
A 16-year-old who still holds the record for the youngest goal in European club football played for fourteen clubs and finished nowhere.…
Young StarsGolden Boy, Kopa And The Best Young Player
The most famous young player award in football is run by a newspaper, decided by journalists, and closed to anyone playing outside…
Young StarsFour Teenagers And Four Tournaments
A 17-year-old scored twice in a World Cup final in 1958. A 19-year-old scored in one sixty years later. In between, an…
Young StarsFifteen Years And Three Hundred And Eight Days
Pele is not the youngest player ever to appear at a World Cup, and the youngest player in Champions League history is…
MidfieldersWhat Happened to the Number 10
For most of football's history the best player wore 10 and stood in the hole. Then the game got quicker, defences got…
MidfieldersThe Australian Midfielders Who Mattered
Australia's record goalscorer was a midfielder. Its highest-capped footballer is a midfielder. And the best individual tournament any Australian has ever had…
MidfieldersBox to Box, and Why It Got Harder
Bryan Robson scored inside half a minute of a World Cup, captained England 65 times and played 461 matches for Manchester United.…
MidfieldersThe Role Named After a Player
Very few footballers get a position named after them. Claude Makelele did, and the club that sold him spent the next four…
MidfieldersThe Playmakers Who Started From Deep
Italian football has had a word for the man who directs a match from in front of his own defence since the…
CaptainsWho Has Worn the Armband Most
A Brazilian goalkeeper captained one club 964 times. Francesco Totti was Roma's captain for nineteen seasons. And the England record has been…
CaptainsThe Men Who Lifted the World Cup
Twenty-three finals, twenty-three captains, four of them goalkeepers, and only two men who have done it as captain and then as manager.…