Winter is closing in fast, though concerns of another one horse race before January arrives were shaken up a little after final whistles blew across Spain on a weekend where Real Madrid found their golden touch again, and Pep Gaurdiola was left with a queasy trip home from Navarre.
Let’s begin though with new Atletico Madrid coach Quique Sánchez Flores who [...]

Wednesday night’s Scottish Co-operative Insurance Cup tie began on paper as nothing overwhelmingly special. Celtic despite their recent barrel scraping went into the game as slight favorites with little expected from Csaba László’s side, a team who look a pale shadow of George Burley’s empowered upstarts of a few years ago. Despite the necessity to hype up a game [...]

 
Irish sport has found itself on a razor’s edge between tragedy and controversy over the last decade. Regarding the latter, one only has to cite Roy Keane’s inspection of Saipan’s finest amenities, or question how legitimate Michelle Smith’s claims to her Olympic medal haul of 1996 really were, to connect with those moments of polarisation that touch a raw [...]

International fixtures saw a break in the programme last weekend, but with Barcelona, Real Madrid, Valencia, and Bilbao all facing away fixtures on week 2, expect some small fry eager to upset the apple cart and set a marker as early as possible into the season.
Real Madrid travel to Catalonia to take on an Espanyol [...]

4 Leinster titles, an All-Ireland winning medal, a thoroughly deserved place on the G.A.A. centenary team of 1984 under stiff competition from illustrious on-field rivals. All point to the Herculean contribution to Louth football over a period of nearly 20 years from Stephen White who sadly passed away in Dundalk in early September. White lived and [...]

Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal put Celtic’s Champions League hopes well and truly to bed with a 5-1 aggregate victory completed with relative ease at the Emirates Stadium. Jinxed striker Eduardo will not look upon the night with any lasting affection after an alleged diving incident involving Celtic keeper Artur Boruc prompted UEFA to cite the Croatian with “deceiving [...]

If speculation is taken with more than a pinch of salt, a rather paltry fee of circa £500,000 confirmed the once bright young thing of Irish soccer as part of the Easter Road roster. Leaving the premature snipes to one side, lining up with mentor John Hughes once more could be just the tonic Stokes [...]

Passion for football is not solely reserved for Croke Park on the last Sunday in September. Any fool knows that teams who have a zero chance at best of claiming Sam can at least put their tribe’s honour into a war of attrition on a sweltering mid-May Sunday on the tattered Fraher Field in Dungarvan, Dr. Cullen [...]

4 first half assassin strikes from the world’s most carnivorous forward trio were enough to confine Bayern Munich’s Champions League ambitions to the drawing board for another year in a mid-week Nou Camp goal-fest that at times bore the hallmarks of Ajax circa 1972 with the horrors of a snuff movie added for wicked indulgence. With the [...]

Steve Finnan’s recent Espanyol/Hull City debacle recalls a story, although dripping of urban myth, is one sadly grounded in reality. During his latter Chelsea days, Graeme Le Saux was outed by his ‘peers’ as an intellectual, a guy who garnished his internationalism with the joys of The Observer while some of his knuckle dragging comrades acted [...]