The talented Mr Miccoli

As the world of football continues to evolve rapidly, one of its traditional superpowers might be left behind.

It was like a scene out of a Robert Redford movie, five co-conspirators gathered in a smoke-filled Córdoba hotel lobby under a blanket of secrecy.

When Miguel Rosa and Filipe Ferreira scored the two goals that enabled CFF Belenenses to beat Sporting Braga 2-1 in January, an audible sigh could be heard amongst the scattered faithful in Estádio do Restelo. Since a 2-0 win over Olhanense on 5th October last year, the dark blues had not tasted victory in the league. A real sense of drama and foreboding had begun to fall over the club that hauled itself so impressively back into the Portuguese top flight last season, after a brief three year spell in the wilderness of the Portuguese second tier, the sparsely populated and little followed Liga da Honra. That Alan brought Braga back into the game with a sumptuous goal worth taking a long and repeated look at (Youtube clip?) only heightened the tension, but the home side held out for the much needed tonic of three points and a widening gap with the Superliga's bottom two, Olhanense and Paços de Ferreira. Since then, the fires of passionate belief have once again been snuffed by defeat on Madeira 

The 23rd of January 2014 could well be the most significant day in the Hyundai A-League’s short history as news broke that Premier League giants Manchester City were part of a consortium to buy Melbourne Heart.

Rabbi Howell was a much more significant figure in footballing terms, and yet he has been largely ignored and forgotten.

As Mexican defender Rafael Marquez prepares for his fourth World Cup, Tri fans recall fondly his earlier appearances.

In 1973 the North American Soccer League's newest club, Philadelphia Atoms, became the first professional sports expansion team to win a debut season championship.

The summer of 1967 in Detroit will forever be remembered for the city’s race riots, National Guard presence and growing opposition to the Vietnam War, but amidst this turbulent period, the city also temporarily acquired a new ‘soccer’ team.

Mohannad Abdul-Raheem Karrar - the 2012 Asian Youth Footballer of the Year and a previous AFC U-19 Championship's MVP – scores the game winner with a composed finish past the Saudi keeper in the finals of the AFC U-22 Championships in Oman.

"To dictate the pace and course of a game, a player has to be blessed with awesome qualities. Those who have accomplished it on a regular basis can be counted on the fingers of one hand – Pelé, Maradona, Best, Di Stefano, and Tom Finney."

Aulis Rytkönen has often been dubbed the first Finnish professional football player who left the country to ply his trade abroad. 

The general consensus amongst experts in the history of British football is that its pivotal moment came on the 25th of November 1953. England’s abject humiliation at the hands of a technically and tactically superior Hungarian side sent shockwaves through the game, forcing a long overdue re-evaluation that would culminate in World Cup triumph in 1966.

When it became clear after the World Cup draw that both England and the US would play games in Manaus, England manager Roy Hodgson instantly showed promising verbal form by explaining the problem with Manaus was "the tropicality" (a word actually already invented a generation ago by Brazilian singer Caetano Veloso; could Roy, who really is a man of unexpected depths, actually have been making an oblique reference to Caetano's great hit "Tropicalia"?).

The Americans win; The Mexicans advance:  Panama’s Golden Generation goes home.

Some would call it intuition, an assumption based on past experiences; others would credit neurons calculating trajectories at the speed of light. Whatever it was I knew, I just knew – as soon as the ball was struck – that ball was going to not only nestle in the net, but also consign Longford Town to another season of toil in Ireland’s second tier.

QPR Greenford Doc

A much awaited comeback: Gervais Martel & RC Lens

I hate it when it happens. You’re there, doing your best. Not just selling 32 pages of printed paper, but selling hours of planning, of work, of writing, of getting pictures, of pleading with others to help you with an article or some design work.

For many Latin Americans over thirty, the Bundesliga will always have a particular voice - that of Colombian broadcaster Andrés Salcedo, who provided the Spanish play-by-play commentary of the German first division between the mid-seventies and early nineties.

Summer is a hellish time to be in Buenos Aires. First, because the temperatures are enough to wilt even the strongest constitution – I type this whilst sitting in the living room in my pants, with the air conditioning on, and thanks to the 40 degrees Celsius outside, I'm still sweating.

When Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain scored for England at Rio de Janeiro's famous Estádio do Maracanã, you'd have been forgiven for thinking it would be a while before the British Isles had another goalscorer there, and that Oxlade-Chamberlain's tale - that of a wide-eyed youngster seizing his moment in the sun - would be the most compelling even once the World Cup in Brazil this summer is in the history books.

Christian Eissele has a highlight reel showing the skills to become a potential threat to meanest of defences in the world. He shows a poacher's instinct inside the box, an eye for goal outside it and a neat touch to link the play to boot.

Back in the early eighties Italy was the centre of the world of football and would remain such for the best part of a decade.