Sixty years and counting. That’s the gap between England’s 1966 World Cup triumph at Wembley and their 2026 campaign in North America, and every English footballer who pulls on the Three Lions shirt this summer will carry that number on their back whether they want to or not. As an Irish analyst who covers the […]

Twenty-four years is a long time to wait when you’re Brazil. The last time the Seleção lifted the World Cup trophy, Ronaldo was scoring twice against Germany in Yokohama, Rivaldo was pulling strings in midfield, and Cafu was raising the cup with tears streaming down his face. That was 2002. Since then, Brazil have endured […]

I remember the day Belgium reached number one in the FIFA world rankings. It was September 2018, a few months after their third-place finish at the World Cup in Russia, and the reaction in the Belgian football world was a mixture of pride and frustration. Pride because the ranking confirmed what everyone already knew — […]

The image is seared into every football fan’s memory: Lionel Messi, draped in a bisht, lifting the World Cup trophy in Lusail on 18 December 2022. The greatest player of his generation had finally conquered the only stage that had eluded him, and Argentina — the country that had waited 36 years since Maradona’s triumph […]