Features

JOHN ROBERTS wrote for the Daily Express, The Guardian, the Daily Mail and The Independent, where he was the tennis correspondent for 20 years. He collaborated with Bill Shankly on the Liverpool manager’s autobiography, ghosted Kevin Keegan’s first book, and has written books on George Best, Manchester United’s Busby Babes (The Team That Wouldn’t Die) and Everton (The Official Centenary […]

By Nick Harris 8 October 2010 Uefa’s Financial Fair Play regulations won’t wipe out the tradition of benefactor involvement in football. They will merely lead to bans from European competition for clubs whose owners want to spend lots of their own money building up those clubs. Those who want to spend freely can do so, […]

5 October 2010 Can you identify the sporting arena? We take an aerial view of a topical ball park, football stadium, marathon course, golf course, Games venue, race track, iconic arena, athletic theatre (some literally theatres), pitch, park, stretch of water or wherever else sport takes place. And we ask you to identify it with the […]

By Nick Harris 4 October 2010 It was 4 September 2001, and the Albanian football team had travelled to Newcastle to play England in a qualifier for the 2002 World Cup. Norman Wisdom, a megastar in Albania, came along to the Albanian team lodgings, a motel on the fringes of Newcastle where I was spending […]

ALEXANDRA WILLIS is the Deputy Editor of ACE Tennis Magazine, and alongside mag work and an affair with social media, has the dubious honour of following British players to Grand Slam qualifying from time to time as part of her professional duties. If you happen to bump into her court-side, she’ll probably tell you that she went […]

By Brian Sears 23 September 2010 Carling can rarely if ever have been responsible for a regional hangover of such proportions as the one clouding Merseyside today. First Everton became the penalty shoot-out victims of League One Brentford in the Carling Cup on Tuesday. Now Liverpool are licking their wounds after going down to Northampton, […]

By Brian Sears 16 September 2010 West Ham and Fulham have an unwanted statistic in common, one that both hope to ditch this weekend. It concerns away days, bad ones, lots of bad ones. On the very first day of last season, Fulham went to Fratton Park and a Zamora goal allowed them to return with all […]

By Nick Harris 16 September 2010 The biggest standing terrace in the whole of European football – and possibly the world, email us if you know different – is the ‘Yellow Wall’ at the home ground of Borussia Dortmund. It holds 25,000. Elsewhere on sportingintelligence today we carry a feature about the Bundesliga. Here are […]

By Nick Harris 14 September 2010 Rafa Nadal’s success in the US Open final this week means his Grand Slam singles titles tally moves to nine, and he moves up to seventh place on the all-time list, behind only Federer, Sampras, Emerson, Laver, Borg and Tilden (see details below). Famously Rafa also becomes the seventh […]

By Brian Sears 10 September 2010 The Wolves will be on prowl in London this weekend, hunting by the river. They’re playing Fulham. And Wolves have won more Premier League points against Fulham than against any other Premier League side. Yes, yes. I know Wolves are only experiencing their third Premier League season; one season […]