He is riding on the back of an open-top bus, red-faced and matter-of-fact, clapping his hands for the crowd below. An FA Cup scarf is knotted thickly at his neck; a blue-and-white banner streams out behind his head, like the flag in Liberty Leading the People. The buntings on the bus railing come up nearly [...]

Every so often, on my perambulations around the footballing part of the internet, I come across a discussion of the Beatles and football: they were Scousers, in their sly way, after all. Were they Liverpool fans? Old Evertonians? Was the Walrus really Dave Hickson? Etc.
The story that usually emerges is that none of the Beatles [...]

SPECULATIONS AT KRAKOW
Whenever I am alone and, for a moment, reasonably secure in Krakow, I repair to a certain library in which, as it is situated underground and beneath a building (the Museum of Pharmacology) whose staff I trust to alert me in the event of any disturbance, I am more than usually well-protected from [...]

Portsmouth have beaten West Brom 1-0 to reach their first FA Cup final since 1939. I had planned to write a detailed match summary, but I think a minute-by-minute report might be a better way to relate the experience of watching football from a far-off country in this internet age…

FA CUP 5th-ROUND ACTION: Barnsley have stunned Liverpool at Anfield, winning 2-1 on Brian Howard’s 93nd-minute goal. It was a wild, inspired performance from Barnsley, who scored the 1-1 equalizer in the 59th minute and spent most of the rest of the match pinned in their own six-yard box, flinging themselves into [...]