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So it happened then. The moment that many thought they would never see finally unfolded on a dramatic December night in Qatar in a fascinating game involving France. That’s right, we’re talking about Harry Kane missing that crucial second penalty. You could be forgiven for thinking we meant another jaw-dropping event that same month – the one that saw a Messi-inspired Argentina draw 3-3 with holders France before defeating them on penalties to hand the little maestro the ultimate prize. But more importantly, has winning the World Cup catapulted the gravity-defying genius to number 1 in our all-time list of greats? Speaking of greats, we’ve been catching up with quite a few recently, including Anfield’s Egyptian king Mo Salah, Azzurri and Juventus legend Alessandro Del Piero, and Lioness playmakers and…

Jude isn’t the only England international in his family – brother Jobe, 17, has also represented his country a dozen times. A rangy, highly technical footballer still growing into his frame, Jobe progressed to England’s under-18s this season, having previously lined up for the under-16s and under-17s. He was on Birmingham’s bench last term, aged 15 – even earlier than Jude – and made his debut five months later, becoming the Blues’ second-youngest ever player, behind his brother. This season, Jobe has been a frequent squad presence in the Championship as a substitute and occasional starter. Could both Bellingham brothers play together for England one day? Don’t bet against it.…

Liverpool fans have been privileged to watch some of the finest footballers in the world grace the Anfield turf but, arguably for the first time in history, the best player on the planet now plays for the Reds. For exactly that reason, watching Mo Salah has been an honour for Kopites – we know that this player and these times are a luxury to be enjoyed. Just like we appreciated some of the greats of the game playing for the opposition, now we know how much it means to have this opportunity in front of our eyes each week. When Salah is truly on his game, twisting and turning the opposition left-back, you can feel the appreciation and anticipation from the Anfield stands. When he collects the ball in that…

Football teams never even used to display badges on the front of their shirts, let alone lucrative sponsors. Now, the very DNA of an institution is woven into the fabric of your club (we’re talking about the crest, not the generic betting firm logo emblazoned on the middle of the strip). Like with anything football-related, sides scampered off in a multitude of directions – some prefer to showcase their city’s coat of arms or a symbol representative of the location; others’ icons have evolved into a simplistic shape surrounding an emblem in the centre. And then there’s all creatures great and small, from lions and tigers to the birds and the bees, via horses, hats, pirates and even the depiction of a legendary ex-player. Each of the 92 has something…

A soft samba tune took hold of the loudspeakers at the Urbano Caldeira Stadium, universally known as Vila Belmiro, on the hot, humid morning of January 2. Written and sung by Pele himself, Meu Legado repeatedly told the people of Santos how grateful the king was to them: “I am Pele thanks to you; I am Pele, my legacy is to you.” At 10am, Santistas and foreign tourists from places as varied as Mexico, Malta and Japan began paying their respects in their own way. Black-and-white Santos jerseys and the yellow and green of Brazil were constants in the queue that crossed Vila Belmiro’s pitch, at the centre of which Pele was laid, for a 24-hour wake. His coffin was protected from the unmerciful sun by a white canopy also…

DIEGO IS THAT YOU? Recreates Maradona’s solo goal at Mexico 86 vs England, running from the halfway line to score against Getafe. KING OF EUROPE Loops home a rare header in Rome to clinch victory in the 2009 Champions League Final against Manchester United. RECORD BREAKER Becomes Barça’s all-time leading scorer, with a treble against Granada in 2012. He is just 24, and isn’t done yet… THE NAME’S MESSI His 500th Barcelona goal is a winner at the Bernabeu in 2017 – he holds his shirt up to Real Madrid fans to celebrate. CLEAR OF THE REST Nets in La Liga for 474th and final time against Celta Vigo in 2021 – 163 ahead of Cristiano Ronaldo in second.…

BRIAN CLOUGH AND PETER TAYLOR So on-again-off-again that there’s even a bromantic movie, The Damned United, the Derby/Forest legends finally fell out for good when Taylor left and tried to sign Clough’s players. Said Clough: “If I was driving along the A52 between Derby and Nottingham and saw Taylor broken down, I wouldn’t pick him up. I’d run him over.” He later regretted never making up. JURGEN KLOPP AND ZELJKO BUVAC Liverpool supporters feared the worst when Klopp’s long-term assistant Buvac suddenly left mid-season, in April 2018. “I felt like I’ve been the manager for all those 17 years,” said the man nicknamed ‘The Brain’, who’d been tapped up by Arsenal the season he quit. Klopp was furious, but allayed the fans’ concerns by then winning everything. They’re yet to…

Beth Mead hated herself. She despised the thoughts that had crossed her mind, but felt powerless to stop them. England’s would-be Euro 2022 hero had been left out of Great Britain’s squad for the delayed Tokyo 2020 Olympics and it had sent her into a spiral like nothing she had experienced before. Stuck at home as Team GB travelled to Japan to take part in 2021’s rearranged Games, Mead found herself locked in a paradox. She wanted the side to do well in the tournament but, at the same time, she hoped they would fall short in their quest for a medal, so that manager Hege Riise would regret overlooking her. “I found it very hard, because I hated the thoughts I was having while the Olympics were being played,”…

Before Christmas in 2019, Birmingham boss Pep Clotet called his senior players into a meeting. After a promising start to their Championship campaign, the West Midlands side were in the middle of a run of just one win in 12 games, crashing to a 3-0 defeat at mid-table Hull. Their play-off aspirations had all but disappeared as Blues slid rapidly down the league table. For a club stuck in the second tier since 2011, the months ahead looked like being another trudge; another potential battle to avoid relegation. Squad morale was beginning to flag. But this season wouldn’t be forgotten as the others were, and Clotet knew it. “I told the players, ‘Just remember one thing’,” the Catalan coach tells FourFourTwo now. “I said, ‘If we stay in the league…

“I hope he’s got his slippers on…” Maybe greatness always starts with an enquiry about slip-ons – because it’s certainly how it all began for Mohamed Salah. The Egyptian was spending his very first morning at Liverpool in the summer of 2017, and he had to be dressed for the occasion. No slippers, no deal – at least if the waiting nurse had anything to do with it, her assertion couched with an authoritative tone that suggested this may not have been the first footballer’s medical she’d ever overseen. Perhaps all who aim for legendary status at Anfield must first don the comfortable footwear and win her seal of approval. Thankfully, she was never going to get any trouble from Salah. Liverpool’s new signing emerged from behind a door giggling…

Two months after winning the World Cup, Alessandro Del Piero experienced a humbling reality check. It was September 9, and the mighty Juventus had just drawn 1-1 against 10-man Rimini in front of 10,000 supporters on the Adriatic coast. Kicking off his new campaign in the second tier of Italian football, a 31-year-old Del Piero – a serial winner of seven major trophies by then, including the Champions League – could be forgiven for wondering what kind of alternative universe he’d found himself in. In the space of a few months, one of the biggest scandals in football history had rocked the game to its core, Italy had become world champions and Del Piero’s beloved Juve were condemned to Serie B. Paradoxically, the lowest point in the attacker’s storied career…

Sunday, December 18, 2022, will always be remembered as the day that Lionel Messi became immortal. It’s a date that will be written in every sports book, celebrated and recreated in myriad ways. That day, football found a cosmic balance, offering one of its true greats the World Cup he’d been seeking since the start of his career. Messi finally touched the trophy at 35 years, five months and 24 days old. It was not just potentially the perfect ending to his World Cup career, but the start of a new life. An eternal life. “¿QUE MIRAS, BOBO?” In Argentina today, thousands of Messi tattoos are being inked, dozens of Messi street murals are being painted. Inscriptions of new-born babies under the names Lionel and Lionela have grown by 700…

You know you’ve had a decent year when someone decides to name a bus after you. Keira Walsh’s 2022 roll call is so all-encompassing, it borders on greedy. Euro 2022 winner. Player of the Match in the final, and selected in the Team of the Tournament. World-record transfer to footballing royalty, Barcelona. Yet for all of the team and individual prizes that the 25-year-old has amassed in the past 12 months, nothing represents the rapid growth in her profile like nominative transportation. ‘Surreal’ doesn’t cut it. The bus company, Rosso, run a service in the north west from Rossendale to Walsh’s hometown of Rochdale. When the midfielder learned they had anointed one of their fleet in her honour, she thought it was a wind-up. “My mum told me and I…

GRANIT XHAKA In his first week on the job, Arteta convinced Xhaka to stay; ever since, the Swiss midfielder has been loyal to his manager and fulfilled every kind of tactical tweak, dropping into the backline, moving to left-back and becoming box-to-box. Finally, he is receiving his plaudits. ALEXANDRE LACAZETTE The manager’s friction with Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang was well-documented, but Laca quietly went about his job up front, working tirelessly, to become a leader. He might not have had Auba’s spark, but his professionalism will be remembered fondly by Arteta. ROB HOLDING The assembled hordes of Genghis Khan couldn’t breach Arsenal’s defence with sub Holding as a fifth defender. Another amiable leader, the Bolton Baresi is invaluable for shoring up 1-0 leads and setting the bar as Arteta’s most selfless team…

What made you join Liverpool in 2014? I had been at the academy of Porto since 2007 and had started to think about a next step. [In 2013] I received an approach from Manchester United – Alex Ferguson and his Dutch assistant Rene Meulensteen wanted to bring me to the club. It looked really good, but a few months later Ferguson retired and the opportunity fell through. One year later, Liverpool showed an interest and I became their under-16s coach. After a while I began to speak with Brendan Rodgers, who was curious how I was implementing a 3-4-3 system in my team. We got on well and in my second season [2015-16] I was asked to be one of his assistants. I learned a lot from him, although he…

MICK CHANNON Unfortunate Mick is the most-capped England player never to go to a major tournament, with 46 international appearances, and when he netted 21 goals for Southampton in 1973-74, Saints still went down. Recognition from the PFA was a small consolation. TREVOR BROOKING The England midfielder made the PFA Team of the Year for a second time in 1978, despite the Hammers dropping out of the top flight. In the lead-up to the 1982 World Cup, he made three more PFA line-ups, too – the Second Division team, on each occasion. MARK WRIGHT After starring for England at Italia 90, the centre-back continued his good form in the top flight with Derby. Not that it helped the Rams all that much: they finished rock bottom, conceding a league-high 75…

When Pep Guardiola’s name appears on your phone, you take the call. You stop what you are doing. He demands nothing less than your sole focus. It’s as if he’s put the rest of the world on mute for the duration he has your attention. Mikel Arteta first met this hypnotic man many years earlier. He had grown up idolising this magician who could bend space, time and football to his will, long before the Catalan coaching sensei learned to choreograph whole teams to do the same. A 16-year-old Arteta would make his Barcelona B debut as a substitute for Guardiola, then-club captain and 11 years his protégé’s senior. The former never made a senior Barcelona appearance but, with the pair both schooled by Johan Cruyff principles and with a…

Nobody grows up wanting to be an assistant manager. Even Tord Grip probably dreamed of train driving, rock stardom or brain surgery, before hitching his wagon behind Sven-Goran Eriksson. This job is neither sexy nor safe. Do well and your boss gets the credit, but if they get sacked, usually you follow them out of the door. Most management teams break up eventually – and even if you get on famously, that can also be intense. “He’s never off the phone to me,” says former Republic of Ireland international Stephen Ward, who’s brand new to the number-two business. A long-time Premier League left-back for Burnley and Wolves, the 37-year-old is now assistant at sixth-tier Brackley Town, and he’s busy. “I can’t go to bed at night without the last text…

Up the f**king stairs now, into my office. Everyone. Let’s go and watch that f**king video.” The entire Manchester United squad had just been ordered to gather around the television inside Sir Alex Ferguson’s quarters at the club’s Carrington training ground. They were unsure what they were about to witness. Roy Keane stood anxiously in front of the TV, aware of what was at stake. His career, a reputation he had built over 12 glorious years at Old Trafford, rested on this. When the tape reached its conclusion on this biting November 2005 afternoon, Ferguson let rip. “It’s a disgrace, this f**king video.” The squad had just seen Keane’s withering MUTV assessment of their recent 4-1 defeat at Middlesbrough; his first act of punditry, so blunt that it was never…

The story of the greatest upset in Bundesliga history is also one of the sweetest revenge stories you’re ever likely to hear. The fairytale started long before Kaiserslautern began to hint that they might become the first newly promoted team in history to win Germany’s top flight. Instead, it kicked off in Bayern Munich’s clubhouse on the evening of April 27, 1996. A few hours earlier, FC Hollywood had lost at home to sixth-placed Hansa Rostock to slip three points behind Borussia Dortmund at the table’s summit. The title wasn’t yet out of Bayern’s grasp, and they’d also just booked a place in the UEFA Cup final with a legendary performance against Barcelona at the Camp Nou, so there was no reason for Die Roten to panic. But panic, they…

“THE LAST YEAR’S BEEn HOLLYWOOD-ESQUE WITH SOME DRAMATIC TWISTS A nD TURnS – IT’D MAKE OnE HELL OF A MOVIE…” “The greatest comeback in Danish sporting history, no doubt. Watching his rise from being technically dead to pulling that famous red shirt of Manchester United over his head, it’s been remarkable.” Lasse Voge, the chief football writer at BT, Denmark’s biggest sports daily, couldn’t have summed it up better. Fourteen months ago, the world watched aghast as Christian Eriksen suffered a cardiac arrest during his country’s Euro 2020 opener against Finland. His life was hanging in the balance back then, never mind his career. The chances of him returning to action appeared remote, even after his revival on the pitch that day at Copenhagen’s Parken Stadium. Months of silence and…

FROM BRUM TO THE BIG TIME Cherished in his hometown and adored in Dortmund, where next for Jude Bellingham? KEIRA WALSH We talk Euro glory and Champions League dreams with the England and Barca maestro 50 GREATEST PLAYERS We’re certain that you’ll agree with our list of the game’s finest performers – honest! SECOND IN COMMAND It’s no secret being a manager is a tough job, but what about the men beside them? GROSSO | ARTETA | MESSI | MEAD | DEL PIERO | PELE…