10th July 2018 Wellington, New Zealand
Arsene Wenger once said that to be a football manager is to live on a volcano. The difference between adulation and castigation is paper-thin, and turns as much on luck as on skill… And yet. There is something about Gareth Southgate. 50 years of hurt can do funny things to a country, but the love that Southgate enjoys right […]
24th September 2014 Budapest, Hungary
Guest blog by Gábor Imeli, Trade Adviser UK Trade & Investment at the British Embassy in Budapest. The signs were not good. On a dark and rainy Saturday the players of the Embassy’s amateur football team, GB United, were about to face the toughest opponents they’ve met so far, the back office team of […]
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16th September 2014 Colombo, Sri Lanka
Most ex-pats live a very privileged life in Sri Lanka, so I’m always grateful to those of my colleagues who make it easy for us to help some of the people who live so close, but are so much less fortunate. Last Saturday, the British High Commission hosted a football tournament to raise funds for […]
27th June 2014 Houston, USA
I will start off by saying that I am obsessed with the World Cup. OBSESSED. Every four years, nothing matters more than making sure I am able to watch important World Cup matches. I grew up watching the tournament back when most Americans had no clue that it existed. My family emigrated from Mexico to […]
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22nd October 2013 USA
In the 1980’s, Channel 4 brought American football into teenage British living rooms. Mike Ditka, John Elway and William “The Refrigerator” Perry became household names as schoolkids started to “Go Long”, call “Set, Hut!” and grapple with the new language of football. Many were convinced that the novelty wouldn’t last. Fast forward 25 years and […]
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26th July 2013
Getting to watch Man U and Liverpool matches in the same week would be a treat even in England. Here in Australia it was a joy. And a GREAT chance to use sport to promote Britain a year on from the London Olympics. Football, or soccer as they call it here, is the weakest of […]
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3rd April 2013 Washington DC, USA
It is a warm morning, and I’m standing in a crowd of Africans. Many of the women are in brightly coloured dresses; the men sport a variety of styles of headdress. A minibus pulls up and we squeeze more of us on-board than I thought possible. As we’re about to shut the door someone leans […]
8th February 2013 New York, USA
My first Super Bowl experience was transcribing the lyrics of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band’s half-time show in 2009 for Sky Sports’ subtitled output back in the UK. This, fortunately, required zero knowledge of how (American) football works – and played to my eternal love of The Boss. Since I moved to the […]
16th November 2012
One of the things I know for sure after attempting to learn many languages over many years is that each person learns languages differently. Here in Istanbul there are countless institutions teaching English. Many are excellent. But did you know that there are also some fantastic interactive English language-learning sites on the Internet available free […]
15th November 2012
Every once in a while you have one of those moments you know you’ll remember for a long time. Hearing Simon and Garfunkel in Hyde Park, or Elton John in Madison Square Garden are two musical examples. In football, I will never forget being in the Stade de France when my school mate John Collins […]
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