Football

Michel de Vacri The big news here is the takeover of OGC Nice by British businessmen James and Bob Ratcliffe. They seem to be better known here than in the UK. James lives in Cap Ferrat and owns the ILEOS pharmaceutical company that took over the SKY cycling team who are based in Monaco. Last night [...]

All sort of excuses were made for this poor performance and home defeat: 2 matches in a week, yesterday’s conditions of sapping heat, a poor referee ignoring 3 handball penalty appeals, no plan B when the possession and elaborate passing game faltered. I saw it differently: Forest were the better [...]

This thrashing drew comparison with the pleasing, passing performances of Slavisa Jokatovic that won us promotion but I would go further back in Fulham time to the Championship winning side of Jean Tigana of the late 1990s. Tigana’s side began with 11 straight wins in the Championship but Scott [...]

There is a well known tactic usually symptomatic of the classier footballing team: “playing out from the back.” Fulham in the first 30 minutes created their own version of “playing in from the back”. Time after time again the ball was passed laterally between central defenders [...]