Racism is in the spotlight but what is being done to tackle homophobia?

The FA stamped down on Luis Suarez’s racism towards Patrice Evra. And it’s quite right that they did, isn’t it? For when we look back into the past, and certainly in football’s past, we see things that are shockingly vile. In the seventies and part of the eighties, black footballers were subjected ...

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It's the Italian job for Arsenal and Chelsea but who will win the Champions League?

The draw for the quarter-finals of the Champions League draw has just been made and both Arsenal and Chelsea must overcome Italian opposition if they are to lift the coveted trophy. Arsenal reacquaint themselves with AC Milan while Chelsea must see off Napoli, who helped knock Manchester City out of...

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Scandinavian Spotlight: Small countires with big ambitions - just don't tell Fulham

With the Danish Season now into its winter shutdown this weeks Europa League ties were the last on-field action for a while with Odense involved in Wednesday nights most dramatic match. Fulham were leading 2-1 and the game was in time added on when the hosts spurned a good chance to put things out ...

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Manchester United: Is this the beginning of the end for the champions?

Well this is a very strange sentence to be writing. Manchester United are out of the Champions League at the group stage. They are out. Eliminated by a side from Switzerland. United fans may console themselves with the fact that City have too fallen at the first hurdle – yet their group was ...

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Chelsea Head Arsenal In Champions League Betting

Chelsea may have been struggling for form in the league but the bookmakers still feel the Champions League trophy has more chance of ending up in the Stamford Bridge trophy room than the equivalent at the Emirates Stadium. Their dimissal of Valencias challenge to ensure qualification - and the robu...

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Apoel and Basle Stir Up The Champions League

There was something depressing about watching ITVs coverage of Manchester Uniteds exit from the Champions League. There was West Bromwich Albion fan Adrian Chiles surveying the teams in the last 16 and sniffily delivering the opinion that many of the qualifiers were teams United could beat. The Cha...

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Manchester City: Why Champions League failure wouldn't be the end of the world

Sometimes, Champions League nights really do come good. It was a festival of football on Tuesday night; goals galore as Real Madrid triumphed and Bayern Munich cut down the limp offerings of Villarreal. And it was an equally fascinating and breathtaking night for the two Manchester clubs who, so...

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Reduce the size of the Premier League? You gotta be kidding me

Sometimes you have to wonder whether football is football anymore. Money has become part of our game for a long time now but the fear of how possessive riches will become, and how their grip will most probably tighten even further to strangle out every last penny from our game, is always in th...

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Arsenal: Could the Gunners be in the top four before Christmas?

Arsenal’s Champions League hopes were written off by most pundits in the summer as everyone waited for the inevitable to happen regarding Cesc Fabregas and Samir Nasri. The Gunners’ awful start to the campaign seemed to justify their beliefs as Arsene Wenger came under intense scrutiny from both the...

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Outside the Box – Football on TV: ITV begin to repay their debt with a feast of Man City delights

It’s the 12th June 2010. Seven thirty-four on a warm summer’s evening. My friends and I are huddled around my television, just as a million more expectant eyes are doing at the same moment up and down the nation. Then pffft … nothing. A moment’s darkness was followed by some guff about Hyundai cars ...

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Manchester United: 10 handy facts on Otelul Galati

A penalty brace from Wayne Rooney ensured Manchester United gained all three points on their last assignment in the Champions League against Otelul Galati, but just how much do we actually know about the European minnows? As Sir Alex Ferguson prepares to welcome the visitors to Old Trafford tonigh...

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Chelsea: 10 handy facts on Genk

Chelsea brushed Belgium champions Genk 5-0 at Stamford Bridge recently, but tonight they travel to the Cristal Arena desperate to erase Saturday’s 5-3 defeat at the hands of Arsenal. However, how much do we really know about the Belgium side? As Chelsea manager Andre Villa-Boas prepares for the big...

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Can any player, including Messi, be considered 'the greatest'?

Ah, the Champions League. Bringer of drama, stopper of dreamers, platform for Ray Wilkins to say ‘my word’ 50 hundred thousand times. And there are other things that are nearly always discussed, certainly when seeing the two dominant Spanish sides play. The great debate has moved from trying to ...

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Who will win the Champions League 2011/12?

Spanish giants Barcelona are attempting to make history this season. In May they destroyed Sir Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United to win the Champions League, but no team has managed to keep hold of the famous trophy since it was renamed 20 years ago. However, the bookies firmly believe Pep Guardiola...

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How Can Manchester City Be 'Naive' in the Champions League?

It was interesting to hear Roberto Mancini describe his Manchester City squad as nervy and naive after their 1-1 home result against Napoli. Maybe something is lost in translation from Italian, but if this is the case Man City fans and owners are entitled to ask why. This is not a bunch of graduate...

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Champions League Group Preview: Easy for Chelsea, a tester for Arsenal

By virtue of high seeding the two London challengers avoided a very difficult draw in the group stages, but Arsenal will need to be at their best in Group F. A failure for Chelsea in their section would represent a major shock. Group E This competition has become routine for Chelsea fans andin rec...

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Champions League: Easy group for United, tricky start for City

The draw for the Champions League group stages produced one very easy group for the Manchester pair and one tough one. Manchester Citywill have to work the hardest, but their squad strength should carry them through to the knockout phase at the first attempt, while Manchester United should coast it....

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Arsenal: 10 Handy Facts About Udinese

Arsenal are getting to be old hands at the qualifying rounds of the Champions League and so far, though Gunners fans would like to avoid the necessity, Arsene Wengers squad have always negotiated a way to the group phase. Michel Platinis reformed system has made the play-off route more difficult, b...

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Squarefootball's Fantasy football invitation

There is less than two weeks to go until the start of the 2011/12 Premier League season and time is running out for you to enter the Squarefootball fantasy football competition. Last season more than 100 teams competed for the Squarefootball title, which was won by P Oxenby and his team FC Poxo. He...

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Manchester City: Tevez, Telephones and Tedium

Im not sure whats been worse over the last week or so, the phone hacking scandal or the Tevez transfer saga?Maybe if the News Of The World was still in existence it could report, with its tele-pathic powers, where Tevez will be moving to? If I were a Manchester City fan I would just like to see th...

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Scandinavian tests in store for Scottish pair

The recent draws for the third qualifying rounds of the Champions League and Europa League have thrown up the prospect of visits to Scandinavia for both Rangers and Hearts. Rangers look likely to be facing Malmo after the Swedish club had a comfortable 2-0 home win over the Faroese side HB Torshavn,...

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Can Nicklas Bendtner be Arsenal’s saint at the Nou Camp?

Since beating Barcelona three weeks ago Arsenal’s fortunes have gone from bad to worse. Forced to a replay by Leyton Orient in the FA Cup, they blew their chance to end their trophy drought against Birmingham City in the final of the Carling Cup and passed up the opportunity to close the gap on Manc...

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Tottenham reach end of ‘that’ ten year cycle…

Bournemouth F.C. escaped dropping out of the football league in 1993, the man responsible for this was Harry Redknapp. This same squad also shocked Manchester Utd in the FA cup that season by converting the holders into also-rans. Tottenham were considered more a cup team before Redknapp took charg...

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Stats Point To Spurs And Liverpool Making Progress In Europe

It was a nasty shock for Tottenham to leave Switzerland with a deficit against a Young Boys team generally thought to be the weakest of the teams they could have drawn but the odds still favour qualification for the group stages of the Champions League for the North Londoners. Teams facing a 3-2 de...

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Ten Handy Facts About Young Boys Berne

Though there are no easy ties in the Champions League, the draw for the qualifiers has been kind to Spurs. The Swiss club are a less worrying proposition than Sampdoria or Dinamo Kiev but who are Young Boys? 1. Though they have 11 Swiss titles, Young Boys have not topped the pile in the Swiss Super...

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20 Handy Facts About Sporting Braga (Again)

The Portuguese side stand in the way of Celtic in the Third Qualifying Round of the Champions League. Square Football noted 20 handy facts about Braga back in March 2007 when they were drawn against Spurs in the Europa League.Some of these nuggets were there in 2007 but most are new. 1. One Braga p...

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Should ‘Woy’ lead the Anfield revolution?

If reports on Friday’s BBC Football website are accurate then Roy Hodgson, currently fulfilling punditry obligations in South Africa, is being lined up as Liverpool’s big summer signing. But is that a positive signal of intent? Hodgson enjoyed an enchanted last season but is the Fulham boss really t...

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Our opinions on how the Inter vs Bayern Munich CL Final will go

The Champions' League final is bereft of either an English or a Spanish team for only the third time in a decade; in the last ten seasons there have been six Spanish finalists (Valencia x 2, Real Madrid x 2, Barcelona x 2) and six English finalists (Manchester United x 2, Liverpool x 2, Chelsea, Ars...

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Get on side and sport your colours for Shelter this World Cup

In celebration of this years FIFA World Cup, housing and homelessness charity Shelter are teaming up with Nationwide Building Society, Official England Team sponsor, to launch their fantastic footy fundraiser, Strip4Shelter. Shelter is asking people across the country to replace their regular work ...

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Champions' League turns back into the European Cup

Given the dominance of English teams in recent years, and in their turn the Spanish teams and Italian teams before them, the Champions' League has been a curious competition for a few years. It has become less about which is the strongest team, it has been more about which team from the strongest l...

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Arsenal: Can Arsenal spring a huge shock at the Nou Camp?

Normally it’s Arsenal who pass and move teams to death but last Wednesday night the Gunners were given a taste of their own medicine by the Champions League holders Barcelona. For most of the game Wenger’s men were left chasing shadows. Only the sheer brilliance of the much-maligned Manuel Almunia –...

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Arsenal v Barcelona- The History

Memories of the 2006 Champions League Final are still fresh in the memory. Arsenal lost keeper Jens Lehmann early on and battled away with ten men for most of the contest before Barcelona and some cunning from Henrik Larsson sealed their fate. The two clubs have hardly ever met in Europe. In pre-Ch...

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Bayern Munich v Manchester United- The History

When these two giants were paired in the last eight of theChampions League on Friday, the immediate thought was of the epic 1999 Final- but apart from that contest meetings between these two clubs have been rarer than expected. Bayern were a modest club in the early days of European competition and...

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Beckham bows, Bale wows

OK, so the nation’s red-top readers might not be unified in touching an x-ray of his broken Achilles tendon this summer, but David Beckham’s injury and subsequent absence from this year’s World Cup rightfully dominated Mondays papers. Sure, his prospective absence isn’t anywhere near as pressing...

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Manchester United: Can Rooney beat Ronaldo’s record?

The sublime Wayne Rooney scored another brace against AC Milan on Wednesday night to book United’s place in the last eight of the Champions League and former Old Trafford favourite David Beckham received a hero’s return from the fans, but it wasn’t such a good night for another former United ace. ...

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Arsenal: Does Wenger really want United or Chelsea in Champions League?

A Nicklas Bendtner hat-trick on Tuesday night against Porto banished the Great Dane’s horror show at the weekend to book Arsenal’s place in the last eight of the Champions League. It was a stunning display by the Gunners who went into the game 2-1 down from the first leg and many were fearing the wo...

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Tottenham Hotspur: FA Cup glory or Champions League – What’s more important to you?

Many top flight managers have been criticised this season in the FA Cup for resting established first team stars in order to give some of their fringe players a chance to get some game time and show what they can do. Harry Redknapp insists that he will never fall into that category. The former Por...

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Premier League Team of the Decade (2000-2009)

This is a difficult team to compile because it would be so easy to let bias drift in and allow players that are dominant in the latter part of the decade more credit than players that were just as important a few years ago. So I decided to use the teams produced by the PFA as the teams of the year ...

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Obertan and Valencia can replace Cristiano Ronaldo as United go back to the 1990s

As any number of pundits pointed out last summer, you can't replace Cristiano Ronaldo - he offers goals, pace, dead ball threat and those direct tricky runs that defenders absolutely loathe. But what United have done is look to minimise the impact by adapting their game and by combining the attribu...

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Tottenham Hotspur: Carling Cup success or top four finish? You decide!

High-flying Tottenham Hotspur travel to the home of the champions and Carling Cup holders Manchester United tonight in a match that could potentially see them being just 180 minutes away from their third Wembley final in as many years. Unfortunately for those Spurs fans who have shelled out good mon...

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The end of my Liverpool grieving process

Im beginning to get over it now. The midweek thing. Im always being told to get over it, so I am. Its ok. Really. We can concentrate on winning the league now were out of the European Cup. Theres a stat somewhere that suggests winning the league is more do-able if youre out of the European cup ear...

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Is a shock Besiktas win at Manchester United possible?

Anyone who saw the lacklustre Manchester United display for an hour against CSKA Moscow must be wondering whether a United side that has already qualified will somehow show more commitment? Although Sir Alex Ferguson is unlikely to accept another below par performance he is also likely to rest some...

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Blame it on the Bougy

Algerian defender Madjid Bougherra was axed from the Rangers starting eleven as the Ibrox side crashed out of Europe with a whimper. A third successive home defeat for the Gers ensured there would be no parachute drop into the Europa League. After two crushing 4-1 defeats to Sevilla and Unirea Ur...

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Will the summer swapsies of Eto'o for Ibrahimovic bite Barcelona tonight?

There is always a group of death. Pick a series of at least 4 mini-leagues using the fairest system you can dream up (that simultaneously helps all the richest clubs from the richest footballing leagues) and one will always look nasty. But enough of Group A, where Bayern Munich look likely to be e...

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Has Rafa Benitez been saving Aquilani for tonight?

Rafa Benitez has been easing Alberto Aquilani into action since signing him in the summer. But the £20m signing will surely get a start soon. His season in the first team has consisted of 15 minutes at the end of the League Cup defeat to Arsenal at the end of October and the final 7 minutes in the...

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Arsenal should score at least three tonight

Arsenal should complete their qualification for the Champions' League knockout stages with a routine win over Standard Liege tonight, and in winning Arsenal will also simplify the next stage of the tournament by winning the group. Back in September it looked somewhat different when the Belgian team...

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CL Preview: Do or die for Rangers

By Danny Law Rangers can resurrect their hopes of qualifying for the knockout stages of the Champions League with a win over Bundesliga strugglers Stuttgart tonight. The Gers have endured a woeful campaign so far with only two points from four matches, including two 4-1 home defeats to Sevilla and...

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Drogba and Anelka look good each way value for Champions' league top scorer

With Didier Drogba having completed his European ban he looks fired up for another tilt at The Champions' League. After being sent off in the final two years ago and then banned for his outburst following semi-final defeat last season Drogba needs to show a little more coolness under fire if he wan...

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The Liverpool revival starts on Monday

Everything runs in cycles and Liverpool have recently had the equivalent of a solar eclipse in the third week of December - black patches in an otherwise grey sky; but cycles, like winters and eclipses end. And Liverpool really should be seeing the light any day now. Firstly since thrashing Hull 6...

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Liverpool have focus - its the players that are a worry

Liverpool play Lyon in a game where defeat could take qualification out of their hands; on the back of six losses in the last seven games. If Lyon avoid defeat then the French team will have qualified and that could be disastrous for Liverpool as Lyon's next game is against Fiorentina - in a match ...

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