Cultured Footbal #17
The 39 best players age 21 or under
And so, two very rich teams who have spent a lot of money managed to beat two other very rich teams that also spent a lot of money to make it to the Champions League final. Cynicism aside, you have to feel for Manchester City fans who have been deprived of the emotion of witnessing this momentous achievement in person. Hopefully, they won’t be completely deprived of being at the final and common sense prevails with UEFA moving the game to England rather than Istanbul. After all, UEFA has been stressing in recent weeks that it is the paladin of the downtrodden and football fans, right?
Sarcasm aside, this has been another great week of football writing and it is a pleasure to bring a varied collection of stories. Enjoy.
The remarkable Japanese goalkeeper who’s sidestepped the passing of time
As someone who loves to read and write football stories with a human interest, this one was always going to be a favourite. Since Mito HollyHock’s (check out their cool badge, BTW) promotion to Japan’s J2 league and resulting move to professional status 22 years ago, they have had just one goalkeeper: Koji Homma. As the article says ‘meet your new favourite player’.
Cagliari’s Giovanni Simeone: ‘As a kid, my old man was my idol’
Giovanni Simeone is one of those players whom I make the mistake of perennially considering to be young when he is 25; still young, obviously, but in a footballing sense it is the age when one is expected to be reaching their maturity. So far, he has carved out a more than decent career for himself but he is coming to the point where he needs to make the big jump in quality – particularly of the team he is playing for – if he wants to fulfil his ambition of scoring in the Champions League and kiss the competition’s logo that he had tattooed when he was 13 years old.
How the big-headed football collectibles took the world by storm
I have never really understood the allure of Corinthian figures; quite simply I found them to be too ugly. Yet it seems that I’m very much in a minority here given that, going by this article, “82 per cent of all boys in the UK had purchased at least four.” And I’m always up to hearing how something like that came into being in the first place which is why I thoroughly enjoyed the interview.
Does football care about mental health?
For footballers, a strong mental attitude is considered to be necessary if they want to succeed which in turn means that any player who admits to struggling with mental issues is automatically considered too frail to be relied on. Or, at least, that has been the historic view. Matters are improving – slowly, but improving nevertheless – although there is still a lot to be done. After all, as psychologist Dr. Thorsten Leber says in this deeply reflective piece, “with such topics we are all the same. It doesn't matter whether you are a pro footballer or a cleaner. It affects everyone the same."
The 39 best players age 21 or under
As Messi’s and Ronaldo’s stars slowly begin to wane, the search is on for football’s next superstars. The likelihood is that the names that will dominate the game over the next decade will be among those highlighted here by Tor-Kristian Karlsen, the football scout and former chief executive at AS Monaco. Many of these are already pretty well known, some will cause a surprise and it all makes for an interesting exercise of ‘imagine’.
Last Week’s Most Read
It seems that I’m not the only one wistful over being able to travel to a foreign land and catch a game in a new stadium given that the article going over names of Italian stadia ended up being last week’s most read.
It was not the most read article last week but enough people read through David Weatherston’s preview of the Norwegian league for me to signal that the second part of that preview is out now.