Nick Smith

It’s those men again. Despite catcalls in Kharkiv, derision in Donetsk and vilification in Lviv, the longest-running comedy show in Ukraine shows no indication of planning for a graceful retirement. The question today is how much longer the Football Federation …

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When ex-Manchester United striker Dong Fangzhuo left Legia Warsaw on August 1, a brief yet beautiful piece of football symmetry disappeared with him. The first Chinese player in Poland may have featured in only six games in just over five …

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Football teams wishing to be taken seriously at a World Cup should probably avoid losing all of their group games, especially if they concede twelve goals and score just one in doing so. Registering a striker as a goalkeeper in …

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After seeing off Egypt in the latest installment of the world’s most violent international football rivalry to qualify for the World Cup, Algeria should be feeling pretty pleased with themselves. The USA, meanwhile, are participating in their fifth straight World …

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It starts with a sudden lowering of the voice. Two quick glances to either side, a furtive slug of the glass, and the mysteries are revealed. Never mind the hand of Thierry Henry and the referee who was told to …

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Summer 2004 saw 250,000 people turn Athens upside down in celebrating Greece’s shock victory in Euro 2004. Fast forward six years and the streets of the capital are full once again, although under very different circumstances. With the nation in …

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With star striker Nicklas Bendtner already thrown out of London nightspot Boujis last year with his trousers around his knees, the worry for Denmark ahead of their fourth World Cup finals campaign is that the coming month will leave them …

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Russia has never been short of a ghost or two. The restless souls of Ivan the Terrible and Lenin’s would-be assassin Fanni Kaplan roam the walls and towers of Moscow, whilst the folk of Saint Petersburg rub shoulders with Princess …

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Five referees. Wage caps. The 6+5 rule. Michel Platini may be on a mission to over-complicate just about everything in European football, but on some subjects nobody can accuse him of neglecting the essentials. Take his visit to Kyiv in …

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One year ago, an unusually reckless observer suggested that Shakhtar Donetsk, pride of Ukraine’s coal-mining Donbass region, were digging themselves into a hole at a rate which would have had Alexey Stakhanov going weak at the knees. One UEFA Cup …

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As everybody knows, the most famous Count of them all had no reflection and could only be seen by others, never by himself. A curious inversion of this phenomenon appears to have recently afflicted FC Moscow coach Miodrag Bozovic. Long …

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- How come nobody ever heard of you? I mean, how come you ain’t got a reputation? (Support Your Local Sheriff!, 1969) With the visibly terrified Shakhtar Donetsk midfielder Jadson looking like he’d just been told that one of the …

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