Innholdsfortegnelse for January 2026 i FourFourTwo UK

X @JamesAndrew_ E james.andrew@futurenet.com Just when football was in danger of becoming too predictable, along came 2025 to buck the trend and prove beyond doubt that the unexpected can always still happen. After years of dominance in the Premier League, there were zero trophies won by Manchester City this year. Instead we saw Crystal Palace secure their first ever major trophy and Newcastle bring an end to their 70-year wait for domestic silverware. Spurs won their first European trophy in four decades as they beat Manchester United to lift the Europa League, while Paris Saint-Germain claimed their first Champions League. On the international front, England retained both the Women’s Euros and the Under-21 Euros, but neither team did it the easy way. The new version of the Club World Cup,…

01 Who managed PSG to the first Champions League triumph in the club’s history, and in doing so became a Treble winner for the second time in his managerial career? 02 In which stadium was the 2025 Champions League Final held? 03 How many English league titles have Liverpool won following their 2024-25 Premier League triumph? 04 Crystal Palace won their first major trophy when they beat Manchester City to lift the FA Cup in May. Who scored the winning goal? 05 Scott McTominay’s 18th-place finish in the 2025 Ballon d’Or vote was the highest by a Scotsman since which 1983 runner-up? 06 Who was the leading goalscorer in Europe’s top five leagues during the 2024-25 season, with 31 goals? 07 Colombian Jhon Duran was the most expensive signing of…

Two things are pretty much certain with the Africa Cup of Nations these days – whatever the original plan was, the tournament will end up taking place in a different country and at a completely different time of year. Ivory Coast was initially due to host the 2021 tournament but staged the 2023 event instead, which was moved to January and February 2024 to avoid the summer rainy season. The 2025 AFCON was originally supposed to take place in Guinea in June and July – they weren’t going to be ready in time, so it was switched to Morocco and then rescheduled to… Christmas?! At least it starts in the right year on this occasion – the tournament was moved from the summer to avoid a clash with FIFA’s expanded…

There’s an artificial football pitch at the southern edge of Stockholm’s Sodermalm island, flanked by a couple of modest stands. A rickety wooden terrace sits at each end. Unless you’re looking for it, the whole thing is easily missed, but every matchday the home of Hammarby’s women’s team comes alive with sound, colour and joy. The club’s following is unique in the women’s game. Simon Sandstrom is a former capo – the leader of the chanting – for Hammarby’s men’s team, and is credited with making that so after his daughter asked why the women’s side didn’t have much support. Sandstrom insists, however, on also mentioning the club’s under-the-radar tifo creators. “It’s embarrassing that there’s been so much focus on me and my daughter,” he tells FourFourTwo. “Without the very…

Coventry City have been here before. In 1967, Jimmy Hill’s Sky Blues won the Second Division and were promoted to the top flight for the first time in their history. Lifelong innovator Hill took the unusual step of resigning to launch a television career, but Coventry stuck around in the top flight for 34 years. As FFT arrives at the Coventry Building Society Arena on an autumn afternoon, the club are flying high in the second tier once again, and the nods to past generations feel especially potent. A statue of George Curtis and John Sillett holding the FA Cup was unveiled in April. At the other end of a shuttered clutch of food and drink kiosks waiting for the next home match, a Memorial Garden is a regular stop…

You’re about to step down as Hearts chair and become honorary president. Is there a moment from these past 11 years you look back on with pride? The day I won’t forget is the end of the first season, walking around the pitch holding the trophy when we won the Championship – that division included Rangers and Hibs. A few months earlier, we were almost dead and buried. That sentiment came back from the stands and it was brilliant. I thought, ‘Maybe I’ve done the right thing here.’ Take us back to 2014 – what were your first impressions of Hearts? When I first got involved with what became Foundation of Hearts, I got my first real insight. It was utterly frustrating because there was no real direction, it was…

At 26, most football fans are worrying about which pub to meet their mates at on a matchday. Matt Porter isn’t most football fans. By that age, he was already running his boyhood EFL club, Leyton Orient, as chief executive – responsible for trying to keep the lower-league side afloat. Not a supporter of the League One outfit but feel like you know the name? That might be because Porter, who is now 45, is more widely recognised as the chief executive of the Professional Darts Corporation (PDC), overseeing events including the Premier League and the World Championship at the Alexandra Palace. “Football is still my first love,” says Porter, who now serves at Orient as a non-executive director. “But it doesn’t affect me today as much as it used…

Brian Clough’s go-to centre-half looks back at bollockings from Old Big ’Ead, Derby’s glory days and the curious pathway his managerial career followed You worked with the great Brian Clough at Sunderland, Derby and Nottingham Forest. How was your relationship with him? Initially, I was in his bad books. When I joined Sunderland as an apprentice, he was still fighting to recover from the knee injury that would shortly end his career. He then became my youth coach and all of us had specific jobs to do. I cleaned the first-team dressing room once the senior players had gone home. One day, the rest of the lads set me up, saying the dressing room was empty, so I walked in, only to be confronted by Brian, some other coaches and…

GREAT SCOTT GLASGOW, UK Scott McTominay was a hero in Scotland already after his goals sent them to the last Euros – against Denmark, his overhead kick put them on course for the World Cup. Kieran Tierney and Kenny McLean scored stunners, too – shall we just let them share next year’s Puskas Award? Pic Andrew Milligan/Alamy “ER, LET GO, PAL? I CAN’T BREATHE…” WOLVERHAMPTON, UK Everton fans had a plan after a win at Wolves – one lured Jack Grealish in with a ‘Can I have your shirt?’ sign, before another promptly put him in a headlock. The poor bloke was probably beginning to wonder if they were secret Birmingham City fans… Pic Dan Istitene/Getty PRIDE OF PLACE WESTCLIFF-ON-SEA, UK Are you even really a proper football fan until you’ve built…

PRESTON 2 WATFORD 2 Third Division, 1975 “Bobby Charlton signed me for North End when I was 17. I was a Preston boy. My dad had played for the club. I was at right-back for my debut that day. One of the problems in that position was that I was on the edge of the pitch and all my mates were stood there for the first half, so you can imagine the abuse I got! But I even managed to nutmeg Bobby Downes, which was like a major win, and Nobby Stiles, who was assistant to Bobby, said, ‘That’s my boy!’ I’ll never forget that. If I had only played that one game for my hometown team and no-one else in my career, I still would’ve been happy.” REPUBLIC OF…

One of the best parts of live broadcasting is being able to tell a story as it happens – you never really know what you’re going to get. Back in October, Nottingham Forest welcomed Chelsea to the City Ground, and once the full-time whistle blew it was anything but a standard post-match wrap-up. Forest boss Ange Postecoglou, only 39 days into the job, had been under increasing pressure ahead of the game. Although there was a narrative that a negative result could potentially lead to a change in management at the club, the timing of his sacking took everyone by surprise. I was reporting for TNT Sports and after the game, while waiting by the interview room, I noticed Postecoglou leaving the dressing room and heading down the corridor. A…

3 JOAO NEVES VS TOULOUSE For Paris Saint-Germain in 2025, the stars aligned, fate converged and magic happened. A year of moment after moment, each unforgettable. Barcelona bittersweetheart Ousmane Dembele was relaunched as a French national treasure, but others sometimes shone even brighter under the spotlight, for one game at least. In a Ligue 1 fixture on a baking hot August evening in Toulouse, the referee awarded four penalties, PSG won 6-3, yet the headlines belonged to Joao Neves, largely for what he did in the first 15 minutes. That’s what happens when a central midfielder scores two overhead kicks in quick succession. The pint-sized Portuguese even had the taste for a third, rifling the ball top bins and wheeling away with three fingers raised to the fans: a little…

You don’t usually join Chelsea halfway through a Club World Cup. And you definitely don’t normally land at the tournament, lace up your boots, then immediately win the thing. Joao Pedro, apparently, didn’t get the memo. One moment he was enjoying a bit of downtime in Brazil, the next he’d completed a £60 million deal and was on a flight to the United States to join his new team-mates, knee-deep in the quarter-finals of the revamped tournament, chasing glory on the global stage to follow up their triumph in the Conference League. A week after linking up with Chelsea, though, Pedro had bagged a dazzling brace on his first start for his new team, against his boyhood club Fluminense in the semi-finals, before finishing things off with the cheekiest of…

One year ago, Lee Carsley had the weight of the world on his shoulders – or the weight of England, at least. Greece had just come to Wembley and won after the Three Lions’ interim boss – in place following Gareth Southgate’s post-Euro 2024 exit – experimented with playing Jude Bellingham in a false nine role. It hadn’t worked as hoped. Similar moments have sent other managerial careers into decline in the past, but 12 months on, Carsley’s stock is firmly on the rise again – to such an extent that he’s now being viewed as a frontrunner to replace Thomas Tuchel on a permanent basis, whenever the England job becomes available again. Carsley’s blip lasted only one night. His England side hit back with a 3-0 win in Greece,…

GEOVANY QUENDA SPORTING, 18 Having already agreed to join Chelsea at the end of this season, Quenda could prove to be the Blues’ answer to Bukayo Saka – if the Portuguese winger is given the same trust and pathway. In the modern era, truly elite players combine footballing talent with frightening athleticism, and Quenda does just that, explaining why Chelsea agreed a £44 million deal to sign him from Sporting back in March. The clubs decided that he would remain with the Portuguese giants during 2025-26, before finally making the move to London next summer. The Blues’ stockpiling of aspiring stars in recent years has been a bone of contention for fans of rival clubs, but one thing you can’t knock is their talent spotting. Quenda was born in former…

His own stag do in Nashville couldn’t stop Harry Hugo watching a football match – even if it was a Surrey Senior Cup clash between Farnham Town and Tooting & Mitcham. Hugo, Farnham’s owner and chairman, was rewarded for his dedication with a victory. “If you don’t throw yourself at it, you aren’t going to succeed,” he tells FFT. “If I say I’m going to do something, then I’m going to do it, and I’m going to do it f**king well!” Hugo watches every single Farnham game, whether live or on streams. He has consumed them while in the Saudi Arabian desert, in the Maldives and up Bangkok skyscrapers. Following his nuptials, Farnham topped the 2024-25 Isthmian League Division One South Central to make it two consecutive promotions. Twelve months…

Since English football’s ‘rebirth’ in 1992, few Premier League alumni have tumbled quite as far down the pyramid as Bradford City. They were a top-flight outfit as recently as 2001, but swiftly suffered three relegations in the space of seven years, and have been bouncing between League One and League Two ever since. The Bantams’ latest slide into the fourth tier came at the end of 2018-19 – with a string of managers failing to get them back on their feet thereafter. All of this despite a huge support that saw an average of around 17,000 fans pack into their Valley Parade surrounds for League Two contests. That was until current gaffer Graham Alexander, formerly of Salford and MK Dons, became the latest to try his hand in November 2023,…

Even now, at 37 years of age, Nemanja Matic is still controlling football matches. After passing the 150-appearance mark at both Chelsea and Manchester United, winning two Premier League titles along the way, the Serbian international left England for Roma in 2022. Two seasons in France followed with Rennes and Lyon, before the latter had to sell stars to comply with financial regulations – avoiding an enforced relegation to the second tier by the DNGC, the body that oversees the accounts of professional clubs in the country. That prompted a summer return to Italy with freshly promoted Sassuolo, who made an encouraging mid-table start to the new Serie A campaign. “I’m enjoying it,” Matic tells us, as he sits down for a conversation with FourFourTwo. “It’s a well-organised club and…

@markwhlte ANDONI IRAOLA This was the year that one man, doubted from the outset, rose above all others to prove just what a genius he was, even after losing key allies along the way. But enough about Alan Carr’s Celebrity Traitors victory – Andoni Iraola’s had a decent 12 months at Bournemouth, too. The Basque boss has been near flawless since arriving in 2023 – without his assistant manager because of visa issues, and with one recognised midfielder due to injuries. He then lost his star striker and four of his back five within three windows. Astonishingly, he led Bournemouth to back-to-back best points tallies in the top flight – people don’t realise how hard that is to do at Dean Court. Eddie Howe took the club to the top…

Under the lights of Basel’s St Jakob-Park, the chants of “It’s coming home” roared through the Swiss night air. When Chloe Kelly’s penalty rippled the net, no-one could quite believe what they were watching. For the second time in three years, the Lionesses had done it – another European Championship trophy was won, and with it a nation had fallen in love with them all over again. England’s summer is the story of a team that refused to give in. When the chips were down, they never folded. Some familiar faces, some new heroes; some recycled chants, some freshly penned. But the feeling was unchanged. Joy. Relief. Pride. “It was such a great moment for women’s sport,” explains Lionesses legend Alex Scott, when asked about the pride she felt watching…

The room erupts. Not with cheers, but laughter. There are around 400 people at Gateshead’s Hilton Hotel, including Dan Burn, and a joke has just been cracked on the microphone at the defender’s expense. The joker is Alan Shearer – a hero to so many Newcastle fans, not least Burn himself. Earlier that day, Burn had endured one of his toughest 90 minutes as a Newcastle player – well, 64 minutes to be precise. That was the time he was substituted, having given up a penalty that Carlton Morris dispatched to put Luton 3-2 up at St James’ Park. They went 4-2 ahead three minutes later and enough was enough – Burn was hooked. The bizarre contest eventually finished 4-4, which spared Newcastle’s blushes, but not Burn’s. His reputation had…

For vastly different reasons, the number 20 took on a special significance for Liverpool in 2025. Firstly, in April, the club sealed a record-equalling 20th English league title, drawing level with fierce rivals Manchester United in Arne Slot’s first season at the helm. Then, in July – the confetti from those joyous celebrations barely swept away – came the devastating news that one of that champion squad had suddenly and tragically passed away. Diogo Jota, just 28 years old, a father of three and newly married, was killed in a road accident, alongside his younger brother Andre, on a motorway in northern Spain. “That news broke my heart,” former Liverpool striker Djibril Cisse tells FFT. “I loved the guy, as a man and a player. He was a sweet guy.…

XI BEST: Keiren Westwood, Rory Delap, Dean Walling, Jon Mellish, Danny Grainger, Rod Thomas, Callum Guy, Paul Conway, Francois Zoko, Michael Bridges, Jabo Ibehre. WORST: Shamal George, Christie Elliott, Mike Edwards, Harry Worley, Shaun Smith, Mark Rivers, Alex Marrow, Canice Carroll, Tyrese Omotoye, Elias Sorensen, Richard Offiong. PLAYER B: Michael Bridges was a genius who elevated a top-seven side to runaway champions in 2005-06 – the equivalent of Peter Beardsley in the early ’80s. W: For someone who came in with so much hype from Newcastle, Elias Sorensen was complete dross. MOMENT B: I mean, I can’t really say anything other than the Jimmy Glass goal, can I? The elation as the ball hit the back of the net… it will never be repeated. W: Jonny Howson’s last-minute goal for…

The Blackburn legend talks about playing for his boyhood club, World Cup heartbreak and one of the Premier League’s most infamous bloopers You were subbed on and off in 11 minutes on your Blackburn debut, then scored the winning penalty in a League Cup tie in your second game. That must have been a whirlwind? Blackburn are my hometown club and I joined them when I was eight, going through the academy. We were still a second division team around the late ’80s, so I saw the club rise dramatically under owner Jack Walker and manager Kenny Dalglish, and it was an exciting time. It was a dream come true to make my debut, but I was sacrificed soon after and it wasn’t the best start. After scoring the penalty…