A Brief Meditation on Wesley Sneijder (& his deriders)

John Guillem takes a brief look at Dutch maestro Wesley Sneijder, once the best player in world football…

Wesley Sneijder used to be the best player in the world. No, really. By which I mean he was the key performer for the most successful team of a specific season (perhaps you know what I’m talking about) as well as joint top-scoring in the World Cup for the beaten finalists. Certainly there was an element of fortune to some of those goals (one against Brazil in particular springs to mind), and his performance was a little overhyped in that tournament, but in the 2009-10 Champions League he was excellent (and in Serie A and the Coppa Italia, only less so), and – if not then, then certainly by now – his performances for his club that year were overlooked. Continue reading

The Dud Tie? Galatasaray v Schalke

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John Guillem previews the Champions League tie that has had everyone talking. No, not that one…

So, is it? Well, that is, I mean to say, other than Porto/Malaga. An unfortunate consequence (if you look at it one way) of the scale of Michel Platini’s little pumpkin is that, alas, you get random teams (that is, clubs which you aren’t used to being continually namechecked or at least mentioned in passing by the domestic sports press) making it out of the group stages, setting up damp squib ties against real teams that ruin the ‘the chaaaampiiooooons’ vibe of the competition, and in some ghastly cases even providing both sides of the matchup. Alas, it’s happened again this year (not once but twice indeed), which is shit. I mean, who the fuck are Schalke? More importantly, what is a Galatasaray? I certainly won’t be watching it, and neither should you. Continue reading

Wesley Sneijder and the Problem of 10

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Following Wesley Sneijder’s move to Turkey, The False Nine’s Simon Smith looks at the multidimensional position of the ‘number 10’…

As Wesley Sneijder completes his move to Galatasaray, Internazionale – and perhaps world football in general – need to take stock and ask why a player once revered as a magician of his generation has been allowed to leave for a paltry fee rumoured to be as little as £8 million. Continue reading