Apalak

Through the grainy monochrome of a minute-long footage from a match that happened more than ninety years ago, one can still see a robust footballer dribbling past a nagging defender with confident ease. He enters the box, which came without…

The 1970 FIFA World Cup was held in Mexico. It was the first World Cup to be televised in colour, staged outside of Europe or South America, and allowed for in-match substitutions. Red and yellow cards were introduced for the first time in…

After a weak season by their standards in 1893/94 when they finished second, six points behind Aston Villa, Sunderland returned strongly for the 1894/95 season. Their first game of the season against Derby County at home is a famous one in…

To most football fans of our times, Sunderland has always been an average, if not categorically weak, football club that, despite its huge support base, has had no notable successes in the modern era. The club's biggest claim to fame in the…

The 1966 FIFA World Cup was held in England, the birthplace of modern football. The Beatles were preparing for the release of Revolver, the Vietnam War was ongoing, and Martin Luther King was leading rallies in Chicago. England were a…

The magical day on which Cape Verde achieved their first FIFA World Cup qualification will be remembered for a really long time. Cape Verde had been under Portuguese rule up until 1975. Its football team played the first ever…

Most football fans have one or a few iconic stadiums that come to their minds when asked what ground they would wish to experience a football match at. Some say Anfield, while many votes go to the Signal Iduna Park, and others suggest…

The 1978 FIFA World Cup was staged in Argentina. It was the last time that just 16 countries competed in a World Cup. This tournament marks another dark chapter in the history of the World Cups, as it became the perfect occasion of…

When I was growing up, often in my neighbourhood playground, there were heated arguments between groups of kids who wanted to play cricket and those who wanted to play football, respectively. One of the many justifications regularly…

FIFA hates it if someone commits the heinous sin of “mixing politics and sports" unless of course it's their kind of politics. And in FIFA’s more than a century-long history, their brand of politics has often been very difficult to evaluate…