By Sportingintelligence 22 November 2011 Borussia Dortmund’s manager Juergen Klopp has dismissed stories that his brilliant 19-year-old German international attacking midfielder Mario Goetze could be on his way to Arsenal for £30m in January as ‘a media issue’. In an interview with the Sport1 website in his native country, Klopp said: “No one just buys […]
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The Yellow Wall of Dortmund: the beauty of the Bundesliga in a single terrace
By Nick Harris 16 September 2010 The biggest standing terrace in the whole of European football – and possibly the world, email us if you know different – is the ‘Yellow Wall’ at the home ground of Borussia Dortmund. It holds 25,000. Elsewhere on sportingintelligence today we carry a feature about the Bundesliga. Here are […]
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Man Utd pip Real Madrid and Barca in global shirt sales league
By Alex Miller 16 October 2016 Manchester United have regained their status as the world’s most popular football club by sales of official replica shirts according to authoritative new research. The Old Trafford club sold an average of 1.75m shirts per year in the five-season period from 2011-12 to 2015-16 inclusive. That puts them in the […]
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Euro 2016 squads: cost £2.2bn but worth more than double
By Nick Harris 10 June 2016 Two interesting and credible studies published this week have attempted to quantify the cost (and separately, the value) of the 24 squads that will contest Euro 2016, which begins this evening in Paris when hosts France face Romania at the Stade de France. The first was conducted by Profit […]
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‘Shakhtar’s story is beyond sport: exiled, denuded but dreaming’
By Tim Rich in Kiev 27 April 2016 “I remember my last day in Donetsk,” says Darijo Srna, the captain of Shakhtar, a football club in exile. “It was 16 May 2014. We were told we had to leave quickly. I didn’t take anything from my home. We just took the two cars. My shirts […]
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In quest to find divine, Ranieri makes exceedingly good point
Screen Break By Martin Kelner To sponsor this column, see foot of page 18 April 2016 Does God support a Premier League football team? I’m not a religious man, I only ask because there has been an uncommon amount of talk this week about divine intervention. I was otherwise engaged […]
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‘Fluke or finance, the title processions in Europe in 2012-13 should be a serious concern’
* EUROPE’S major leagues delivered a string of titles by procession in Spring 2013 as a group of the biggest, richest clubs across the continent romped to runaway victories. Most leagues have always had one or two dominant clubs but is there something else afoot now? And what if anything does that say about the […]
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From £200m Messi to £20m Lukaku: Europe’s 60 most valuable players this summer
By Nick Harris 17 June 2013 There are 60 footballers in the ‘Big 5’ leagues of Europe who each carry a market value of £20m-plus this summer. The world’s best and most expensive player is Barcelona’s Lionel Messi, whose ‘guide price’ is between €217m and €253m (£185m-£215m). Next comes Real Madrid’s Cristiano Ronaldo (£87m-£101m), then […]
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REVEALED: Manchester City rise to top of global pay charts, Dodgers soar to challenge
By Nick Harris 11 June 2013 Manchester City are the best paid team in global sport according to Sportingintelligence’s Global Sports Salaries Survey (GSSS) for 2013, compiled in association with ESPN The Magazine and published this week to coincide with The Magazine’s ‘Money Issue’ (cover below). The average first-team pay at City, who have been transformed […]
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Tell me why … my Wembley trips with Wrexham bode badly for Bundesliga’s finest
* Wembley, the national stadium and spiritual home of English football, will host the 2013 Champions League final later this month when Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund face each other. The German clubs come from a footballing nation where tickets are cheap, travel to matches is free or subsidised – and the average supporter isn’t […]
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