United Rant

Dear Sir Alex, Thanks

Football serves an odd function – and if you are reading this there’s a good chance that you really care about it. I am endlessly fascinated by what football represents to those of us who become so invested in the outcome of a few men kicking a ball around that it is transformed into drama, [...]

Berbanigma

I don’t actually know what the weather is typically like in Bulgaria, but I’m going to guess that the winters are chilly. And a good job too, because Dimitar Berbatov will have had some practice at being out in the cold; his position in the Manchester United pecking order is a solid fourth choice. Rooney’s [...]

Donate to Rant Cast

We really, really appreciate you listening to Rant Cast, our weekly podcast, and both Ed and Paul really enjoy doing it. We’ve done a show almost every single week for the past season and a half, and quite a few the season before that, and of course we wouldn’t do it if we didn’t love [...]

The genuine, non sarcastic, magic of the Cup

The Paul Ansorge column appears each month in Rant Monthly. Once upon a time the magic of the Cup was a term with very different usage. 2012’s FA Cup will see that phrase used by television marketers to add glamour to ties that see the elite clubs of the land field third string midfielders away to [...]

Football Manager 2012 review

Football Manager 2012 is absolutely, totally and utterly brilliant. I can’t imagine that surprises you much, dear reader. Football Manager has been absolutely, totally and utterly brilliant since it was called Championship Manager, and there was a Mitre Magma on the cover. What is really such an extraordinary achievement is that they really do just [...]

Review: “Red” by Gary Neville

There are moments in “Red”, Gary Neville’s autobiography, when you are reminded what an absolutely extraordinary career he, his brother and – as he never fails to refer to them – “Butty, Becks, Giggsy and Scholesey” had together. In the second batch of photographs included there is an image, captured in the dressing room before [...]

Fifa 11 Review – the best football game in the world but is that enough?

Rant almost always refers to itself in the third person, but when you’re attempting to critically appraise a work of art or entertainment, there really is no room for the third person – none of this is “Rant’s” opinion – it’s all mine. For the purposes of establishing credentials, I have a long history with [...]

Everybody sing! 5-2, even Berba scored…

Dimi’s come in for quite a bit of grief lately, which is vaguely understandable, but there’s much to celebrate about the languid Bulgarian. When he scored against Spurs, his apparently nonchalant turn away from the goal masked the massive relief. When he was mobbed by his team mates (surely a sign about the esteem they [...]