In one of the most remarkable stories of the season, we have witnessed a fairy tale happen in Sweden. A story not dissimilar to that of Leicester City winning the Premier League. In stark contrast to Leicester’s historical title win, Mjällby AIF resides in the small fishing village of Hällevik, also part of the Sölvesborg Municipality in Blekinge County.

Welcome back to Niche Football Journalism. This week, we have a different kind of article. If you listened to the podcast from Thursday, you may understand why we have released this today. We’ve had guests on the podcast recently, and we tend to tell stories from all around the world that do not often get the light of day in the modern mainstream media. However, today, we are looking at something that has come out in recent days and that has caused a huge stir in the world of football. The 2026 World Cup ticket prices.  

This isn’t a rant about FIFA charging too much for their tickets. Unfortunately, FIFA is the governing body and is free to charge what it wants. The issue is that the average football fan is now being priced out because of this.

In years gone by, it has been projected that FIFA has become a greedy organisation and will go to extreme lengths to squeeze every penny out of the people who make the game what it is, the fans.

Across the globe, football is played from grassroots to professional. From the less economically developed nations to the most, there is almost always a connection with the beautiful game. At the very top of the game, we find the usual suspects: Liverpool, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, and so on. Outside of Europe, we find the giants of South America with Boca, River Plate and Flamengo. Africa can boast of the Egyptian giants, and Morocco can bring forward their teams from Casablanca.

CONCACAF steps into the ring with representatives from Mexico and the United States, while Asia promotes the Japanese, Korean, and Middle Eastern teams. But what about Oceania? Since the beginning of the beautiful game, Oceania has been behind the other continents in terms of footballing progress. The shining light of the Oceania Football Confederation was Australia; however, they have since moved to the Asian Football Confederation to pursue tougher challenges, which they believe will help their nation succeed. 

Now, the Champions League has kicked off for the 25/26 season, and the regular names are amongst the competition. Real Madrid, Liverpool, Barcelona and so on. Then you see the name, Pafos FC, who? You may be thinking. Who is this team that has made it to the Champions League proper?

Most young footballers dream of playing international football for England. Some forge long, decorated careers, while others international careers fade into obscurity. 

Let’s look at ten “one cap wonders” - players whose England careers were all too brief.

A mild night in the Jetisu region of Kazakhstan produced one of the most remarkable stories in football from the last decade. The once capital city of Kazakhstan, Almaty, brought fever dreams to life with the performance of the football club, Kairat. A nation with a league ranked 34th in the UEFA Coefficient rankings has produced an incredible feat by reaching the Champions League, League Phase.

This is not the first time a Kazakhstan side has reached the promised land. FC Astana appeared in the Champions League in the 2015-16 season, although they did not progress past the group stage. Historically, Astana are the most successful team in Kazakhstan, winning the title on seven occasions.

The Chinese Super League was a hot topic of conversation five to ten years ago. Attracting the biggest stars from the beautiful game, offering outlandish wages and incentives to bring the very best to the country. With all the money and all the attention globally, the Chinese Super League still has not been the success it once tried to become.

Referees are the mutually agreed-upon unpopular figure on the football pitch. Fans hurl abuse at officials at every game, players argue with a lot of their decisions, and managers will get in the ear of the fourth official. The majority of what happens is just an exchange of words, usually people telling how the referee got a decision wrong. All is forgotten afterwards, and everyone from both sides moves on to the next game.  

The “Barclaysman” is a term thrown around in general pub chat while watching the Premier League Sunday fixtures with a few mates and a few more beers. But what is a “Barclaysman”? Often used to describe a player with cult status amongst fans, not necessarily the best players, but one that embodied what it was to be a footballer in the Premier League during the Barclays Bank sponsorship era from 200 to 2016.

With that in mind, we have devised a starting XI full of prime Barclaysmen. Let’s take a trip down memory lane.

Russia, not a popular country in the current era amidst all the happenings with Ukraine and the threats to other nations. Thankfully, this is a football article, so we don’t have to get into the weeds with all that. Instead, let’s focus on the Russian Premier League, which has just kicked off.

The league consists of the usual names, such as Zenit Saint Petersburg, Rubin Kazan and the Moscow clubs CSKA, Spartak and Lokomotiv. All clubs that have represented the country on the European stage.

There are always those players who, when mentioned, strike fear into opponents. The likes of Roy Keane, a bruiser of a central midfield player who would leave it all on the pitch, and sometimes off it, to give his team the best chance of coming away with three points.

In a different vein, there are the likes of George Elokobi and Adebayo Akinfenwa. Both are extremely strong and use size as an advantage. Aggression, size, mentality and strong desires to win, all combined, can produce a somewhat ‘scary’ footballer. However, these are all traits and abilities used on the pitch. Who then is the most dangerous footballer off the pitch?

By now, we are used to seeing British footballers play abroad. Harry Kane scoring goals for fun in Munich, Bellingham lighting it up in Madrid, and more recently, a gold rush of players to the Saudi Pro League.

But beyond the headlines, there’s a wave of British footballers making names for themselves in unexpected corners of the world, away from the bright lights of Europe or the money from America or Saudi Arabia.

As football fans, we all choose a team and the majority keep this team close to their heart through thick and thin, and for many, through a lifetime. It’s the beauty of the sport. Internationally, there is the opportunity to support the nation of your birth, your ancestral nation or even the nation you reside in.

What if, though, your nation stepped away from the sport? To top this off, what if the people behind the scenes did not give an official reasoning for why the beloved game was pulled? Amidst all the controversy, a story emerges.

Ali Dia claimed to be George Weah’s cousin, tricked his way into Southampton’s squad, and delivered the most infamous cameo in Premier League history.

Loyalty, almost a forgotten concept in the modern game. Big money transfer moves are tempting the very best to the Goliaths of football. Nearly every top player dreams of that big move with the ambition to win countless trophies and play amongst the best every year. Is there more to this game than winning, though?

Well, once upon a time, yes, loyalty to a club wasn’t uncommon. Now, though, finding a player to be a one-club man is very rare. Even some of the greats, such as Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard, albeit club icons, weren’t one-club men.

In most leagues, a Player of the Match award earns you a handshake, a sponsored trophy or maybe a bottle of champagne. In Norway, it can mean walking off the pitch with four trays of eggs, or in one case, a freshly slaughtered pig.

In the modern era of football stadiums, many of these multimillion-pound establishments feel like sterile concrete bowls that just seem to lack something.

Maybe a bit of personality. They are supposed to be theatres. Places where thousands of people’s cherished memories and heartbreaks are stored. And yet, for a lot of top-level stadiums, they seem to follow a similar pattern, rectangular pitch with plastic seats and overpriced pints and pies.

Football is a sport full of fate and folklore, superstitions and coincidences, curses and prophecies. Throughout the history of the sport, there have been many examples of strange hoodoos that follow certain players and clubs, and never seem to let them go. Here is a quick tour through some of the strangest stories that refuse to go away.

When Crawley Town let fans vote on a transfer decision using NFTs in 2022, eyebrows were raised across the football world. To some, it was a revolutionary new model of supporter ownership powered by blockchain. To others, it looked like a tech gimmick and a novelty more at home in Silicon Valley than in League Two.

The last six years will have felt like an eternity for AIK Solna fans. With a last league title coming back in 2018, AIK has fallen victim to Malmö’s sustained dominance of the Allsvenskan in recent times, as the club has found itself languishing with underachievement in the Swedish top-flight.