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The

Sports JournalistFootball edition

TOP

Stadiums

Graham Hunter“They are athletes they shouldn’t be in a farm never mind in the media.”

according to the journalists

THEBEST

FOOTBALL BOOKS

Special editionMay 2012

5Johanna Frändén

“Camp Nou is my second living room”

The journalists' Perspectiveand the players’...

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Editorialpage 4- 5

Quotes to rememberpage 6

Johanna Frändén pages 8-11

The players have the wordpages 12-13

Books to readpages 14-15

Graham Hunterpages 16- 21

The fans have the wordpages 22-23

The Legend page 24

Johanna Garåpages 26-27

The Journalists have the wordpages 22-23

16-21

CONTENTS

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22-23

26-27

8-11

14-15

24

Graham Hunterpages 16- 21

The fans have the wordpages 22-23

The Legend page 24

Johanna Garåpages 26-27

The Journalists have the wordpages 22-23

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CONTENTS

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EditorAlexandra Jonson

PicturesMinea Jonson, Alexandra Jonson, Dorota Rak, Backpress

Illustrations Dan Leydon, Margaretha Leide

Thanks to: Graham Hunter, Johanna Frändén, Johanna Garå, Bojan Djordjic, Pontus Jansson, Henok Goitom, Omid Nazari, Mohamed Ahmed, Armin Samandi, Dorota Rak, Emma Cardenas, Hady Ezzeddine, Yi Xun Cheng, Mónica Sanchéz, Dan Leydon, CAAndersson.

Email: alexandra_jonson@hotmail.com Twitter: @AlexandraJonsonPhone: +46707974091

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I’m only 18 years old, but since that day when I was 15 and realised that this was what I wanted to do, I’ve come a long way. This magazine is a school project, my biggest and final one, a one-year project, and the last year has been the year I’ve grown the most, as both a person and a journalist. I’ve always been shy, hated doing things that scared me, like calling or interviewing someone I don’t know. This year I’ve decided that all those obstacles holding me back from what I want to do, it’s time to defeat them.

So I decided to make a magazine about Sports Journalists with football focus. I’ve read their texts since I was 10 years old. As I myself now want to become one of them, I also want to know who they are. So I decided to do this. I picked out three journalists that I would love to meet and interview, Johanna Garå, Johanna Frändén and Graham Hunter. So I did something I would never have dared before, I contacted them and asked if they would like to help out. They were all happy to do that. I also felt I wanted to have the players’ perspective on media. So I contacted four players, Bojan Djordjic, Henok Goitom, Pontus Jansson and Omid Nazari who all said yes. In Decem-ber I went on a trip that would teach me a lot, for the first time I went abroad on my own. I went down to Barcleona, where I met up with two great friends that I know thanks to my dedica-tion to Barça and the fantastic sites www.totalBarca.com and www.totallygoats.com. Down there I was robbed of my phone, and later also missed my flight home. But I managed to solve those situations. And it was an amazing trip, because I had done something before the trip, which I’ve never really dared before, I had asked. I had managed to get an accreditation to the game between FC Barcelona B and UD Almeria, so that I could talk to Henok Goitom in the mixed zone, and I had also managed to get an interview with Graham Hunter, a great guy who, since then, has helped me out a lot. A year earlier this magazine hadn’t been possible to do because I was too shy and scared. But I’ve learnt that it’s worth asking, it’s worth taking the risk.

And now I can offer you a magazine with great interviews with three top journalists, with words from players, from fans, with wonderful illustrations and much more besides.

There is a drawer in my room, if you open it up you will find stacks of newspapers. I started to collect those papers when I was about 13 years old. As a kid my hero was Henrik Lars-son, and when I as a 10-year-old read a one-page text about his career from his childhood to top football, I realised I wanted to know more. I then started doing research and read everything I could come across about my hero. I even read a book and I read it twice. As a kid and still today, I’m not a too big fan of books, I’m too restless to sit down and read so much. But some books can make me do it anyway, books that are more like fact books, like this one. But reading articles and mostly columns became my thing. As a 13-year-old, now in love with Fútbol Club Barcelona, I came up with the idea, why don’t I save the best texts somewhere so I can read them over and over again. So whenever my teams, Barça or Malmö FF, had won something huge like a league title or Champions league, or just played an incredible game, I would save the newspaper or print a specific article from a web site, if I loved reading it. I collected them in my drawer, and whenever I have bad day, I will open that drawer and read and read, and I will smile and remember.

When I discovered as a kid that I liked doing the research and read about football, players and teams that interested me, I would bring a special notebook to school. In this notebook I would write about Larsson’s football career, after every weekend I would write down how many goals he scored, what prizes he won etc. I decided I would keep doing it until the day he stopped playing. Which I didn’t do but during all years in primary school I wrote in that notebook. But it was when I was 15 that I, for the first time realised I loved writing. I had written two columns in school, one about Barcelona’s youth academy La Masia, the other about a tennis game. I got the highest grade and I had never seen my teacher so impressed before. I under-stood I was good at it and that I loved it.

Editorial

Alexandra Jonson

EDITORIAL

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Quotes to

remember“Whoever wins today will win the championship, no matter who wins”

“In football everything is com-plicated by the presence of the opposite team”

“It looks dark on the Cam-eroon bench”

“Now something has happend... Oh, he blew the final whistle”

“Football is all very well a good game for rough girls, but not for delicate boys”

“I fell in love with football as I would later fall in love with women: suddenly, uncritically, giving no thought to the pain it would bring”

“Despite the rain, it’s still raining here at Old Trafford”

“Well Kerry, you’re 19 and you’re a lot older than a lot of people younger than yourself”

“Wilkins sends an inch perfect pass to no one in particular”

- Oscar Wilde

- Nick Hornby

- Byron Butler

- Jimmy Hill

- Mike Gray

- Bo Hansson

-Jean Paul Sartre

- Arne Hegerfors

- Denis Law

QUOTES TO REMEMBER

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- Denis Law

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Johanna Franden

Camp Nou is her second living room, she meets the superstars in the Spanish league on a regular basis and even if it would be the dream job for most Swedes, following Zlatan for one year was more than enough for her.

Johanna Frändén has the job most of us dream of. Lo-cated in Barcelona she is following what might be the best league in the world as well as the team some would say is the best there has ever been. Describing her job she says ”the best with my job is the freedom, I can plan it pretty much as I want and decide a lot myself.” But she argues it has its downsides as well. ”It can get quite boring and lonely not to sit in an office, it can also be hard to ex-change ideas with the bosses mostly because I’m the one with the best knowledge in this area”, she says.

.. ´

JOHANNA FRÄNDÉN

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Johanna Franden

“Swedish media isn’t as fawning as the Spanish”

JOHANNA FRÄNDÉN

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So how does one end up in such a luxury position?

To become a football journalist wasn’t the obvious choice for Johanna, although she played football until the age of 15 and has always been interested in sport and football. Johanna argues ”I was never a football nerd” and continues ”and I’m not really one now either, I like to have good knowledge about what I’m working with and think it’s fun to talk football, but I can easily shut it out when I have vacations etc.” although she admitted ”Ok, I look up the results from the weekend, but I don’t have any problem if I would miss a round of games”. So to become a football journalist wasn’t the first thing that struck Johanna’s mind and after High School she went on to study three years at the University in Lund before she realised that journalism, that could be fun. And after one year with Journalism at the University in Göteborg (Gothenburg) she started working as an intern at Sportbladet, the sports section of Aftonbladet. Nor was the focus of her internship an obvious choice. ”I thought, well, I like sport so that would be fun to try out”. She got the intern-ship and when it was over she was offered a summer job for the paper and from there it just continued.

Hola Barcelona

Later she would end up working as a freelance for Aftonbladet in Rome following Italian football, and AS Roma would become somewhat of a favourite team. ”But I’m not a fanatic fan, it’s more like a smile will cross my face if I see they have won”, she says. Working for Aftonbladet’s web site during the summer back home in Stockholm, Johanna noticed that with Zlatan Ibrahimovic transferred to Barcelona there was suddenly a full time job available in Spain. With her already good knowl-edge of Zlatan after her years in Italy and a white lie saying she knew Spanish, she got the job. With the new job also a new blog was started. ”Hola Barcelona” would become a success at Aftonbladet, where Johanna would share mostly the odd and fun things happening in La Liga. And as she discovered La Liga so would her readers, who today all for sure are aware of her ”love” for the Barcelona midfielder Andrés Iniesta.

Following Zlatan’s every step from the moment he arrived in Barcelona would have its glorious moments but also its dark ones. Working for Aftonbladet, a newspaper Ibrahimovic for years refused to talk to, didn’t offer the best conditions. When Zlatan moved back to Italy, Johanna was asked if she wanted to follow, but one year was more than enough. She would rather stay put in Barcelona.

The white lie that she knew Spanish, would come true, and in Spain Johanna has got compliments for her great Spanish. But some people are now expecting her to take it to the next level, to learn Catalan. At a press conference during the ongo-ing season, Johanna asked the Barcelona coach Guardiola a question in Spanish, Pep would give a long and well informed

answer back, but it was in Catalan. When Johanna finally got her message through to the Barça coach, that her question had actually been in Spanish and she would like an answer in the same language, Pep looked at her surprised and said ”I thought you would have learnt Catalan by now”.

Spanish media is incredibly frustrating

Working in both Sweden and Spain Johanna shares her view on the difference in her profession between the two countries. ”When it comes to sports journalism in Spain it’s incredibly biased. I would go so far as to question if what the big sports papers in Spain are doing really is journalism” continuing ”They write with ”their own” club’s best interest in mind. If for example FC Barcelona wants to ensure that a fight between two players is not written about, it won’t be, either”. The whole thing, she explains, is ”incredibly frustrating when you come from a journalistic culture and tradition that has transparency and ”tell all” as key words”. But the Swedish media has also got its dark spots, she agrees, although on a better level than in Spain. ”The Swedish journalism can sometimes be too clever

Zlatan Ibrahimovic was the one who took Johanna Frändén to Barcelona

JOHANNA FRÄNDÉN

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and seek conflicts but it’s in very few cases cringing and fawning”. But there is of course also good things about the media in Spain, and even if she is a girl working in what historically has been seen as a ”male profession” it’s nothing that has ever been a problem. ”Of course I’m aware of it and also aware of differ-ences” she says but argues ”I think I’ve always been treated as my male colleagues, and there are lots of female sports journalists here in Spain who sit on heavy reporter jobs.” Maybe she’s got used to it or just doesn’t notice certain things anymore, anyway, she says ”From clubs and players, I have encoun-tered nothing but professional treatment in Spain”.

Working as a freelance obviously has its advantag-es and disadvantages as Johanna describes ”The disadvan-tages are obvious, you don’t know if the money for your rent will come next month” but for her it works great because ”in my case I have several long freelance contracts with various clients, which means that I still can feel relatively secure” and the advantages ”it’s that you can say no to a job and can write/talk for different media without a single employer interfering.” @juanitafranden

What makes Johanna Frändén so good?She doesn’t care what everybody says, if she has got her own opinion, she writes it. It’s not that she wants to be arrogant, she simply likes to be herself.

What distinguishes her from other journalists?The fact that she’s the first female writer I’ve started to follow since she began to write about Spanish football, the irony and the views about the game are quite hard to understand for oth-ers who don’t. She always sees the thing nobody else sees, and in my eyes won’t bow to anyone. And by that I really mean anyone.

Why do you believe people should read her texts?Because they’re not like other texts. She always makes her points and they’re always good points, I’ve followed her for 2-3 years by now and haven’t even come up with one little mistake or a point that I would’ve doubted. She’s flawless and funny, and I think that is what the other writers seem to lack a lot.

What do you think of her activity on twitter, why should people follow her there?Oh my goodness. That is the whole thing. Because when you’re

tired of all the writings, just log in to twitter and get into the real world of Johanna Frändén.If you’re not Swedish, bad luck. Because when having the darkest moments of your life, having the worst day - one little tweet from her will always make you smile.

When did you first notice her?I have a vague memory of her from Aftonbladet when she wrote a few articles, but the greatest memory is from her blog Hola Barcelona and from her being a guest in the Swedish TV-network SVT studio during their World Cup 2010 coverage.

What do you think of “Hola Barcelona”? How often do you visit it?It’s the best. Not the fact that it’s called “Hola Barcelona”, the whole of Spain is in that blog. Amazing. Everyone should read it. Myself, I read it every day! You say she is really funny, what is it that makes her funny?I’m sorry, but you have to see it for yourself, she is THAT funny.

The ReaderArmin SamandiAge: 24From: Göteborg (Gothenburg), Sweden

“Hola Barcelona” has become a great success at Aftonbladet

JOHANNA FRÄNDÉN

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The players have the word

Pontus JanssonAge: 21Club: Malmö FFLeague: Allsvenskan, Sweden

Can you trust journalists, any one specific you trust more? Yes, I can trust journalists. I have never felt that they are trying to bust or misquote me. Ole Örner at “Skånskan” is very good, a true Malmö sup-porter.

What do you believe is the biggest difference between Swedish and for-eign journalists? It’s hard to say what the biggest difference is. Maybe that the foreign press can be a bit tougher.

Have you got any hint from senior players in the team on how to tackle media? Hint and hint. Now I have become quite experienced, but in the beginning you could get hints to consider this and that. But you learn in time.

Henok GoitomAge: 28

Club: UD AlmeriaLeague: Segunda Division, Spain

Can you trust journalists?There are both good and bad [journalists] so you have to be careful. Don’t trust a journalist too quickly, let time reveal the truth and always be on your guard.

What do you think is the biggest difference between Swedish and Spanish journalists?

The biggest difference would be the mentality. Spanish are more aggressive and show passion while the Swedish are more calm.

Ponne, Sweden’s own Gerard Piqué is a great hope for the future.

Almeria forward Heonk Goitom is used to playing against the best after several seasons in La Liga.

THE PLAYERS HAVE THE WORD

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Bojan DjordjicAge: 30Club: Royal Antwerp League: Second division, Belgium

Can you trust journalists? You should always be careful when talking to journalists. Honesty and truth last the longest and it’s those two things I always think about.

What do you believe is the biggest difference between Swedish and foreign journalists? The difference between Swedish sport journalists and foreign is that the foreign ones have their own opinion. Swedish sport journalists don’t trust their own judgment all the way but seek sometimes confirmation from the foreign journalists.

Have you got any hints from senior players in the team on how to tackle media? When I was younger I actually used to give the older players advice. Have always found it easy to talk. When you like to talk you do.

Omid NazariAge: 20

Club: Ängelholm FFLeague: Superettan, Sweden

Can you trust journalists?Well, I always try to think about what I say. You never know what they will write so I’m always careful so I won’t be misunderstood.

What do you think is the biggest difference between the media coverage in Superettan and Allsvenskan? Malmö is so much bigger than Ängelholm! At MFF there were always journal-ists, who followed the training sessions and everything.They have an eye on eve-rything in Malmö. In Ängelholm it’s not as usual that they are at the training ses-sions and I don’t think they know as much about the players as they do in Malmö.

Have you got any hints from senior players in the team on how to tackle media? Well, not so much. As I said, I always think about what I say so it won’t escalate to something that isn’t true.

Manchester United’s young player of the year more than a decade ago Bojan Djordjic, is today playing in Belgium’s second division

Malmö starlet Omid Nazari joined Ängelholm for this season after enjoying a season there on loan.

THE PLAYERS HAVE THE WORD

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BOOKSto read...Barça a people’s passion Jimmy Burns To be able to understand what FC Barcelona is all about this book is a must read. Just as the club is more than just a club, Burn’s book is more than just a book about foot-ball. It is also a story of one hundred years of obsessive national pride. Barça fan or not this book should be read. It will give you a whole new understanding and view on FC Barcelona and the country of Catalonia. Love and Blood

Jamie TreckerVeteran football commentator Jamie Trecker traveled to the World Cup in Germany 2006 and reported from restau-rants, train, bars, town squares, hostels, press boxes and brothels. In his book he tells about the games, the parties, the great plays, the fistfight, the gossip and the tacky souvenirs that turn the largest sporting event on earth into a true world bazaar. With equal measures insight and irreverence, Trecker captures the passion, the politics, the controversies and the economics that make football a reflection of the world.

How Soccer explains the world Franklin FoerFootball is more than a sport and this book by Foer ex-plains what the biggest sport in the world really is about, the joy, the sorrows. The shining spotlight on the clash of civilizations, the international economy and just every-thing in between. For those who can’t really understand what football means, this book will explain it.

Morbo The story of Spanish football Phill Ball Morbo is a Spanish word that doesn’t exist in English and can be complicat-ed to understand. Just as Spanish football can be hard for an outsider to un-derstand. In his book Ball makes it more understandable, as he describes the various ways in which rivalry is expressed between clubs divided by history, language and politics. The first English languages book to describe the history of the Spanish game and its true governing body.

El Futbol a sol y sombra Eduard Galenao English title: Football in Sun and Shadow A book that tells the real love for football written by the Uruguayan poet Eduard Galeano. In an emotional way he gives you the history of the world’s biggest sport, foot-ball. A fan of the sport instead of a specific team, Galeano shows us that football is not only about scoring or winning but how important it is: how you play it. A must read for not only football lovers but all literature lovers.

illustration by Dan Leydon

BOOKS TO READ

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By Graham HunterGraham Hunter has for the last 10 years been reporting on Spanish foot-ball from his Barcelona base. When he arrived FC Barcelona was a club in chaos away from the top. Ten years later we are watching a Barça team that has established itself as the greatest football team in the world; some people already believe they are the greatest of all time. But what has hap-pened in those 10 years for this enormous change to occur. Graham has seen it happen first hand and he gives us a book that de-scribes how the greatest team in the world was built.

Graham on how he ended up writing a nearly 500 pages long book about FC Barcelona

“I wrote a big article about Xavi last January. Two guys I never met or heard of, read it and liked it. They were publishers and called me and said, we are throwing everything else we had planned this year, if you would write that article but this big and about the two last seasons of Barcelona instead of just about Xavi. So I used all of my experience and intelligence to think about it for about two and a half seconds and then said, yeah ok. It wasn’t great planning and it stripped six months of my life but there has been some satisfaction in it and I hope people will find it interesting. It’s long and it’s de-tailed.”

More books to read...

AJAX THE DUTCH THE WARSimon Kuper

Livet längs linjenErik Niva

SoccernomicsSimon Kuper Stefan Szymanski

THE BALL IS ROUNDDavid Goldblatt

SambafotbollFredrik Ekelund

Passion of the peopleTony Mason

The articel about Xavi that was the start for Hunter’s book.

BOOKS TO READ

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GRAHAM HUNTER

“Scots weren’t speaking to the Dutch. So I thought, I’ll go and speak to the Dutch”

GRAHAM HUNTER

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”No Scottish guy has ever won the World Cup, no Scottish guy has ever refereed in a World Cup final, I’m the only Scot who will ever in history be, in a World Cup winning dressing room.” Those are the words of Graham Hunter, and no he hasn’t won the World Cup. But due to his honesty, his hard work and his ability not only to be a journal-ist but also a friend to players and coaches, he was let into the Spanish national team’s dressing room after the final whistle as they won the World Cup in 2010, even though Hierro had said ”No way no, it’s wrong it’s wrong”.

In December 2011, I sat down with Hunter at a café in Barce-lona. The interview was supposed to take 30 minutes, it took almost an hour. There were so many stories to tell as he took me on his journey from a hospital bed in Scotland to that World Cup celebrating dressing room in Johannes-burg.

Graham Hunter is a respected football journalist, he is seen as an honest journalist who tells the truth. But most of all Hunter is a hard working journalist who isn’t fond of turning down a job. He won’t be happy with his work if he doesn’t know he has put everything into it. ”If I’ve done bad work it’s not nice if someone else tells you about it or somebody rejects it or changes it. It hasn’t happened to me for a long time but when it happens it feels bad, but there is nothing worse than knowing yourself,” says Hunter. ”It won’t matter how bad the criticism you get is, there is just nothing worse than knowing yourself that you didn’t do it properly or you didn’t do it well enough. You failed in some respect. So that’s why I work so hard”.

The beginning Since he was a kid Graham knew he wanted to be a journalist but ”It didn’t start immediately, I just got lost and went in an-other direction,” he recalls. It was interesting but in the 80’s he decided to pick up the old journalist dream. He started out with a group that was called ‘hospital radio broadcasting’. This was before the days of lots of different radio stations and the inter-net. In England and Scotland they decided to instal radio sets at all patient beds in the hospitals. People including Hunter would volunteer and broadcast for the patients. They could record in a studio or as Graham did commentate on football matches and it would all be free. ”It was more commentating than journalism, but what it led to was meeting footballers, meet-ing coaches, going to big and important games, cup finals and international matches” recalls Hunter. ”It just knocked me over, made me remember, this is what I always wanted [to do].” In 1991 he began to write columns for the Sunday Times, he did it well and went on to the Daily Mail in Scotland ”and by luck I had two or three big stories, really big projects which were partly luck and partly my good judgment” tells Graham. It was

stories that raised his profile even more and he was now sentt to London, ”I went from being a guy with no contract to being the chief football writer in London and following England, Chelsea and Manchester United. It all happened in the space of about two years.”

The love affair with Spain ”Liked Spain so much I bought the company”, that’s what Graham Hunter’s description on Twitter says. And there must be something to really like in Spain, because after about six years in London Graham dropped everything and moved with his family to Spain. ”We came here without any contracts, without the contacts, we just came and started..” says Graham and continues ”Ten years later I’m still looking for work”, he laughs, ”No, ten years later and it’s gone really well.” The love affair with Spain goes back a long time he explains, ”When in 1982 I came to the World Cup, I was a fan and really enjoyed it and already back then Spain felt like my country”. But there was more than that which made Graham so determined to move from England. ”I had been on the top of British journalism

for a little while, and I found the players and managers too big-headed and too rude” says Hunte. ”You weren’t allowed to go and watch training at football clubs in England, the train-ing sessions were closed.” “In England” he says, ”there was this idea around football peo-ple that journalists were down there..” And that was something Graham didn’t like, he knew that

in other countries like Holland, Sweden or Germany there were a lot more access to football and a lot more respect. ”In some countries footballers and journalists are exchanging phone numbers and that’s the way I wanted it to be, and I knew that was how it worked in Spain.” So Graham and his family took their bags and went to Barcelona. Both Spain and FC Barce-lona had been going through some hard moments. But when they arrived luck struck again as Barcelona started to grow and grow and so did the Spanish national team, which all generated a lot of work. ”When I came here there weren’t so many British people on a freelance ba- sis” recalls Graham ”There was no Ronaldinho, and then Ronaldinho arrived, there was no Beckham and then Beckham ar-rived, which turned all the eyes of the world towards Spanish football. And as I said before, part of my success was due to talent, part of it was due to luck, luck is very important. Very important!”

It’s mentalNot many journalists work as hard as Graham Hunter, newspapers, magazines, radio stations, TV stations all

“There is nothing worse than knowing yourself that you didn’t do it properly or well enough”

GRAHAM HUNTER

By covering the Champions League, Graham believes he have got a better international perspective.

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over the world and now lately he even wrote a book. I asked him the obvious question: - How do you find the time for it all. ”Ask them, not me” he says and looks brdifr him where his daughter Cara and her friend are sitting. Cara laughs a bit and says ”He doesn’t”. ”seven days a week, 15 hours a day, 365 days a year and I’m not joking!” continues Graham, ”I promise you, no bullshit, no joke. Just it’s mental. I don’t know many people who work as hard as I do.” One day he can be writing for a newspaper in Australia, the next he is working for ESPN and the third it’s BBC, UEFA, FIFA or someone else. ”But it’s good”, says Graham, ”because one thing you get when you’re a freelance as I am, is variety. I see many people in my industry burning out because they do the same thing all the time”. Even if he since ten years back has his base in Barcelona it’s not just Spanish football Graham is asked to report about. ”A lot of people still ask me to write about English football, Italian football or Dutch football, French football, German football and that keeps you fresh and lets you work on an international circle.” Also, working with the Champions League he has met a lot of different nationalities and players. His knowledge and experience have later also become a big part of how he writes as he tries to link everything together. Graham explains how important it is to have an international perspective, ”I really try to take all parts of my work in life and draw them together and that seems to give people, editors, readers more of what they want, an international perspective I think is very important.” But it’s not only from himself that Graham expects hard work. During his time at the Daily Mail he was asked to edit for 6-7 months. ”It was a big job and I was new to it, I started to read some of the articles that the report-ers who were under me had sent in and they were crap. I told them to go back and do that again and like this. And everybody was amazed, why?”

Not starstruck but phone blockedEven if he has met some of the best footballers ever been, Graham has never got starstruck. And he is pretty sure he’ll never be, because if it would happen then it would have been

when he and Cara met Johan Cruyff at his house for an hour long filmed interview. ”I think he is a genius, he is one of my favourite footballers of all times and also, what he did as a coach and he is funny, he is interesting to talk to. We went there and if it would happen it would have been there but it didn’t”. Instead there are other things that have been bigger obstacles for Graham, like picking up the phone and call a manager who just lost a game. It was during his early days working behind a desk at a newspaper and they told him to phone a guy at home on a Sunday afternoon. ”I still had that idea then, ‘Nah I can’t phone a guy at home on a Sunday afternoon, why should he want to talk to me’ and I thought, this is wrong. And they were like, what are you talking about, you’re an idiot, it’s your job”. Graham continues, ”You start thinking why would he tell you anything and then you discover that, because of their nature, they can’t prevent themselves from talking, saying things. So no I haven’t been starstruck but I’ve been blocked”. He continues, ”I was blocked the first month working there until I phoned this guy and he gave me the biggest tornado of abuse

and swearing I’ve ever received in my life and hung up and said don’t ever phone me again.” After that incident,

Graham wasn’t blocked anymore.

Getting recognitionThe absolute best thing about being a football journalist, Graham explains, is when you get recognition ”When you’ve been at an amaz-

ing game or a brilliant press conference or you know you have done a great job and people come and say I read that piece and I wasn’t there but it felt like I

was”. That is the best or when you get an exclusive story, he says, and gives us two examples.

Still pretty early in his career he was working under pressure in London and it was a pretty aggressive game in England, ”Some people were trying to make me lose my job as they didn’t like how I had arrived and taken someone else’s job” he says. But then a friend he had in Madrid offered him an exclusive story. ”He said look I absolutely know this for a fact, Steve McMana-

is late because he was playing cards with his ex-teammates last night to say goodbye, he missed his flight and he is not going to make it to the press conference. I asked, do they know about this? And the Dutch said, no. Then the Dutch asked me, can you tell us where there is a shop for us to buy a kilt that we can dress Van Hooijdonk in. I told the Dutch, if you don’t tell them about him being late and missing the flight, I’ll get you a kilt. So I promised them a kilt, but I didn’t in the end. The whole press conference went on, none of the Scottish journalists asked Celtic exactly why the player was late. I went back to the office and had an exclusive, no one else knew. ”Player stays up all night playing cards with his old team, misses flight. The embar-rassment!”. And it was my first day, no one else had the story. They put it on the back page and said, ok, you can stay.

Graham shares three stories The Dutch that never showed upCeltic was signing a new player, Pierre Van Hooijdonk, a Dutch guy. I got a phone call, ”go to Celtic Park, our main guy is in another city, you’ll have to do it.” And it was my first day in the office that I went there. All the journalists were standing in one corner and the Dutch were standing in another. The Scots weren’t speaking to the Dutch. So I thought, I’ll go and speak to the Dutch, and the Dutch tell me that Pierre van Hooijdonk

“I think Cruyff is a genius”

GRAHAM HUNTER

19

man has secretly signed a “freedom of contract“ deal to move from Liverpool to Madrid, he is going to be the first English free transfer and he has signed it, it’s sealed, it’s sure, write it. So I did a bit of checking, I wrote it and it was on the backpage of the Daily Mail, five million people read it” recalls Graham. The story had been 100% exclusive and no one else had even heard of it. Years later when arriving in Spain, McManaman took Graham aside and asked, how did you know? And ever since the two of them have had a friendly relationship because McManaman’s respect was ‘how did this guy do this’.

Another dear memory for Hunter comes from the Champions League final at Camp Nou in 1999 between Bayern Munich and Manchester United. Bayern were winning the game for 90 minutes before Manchester came along to score two goals in two minutes through Solskjær and Sheringham. ”The way we

had to write then was sitting at a desk and write a 1000-word match report, you had to send 1000 words with an introduc-tion and all your concluded thoughts”, recalls Graham. With 15 minutes left of the game Bayern leading 1-0, everything was written and sent. ”Bayern Munich last night snatched the dream of the treble win for Manchester United” had been Graham’s headline. Then in the last 90 seconds Manchester went ahead and scored twice and the whole paper was about to print. ”And these sport editors are screaming at you. You have to give me a new 300 words in five minutes, NOW.” It was a journalist’s nightmare, but Graham did it and got it right. ”The next morn-ing somebody from Sky noticed it at the airport and he couldn’t believe that it was a good report instead of a bad report because of the circumstances”, Hunter recalls. Years later when Graham moved with his family to Spain he got a call from the guy who had seen the report that morning at the airport. ”You moved to

Bosman charged 20 poundsI phoned my editor one day and said: ”No one in Britain is paying attention to this guy named Bosman.” They knew he was on strike and that there was a row and I told my editor ”I hear it’s a personal story, a human story behind it”. This was at night and he asked ”What is it?”, ”Well I think he lost his

family and turned to drink”, the next thing the editor said was ”You’re on a plane at 6 in the morning”. So he sent me over there with around 25 pounds in my pocket, stupid. I arrive at nine in the morning at the

airport. I had Bosman’s phone number so I phoned him up and said I’d been sent to come and inter-view him and he said NO. What do you mean by no, I’ve been sent here.. He said no, I’m not talking to you. I said this is important to me,

and he said how much money do you have? So I lied and said I have about 20 pounds. ”I’ll take it, take the train to Liège and I’ll meet you.” He took 20 pounds in exchange for the interview. Took me to his parents’ house where he was living. I interviewed him for about two hours, and he told me his whole life story, about becoming an alcoholic and about his wife leaving him. During the interview the phone started ringing and it was ringing and ringing and he told his mother to answer it. She came back and said it was his lawyer, you have won the case. Then the phone was ringing of the hook. The whole world wanted to speak with him and he sat there and said to his mom, no, no this guy is here, he is having the interview, he paid me 20 pounds, tell them I’m not talking to them. And I am sitting talking to the guy everyone wants to talk to, by luck.

Graham’s 16-year-old daughter Cara didn’t mind listening to the interview while eating her breakfast, arguing she didn’t know all this about her dad’s work.

GRAHAM HUNTER

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Spain, I like your work let me give you some employment”, Graham recalls him saying, and continues ”Things like that, when you know you’ve done a great job, and I don’t mean to seem egotistical but when you’ve done a good job in difficult circumstances.” He says ”It’s not attending big events, it’s not meeting the stars, it’s when you’ve communicated well about something important during difficult circumstances and people enjoyed it, liked it. That’s the best.”

People lie all the time His job can easily be seen as a dream job, but it’s far from perfect. ”One of the worst things is people lying to you all the time. I don’t think there are many jobs in the world where somebody lies to you every single day. And they will lie straight up to your face” explains Graham. ”They have some-thing they want more than being honest and respectful to you and they’ll drop honesty just like that.” And there is even more ugliness in the profession Hunter tells us, ”For example in England, in the mixed zone the English media is so determined, and I won’t go into details. But they can’t stand each other. I’ve seen fist fights, I’ve seen elbows”, he continues, ”I’ve seen someone stopping an interview with a player because some-one else pushed him. The player is standing there while two journalists are fighting with each other. They are athletes they shouldn’t be in a farm never mind in the media.” One of the biggest problems in football journalism, Graham says, is that many journalists are very egotistical, ”Football journalism has definitely become more and more a game of egos and when ego comes into it, a friendly respectful relationship often get shoved to the side”, he continues, ”If I speak personally I know a lot of people who I see on a regular basis who I think are scum, lying, cheating, talentless idiots.” And there is even more ugliness ex-isting in journalism, most of us have heard about cases when an interview has been in a paper and the player in question claims it never took place and Graham agrees that this happens, ”I’ve seen people make those stories up, I’ve seen people on the phone to the newspaper making quotes up. It does happen. I have never done it and nobody I associate with will do it”. But he also argues that it’s not always like that, situations like this occur ”I’ve seen circumstances where an English journalist will receive an interview conducted by a Swedish journalist face to face with the player. Because of a colliding arrangement they will share. The story becomes big in England and the player

says, I never spoke to that paper”, Graham also believes there is a gray zone, ”In modern journalism I think there is a gray area, where you sincerely ask a reliable journalist who you know has interviewed another person to pass on the quotes to you and you write it without pretending it’s your interview. Isn’t that legitimate? I think it’s possible, depending on how you use it, and how clear you are about if it’s your interview or not.” Although when it comes to inventing interviews Graham is clear, ”When it comes to invented interviews there should be a one-strike-and-your-out policy.”

Graham gives us an example of a case where a journalist got caught cheating doing his job and afterwards got sacked.

A famous journalist was caught by his newspaper taking money from another newspaper to be at a game at a World Cup game that was four hours away from the game that he was supposed to be at for his paper. The games started within half an hour from each other. He reported the first game for the paper he wasn’t supposed to be working for because they paid more money. It was Brazil - Denmark but at the same time he pretended to his newspaper that he was at France - Uruguay in Paris. The paper went and checked the timetables and said: - Why is your byline on the international Herald Tribune, Den-mark - Brazil game? - Oh I did that and then I went to your game as well.- And how did you get there? - I took the train.- Do you mind telling us exactly which train you caught to make three and a half hour journey in half an hour? ”And he was stunned. He was sacked. I think that if you make things up, it’s enough, one strike, out” says Hunter convinc-ingly.

Celebrating as a World Cup WinnerDuring the World Cup in 2010, IMG, a world-wide marketing group, hired me to become a tv producer for FIFA during the World Cup and asked me to follow Spain. I knew some of the Spanish players quite well and I knew the coach a bit. It was a stressful time for them and hard work for me. But I started joking around with them, fooling with the players a little bit telling them stories and it went well. Right before the World Cup final my boss talked to me and said, ”Listen, if Spain wins we want you to go into the dressing room with them and film with the cup and the king and queen and Rafa Nadal.” I was like, yeah right. So he received me on the Sunday morning and

we sat down with the head of the Spanish Federation and my boss said ”How has it been with this guy” and they were like yeah it’s been great with him, we trust him. So we asked if we could come in and film in the dressing room. They took it to Fernando Hierro who is an ex Real Madrid player but also the boss of the players and Hierro said, ”No way, no it’s wrong, it’s wrong.” So the boss of the federation went away with Hierro and an hour later he came back and allowed me and my cam-eraman into the dressing room 20 minutes after the final whistle of the World Cup. The players were giving us hugs, treating us as if we had won the World Cup as well. No Scottish guy has ever won the World Cup, no Scottish guy has ever refereed in a World Cup final, I’m the only Scot who is ever going to be, in the history of time, in a World Cup winning dressing room.

“a lot of people who I see on a regular basis, are scum, lying, cheating, tal-entless idiots”

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Group or solo In journalism a lot of people group together. If there are three guys from three different newspapers and all are covering Manchester United for instance, quite often they will share a story with the others. So on a day when they don’t have a story the others will share with them. But that’s nothing for Graham, he says, ”Either you’re good enough to stand on your own, or you’re not” and he gives us an example when such a friendship can cost you dearly.

There is a journalist I have no respect for whatsoever. One day he was playing golf on his day off. His paper had told him, every time you have a day off, wherever you go, whatever you do, always carry your passport with you. Because if we phone you to tell you to go somewhere and you can’t go directly to the airport, your sacked. So he is out on the golf course and they call him from the newspaper desk and say: ’Eric Cantona has left Manchester United because he is so angry at the ban the Football Federation gave him for kung fu kicking a specta-tor. But Alex Ferguson doesn’t want to lose him, so he is in three hours on this flight to Paris to find Cantona and make him come back. Be on that flight.’ But this guy doesn’t have his passport, and he doesn’t have the key to his house. He calls his wife but for some reason she has gone out. He is screwed. But what he does is this, he calls his friend from the rival news-paper who doesn’t know about the story and he says, you can never guess what has happened. Can you get on the flight , find the story, give it to me and we will share it. So the friend takes all the details and tells it to his own desk as it is exclusive, then gets on the flight, goes to the restaurant, watches Ferguson talk to Cantona. Then tries to catch Ferguson who says ”No I’m not talking to you now”. But at least he has a quote to confirm, and he got a picture. What happens is, he doesn’t share it at all with his friend on the golf course. And there was a massive, mas-sive, massive riot. But Hunter explains that he can’t feel sorry a bit for the guy, ”That is what I think normal journal-ism is about, people who behave like that de-serve what they get”. But he also admits that if something would happen to someone he trusts he would be more than happy to help out. ”On an occasion when good, reputable journalists have missed something and it’s not their fault, then I would be happy to help them and share with them and make sure they weren’t exposed due to a small error, like a train is late or their tape hasn’t worked.” He con-tinues ”A decent, straight, honest journalist shouldn’t be left in the cold because something unfortunate has happened to him.” In the end Graham gives us an conclusion, one: Don’t make pact and two: It’s better to fight solo.

MIGHTY ABERDEEN Living in Barcelona and covering Spanish football for 10 years, does Graham Hunter have a team that makes his heart beat a little bit harder than the rest, then that must be FC Barcelona, right? or at least a Spanish team? Well, there is a team that is very special for him, but it isn’t Barça and it isn’t Spanish. In 1983 the team in question reached its most glorious moment ever. ”In quarterfinals we beat Bayern Munich, in the semifinals we beat a team you don’t care about [K. Waterschei S.V Thor Genk], in the final we beat Real Madrid 2-1. In the Cup Win-ners Cup final, sweet!” recalls Hunter with great enthusiasm. The team he is talking about is of course Aberdeen, or Mighty Aberdeen as he likes to call them. A club from the town in Scotland where he once grew up. When I don’t quite recognize Aberdeen’s successful Cup Winners Cup campaign he gets dis-appointed, not only with me but also with the Swedish school system, ”Every Swedish town should have that in primary school during one of the first lessons!” While talking about Sweden he suddenly recalls that the retired Swedish interna-tional ”Joachim Björklund was there as a little kid watching with his grandad”. During the whole interview, talking about Aberdeen is what fires Graham up the most. ”Aberdeen” he says, ”you can write that in capital letters or if you want to call them Mighty Aberdeen”.

@BumperGraham

GRAHAM HUNTER

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Name: YI Xun Cheng Age: 22 Country: Holland

The fans have the wordDo you read football magazines, which one is the best?

Who is your favourite football journalist and why?

What do you think is the biggest difference between journalists in your country and foreign journalists?

1. I read a lot when I was younger. My family owned a restaurant and a good customer always bought football magazines and after reading them he gave them to me. I collected them all and read every single sentence. My favourite was Voetbal International.

2. When it comes to journalists, I don’t really care about their names. What’s important to me is the information. If we can call Cruyff a journalist, then he is my favourite. His column is amazing.

Name: Mohamed Ahmed Age: 23 Country: Sweden 1. I don’t really read a lot of football magazines, today with the internet be-ing an important part in our lives I mostly read websites with my favourite football journalists. I want to read about football that I am interested in. I tune in every week to listen to the football podcast on the Guardian.com.

2. Sid Lowe is my favourite journalist. His way of writing makes you picture the words in your mind. He is very well-informed about the Spanish league, and he is very respected in Spain. Mostly I enjoy reading his work because he can tell the story behind the game as well as he tells the story on the pitch.

3. In my country the journalists have to think about a country with nine mil-lion inhabitants and most of those nine million enjoy the Premier League and Zlatan Ibrahimovic, and that is what most journalists have to cover. But in general I do think that foreign journalists have a better insight into clubs and football than the Swedish ones.

THE FANS HAVE THE WORD

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Name: Mónica Sanchéz Age: 21 Country: Catalonia

Name: Emma Cárdenas Age: 26 Country: USA

Name: Dorota Rak Age: 25 Country: Poland

Name: Hady Ezzeddine Age: 16 Country: Lebanon

1. I don’t read a lot of magazines, I prefer to read articles on websites as I usually work online. From time to time I buy FourFourTwo, I love their high quality pictures.

2. I don’t have one. But there are many talented journalists that I follow and whose opinions I like to know. Graham Hunter, Sique Rodríguez, Joan Maria Pou and Xavi Torres.

3. Here there are very few with a strong position, sport journalist is not a prestige position. The ones working with culture or social life are well known, while sport journalists are a minority. But it’s changing. There aren’t either so many freelancers, journalists often collaborate with one newspaper/magazine for years.

1. I read a lot, but not from a certain magazine, I like to read articles from here and there. In order to get as many diverse opinions as I can. The first I read every day is Sport and EL Mundo Deportivo and then I check the site I work for, total-barça.com. Marca and AS I then check for a good laugh. Most of my reading is in Spanish and Catalan.

2. I don’t have a specific preferred journalist, each has their own abilities. But the one I look up to the most is Marti Pernanau. I also like Sid Lowe and Graham Hunter a lot. At Marca I like Rafa G-Plaencia who writes about Barça which I really admire for going counter to the paper he writes for.

3. I don’t think the Lebanese football journalists get so much attention because people worry about other stuff, which is a pity. That’s the biggest difference to foreign countries, the attention given to sport journalism which here is zero here.

1. I usually don’t read football magazines, but when I do I prefer El Mundo Deportivo because it’s not that biased as Sport or others that I’ve read. I prefer reading magazines that aren’t too biased so when I’ve read the true information I can build my own opinion.

2. I don’t have any favourite journalist but if I have to say one it would be Carme Barcelo for her great performances in Punto Pelota.

1. I don’t read a lot of football magazines, only FourFourTwo. I usually stick to blogs because the information is available faster.

2. My favorite football journalist is a draw between Graham Hunter and Sid Lowe. I think they both have a great understanding of not only football and how it’s played but also the culture around it all. Everything from the fans of particu-lar clubs to the townspeople of those clubs. They give you a complete picture.

3. The biggest difference that I’ve taken notice of is the amount of coverage and the difference in number of journalists. I feel like there are more people abroad covering football than there are here. A lot of the news and stats come directly from the clubs here in the States. I don’t believe there are any American football magazines, it’s mostly blogs.

(Spain)

THE FANS HAVE THE WORD

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TheLegendBrian GlanvilleHe started working as a sports journalist as a teenager, and today at the age of 80 he is still ac-tive. It’s impossible no to consider Brian Glanville as a legend in his profession.

Born on 24th September 1931 in England, Glanville’s Journal-ist career would start early. As a 17 year old on holiday he walked into the offices of Cor-riere dello Sport in Rome and was given work on the strength of an already substantial cuttings file, despite not knowing any Italian. And while getting his education at Charterhouse School where he also played football on quite a high level, he went on to publish his first book at the age of only 19, when he ghost-wrote ”Cliff Bastin Remembers”, an autobiography of his football hero, Arsenal great Cliff Bastin.

During many years Glanville has written more than 20 novels, five collections of short stories and nearly 30 football books. He also covered the 1960 Olympics in Rome for the Sun-day Times and has reported on 13 football World Cups. As a journalist Glanville has spent nearly thirty years as a football correspondent for The Sunday Times to which he still is a con-tributor. He has also contributed to World Soccer Magazine for over 15 years, in print and online, where he is currently writing a weekly column.

In contrast to the typical British sports writer, Glanville has over the years been noted for taking a critical view on many issues. He has for example, since its formation, criticised the Premier League as the ”Greed is Good League” and FIFA presi-dent Sepp Blatter has been referred to as ‘Sepp (50 ideas a day, 51 bad) Blatter’ relating to his comments on women’s football and the introduction of the silver goal.

During the 60s and 70s Glanville was a member of the jury which awarded the yearly Ballon d’Or to the European Foot-baller of the year. During the 1960s he also worked as a writer for the BBC TV programme “That Was The Week That Was” and wrote the screenplay for Goal!, the BAFTA award win-ning official film of the 1966 World Cup. From the mid 1960’s to the 1980’s Glanville organised and ran his own successful amateur football team, Chelsea Casuals. The ones who played for the team were a collection of actors, artists, radio, TV and newspaper journalists, university graduates and undergraduates. Occasionally even professional football players or profession-als from other sports like cricket would turn up.

After everything he has done and achieved Glanville has always been clear about one thing, that football reporting is not allowed to get above itself, as he said in an interview to Intel-ligent Life Magazine last January, ”It’s not an art form and if you try too hard the result is bathos”. He doesn’t regard his job as hard, either, even if he is perhaps the last sports journalist to fill in his match reports the traditional way.

Football writer and novelist

”The greatest football writer of all time” - Paul Zimmerman

Name: Brian Glanville

Born: 24th September 1931, London, England.

Favourite football team: Arsenal F.C

Education: Charterhouse School, Sur-rey, 1945-49.

Career: Literary adviser, Bodley Head, publishers, 1958-62. Since 1958 sports writer for the Sunday Times, London.

Awards: Berlin Film Festival award, for documentary, 1963. British Film Academy award, for documentary, 1967. Thomas Coward Memorial award, 1969. Sports Council Reporter of the Year award, 1982

THE LEGEND

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Johanna Gara

Swedish football journalist Johanna Garå tells everything from the enjoyment of watching the best games to the stress as the paper is about to press.

Two top moments for Johanna, were to sit down with Sweden’s nr 1 Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Spain’s World Cup hero Andrés Iniesta

.JOHANNA GARÅ

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Q/AWhat is the best about being a football journalist? To be able to work with your hobby. It is a rare luxury. I like to tell a story, to teach readers and viewers things they did not know. What is most fun is to travel abroad and see games live.

When did you decide that it was this you wanted to work with? I got the highest grade on a paper at high school and had to read it in front of the class. It was at that moment I understood that I was good at writing. That it became Sport was because it was my biggest interest.

Is there any special moment in your career, that you’ll never forget? The Euro final in 2008 and the World Cup final in 2010 it was incredible to be there. It’s also very special to see Barcelona and Madrid play each other. I was there when Barça humili-ated Madrid with 5-0 at Camp Nou last fall - it was an amazing display.

What are the negatives in your profession? It’s very stressful. The daily newspapers have early presstimes and most times you have to send in your text at the final whistle of a game. It rarely becomes as good as you would have liked. In this profession it is also becoming increasingly difficult to get access to players, you’re forced to go through many middle-men. I also think it can be annoying getting critical e-mails and messages.

What do you think of media that make up interviews or when quotes are distorted?It’s obviously never ok to distort quotes or make up interviews. Unfortunately it often happens that there are translation mis-takes when reporters use Google Translate. Which I notice as I know Spanish.

What is the biggest difference between the journalism in Sweden and other countries? If I use Spain as an example. The journalists there are often ”friends” with the players and clubs they report about. They very rarely criticize their team. It’s not like that in Sweden. Also Spain have a lot more sports daily papers that have to fill their pages with quite a few uninteresting articles.

How is it to be a woman in such a ”male” profession? In Sweden I believe there isn’t any difference between male and female reporters. However, it’s not straightforward, like when some locker rooms are open to journalists after the games. At the beginning of my career, I went in but after a while I began to call the players out in the corridor instead. Abroad, colleagues might look a bit extra but I think it is about habit. It also seems to be a generational issue. Some older men might look down on girls, but I haven’t experienced it.

Have you always been interested in football, maybe played yourself? I haven’t played myself, handball was my sport. But I went with my older brother to Ullevi already when I was three-four years old. The interest in Spanish football was born when I went to Barcelona to live there after high-school.

What have your journey as a football journalist looked like? I studied Journalism at City University in London and did an internship over the three years at the paper The Observer’s sport section. When I had graduated I got a summer job at Swedish Sportbladet and stayed there for eleven months. After that I worked a period with Expressen and for a time I was also jobless. In March 2005 I got a permanent employment at Svenska Dagbladet.

What is needed to succeed as a sports journalist? Most important is of course to be able to express yourself but it’s also important to have contacts, and to have good refer-ences when applying for a job. Then also being good at getting news and interviews.

Did you have any role model? Kristina Kappelin was my role model. She wrote about football and lived in Italy. I wanted to do the same in Spain.

What advantages/disadvantages do you see working as an employee compared to working as a freelance? As a permanent employee you have security, knowing the sal-ary is coming every month and you can pay loans for your resi-dence. Life as a freelance is a constant hunt for money but at the same time you can choose to write about all sorts of things. As a rookie it’s absolutely better to work as a stand-in at a newspaper as it’s so hard to sell in a job when you’re unkown.

A normal work situation during the World Cup 2010, Anna Brolin working in the front seat and Johanna Garå at the back.

@johannagara

.JOHANNA GARÅ

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Johanna Frändén Johanna GaråGraham Hunter

The 5 best footballstadiums

Hunter

New Wembley

Camp Nou

Emerits

Bernabeu

Allianz Arena

The worst InterviewFranden “It’s obvious that someone like Lionel Messi is hard to get to, it’s also a challenge to get something out of him because he doesn’t express himself to well. He is difficult both to access and get something useful out of. Those interviews with Leo are often done in a group, it’s not often you get him to yourself so it’s a bigger challenge. But at the sametime I often see those interviews as the most fun to do because if those interviews go well, if you get something out of Messi or Zlatan for that mat-ter, then you’ve done a good job.”

Hunter ”The worst one, that’s easy. The French international Yoann Gourcuff, he used to play for Bordeaux and right now he is at Lyon. Just a total clam, I mean really. I asked him, tell us about your beginnings in football and he says ”eehh.. yeah they were fine..” So what is your favourite part of football? And he sat and thought about what his favourite part of football was for four minutes in a live interview. ”I don’t know.... passing...” If my boss hadn’t been there I would have punched him. So we had fifteen minutes of him being like a moron. I would turn around, I’d rather he didn’t show up. So Gourcuff”.

Gara ”It’s rarely fun to stand in a crowded mixed zone after a game and try to get some impersonal quotes from players.”

“If my boss hadn’t been there I would have punched him.“

Graham didn’t enjoy the interview with Yoann Gourcuff too well

Camp Nou in Barcelona and Santiago Bernabeu in Madrid are both on all three journalists’ Top 5 list

FrandenCamp Nou, Barcelona

My second living room and the football stadium I’ve seen most games at during my life. It’s a privilege of course and you never stop gettin fascinated that 100 000 people can fit into the same stadium.

Råsunda, Solna It was a while ago but it was a great at-mosphere around the Stockholm derbies, in ‘06, ‘07. Then were few stadiums could beat Råsunda. From the mosaic before the game to the final whistle. Amazing atmosphere, that will leave the foreigner with an open mouth.

Santiago Bernabeu, Madrid I love to hear Plácido Domingo’s Nessun Dorma before kick-off at a stadium where the audience has style.

Sánchez Pizjuán, Sevilla The sound of bird seed and the tempera-mental audience are enough to create a great atmosphere. And also the Sevilla hymn before the game.

Stadio Olimpico, RomFootball is a lifestyle in Rome and the roof that doesn’t exist will rise when Totti or Klose scores. Amazing atmosphere espe-cially at the Rome derby.

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THE JOURNALIST’S HAVE THE WORD

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The Journalist’s have the word

Johanna Garå

Hunter

New Wembley

Camp Nou

Emerits

Bernabeu

Allianz Arena

The best InterviewFranden”A player that I think has been fun to interview is Bojan Djordjic, he is pretty funny and fast. Then it’s always fun to interview big players even if they are not always such fun. Xavi Hernán-dez is one of my favourites, he is easy to get talking, a great interview object. I also think it’s fun to work with the Swedish national team, I don’t do it so often anymore but I did when I worked in Stockholm. Most players there are pretty fun to interview, Kim Källström is great to talk to as he is very smart and you never really know what mood he will be in, but he is very smart and it’s fun to interview play-ers who think and do not just answer automatically. Looking at what my work looks like now, I think Xavi is number one, but Dani Alvés is also very good to interview. They are easy because they are two players who stay until you have asked all your questions. Another one everyone liked to interview is Rami Shaaban when he was the Swedish national goalkeeper, because he was one you could call any time and he liked talking.”

Hunter ”The best.. that will be hard to say but,

some of the most enjoyable chats I’ve had would probably have been here [in Barce-

lona] I guess. So ehh, Xavi maybe. Because Xavi is funny, not all footballers like football, some of them talk rubbish when talking about football and Xavi, he is as addicted to football

as I am. He is funny, you can play with him with words, jokes. When the tape goes off you can chat a little bit. And he is bright, not all foot-ballers are bright either and it makes the differ-ence. Some interviews are up there some are down there. Xavi is always up there.”

Gara ”I don’t have any favourite but the best interviews are done when you get the person in question to relax and open up. If you get

a story to pass on, something new about the person, then it’s a successful interview. I am most

pleased with the interview I did with Zlatan Ibrahimovic during the fall 2009 and when I got to sit down with Andrés Iniesta before the World Cup semi final in 2010.”

Gara

Ernst-Happle

Camp Nou

Old Trafford

Bernabeu

SoccerCity

Allianz Arena in Munich, New Wembley in London and Old Trafford in Manchester are three favourites

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Xavi Hernández’ enourmous love for football makes him the perfect interview object

THE JOURNALIST’S HAVE THE WORD

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