Everyone remembers the big goals and spectacular finals, but some players built their European legacy through consistency, versatility and longevity.
Jesús Navas is one of those players.
Who would be your first pick for an underrated Europa League XI? And does Navas deserve to be included?
Hola. Hemos hecho un pequeño documental sobre el Málaga CF de 2012/13, pero queríamos contar la historia también desde el punto de vista de la ciudad. Durante unos meses, Málaga pasó de ser una historia emergente del fútbol español a convertirse en uno de los lugares más sorprendentes de la Champions League. Al-Thani, Pellegrini, Isco, La Rosaleda y aquella eliminatoria contra el Dortmund convivieron con una realidad mucho menos brillante: el proyecto económico ya estaba empezando a romperse. Nos interesaba especialmente ese contraste entre la imagen internacional de aquella Málaga y lo que estaba ocurriendo detrás. Para quienes estaban en la ciudad en aquel momento: ¿cómo se vivió realmente aquella temporada?
Some players are remembered for the trophies they won. Others for the loyalty, identity and football intelligence they brought to a club.
For me, Dani Parejo belongs to the second category.
He became the heartbeat of Valencia's midfield, captained the club to the 2019 Copa del Rey and left under circumstances that still feel difficult to understand.
His story didn't end there, though. At Villarreal, he went on to win the Europa League and prove his quality on the European stage.
I'd love to hear from Valencia supporters: how do you remember Parejo today? And how high would you rank him among Valencia's greatest midfielders?
Looking back at João Moutinho’s career, I think his years at Wolves are actually a perfect example of why he was so easy to underestimate.
He was rarely the player producing the spectacular moment, but he seemed to make everyone around him better controlling tempo, finding spaces and doing the small things that disappear from highlight reels.
I’d genuinely be interested in the Wolves perspective: how highly do you rank Moutinho among the midfielders you’ve watched at the club, and do you think his contribution gets enough recognition outside Wolverhampton?
Hey everyone,
we run a small Italian football storytelling channel focused mostly on clubs and stories outside the usual European spotlight.
For our latest episode we looked at FC Lugano and tried to understand how the club has gone from being relatively peripheral even within Swiss football to becoming a much more ambitious and consistent project.
What interested us most wasn't simply the results, but the transformation around the club: ownership, recruitment, infrastructure, identity and the attempt to establish Lugano as something more than an occasional challenger.
We made the video in Italian, but I'm especially curious to hear the perspective of people who actually follow the Swiss Super League every week.
Do you see today's Lugano as a project that can remain near the top of Swiss football long-term, or is there still something missing?
Tra le tante storie del calcio italiano degli anni '90 ce n'è una che secondo me viene raccontata pochissimo.
Nel 1991/92 il Torino arrivò fino alla finale di Coppa UEFA.
Nel percorso eliminò anche il Real Madrid e in finale trovò l'Ajax di Louis van Gaal.
2-2 a Torino.
0-0 ad Amsterdam.
Coppa all'Ajax per la regola dei gol in trasferta.
Quel Torino quanto avrebbe potuto cambiare la propria storia vincendo quella Coppa UEFA?
Diego spent only three seasons in Bremen, yet somehow his time at Werder feels much bigger than that.
For many people outside Germany, this was where we first discovered him: the technique, the free kicks, the long-range goals, that almost theatrical way of playing football.
We run a small Italian football storytelling project and recently made a video about Diego's entire career, but while researching it I kept coming back to Bremen.
So I wanted to ask Werder fans directly: why do you think the connection between Diego and Werder became so strong despite him staying only three years?
Budapest is usually introduced through its architecture, the Danube or the Austro-Hungarian past.
We tried something different.
We told part of the city’s 20th-century history through two people: Béla Guttmann, the Hungarian-Jewish football coach who would later become a legend at Benfica, and Giorgio Perlasca, the Italian who helped save thousands of Hungarian Jews in Budapest during WWII.
Football is only one of the doors into the story. What interested us most was understanding the Budapest that produced, transformed and surrounded these lives.
We’re an Italian channel telling lesser-known European football and cultural stories, so the video is in Italian with English subtitles.
For people from Budapest: I’d genuinely love to know if you think we captured something recognisable about the city and its history.
Ciao ragazzi, abbiamo lavorato a un racconto sul Brescia cercando però di non limitarci alla solita successione di risultati, presidenti e classifiche.
Siamo partiti dalla città, dalla sua storia e dalla sua identità, fino ad arrivare a quello strano periodo in cui al Rigamonti passarono Roberto Baggio, Pirlo, Guardiola, Toni e Mazzone.
Proprio mentre il calcio bresciano sta vivendo uno dei momenti più complicati della propria storia, ci sembrava interessante tornare a capire perché quella maglia e quella V abbiano significato così tanto per una città intera.
Se qualche bresciano lo guarda mi interesserebbe soprattutto una cosa: c'è qualcosa della città o del rapporto tra Brescia e la sua squadra che secondo voi chi viene da fuori difficilmente riesce a capire?
Most Balkan flags immediately point towards history, dynasties, religion or older national symbols.
Bosnia and Herzegovina's current flag feels very different.
That difference is exactly what made us curious.
We made a short Italian video looking at how the flag was created, what its symbols mean and why designing a national symbol for Bosnia became such a complicated task.
I'm curious how people from the region see it today.
Every few years brands try something different with Croatia's kit.
But eventually everyone seems to return to the same problem:
the checkerboard isn't just a pattern anymore, it basically IS the identity of the national team.
We went back through the history of the šahovnica to understand how it became so closely linked to Croatian football.
Question for kit collectors/designers:
How far can you actually change Croatia's shirt before it stops looking like Croatia?
Hi everyone! We’re two Italian football fans interested in the culture and identity behind European football.
For our latest project we looked at Norway through something that is often treated as just merchandise: the national team shirt.
We tried to understand how it evolved over the years, the connection with Norwegian identity and symbolism, some of the more unusual designs of the past, and eventually how the current generation around Haaland has given the shirt a completely different international visibility.
Since most of you obviously know Norwegian football much better than we do, I’d genuinely be interested in your perspective:
Which Norway shirt best represents the national team to you and is there any important story or detail about the shirts that foreigners usually miss?
We were researching Spain’s national-team shirts and ended up going much deeper than expected.
The red shirt became so closely associated with the team that today we simply call them La Roja.
Yet Spain won two of the biggest games in its history wearing blue: the Euro 1964 final and the 2010 World Cup final.
Then there are the USA ’94 designs, the changing Spanish crest, the Adidas eras and the way political and historical changes influenced the symbols appearing on the shirt.
We tried to put the whole evolution together in one video, from the origins of Spain’s national colours to the current generation.
More importantly: which Spain kit do you think best represents the national team?
Watching back Celtic’s European run in 2002/03 made me think about how differently that era of Scottish football is remembered outside Scotland.
Larsson obviously became an international star, but some of his best European football was played while spending his prime at Celtic — culminating in that run to Seville.
We’re making a series on the great “underdog” players in UEFA Cup / Europa League history and chose Larsson as one of the XI.
Curious what Scottish fans think: has that Celtic side become more appreciated with time, or is it still underrated outside Scotland?
We run a small Italian football storytelling channel focused mostly on lesser-told European football stories.
While researching Nelson Haedo Valdez, what struck us was how unusual his journey to Germany actually was — long before Dortmund, the Bundesliga or the Paraguayan national team.
For people outside Germany, Valdez is often remembered simply as a Paraguayan striker who played for Werder and Dortmund. But his story of arriving in Europe and building a professional career from almost nothing is remarkable.
We made a video about his journey and wanted to share it here, but I’m actually even more interested in asking older BVB fans:
How do you remember Valdez at Dortmund?
Cult player? Frustrating striker? Underrated? Just part of a difficult period for the club?
Fuori da Firenze, oggi Kalinić viene spesso ricordato soprattutto per quello che è successo dopo, in particolare al Milan.
Ma alla Fiorentina si era visto un giocatore molto diverso: intenso, intelligente nei movimenti, capace di legare il gioco e di segnare con una certa continuità.
Prima ancora, con il Dnipro, era arrivato fino alla finale di Europa League del 2015, segnando anche contro il Siviglia.
Per il nostro canale stiamo costruendo una Top 11 dedicata agli underdog della storia dell’Europa League e abbiamo scelto proprio Kalinić come numero 10.
Sono curioso soprattutto del parere di chi lo ha seguito davvero a Firenze: quanto era forte Kalinić nel suo prime in viola? E pensate che oggi venga un po’ sottovalutato?
Hi everyone,
I’m part of an Italian football storytelling project and we’ve just finished a documentary about AS Monaco’s incredible 2003/04 Champions League season.
Rather than just covering the results, we tried to understand the strange context around that team: the club’s financial problems, Deschamps at the beginning of his coaching career, Nonda’s injury, Morientes arriving on loan and then eliminating Real Madrid, and the run all the way to Gelsenkirchen.
But I’d actually love to hear from people connected to Monaco:
how is that team remembered locally today? Is 2004 still considered the defining European Monaco side, or does the 2016/17 generation mean more to younger supporters?
Pour ceux qui ont vécu cette période, j’aimerais beaucoup avoir votre point de vue.
Entre 2002 et 2008, Lyon a remporté sept championnats consécutifs. Aujourd’hui, avec le recul, cette série paraît presque irréelle.
Juninho, Coupet, Cris, Essien, Abidal, Malouda, Benzema… mais surtout un club qui semblait pouvoir perdre ses meilleurs joueurs chaque été et malgré tout revenir encore plus fort la saison suivante.
Mais j’aimerais surtout poser une question aux supporters lyonnais :
quel titre de cette série reste le plus spécial pour vous ? Et à quel moment avez-vous vraiment réalisé que l’OL dominait la France ?
Before the Galácticos completely took over Spanish football, there was this Valencia.
Mendieta running the midfield. Cañizares in goal. Claudio López, Kily González, Angulo, Baraja. Héctor Cúper on the touchline. And Mestalla feeling like one of the worst places in Europe to visit.
Two consecutive Champions League finals.
Real Madrid stopped them in 2000.
Bayern needed penalties to do it in 2001.
For a brief period, Valencia genuinely looked capable of becoming one of Europe’s defining teams.
We made the second part of our documentary about Valencia around that generation, Mestalla and the strange feeling of a team that got incredibly close to immortality without ever actually lifting the Champions League.
What player from that Valencia side do you remember most?
Hi everyone,
we run a small Italian football storytelling channel called Footbatelier, focused mainly on the history, culture and identity behind European clubs.
For our latest episode we went back to Eindhoven to understand something that has always fascinated us: how deeply Philips, the city and PSV are connected.
So the story isn’t only about the 1988 European Cup. We tried to understand how a factory team became one of the biggest clubs in Dutch football, and how Philips helped shape an entire football identity around Eindhoven.
I’d genuinely be curious to hear from PSV supporters: does the Philips connection still feel like a living part of PSV’s identity today, or has it become mostly part of the club’s history?