EDITOR’S LETTER

There are a few things that Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and I have in common. We both wore a Norway shirt in the 1990s (I was a 13-year-old football hipster, sorry), we’ve both come off the bench to score four goals at the City Ground and, this season, we’ve both taken temporary charge of an iconic football institution. OK, only two of those things are true, but I’ll be at the helm of

FFT until our new Editor-in-chief arrives a little later in the year. Successful caretakers (and Tim Sherwood) often make a point of blooding youngsters, and with that in mind, this month we’ve made Jadon Sancho our youngest cover star since Lionel Messi first graced our front page back in 2005. Sancho may not go on to win five Ballons d’or like Leo, but there’s no doubt he’s the most exciting English youngster in over a decade. He’s also one of the most enthusiastic and welcoming players we’ve ever met. He was more than happy to lark about with the assortment of retro tech we turned up with (a play on the fact that, terrifyingly, he was born in 2000), and seemed genuinely giddy at being shot for our cover.

We’ve also met a serial Champions League winner, tracked down Dutch football’s forgotten prodigy, and made Nigel Winterburn re-enact his most embarrassing moment. Oh, and handily for me, we present a comprehensive guide to being a successful interim manager.

Right, I’m off to buy a gilet...