Richard Aikman

They say that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger and after a career which has taken in – and taken down – the Football Gazette, onefootball.com, ITV Digital, and the Sportsman newspaper, I should be harder than John Terry by now.

I should probably point out that not all of my former employers have gone to the wall, and to my knowledge the Times, the Independent on Sunday, the Daily Express, Channel 4’s Football Italia website and Blue Square are all still standing.

My interest in European football began as a teenager when my Italian cousin took me to watch Bologna get hammered by AC Milan at the Stadio Dall’Ara and when a modern languages degree brought me to live to France and Italy, my unnatural obsession for the beautiful game extended beyond that of Bologna and my beloved Arsenal, whose glorious Cup Winners’ Cup campaign I followed around Europe, to le foot of Arsène Wenger’s Monaco.

I did for a while toy with the idea of becoming a scout after recommending a young Andrea Pirlo to David Dein, but I soon changed my mind when I took it upon myself to write to Wenger to suggest he drop Emmanuel Petit in favour of Stephen Hughes because the Frenchman would never cut it at Highbury.

I have since spent the best part of a decade as a freelance writer and have devoted much of my career to European football and sports betting – the latter a result of a brief stint editing Blue Square’s website. I have worked as a correspondent at numerous major football tournaments, including Euro 2008, currently report on the Champions League for uefa.com (and occasionally ITV) and also write for the Guardian as well as various football-related and betting publications.