Soulful, insightful and eloquent, the game has lost one of its greatest writing talents in John Moynihan John Moynihan, for 12 years a revered member of this Sunday newspaper parish, has passed away aged 79. Whether through his match reports or his seminal book Soccer Syndrome, Moynihan was always required and illuminating reading because he viewed football as much from the terrace perspective as from the press box. Passionate about Chelsea, Moynihan was in thrall to legends like Peter Osgood, Bobby Tambling and especially Charlie Cooke, but was never so besotted with players that he overlooked their reliance on others, namely fans. Take this spellbinding judgment on a goalbound striker in Soccer Syndrome, which is just as pertinent now as when it was penned in 1965: "If there was no crowd he would still be heading for goal but there would be no sound to make him wallow in the moment, in which needles of piercing devotion are driven into his bloodstream from the terraces." Moynihan occasionally turned out for Brian Glanville's Chelsea Casuals. Those of us Seventies" schoolboys ordered to play against these slow-moving, quick-talking poets of the Beautiful Game never fully appreciated how privileged we were to eavesdrop on their post-match declarations. Moynihan's football-writing legacy lives on through his son, Leo, and in Soccer Syndrome. John's book sits prominently on the study shelf of any self-respecting football correspondent, a permanent reminder that the game is about human beings, about emotions and about glory.