Sid Lowe: How an Englishman Became the World’s Most Recognized Voice on Spanish Football

The Story Behind Sid Lowe’s Illustrious Career

Author. Pundit. Commentator. Writer. Father. Husband. Savior of Real Oviedo. There are a number of words to describe Simon James ‘Sid’ Lowe, but one thing’s undeniable: he is one of the greatest Spanish football journalists of all time, and he has proven integral in attracting a number of people across the globe to LaLiga with his stellar journalistic skills and masterful coverage of the Spanish game.

Born in Archway, England on June 21, 1976, Lowe grew up in North London but didn’t support Arsenal or Tottenham Hotspur; instead, with his brother Ben preventing him from following his QPR, Sid decided to instead support the reigning powerhouse of the ’80s — Liverpool — thanks to his love of Kenny Dalgish and the color red.

After studying abroad in Lorca, Spain when he was 13 years of age, Lowe decided to take up Spanish and eventually graduate with his A-Levels in the Spanish language. And after initially studying History and Politics at the University of Sheffield, he moved to a dual honors degree in History and Spanish. Lowe spent the 1996/97 academic year in Oviedo, where he commenced an affinity with Real Oviedo that has lasted to this day.

Lowe started doing postgraduate research on Spanish history and paid for a part-time Master’s degree in History by teaching a Southern European fascism course at Barnsley College. He graduated with a a PhD in 20th-century Spanish history from the University of Sheffield, with his thesis “Catholicism, War and the Foundation of Francoism: The Juventud de Acción Popular in Spain, 1932-1937” being published into a book.

Shortly after moving to Madrid in 2001, Lowe started working as The Guardian’s Spanish football expert, a role that he has continued in until this day. Two years later, David Beckham made the move from Manchester United to Real Madrid, a blockbuster transfer which led to far more British eyeballs being cast upon the Spanish league than ever before. 

“Beckham’s arrival was absolutely enormous…he completely changed my life,” stated Lowe in an exclusive EPL Index interview. “I think a couple of things happened together. One was that the volume of interest in David Beckham meant that my side hustle became my first job. My PhD took a step back, and the football writing took over because there was just so much to do around Beckham…there was so much interest in Beckham. When Beckham first arrived, I had already been writing for The Guardian, but with that year with Beckham, I was The Guardian correspondent, I was The Telegraph correspondent, I was the World Soccer correspondent, I was the ITN correspondent, I was the Good Morning Britain correspondent… all these people wanted to know about Beckham.”

“Now, it’s true that things normalized after a while and settled down, and you weren’t necessarily writing every day, or phoning in reports every day, but Beckham changed the level of interest in Spanish football enormously. I always felt that he was an opportunity to tell people about Spain, not just about him. For the most part, I was asked to write pieces about him, but I always tried to make them pieces about Spain as well. There’s a book ‘El Bex’ on my shelf whose author Alex Leaf phoned me and said, ‘I’m going to write this book, and it’s a book about how Beckham explains Spain. In a way, it’s a book about the Spain that Beckham didn’t see, because he was in hotels, but that everyone else saw by following him. And I remember saying to him, ‘You bas***d, that’s exactly what I want to do.’

“Alex came, wrote this book, and then left. He was only in Madrid for a little while, but in a way, that was kind of what I was doing through my Beckham pieces. I was trying to make it about Spain, and not just about him, but he was the vehicle to that. The other thing that happened that was really big for me was that Beckham arriving in Spain brought lots of British journalists with it. The Sun sent two guys, a news guy and a sports guy. The Mirror sent two guys, a news guy and a sports guy. The News of the World sent someone, the Daily Mail sent someone, The Times had a correspondent here, who was a normal political correspondent, but suddenly had to write about football. He didn’t know anything about football, but had to write about football, because Beckham was here.

Similarly to others like Stephen Constantine and Kevin Egan, Lowe was forced to put his playing ambitions on the backburner after suffering a long-term injury at an early age, but he didn’t allow this to prevent him from chasing his footballing ambitions. Instead, Lowe established himself as one of the foremost voices in Spanish football, writing weekly articles for ESPN and The Guardian and becoming a regular TV pundit on ESPN and discussing the latest in LaLiga from Barcelona’s fight to defend their title to Girona’s relegation battle.

Lowe has cemented his status in journalistic lore thanks to both his articles and TV and radio appearances as well as his books, having worked as a translator with a number of stars like Roberto Firmino, Fernando Torres, and Andrés Iniesta to churn out their stories in the English language. However, his most highly regarded book is none other than “Fear and Loathing in La Liga: Barcelona, Real Madrid, and the World’s Greatest Sports Rivalry,” which chronicles the relationship between the two Spanish giants and which was nominated for the 2013 William Hill Sports Book of the Year for 2013.

But whilst Lowe has spent the past quarter-century in Madrid focused on covering everything and anything in Spanish football, he also hasn’t lost touch with the English game and continues to hold an affinity for the Three Lions. “The first World Cup that I remember is 1986, where England got to the quarterfinals, and then I very much remember their run to the semifinals in 1990. I view that as the high point of English football because that’s the furthest that England had gone since winning it in 1966. Given that it’s such a football-mad country, there was very much the idea that they should have a better World Cup record.”

“It was believed that we had the players to do more, but at the same time, I think it probably is true that other countries were just that bit better at football than England, in particular the Germans, certainly from a European perspective. And then, of course, you’ve always got Brazil as this kind of glamorous outlier that everybody talks about as just being somehow different to everything else, even though, at that point, Brazil hadn’t won the World Cup in 20 years. It’s not like Brazil were the main team, although people of my generation remember the Brazilian team from 1982, not so much ’86, but there’s just this idea that surrounds the Brazilian national team from 1982.”

“I think from an England point of view, this comes to a head culturally, at Euro 1996, where England hosts the tournament, having not made it to the 1994 FIFA World Cup, and having been absolutely disastrous in the 1992 European Championships. Although England had a great World Cup in 1990, it was followed by two dreadful tournaments. You get to 1996 and as hosts, and the reason why I say it’s the cultural high point is the idea that’s bound up in the song ‘Three Lions’ with that central line in the chorus about 30 years of hurt, and how nothing good ever happens. You think about it now and it’s amazing…you look and go, ‘Bloody hell, it’s 60 years of hurt now, because England still haven’t won anything.”

Having spent half of his lifetime in England and half in Spain, Sid Lowe has cemented his status as one of the greatest Spanish football experts, if not the greatest, of his generation. And whilst he was unable to cover Spain’s successful World Cup conquest in 2010, he’s covered every major tournament of theirs since, from embarrassingly early exits to Euro triumphs in 2012 and 2024. And next summer, he looks set to cover Spain’s pursuit of their second star in North America.