Sam Wallace is a British sports journalist, the Chief

Football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...

Writer at the Daily and Sunday Telegraph since 2015. In 2021, he was the recipient of the Scoop of the Year and Football Journalist of the Year at the SJA Awards, as well as the

Hugh McIlvanney Hugh McIlvanney (2 February 1934 – 24 January 2019) was a Scottish sports journalist who had long stints with the British Sunday newspapers ''The Observer'' (30 years until 1993) and then 23 years with ''The Sunday Times'' (1993–2016). Aft ...

Sports Journalist of the Year and Sport News Story of the Year at

The Press Awards The Press Awards, formerly the British Press Awards, is an annual ceremony that celebrates the best of British journalism. History Established in 1962 by ''The People'' and '' World's Press News'', the first award ceremony for the then-named '' ...

Early life and education

From

Stevenage, Hertfordshire Stevenage ( ) is a large town and borough in Hertfordshire, England, about north of London. Stevenage is east of junctions 7 and 8 of the A1(M), between Letchworth Garden City to the north and Welwyn Garden City to the south. In 1946, Steven ...

Wallace graduated from

Robinson College, Cambridge Robinson College is a Colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1977, it is one of the newest Oxbridge colleges and is unique in having been intended, from its inception, for both ...

with a degree in English literature. The son of an English teacher at

The Barclay School Barclay Academy is a secondary school and sixth form located in Stevenage, Hertfordshire, England. The current head teacher is Dr. Matthew Laban. Opening in 1949, it was the first purpose-built secondary school constructed in the UK after the ...

, Stevenage, Wallace was a schoolboy peer of professional

golf Golf is a club-and-ball sport in which players use various clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a course in as few strokes as possible. Golf, unlike most ball games, cannot and does not use a standardized playing area, and coping wi ...

Ian Poulter Ian James Poulter (born 10 January 1976) is an English professional golfer who plays in the LIV Golf League. He has previously been ranked as high as number 5 in the world rankings. The highlights of Poulter's career to date have been his two W ...

. Poulter wrote in his autobiography ''No Limits: My autobiography'' that the pair would play together on the right side of their school football team with Wallace at right back and Poulter at right midfield. Wallace would write match reports of their team's matches, some of which are still on display when Poulter revisited their school in 2013. Wallace was a ball boy for the

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

game in March 1990, at

Wembley Stadium Wembley Stadium (branded as Wembley Stadium connected by EE for sponsorship reasons) is a football stadium in Wembley, London. It opened in 2007 on the site of the Wembley Stadium (1923), original Wembley Stadium, which was demolished from 200 ...

. England won the game 1–0 with the solitary goal from

Gary Lineker Gary Winston Lineker (; born 30 November 1960) is an English former professional footballer and current sports broadcaster. He is regarded as having been one of the greatest English strikers. His media career began with the BBC, where he has p ...

Career

Wallace earned a place on the Telegraph graduate training scheme in 1999 and apart from six months at the

Evening Standard The ''Evening Standard'', formerly ''The Standard'' (1827–1904), also known as the ''London Evening Standard'', is a local free daily newspaper in London, England, published Monday to Friday in tabloid format. In October 2009, after be ...

as a news reporter, Wallace stayed at the

Daily Telegraph Daily or The Daily may refer to: Journalism * Daily newspaper, newspaper issued on five to seven day of most weeks * ''The Daily'' (podcast), a podcast by ''The New York Times'' * ''The Daily'' (News Corporation), a defunct US-based iPad new ...

for more than five years. Within that time he worked as the paper's north-west football reporter, based in

Manchester Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The t ...

from January 2002. He agreed to join

The Independent ''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publis ...

newspaper in December 2004. Wallace had worked up to become the Chief Football Correspondent for The Independent by the time he agreed to move back to the

this time as Chief Football Writer, in the summer of 2015. His final articles for The Independent appearing in October 2015. Since returning to The Telegraph, Wallace has also appeared on their Total Football and Audio Football Club podcasts. Wallace was nominated in the specialist correspondent category at the 2009

British Sports Journalism Awards The British Sports Journalism Awards is an annual ceremony organised by the Sports Journalists' Association that recognise the best of sports journalism in Britain in the previous calendar year. The awards are widely considered the BAFTAs of the ...

. Wallace was nominated for Writer of the year at the 2014

Football Supporters Federation The Football Supporters' Federation (FSF) is an organisation representing football fans in England and Wales. It campaigns across a range of issues and supports fan representation on clubs' boards, lower ticket prices, and the introduction of saf ...

Awards. In 2015 he was nominated as Football Writer of the year at the Sports Journalist Awards and in 2016 he was highly commended in the football writer category. In 2018 and 2019 Wallace was nominated as Football Journalist. He received a highly commended recognition in both years. Wallace was nominated again in 2020 and earned the Bronze award. Wallace was shortlisted in the Best Writer category in the 2021

Football Supporters' Association The Football Supporters' Association (The FSA) is the national, democratic, representative body for football supporters in England and Wales. They are the leading advocates for supporter ownership, better fan engagement, cheaper ticket prices, t ...

awards. A regular pundit on

Sky Sports Sky Sports is a group of British subscription sports channels operated by the satellite pay television company Sky Group (a division of Comcast), and is the dominant subscription television sports brand in the United Kingdom and Ireland. It ...

programme Sunday Supplement, in May 2020 a private conversation by the pundits over remote record during the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...

was accidentally broadcast and included a comment by Wallace about why the singer Morrisey had been “basically cancelled”, for which presenter

Geoff Shreeves Geoff Shreeves (born October 1964) is a reporter on Sky Sports. He joined the channel in 1992, the first season of The Premier League. Career Shreeves went to Verulam School in St Albans. His media career began in the United States in 1990, w ...

had to apologise. Wallace has also appeared as a football pundit on the

BBC Sport BBC Sport is the sports division of the BBC, providing national sports coverage for BBC television, radio and online. The BBC holds the television and radio UK broadcasting rights to several sports, broadcasting the sport live or alongside flag ...

television and

radio Radio is the technology of signaling and communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 30 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transmit ...

, as well as for the official podcast of London-based

Premier League The Premier League (legal name: The Football Association Premier League Limited) is the highest level of the men's English football league system. Contested by 20 clubs, it operates on a system of promotion and relegation with the English Foo ...

football club

Crystal Palace F.C. Crystal Palace Football Club is a professional football club based in Selhurst in the Borough of Croydon, South London, England, who compete in the Premier League, the highest level of English football. Although formally created as a profes ...

On 2 March 2021 it was announced that at the Society of Editors’ “

” that Wallace was nominated twice, once for The

Award for Sports Journalist of the year, and also for the Sports News Story of the year for his scoop in the Telegraph about ‘Project Big Picture’, designed by some to help the

Premier League–Football League gulf In English football, a gulf has arisen between the finances of clubs from the Premier League and English Football League since the First Division clubs broke away to form the Premier League in 1992. Some have argued that this disparity is wider ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wallace, Sam British sports journalists The Daily Telegraph people Year of birth missing (living people) Living people