Football

Thursday

Roger Alton

England’s rugby team are embarrassingly sore losers

Sports events come and go, but good manners, as William of Wykeham might have put it, last for ever. Or the lack of them. Which is why the surly, petulant behaviour of most of England’s rugby players after losing the World Cup final was so disgraceful. Refusing to wear the medals presented to them (by Sir Bill Beaumont, for heaven’s sake, a man who knows a bit about losing as well as winning), or hastily discarding them, standing around scowling, and then failing to bow in unison to the Japanese people who had created such a marvellous tournament. It was all pretty shameful. The rugby fraternity loftily dismisses this as

Thursday

Mark Mason

Why I love a bit of death on a Sunday night

There’s nothing like a nice bit of death on a Sunday evening. Radio 4 originally transmit their obituary programme Last Word on Friday afternoons, but I love listening to the repeat. Sunday at 8.30 p.m. is the perfect time — the ending of people’s lives at the ending of the week. The stresses of Monday morning are beginning to appear on your mental horizon, so Last Word is a handy reminder that none of it matters. Triumphs and tragedies come and go, but in the end we all check out. This week provided the usual smorgasbord of mortality. Everyone from Irene Shubik, the TV producer behind Rumpole of the Bailey,

Thursday

Roger Alton

The joy of Japanese-style rugby

Proud son of Wexford he may be, and of doughty farming stock too, but the heart sinks at the prospect of seeing yet again Tadhg Furlong, all 20-odd stone of him, emerge from a pile of bodies laying siege to the opposition line to lumber over for a try. Ireland’s brand of suffocating rugby has been effective but uninspiring over this World Cup. And without wishing to offend our cousins across the Irish Sea, the heart sinks at the prospect of Furlong, Stander and the rest of the boyos possibly putting out a free-running (if so far slightly untested) New Zealand in the second of this weekend’s mouth-watering quarter-finals. Those

Benedict Spence

It’s not just hooligans – hipsters also love a football shirt

When I was young, from about the age of nine to 13, I went through what my parents recall with a shudder as ‘the football shirt phase’. Where some children rebel by smoking, and others take to eyeliner, my vice was polyester. My first shirt was a quirky one — an early Noughties AS Bari white and red home shirt with an itchy collar. The thing smelled of washing powder no matter how much I wore it — which was daily for the best part of three months one very hot Italian summer. I’d wear football shirts everywhere, from family meals to drinks parties, trips into town and to Mass.

Thursday

Geoff Dyer

On photography, shrines and Maradona: Geoff Dyer’s Neapolitan pilgrimage

At the Villa Pignatelli in Naples there is an exhibition by Elisa Sighicelli: photographs of bits and pieces of antiquity from, among other places, the city’s Archaeological Museum. Put like that it doesn’t sound so interesting but the results are stunning. Walking through the Archaeological Museum after seeing the exhibition it was difficult to discover the original objects from which Sighicelli’s samples were taken. One instance, a tight crop of fingers pressing into a calf, is from a highly elaborate, much restored and augmented sculpture with so much going on — a naked swirl of bodies, a rearing horse, a sympathetic doggy — it’s hard to imagine how she found

Wednesday

Steerpike

Is the EU to blame for football’s daft new handball rule?

It’s not often Mr S jumps to the defence of the EU, but he is prepared to make an exception. A new handball rule in football caused controversy over the weekend after a last-minute goal by Manchester City was ruled out. The reason? City player Aymeric Laporte was judged to have lightly touched the ball following a video check. So who’s to blame for the stringent new rule that cost the Premier League champions victory in their game against Tottenham? The EU, according to football manager Ian Holloway: ‘I don’t think that’s our boys making up that new change of law. I think that’s people telling us what we should

Thursday

Jemma Wayne

Why the hype over women’s football isn’t all good news

I hate football. Wait, that’s a bit strong, I’ll rephrase: I have no interest in watching a bunch of grown men chase a piece of leather around a pitch while fans either wallow in devastation, or smugly taunt the opposition with their triumph: “we won!” You had nothing to do with it, mate. You were sat on the sofa. Perhaps my distaste comes from this weird tribalism. Perhaps it’s because, when I do watch these globally-revered footballers, they just don’t seem that good. I mean, if you’re paid that much and train that much, surely, when you take a penalty, you should never actually miss the target? But maybe there

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

My campaign for fairer treatment

I am a football fan. Each fortnight I go to watch my club and, like the overwhelming majority of the football–supporting community, I do so peaceably, giving offence or threat to nobody. Sometimes I take boiled sweets. At halftime I might enjoy a chicken balti pie and a glass of lager. I do not lamp opposing supporters over the head with a bottle, or chase them around the back streets of the local area screaming: ‘I’m going to open you up like a can of peaches.’ Only a tiny minority of the football-supporting community do things like that, and so I am disinclined to consider them football supporters at all.

Monday

Emma Revell

The women’s world cup pay gap is nothing to do with sexism

As the Women’s World Cup drew to a close yesterday, the noise around the ground wasn’t just generated by fans celebrating the continued dominance of the United States. The crowd also chanted in support of equal pay and booed FIFA president Gianni Infantino.  Their problem? The lower prize money and pay earned by female players compared to their male counterparts. The prize money for the women’s tournament is £24m ($30m), while the total for the men’s competition last year came to £319m ($400m). So in the face of this seemingly undeniable inequity it seems Megan Rapinoe, captain of the US team, is right to back the chanting. But in fact

Thursday

Rod Liddle

Save us from the civil service and the BBC

I was asked on to the BBC Today programme — my old manor — last week to talk about the Women’s World Cup. The producers had noticed that I’d changed my mind about the event and now thought it all rather good fun, having hitherto been derisively misogynistic. ‘This is the thing,’ I said to them. ‘You only invite social conservatives on when they’ve come around to your way of thinking and stopped being social conservatives. Why don’t you ask me on to talk about banning abortion, deporting all foreigners and sectioning the trannies?’ I agreed to the football chat, a little reluctantly, but told the chap that the item

Thursday

Deborah Ross

Fallen god

Diego Maradona, Asif Kapadia’s take on the poor boy from the slums of Buenos Aires who became a footballing god, is gripping if heartbreaking. It’s one of those scenarios where a stunning natural talent is exploited rather than protected. He even put me in mind of Judy Garland (minus the large and devoted gay following). But for all that, it is not wholly satisfying and it sent me scurrying to Wikipedia. What happened to his marriage? What were his ties with the mafia exactly? Plus, from what I read there, was he also a bit of a shit? Kapadia is an exceptional documentarian and, as with his previous films, Senna

Thursday

Rory Sutherland

The art of persuasion | 23 May 2019

People sometimes ask what slogan could have swayed the Brexit vote: the opposite of the touchstone phrase ‘Take back control’. There are many suggestions, my own being: ‘Don’t leave — it’s what the French want us to do.’ No Europhile committee would ever have approved a jingoistic slogan, of course; yet the feelings of committed Europeans are irrelevant. Those people will vote Remain in any case. Instead you need to reach the ambivalent, sceptical or mildly hostile. This raises the central question about communication: do you want to feel good about yourself, or do you want to change the minds of others? The art of sloganeering can serve two powerful

James Delingpole James Delingpole

Get your kit off

After its new costume drama You Go, Girl! (Sundays) about how amazing, empowered and better-than-men women are, especially if they are lesbians, the BBC ran its first ever Nike ad. At least that’s what I thought initially: rap music, moody shots of athletes, very high production values. Then I saw they were all grim-faced women and the word ‘RISE’ in flames and I thought: ‘Big new drama series? About girls who’ve been sucked into this very strict Christian cult, a bit like the Handmaid’s Tale, maybe?’ Then I noticed they were all wearing football kit and kicking balls around, and went back to my original Nike idea. Finally came the

Thursday

Roger Alton

It’s the fans wot win it – so stop fleecing them

It is always possible to tell the difference between a bunch of Manchester City fans and auditions for the latest Dolce & Gabbana commercial. And in that uproarious packed stand at Brighton on Sunday, there were clearly quite a few folk who hadn’t gone without a meal for some time. But by golly we were a happy, relieved bunch. City supporters have been used to getting kicked in the face at the last moment for so long that no one really celebrated till the result was beyond doubt. ‘Why are you so nervous, you’re 4-1 up?’ ‘I know, but there’s five minutes to go,’ is a joke made for City

Thursday

William Cook

The world at his feet

How much is Jadon Sancho worth? Fifty million? A hundred million? As the speculation mounts, the numbers keep growing. Jadon is the star player for Borussia Dortmund, one of Germany’s leading football teams. He’s already won his first England cap — and he’s still only 18. If you know anything about football, you already know about Jadon. If you don’t know anything about football, you’ll know about him soon enough. He’s the kind of player who comes along only once in a decade — a Glenn Hoddle, a Paul Gascoigne, a Ryan Giggs, a Gareth Bale. He’s the most gifted British footballer of his generation. And from when he was

Tuesday

D Reilly

Jose Mourinho’s sacking will be a relief for the Special One

They say it’s not what you do or say that people remember you for, but how you make them feel. Jose Mourinho has spent the last few years, lately as manager of Manchester United but before that at Chelsea and Real Madrid, making everybody feel awful. Now, once again, he’s paid the price. Petulant, sulky, seemingly at all times very angry with everything and everyone, United under him seemed hell-bent not just on negating the human spirit, but also crushing it. They were boring to watch, disdainful of flare and, worst of all for this most romantic of clubs, utterly pragmatic (and not even very good at that). At the

Thursday

Ian Sansom

A hero to worship

If you don’t know who Lionel Messi is you won’t enjoy this book much. If you do, you probably will. But if you know who Messi is and you’ve got at least a 2:1 in English, comp. lit. or similar, you are going to absolutely love it. This is definitely one for the football aficionado as well as for fans of fine writing. Messi is an Argentinian footballer who’s played for Barcelona for his entire professional career. He’s short. He’s modest. And he never takes a dive. Apart from his appalling tattoos, he’s the very opposite of what you might expect of the modern footballer — an Argentinian Roy of

Thursday

Roger Alton

Time to waste, money to burn

Marvellous team, the All Blacks, of course. But they certainly know how to waste some time. Here are some things you may want to do when the New Zealand forwards are making their way to a line-out with a one-point lead and the clock running down: change your energy supplier, clear those clogged winter gutters or, for the more adventurous, nip out to Santa Pod Raceway in Bedfordshire and do a quarter of a mile in a drag-racing car. Either way, those mighty Kiwi forwards won’t have moved far. Much to the annoyance of some big footballing beasts like Bayern Munich, Manchester City appear to have been channelling away millions

Thursday

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 11 October 2018

I told Oscar to wait outside and I went in and said to the barman: ‘Would it be all right if my grandson came in to watch the football?’ ‘Of course,’ he said. My notion that children aren’t allowed in pubs must be a quaint one because his harassed, hardworking face creased into a bemused smile and a man seated at the bar laughed. We had four screens of various sizes to choose from: one behind the bar, one above the pool table, one above the fireplace and one fixed to the wall at the end of the bar. About a dozen customers were half paying attention to the screens

Sunday

Steerpike

Jeremy Wright’s football fail

Is Jeremy Wright the new David Cameron? By that, Mr S does not mean to suggest that Wright is the man to go on to win a majority for the Tories at the next general election. Instead, Steerpike’s concern relates to football. During Cameron’s time in No 10, there was a running joke that despite his claims to the contrary, Dave wasn’t much of a football fan. Despite claiming he was an Aston Villa fan, Cameron later said he supported West Ham United. The new Culture Secretary is showing signs of suffering from a similar condition. In an interview with Sophy Ridge this morning, Wright said that he was particularly