Football

Dear Mary: Should I rename my grandmother’s dog to avoid offense?

Q. I have been offered a cottage, at minimal rent, on the estate of a friend of a friend who had got wind of my current unsatisfactory domestic arrangements. I am supposed to move in shortly but now I have looked more closely at the picturesque dwelling I find it is blighted by the typically low ceilings which characterise estate workers’ cottages. It is something that I — and our mutual friend — should have thought of. I am 6ft 6in and banging my head on beams is likely to be a major problem. How can I tactfully withdraw without making a fool of myself over the intemperance of my

Roger Alton

Footballers have made a pig’s ear of Covid rules

It’s the Portuguese piglet you feel really sorry for. The diminutive (ready cooked) porker — a festive delicacy all over the Iberian peninsula — was a Christmas gift from Spurs manager José Mourinho to his talented fullback Sergio Reguilon, on loan from Real Madrid. José, showing a robust approach to the intricacies of Veganuary, thought his player, a long way from his family, would be feeling lonely. As it turns out he needn’t have worried. Reguilon was one of a considerable number of Premier League players who were able to seek solace and good company at a series of jolly Christmas and new year parties, hosted by teammates and featuring

SNP vs Celtic: Why their Covid showdown matters

Football and politics seldom mix well and especially not when it comes to Scotland’s Old Firm. Yet the SNP government in Edinburgh has got itself into a war of words with Celtic FC after the club’s squad flew out to Dubai for a training camp. Asked about the Parkhead side’s decision on BBC Radio Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon’s deputy John Swinney said: I don’t think it’s a particularly great example to set. When we are asking members of the public to take on very, very significant restrictions on the way in which they live their lives, I think we have all got to demonstrate leadership on this particular question. Scotland’s lockdown

This has been the year of epic derangement

I wonder if British universities will follow Cornell’s innovative approach to ensuring students are protected from wretched viruses? The American institution has received plaudits for its rigorous regime. Students who refuse to have the flu vaccine will be barred from the Cornell libraries and other campus buildings — or, at least, they will if they are white. ‘Students of colour’ can decline to receive the vaccine. Why? Cornell explains: ‘Students who identify as Black, Indigenous, or as a Person of Color (BIPOC) may have personal concerns about fulfilling the Compact requirements based on historical injustices and current events.’ The university authorities give a little more detail about what those concerns

In defence of the booing Millwall fans

It is an enormous shame that the Millwall fans who booed their players for ‘taking a knee’ in support of Black Lives Matter last week were not better acquainted with one of the British BLM leaders, Sasha Johnson — they might have taken a knee themselves out of admiration. In August Ms Johnson tweeted: ‘The white man will not be our equal but our slave.’ If there is one thing Millwall supporters respect it’s aspiration, and Ms Johnson has that in abundance. I am sure the FA, the English Football League, and indeed the Millwall club board, who condemned the booing, all wish Sasha the best of luck in her

Football fans are sick of being lectured

There’s a menace on the terraces. At football grounds across the land, there are fans who are ruining the beautiful game for everyone else. They’re bringing their prejudices into football. They think nothing of grunting and groaning at people they don’t like, at people they view as inferior. It’s becoming intolerable. No, I’m not talking about noisy, rowdy Millwall fans who do naughty things like boo the taking of the knee. I’m talking about the middle-class NuFootball mob. I’m talking about the Johnny-Come-Latelys to the beautiful game who turn up with the Guardian folded under their arm and a neatly cut sandwich in an eco-friendly stainless-steel lunchbox. These people worry

In defence of Millwall

Were Millwall fans wrong to boo players who knelt in support of Black Lives Matter? Yes, according to the assembled pundits who are paid a fortune to talk about football.  ‘Let’s be fair,’ wrote Gary Lineker, ‘it only appears to be a small minority of Millwall fans that didn’t boo the players taking the knee’. ‘Reality is Millwall fans booing players taking a knee doesn’t surprise many!!!,’ said Trevor Sinclair, the ex-footballer who pleaded guilty in 2018 to a racially aggravated public order offence after he abused a police officer. Dion Dublin, whose career as Homes Under the Hammer presenter has been a lot more productive than his brief spell at Man United,

Rugby must try harder

Remember those lazy, hazy, crazy days of last year’s rugby World Cup, when as perfect a performance by England as we are ever likely to see dethroned the All Blacks? England went through to the final 19-7 with a brilliant, nimble, free-running performance, backs and forwards in perfect harmony, and a dazzling display of skilful tactical kicking. Seems a long time ago, doesn’t it? Friends told me after the final, where England were made to look very ordinary, that the style of South Africa’s victory (despite Cheslin Kolbe’s exquisite winning try) could be the death of rugby: attritional forward play and relentless box kicking, gaining ground and forcing penalties. All

Diego Maradona, a god of football

Argentina has announced three days of national mourning after the death of Diego Maradona. Take a second and think about that. Who in Britain, beyond the Queen, might command such nationwide grief? Despite his untimely death, Maradona will never truly die. Gods never do.  Naples is able to marry the divine and the devil like no other city; a rough, tough, crumbling beauty that seats opulence in the midst of teeming poverty. Fitting, then, that it became Maradona’s own home for so long. He arrived to the wild fanfare of 75,000 people when he signed his contract at the Stadio San Paolo in 1984. Maradona cut a mixed figure in

Farewell to Graham Cowdrey, cricket’s king of the dressing room

So the Good Lord really wants to fill out his team: how else to interpret the passing in recent months of three of the finest footballers of the past century — Jack Charlton, Nobby Stiles and Ray Clemence. All received thoroughly deserved eulogies. All had reached the highest realms of their sport and, though none made it to a very great age, they did at least achieve the biblical milestone of three score years and ten. All deaths have a depth to their sadness, felt most deeply by immediate family, but not all have an added melancholy that engages us in a quite different way. Graham Cowdrey’s passing in seemingly

Cheering for Jürgen Klopp: Liverpool FC’s manager can do no wrong

As his biographer, I feel obliged to quote John Updike’s wise sayings — among them the first rule in his code for book reviewers: ‘Try to understand what the author wished to do, and then do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.’ Too bad about the gendered pronoun; otherwise, spot on. Rules are made to be broken, though, and when it comes to Anthony Quinn’s Klopp, I have to say I wish there were more Klopp, less Quinn. In the prologue, the author warns us: ‘This book is not a biography of Jürgen Klopp.’ So what’s with the title? Jürgen Norbert Klopp arrived at Anfield

What’s the difference between ‘gifting’ and ‘giving’?

Boris Johnson, the Telegraph suggested last week, is understood to have a personal interest in rewilding, ‘recently gifting his father beavers to release on his own Exmoor estate’. I started at the word gifting like a horse shying at a carrier bag caught in the hedge. Why didn’t I like it? My first thought was that there was a perfectly good word, giving. My second was that gifting is an obtrusive case of verbing a noun. Thirdly, it seemed like an Americanism. Fourthly, it belongs to a kind of speech adopted by copywriters for luxury cruises and retirement homes. In 1996, Robert Burchfield in The New Fowler’s Modern English Usage

What I’ll miss most in Lockdown II

A second lockdown won’t cause me much suffering. I don’t have a shop selling ‘non-essential’ goods (e.g. books) that will go out of business. As a freelance journalist, I’m not at risk of losing my job. I don’t have a life-threatening disease so I’m not going to die because my local hospital won’t admit me. I have only one elderly relative and she’s in our family’s ‘support bubble’. My biggest worry is that schools will close again, not least because one of my children is doing her A-levels next year and another his GCSEs. Boris has absolutely, categorically ruled that out so I give it about another week before he

The joy of red wine

Everything is happening so fast. First we were put under a night curfew. A few days later M. Macron announced another lockdown. Then, pretty much overnight, I developed a taste for red wine. The Damascene conversion was a bottle of Clos de l’Ours, a local vineyard. It was pricey admittedly, even when bought direct from the vigneron’s shop, but it was a gateway. Now I’m guzzling red. It’s like finally liking sausages after a lifetime’s aversion. The suddenness and completeness of the conversion I can only put down to an organic deterioration in the brain. Old age, perhaps. Or years of drinking this unpretentious, paralysing brand of gin that is

Roger Alton

Sporting spectacles to look forward to in lockdown

‘At least there’s sport,’ said the woman in the supermarket queue. True enough, and in a welcome sop to an embattled world elite sport has largely been saved from the wreckage of second lockdowns around the globe, leaving a great deal to look forward to and argue about. 1. The much-delayed US Masters — will Bryson DeChambeau, the American built like a brick outhouse, pummel Augusta National into submission like a pitch and putt on Bognor seafront? The Augusta committee won’t want that and will have set the course up to stop him. Should be a compelling spectacle, though I rather fancy the ever-consistent Spaniard Jon Rahm, the one-time world

Thanks for nothing, Jordan Pickford

You might hate the Premier League for its determination to suck all the money out of football, but at least it has now become so weird it’s almost like fake news. Who would not have been gobsmacked by West Ham’s comeback with just 15 minutes left from 3-0 down to draw 3-3 against Tottenham? And it wasn’t really a day to tell the grandchildren about for the lavishly remunerated golfer Gareth Bale, who came on with 20-odd minutes to go, was hardly mentioned, and missed a sitter. Still he only costs £600,000 a week. Maybe in these days of bailouts, Mourinho should have followed suit and left Bale out. Can

Football is better without the crowds

The Liverpool defence might have decided in a rare show of togetherness to demonstrate what the word ‘appalling’ means, and Spurs only had a pathetic Manchester United to beat, but something strange is happening to football. After all, Manchester United have conceded six goals before (well, one other time since the 1930s) and Liverpool have conceded seven before (just a couple of other times since the 1930s) — but both on the same day! So what’s going on? Like actors performing out of their skulls at dress rehearsals because the pressure of a first night is off, are footballers flying through games with freedom, flair and zest, ready to try

DeChambeau’s the one to watch in the Masters

José Mourinho, it was surprising to read, recently said how relieved he was that the Amazon Prime cameras were out of his hair and he could get back to working in private, the way he likes it. Given that the Spurs documentary programmes, part of the All or Nothing sports series, are long promotional videos for José, made with his consent and, it would appear, absolute collaboration, this was a risible remark. And it turns out erroneous. Far from ending the series, one cameraman continues to work — and was spotted last week at an upmarket bar in Chingford, where Harry Kane and Son Heung-min were relaxing after a training

Foden and Greenwood’s ingenious Icelandic rendezvous

You suspect that a bar of duty-free Toblerone, no matter how supersized, wouldn’t really do the trick when hapless England footballing star Phil Foden flew home from Iceland to his long-term girlfriend Rebecca, mother of their 18-month-old son. You can only wish him all the best. Foden, 20, and Mason Greenwood, 18, who are huge pals, despite playing for opposite sides of Manchester, found themselves in something of a scrape involving hotel rooms, beautiful girls and leaks to the press. Same old, same old… Now I don’t know what you were like at 18, or how detailed your knowledge of the Icelandic dating scene, but hats off to these kids

Zac Crawley, a cricketing giant

Crowds, Covid and sport: could it get any crazier? I don’t mind about golf: no idiots yelling ‘Get in the hole’ at every opportunity. But Formula 1 without a few thousand petrol heads going berserk is even more tiresome than usual: a minor wheelspin at the start, then Lewis wins. One-day cricket in an empty ground will feel a bit odd. Not even a lone voice abusing Steve Smith in the upcoming games against the Aussies. Sport as purely a TV event is pretty limited. A friend had missed the PM’s volte-face on letting small crowds into the Bob Willis games, so was turned away when he tried to buy