Category: Sport
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Replica Shirks
Shell-shocked, I’ve been eating gargantuan wedges of humble pie after Gareth Southgate steered the Three Lions to their first major final in 55 years. Whatever the ultimate outcome, the team has, after a sluggish start, performed magnificently. Forget the tactical analysis, and that’s not just because, like most punters, I don’t really understand the technicalities.…
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It’s Coming Home
So, Euro 2020 is underway, and the immediate focal point will doubtless be the knee-taking that will almost certainly overshadow our chance-taking. We will therefore be showing the red card to racism but getting fervently behind our respective teams, right? Now that raises an uncomfortable question regarding our own comfort with football patriotism. If racism…
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Heart Failure
When Christian Eriksen hit the deck during the Denmark-Finland match, it was a horrible moment. But it was not just the player collapsing, it was also the integrity of much of the viewing public who sprang into life on social media. Yes, while the poor chap lay prostrate on the pitch and in the sick…
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Teenage Kicks
The cricketer Ollie Robinson has been yanked out of his England debut because of some boundary-breaching, turdist tweets that he had posted a decade ago. At worst it was throwaway bravado or attempts at humour through extreme shock value, and to be fair, I’ve heard worse from your average grim gaggle of giggling girlies in…
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Knee Jerk
Reportedly, Gareth Southgate is to hold urgent talks with the England squad about taking the knee. In all truth, he’d be better off talking to them about taking the piss. That performance versus Austrian opposition would have had Neville Chamberlain’s paper fluttering in the wind. In elite football terms, we’re not waving but drowning. As…
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Southgategate
When I was a lad, parents would buy their kids pet hamsters in order to introduce them to the crushing reality of bereavement. Nowadays, parents whip up excitement around England’s football tournament campaigns to the same end. Yes, it’s that time again when for a few weeks we can deceive ourselves that incompetence and cluelessness…
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Porto Ball Bug
It’s the UEFA Champions’ league final today – an all-English affair, which is taking place in Porto. Fewer than three weeks ago, it had been decided to switch the event from Istanbul because Turkey is on the UK’s travel ‘red list’. So, let me get this straight. In the midst of a pandemic when this…
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Pro Test
After yesterday’s match against Fulham, Paul Pogba and Amad Diallo unfurled a Palestinian flag and paraded it around Old Trafford. I thought political statements were banned in football? So sensitive about this were FIFA that the home nations were once punished for displaying a remembrance poppy, which is arguably not a political symbol at all.…
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Flip Flop
You couldn’t make it up. The Free Speech Union has supported the ban on taking the knee at the Tokyo Olympics. One of their gang said: ‘The majority of people support banning taking the knee. It is divisive and doesn’t have much to do with kicking racism out of sport‘. That’s a belter. If shooting…
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Closed Shops
Well, that didn’t last long. The European Super League has received the red card, but that will likely not be the end of it. For now, the Big Six can return to the Premier League where they can revert to sucking up cash, buying in the best players, and operating without fear of relegation. One…
