Tag: Football
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Stepping Back
So, Gary Lineker is on his way out of the BBC. It was indeed a stretch to see how somebody so clear about the Tories’ language of the 1930s was oblivious to the rat symbolism used by the Nazis during the same era. He apparently never saw the offending emoji in the post he shared,…
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Tuched Up
So, England’s first German manager has entered the fickle foray of footie, kicking off with a hefty slice of withering criticism for his predecessor and a 2-0 win over Albania. Guys, you’d only lose to Albania at pickpocketing, trafficking, or blood feuds. It’s probably true that Southgate’s weightiest clanger in the last tournament was his…
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Flaccid Jenas
Well, that was a spunky twenty-four hours for Jermaine Jenas. He’s pirouetted from a pugilistic ‘I can tell you I’m not happy – there are two sides to every story – and I’m going to be speaking with my lawyers on the issue’ to a pusillanimous ‘I am ashamed, and I am deeply sorry’. He…
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Too Juan
Another day, another failure. In fairness, the match against Spain was pretty evenly matched for the first 85 minutes. Of course, Spain had looked more dangerous and had played the better football, but the score still reflected bottom-lime parity. Then, in the blink of an eye, there was a precision pass, a lightning burst of…
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Safegate
‘We don’t have a replacement for Kalvin Phillips’. Let that sink in for a moment. Gareth Southgate has a team that should be bubbling with the Bundesliga top scorer, the season’s outstanding player in La Liga, and a fresh dollop of Premiership cream. And yet, he is bamboozled by the challenge of replacing a player…
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Slot Machine
Wowsers! Liverpool FC appear to have been sucked into the cyclical, psychopathic managerial money-go-round, plumping for Arne Slot as a replacement for Jürgen Klopp. Slot is, according to Virgil van Dijk, ‘one of the better Dutch coaches’ currently plying their trade. Oh dear. Erik ten Hag is the best, which should be triggering canned laughter…
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Tap-In
Another day, another Team England loss, and two hours of my life was gone forever. Sometimes I think I’ll never learn. Cue the rearguard. The shambolic shitshow shoo-in was predictably re-imagined by the client press as an inevitable defeat in the wake of the new Brazilian wonderkid. The ‘new Romario’, no less. Nothing Gareth could…
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A F- Con
Deary me – the Afcon tournament is hardly a more appetising spectacle than the Women’s ‘World Cup’, which itself registered an 11/10 on the toss-o-meter. I’d rather plunge my unprotected fingers into Mary Earps’ Instagram page than allow any more of the light from that sub-Saharan sportsqueef to enter my retinal photoreceptors. There’s certainly not…
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Not Fit to Iron the Shirt
Former footballer and manager Joey Barton has ruffled a few feather boas in recent weeks by stating some of the least controversial comments imaginable. He has said that the current locust swarm of female pundits are crap. That’s not even an opinion. It’s a fact. Claiming that their presence on screen in the context of…
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Twearps
Hold my Prosecco while I have a whinge. For the second year in a row, the public has voted a woman footballer the ‘Sports Personality of the Year’. Their game, their rules. Good luck to all the women making money from football. I say the same about proper players making zillions from Premier League merchandising.…
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