Football

It’s a crying shame that we will no longer hear the insightful and original opinions of Gary Lineker. No more comprehensive and judicious appraisals. No more balanced verdicts delivered in an authoritative yet amiable manner. No longer will we witness Lineker draw from his deep well of experience and knowledge to deliver his considered conclusions. Saturday evenings will never be the same again. Yes, I am of course talking about Gary Lineker the popular television football pundit, not Gary Lineker the unpopular political thinker. While the first version can lay claim to be – or once could have claimed to be – a national treasure, the newer, other iteration has

When my youngest son Charlie was seven he was talent-spotted by a QPR scout who saw him playing football in the park and invited to try out for the junior academy. I struggled to take this seriously – he still couldn’t ride a bicycle – but duly turned up at a ‘sports academy’ in Willesden, a secondary school, where the trials were held. To my astonishment, a QPR coach told me Charlie had potential and offered to enrol him in a programme that involved spending two hours every Wednesday evening at this school. This wasn’t the junior academy, but a level below. Charlie was keen and after talking it over

Last Saturday, I made the 400-mile round trip to Burnley with my 16-year-old son Charlie to see Queens Park Rangers play the Clarets. Quite a long way to go, given that Burnley was one of three teams relegated from the Premier League last season and are expected to go straight back up, while QPR are struggling to remain in the second tier. Nevertheless, we managed to hold them to a goalless draw, which the visiting fans celebrated as if we’d just won the FA Cup. ‘Worth the trip,’ declared Charlie as we embarked on the four-hour train ride home. The cabinet of killjoys can’t stand the fact that the beautiful

‘I’ve proven in my career that I will always win,’ Erik ten Hag told the press last month. ‘In the last six years I have won eight trophies.’ The now-sacked Manchester United manager’s words were true but said without conviction. As loss followed loss, it was just one of the many excuses he trotted out to try and maintain his dignity and placate the fans. Both pundits and punters could see that ten Hag had grown tired and embittered after two years under the yoke of England’s biggest but most troubled football club. But how did the prospects of a talented manager collapse so quickly? Ten Hag joined Manchester United

Readers concerned that the seemingly imperious march of Bazball across the cricket firmament has blotted out the more, er, traditional virtues of the game need fret no more. Matches in the ninth division of the Derbyshire League don’t normally make headlines from Australia to Qatar but a needle relegation tussle between Mickleover Third XI and Darley Abbey’s Fourth team was no ordinary game. Mickleover piled up a chunky 271-4 declared in a mere 35 overs, thanks largely to a teenager called Max Thompson who belted 186 from 128 balls, with a feast of fours and sixes. If you have to call up J.K. Rowling’s bespectacled wizard, you really are in

Sven-Goran Eriksson, who has died aged 76, was an unlikely choice for the England job in 2000. He was inexperienced with English football – his only exposure having been as young visiting coach in 1978 when Bobby Robson invited him to sit in the dugout during an Ipswich match. But Sven was a serial winner. He had just won the Italian league, the toughest in the world, with Lazio, the club’s first title in 30 years. Before that, he had won 17 trophies over two decades at clubs in Sweden, Portugal and Italy.  The Football Association had burned through top English managers in the previous decade. Bobby Robson was let

I detected a degree of surprise among those people who were uncommonly cheered by Sir Keir Starmer’s election victory that England failed to beat Spain in the final of the European Championship. That wasn’t in the script. For those Labour supporters in the press and floating in the shallow trough of luvviedom, an England victory would have been the first thing to gild this brave new era of kindness, generosity of spirit and diversity. I would not begrudge Southgate a knighthood, given the state of the national game when he took over These were the sorts of qualities associated with the England manager Gareth Southgate, who needed no more encouragement to

Say what you like about Gary Lineker, and plenty do, but he’s a terrific presenter and when he’s not running it, Match of the Day dials down a notch. If he wants to bang on about the language of Suella Braverman and 1930s Germany, well it’s a free country – though elsewhere you might find his lachrymose response to the Gaza war somewhat tiresome. When Lineker decided to ramp up his cosy, own-brand T-shirt style by using his podcast to call the England team’s (admittedly lacklustre) performance against Denmark ‘shit’, doubtless the bevvied-up boyos at the Croydon fan zone would have downed a few more pints in appreciation. He might

Poland’s manager, Michael Probierz, wore a shapeless tweed-ish suit with bulging waistcoat and, when the Dutch scored their winner, had about him the demeanour of a dispossessed country squire who has just seen Angela Rayner walking up the drive with her canvassing team. He had a right to be disappointed. The Poles have been written off by everybody, as they usually are, but perhaps deserved a point from a Dutch side which combined the familiar flair going forward with the familiar frailties in defence. Poland took the lead, conceded, but for much of the second half ran the Dutch ragged, until Wout Weghorst found space inside the Free Polish Corridor

The provisional England squad for the Euros unveiled by manager Gareth Southgate contains one notable omission: Jordan Henderson. That’s a big surprise, not because the midfielder deserves to be on the plane to Germany this summer, but for what it says about the thinking of the normally ultra-loyal Southgate, who is often accused of picking his personal favourites for the squad, regardless of club form. His decision to omit Henderson and some other under-performing England stalwarts sends a strong message to all the players. The England manager had this to say about why he left Henderson out: ‘The determining factor was the injury he picked up in the last camp.

Spare a thought for Manchester United’s Erik ten Hag. He’s got a fairly crummy, injury-hit team who appear to have given up running (apart from Alejandro Garnacho who is still young enough to think that it’s OK to belt down the left wing and then deposit the ball somewhere, though not in goal). His new owner is pictured in the stands with his head in his hands and he has to cope with the choleric visage of his predecessor Sir Alex Ferguson watching on with an expression of scarcely controlled contempt, while two former United godfathers, Gary Neville and Roy Keane, fulminate in the Sky commentary box about how crap