Football

On this week’s episode, we examine Twitter’s mob mentality, get to the heart of PTSD, and look at how Russia is preparing for this year’s World Cup. First up: At the end of 2017 it would’ve be hard to guess that the name of everyone’s lips during the sunrise days of the new year would be Toby Young. But thanks to a government appointment and a series of ill-advised tweets, his brief stint at the Office for Students has dominated the news cycle. In the magazine this week, Lara Prendergast writes about how our digital footprints could come back to bite us, whilst Rod Liddle laments the rise of trial

Authoritarian regimes love grand international sporting events. There’s something about the mass regimentation, the set-piece spectacle, the old-fashioned idea of nation states competing for glory that appeals to leaders who wish to show off the greatness of their country to the world. Berlin ’36, Moscow ’80, Sochi ’14 — nothing says ‘we’re here, get used to it’ better than a giant sporting jamboree. The 2018 football World Cup doesn’t offer quite the same degree of validation as an Olympic Games. But for Vladimir Putin, it’s still a major opportunity to demonstrate not only Russia’s new-found greatness but also its continued membership of the civilised world. For what Putin yearns for,

England, Belgium, Tunisia, Panama: it doesn’t make an acronym as alluring as the ‘England Algeria Slovenia Yanks’ headline The Sun ran at this stage in 2009, but English football fans will have breathed a sigh of relief after being placed in a group we might call BTEC – Belgium Tunisia England Canal folk (Panama) – because it certainly wasn’t the hardest option out there. A cautious optimism must now seep into the England set-up. Encouraging draws against Germany and Brazil proved that this generation are more dour and pragmatic than the extravagant ensemble that preceded them. Even at managerial level, the contrast between unfashionable Gareth Southgate and his predecessors is stark:

What a privilege it is to watch Manchester City in the age of Pep Guardiola. I can’t recall a club side so lauded so early in the season, but the lavish praise seems justified. Could his Midas touch be young England’s best hope in Russia? Noel Gallagher, yes him, has been speaking about the ‘cosmic’ football City are playing under Pep, and who are we to argue? Guardiola seems to be getting the best out of Stones, Walker and Sterling. These three plus the Tottenham backbone of Kane, Dele Alli and Dier bringing their club form to the national team, along with the young England talent that did so well

So West Ham took the least surprising option and sent for David Moyes. Same old same old. I have a feeling that if Theresa May fell on her, or anyone else’s, sword, we’d send for David Moyes and that familiar figure would be shuffling up Downing Street with his wrinkly-eyed grin, proclaiming outside No. 10: ‘We’re in a relegation battle here.’ He wouldn’t be wrong either. Looking at West Ham’s lacklustre performances, with players sometimes putting on a bit of a reluctant jog in vague pursuit of opponents sprinting past, it’s easy to imagine them in the dressing room with a fag and some of owner David Sullivan’s old top-shelf

In my Daily Telegraph column today, I write about the incredible story of Östersund football club. It hasn’t quite been picked up in Britain yet, but I suspect it will one day be made into a Moneyball-style film: about how a small-time English coach was hired to move to a small subarctic town in Sweden with a small budget, and assembled a team of misfits on £600-a-week. But his tactics, and his faith in his ability to get the best out of people, saw them not only win the Swedish Cup but they are now taking on the biggest clubs in Europe. So this town, the size of Inverness, a

Rugby’s autumn internationals are almost upon us and dark thoughts hover over lovers of the sport. One day soon a professional rugby player will die playing the game. The players are fitter, bigger, stronger, faster and too powerful and it is no longer a 15-man game. It is a 23-man game: more than half the team gets replaced so the intensity and impact never subsides. Rule changes around the breakdown to encourage attack have had the opposite effect, meaning that defences line up across the pitch, no space is created and every game is 80 minutes of unsustainable collisions. Seasons go on longer, players get no rest and they keep

During a riveting session at the Cheltenham Literary Festival with sporting brainboxes Mike Brearley and Matthew Syed, discussion touched on the Ringelmann effect. This is the tendency for members of a group to perform less well together than individually. Old Ringelmann observed it in tug-of-war in the early 20th century. On their own the athletes pulled a big weight. In a team they grunted, grimaced but didn’t pull so much. They were skiving; sheltering behind teammates. You can bet Ringelmann would be rubbing his hands over the state of the England football team. After a seemingly interminable World Cup qualifying campaign full of the dreariest football imaginable, England flopped across

A few years ago, I was sitting at my desk late at night, frustrated by the latest sports financing project which I was working on at a large investment bank. Despite the iconic brand, large international fanbase and its many trophies, it was extremely difficult to find investors for this top-20 global football club. Time and again, potential investors struggled with the club’s volatile cashflow profile and uncertainty about its future revenues and performance. I asked myself: ‘If it’s this hard for this glamorous club to raise money, how are less fortunate teams coping?’ However, contrary to normal businesses, sports clubs have one major intangible asset which the institutional market

On this week’s Spectator Podcast, we discuss Britain’s obesity crisis, the upcoming German election and the England team’s footballing woes. First up, Britain’s obesity problem is worsening, says Prue Leith in her Spectator cover piece. The UK is the sixth fattest nation on earth and more than a quarter of the population is obese. Yet despite this worrying epidemic, precious little is being done. So how can we fix this crisis? Spectator Health’s Christopher Snowdon, Professor Graham MacGregor, Chairman of Action on Sugar, and Professor Francesco Rubino, from Kings College London, have some answers. In her cover piece, Prue Leith writes: Part of the UK’s problem is that we see

Football is theatre, that much has always been obvious; but it’s also business. And though the rules of the game haven’t changed much on-field since 16th century Etonians codified the random kicking of an inflated pigskin, off the field the game has been in constant evolution. This summer has demonstrated, once again, that football is as much about ritual performances of capitalist peacocking as it is about twenty-two men going head to head. As the transfer window creaks closed today, it is worth reflecting on an historic summer. Neymar’s £200m transfer from Barcelona to Paris Saint-Germain more than doubled the world transfer record and created a domino of wildly inflated transfers – including

Football’s back, I’m afraid, and, in the imperishable words of David Mitchell, every kick in every game matters to someone, somewhere. Still, it’s the Premier League’s 25th anniversary, so a good time to take stock. There’s no doubt that with Sky’s help the PL has sexed up the English game and moved it once and for all from being the preserve of the working man. When I started going to matches half a century or so ago, the stadiums were awful, the food terrible, and the football not that great. A game could be intimidating; not for the fainthearted, or women, or people who weren’t white. Now that has changed