Premier league

It’s one of the oldest stories of them all, deeply embedded in our nature and our culture. In some ways it’s the story that defines our humanity and we have told it a thousand times in a thousand different ways. It’s in the Bible with Joseph and his coat of many colours, it’s King Arthur pulling the sword from the stone, it’s the ugly duckling, Cinderella, Great Expectations, Moll Flanders and Jane Eyre. It’s Clark Kent becoming Superman, it’s Harry Potter leaving the cupboard under the stairs to become the greatest wizard of them all. It’s Rags to Riches. And it’s the tale of Leicester City. Sport retells all our

There’s nothing quite like a sporting celebration, but the lash-up after Britain’s (almost) inevitable victory in the Davis Cup tennis final against Belgium this weekend should be unique. For a start, there will be hardly anyone there: just Judy Murray and Andy, with Jamie popping his head in: ‘Have some Irn-Bru boys, and, take another teacake.’ It’s a funny old team, with -pretty much only one man in the team, but it will be a huge personal triumph for Andy, every bit as special as Wimble-don and the Olympics. What a -triptych! And now David Lloyd is -having a go at him for ‘not giving enough back’ to tennis. Oh

My favourite moment in the crisis engulfing football’s governing body, Fifa, came with the intervention of a man called Manuel Nascimento Lopes. Manuel is the Fifa delegate from Guinea-Bissau, an African country which occupies 130th place in the Fifa world rankings but which, far more importantly in this context, punches well above its weight when it comes to institutionalised corruption. Thirteenth in the world, according to the organisation Transparency International — not a bad showing for a smallish sub-Saharan rathole which has been almost permanently engulfed in civil war since the Portuguese got the hell out. Manuel suggested that to vote against Sepp Blatter remaining as boss of Fifa would

I can’t say I’m surprised by the departure of Harry Redknapp. Since I started supporting Queens Park Rangers in 2008 we’ve gone through seven managers — 13 if you count the caretakers. Indeed, it’s a miracle he’s lasted this long. The club was relegated during his first term in charge and we only returned to the Premier League thanks to a last-minute goal by Bobby Zamora in the play-off final against Derby at the end of last season. I was at that match and Derby were easily the better side. If Harry had been sensible, he would have announced his retirement after that game and gone out on a high.

It was the year of KP, Keano and the Kiwis; of Federer, Froch and Phil the Power (no change there then); of Sochi and Suarez; of Rory and Ronaldo; McCaw, McGinley and McCoy (as always). But it was also the year when we learned some very valuable things about sport. 1. For all the boasting about how good the Premier League is, there’s actually only one team in it — which is less than in Italy, Spain or France, or even poor old Scotland. The only country where anything similar is happening is Germany, where Bayern are running away with the Bundesliga, just like Chelsea here. Which only goes to

It’s been a long, hot, soccerless holiday. There has been football about — the women’s European Championship, for example, and various age-group tournaments, all of which England departed with undue haste — but not the proper stuff. There hasn’t been a tournament where players can ‘put themselves in the shop window’ or prove that they have what it takes ‘at the highest level’ for any club with a fat chequebook and a friendly press. Youth football, even women’s, is all very well but it doesn’t pay the bills. Men’s professional football is, sadly, the big kid in the playground of sport. When it’s not there we miss it and make

Over the next few days, we’ll all have to swallow gallons of journalistic effluvium about the great Alex Ferguson, who announced his resignation this morning. We will be told about the legendary gum-chewing manager who transformed humble, working-class Manchester United into a world-topping global brand. We should, however, be expressing relief that a man who has done so much damage to English football is at last quitting. First off, we now have the cheering possibility that Manchester United’s boring dominance of top-flight football will finally end. This year they won the Premier League without at any stage playing all that well. Other teams just couldn’t get their act together. This