Simon Kuper
@KuperSimon
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@FT writer. New football podcast: Heroes and Humans - follow it at @heroesandhumans . My memoir of modern Paris, Impossible City, is out in the UK in April
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I cannot believe it's out, after months of work, but here's our very first Heroes and Humans of Football podcast! Me with
@MehreenKhn
. It's about Kylian Mbappé: made in Paris, in an extraordinary family, about to be exported to Madrid. Please listen!
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Short thread: it's quite right that the UK has sanctioned Roman Abramovich and deprived him of control of Chelsea. English football has suddenly turned against him. But: all this is just hypocrisy as long as the English game doesn't go after far more culpable club owners //
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1. The fact that Manchester United are largely targeting Ten Hag's favourite players from the Dutch league (F de Jong, Timber, Lisandro Martínez + Malacia whom he considered buying for Ajax) suggests that the club doesn't have a scouting system of its own that it takes seriously
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Michael Bloomberg: “I think Brexit is the single stupidest thing any country’s ever done, until we Trumped them”
#CityLabParis
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1. We say in Soccernomics: "Anyone who spends any time inside football soon discovers that just as oil is part of the oil business, stupidity is part of the football business."
Martin Jol always said "nothing in football is what it seems". What he meant was that behind the glitz, the game was a lot more amateurish than you could imagine.
What a clown show this $4.2bn Super League of the "world's greatest clubs" has turned out to be.
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As a young journo in 1995 I interviewed Kate Hoey about sport. I came away quite shaken by how stupid she was. I had thought till then that that would be a bar to even modest career success
Hi
@KateHoeyMP
, thanks for the feedback. Actually, I was elected by my constituents with over 500k votes.
Imagine an elected MP campaigning on Europe, not knowing that MEPs are elected?
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Eden Hazard has broken an ankle three times. Every time he gets the ball, the Portugese target his ankles, having already put Kevin De Bruyne out of the game. This was the way great players were treated before the 1990s. Such a shame
#BELPOR
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This is best 2-minute analysis of UK politics I’ve ever heard
Rory Stewart's take-down of "Bertie Wooster politics" is worth watching.
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Even many senior Brexiteers now understand, quietly, that Brexit failed. Lots of them will probably exit government next year and never return. One day Brexit will be the first line in their obits. So how do the guilty men and women live with that? Me
@FT
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And on the subject of Brexit, this is the best sport ever and if the Irish had colonised the world, nobody would ever have heard of football
Absolutely incredible goalkeeping from
@WaterfordGAA
's Stephen O'Keeffe as he makes two top class saves to deny Limerick an early goal!
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After one minute we were leading, solidly. Then, one by one, they started to magically disappear as surprise German goals were counted. VERY STRANGE, and the bookmakers got it completely & historically wrong!
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4. So which Premier League owners are more culpable? The Saudis at Newcastle. For 7 years now, they have been fighting a war in Yemen that's as gruesome as the war in Ukraine, albeit that the world hardly cares. That war is under control of Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman
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Getting rid of huge cars is just about the easiest thing we can do for the climate - and given the sevenfold increase in SUVs since 2010, pretty important. It's much easier than banning planes or cows. Me
@FT
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Newcastle Utd selling its heritage to a murderous regime is the perfect symbol for the entire country - me
@FT
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He's not a politician but he is the current face of Abramovich's sportswashing project, so these questions are legit
“STOP asking me these questions. I’m not a politician!” 😳
Thomas Tuchel loses it after being asked another question related to war & Roman Abramovich 😡
#CFC
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Mo Salah seems to have reduced Islamophobia among Liverpool fans. Hate crimes in Merseyside + anti-Muslim speech among LFC fans down sharply, relative to other countries/other fans. Study by
@wpmarble
@a_alrababah
@salma_mousa_
@aasiegel
@immigrationlab
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6. As long as the Saudis own Newcastle, the Premier League is a shamefully compromised operation. Getting rid of Abramovich after his comfy 19-year ride in which he accomplished everything he wanted won't change that
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1/ Today I heard again a familiar piece of old nonsense about the French team that I want to refute: the falsehood that France imported gifted players from African countries in order to put them in the national team. Not true. All the starters in the final were born in France
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I doubt this is being shown in the tv images but stadium was about half-empty long before the end. Mostly just Ecuadorians and the paid claque of chanting Qataris behind the goal left now. FIFA have devalued the World Cup way more than I had imagined
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It's out: my interview with Arsène Wenger on everything from growing up in an Alsatian village where nobody would talk about the war, to living with workaholism, to his pain that Arsenal don't want to see him around anymore
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Roger Federer and I chilled on his private plane, gorged ourselves, and reviewed his career and fatherhood. A really nice guy. Lunch with the FT: via
@financialtimes
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Note the clubs that stuck with the Super League longest: Agnelli's Juve, Perez's Real Madrid + the US-owned profit-seeking quartet of Man Utd, Liverpool, Arsenal and Milan; Spurs and Inter also in the profit-seeking group. Oligarch-run Chelsea + Man C don't care about profits
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I've just unfollowed a smart man whom I admire because he can only view the horrendous Israel-Hamas war through a one-eyed lens. In his case, everything Israel does is right. For others, Hamas is always right. I fucking despair + never want to hear from any of these people again
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I got to peek behind the curtain at
@FCBarcelona
. How the club and its Innovation Hub are rethinking football - from beetroot juice to what Messi does in the first few minutes of the game to why many players won't join Barça. Also on facing the right way
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2. What happens to all Ten Hag's purchases if he fails like all United managers of the past 9 years? And is it really the case that the optimum buys for one of the world's richest clubs are almost all players from 1 small league? This is no way to run a football club
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No Liverpool players went over to Karius when he was lying on the ground, only Madrid players
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1. Quick thoughts on what's happening in France, after I've been out this morning watching gilets jaunes in Paris. Purchasing power has long been a bigger problem in France than in other western countries/
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Paris St-Germain isn't some fake club invented out of nothing by the Qataris. It's new (from 1970), but so are most of the suburbs of Paris, where most PSG fans live. Me
@FT
on Neymar, Mbappé, and the filling-in of the biggest hole in Europe's football map
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Today
@FT
publishes the first extract from my book Chums: How a Tiny Caste of Oxford Tories Took Over the UK. To understand this ruling caste - Brexit, Partygate, the distance from people who cannot afford fuel or food - you need to return to 1980s Oxford
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A great Ajax team emerges every 24 years, so next time I’ll be 73 if still around. Right now I hate football. Thanks to everyone who sent kind messages
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On the same day that Barcelona says Messi is leaving, my new book on the club is launched with this
@FT
extract on how their terrible transfers of the last 5 years left them with no more money to pay him. Here's the backstory to his departure
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6. That's the basic weirdness of the football industry. On the field, it's pure meritocracy. There are no bad professional footballers. (I hear your jokes, but really, there aren't.) But off the field: zero quality control, many mediocrities in top jobs (including some coaches)
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2. Abramovich has a 'no enemies' policy and always made sure he stayed chummy with Putin, doing his bidding whenever asked. But it's wrong to imagine he's still at the heart of the Putinist elite. The oligarchs were pushed aside 20 years ago, replaced by Putin's old KGB pals
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4/ It's fine to point out that many French players have African origins, and are proud of them. But don't say they 'are African'. They are French and feel French. Like so many people, they have mixed identities. The French far right denies their Frenchness. Don't be like that
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5. How close are links between Mohammed Bin Salman and Newcastle United? This is from last week's
@FT
football business conference. 'PIF' referenced here is the Saudi Public Investment Fund, which bought Newcastle in October. Sanction Abramovich, sure, but what about the Saudis?
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2. Related to this: a fellow football writer once told me he'd tried and failed to do business with a legendary English football institution. He said, "I can work with crooks, and I can work with stupid people. But I can't work with stupid people who think they are crooks."
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In 1986, when I was 16, I wrote my first ever paid football articles on 2 rising young Dutch talents: Gullit + Van Basten. Now, after Holland beat France, me for
@ESPN
on Frenkie de Jong + Matthijs de Ligt
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3. Abramovich came by his money dishonestly, paying for political protection, but he's not a warmonger. This war is the last thing he wants - it will probably cost him most of his assets and his easy access to the west
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What's also interesting is that Brexiters no longer have "If we do xyz, then Brexit will work" narratives. No sunlit uplands anymore - just whining about Remoaners and explaining why all the various PMs messed up Brexit
"Brexit checks on food imports pushed back until 2024 in fifth delay"
Latest installment in the "Brexit only works if it's not implemented" series.
(I expect it will be delayed again next year until shortly after the GE, making it Labour's problem.)
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Only a photo, but I've just been sent my first sighting of my new book on Barça - for which the club threw open many of its closed doors to me. This is the UK edition, with big thanks to
@GaryLineker
for the lovely blurb. It's available for preorder now:
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It's just not true that populists were brought to power mostly by unemployed factory workers. The main person behind the revolution? The comfortably-off, middle-class, suburban or small-town man. Me for
@FT
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3. My argument isn't that these are bad players. They are all v good. My point is how a giant club goes about making such big choices. It was fair to 'trust the manager' in era of SAF as everyone knew he'd be around for years after making the signings. Not true at United lately
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Imagine if they'd played the whole of Macedonia
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All of us columnists like to think that our own random personal experiences explain the world. But I went to Oxford in the 1980s, so mine really do. Me
@FT
on the origins of today's Tories, Brexit and the unravelling of Britain
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I can't remember seeing a better political ad
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We say in Soccernomics that the main reason why male football clubs don't appoint female coaches is that stupid fans, journalists, players, sponsors and directors would object
Appointment of Hannah Dingley as head coach of Forest Green Rovers has the unmistakable whiff of a PR stunt
✍️
@LukeEdwardsTele
#TelegraphFootball
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You spend millions on product placement, and then you just hope it pays off. Ted Lasso is a brilliant series, especially Season 2 Episode 6
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4. Related: football is an industry where practically everyone in a boardroom is a white man, so the talent pool they are drawing from is not large. There's also a fast track for ex-players, sons of senior officials, people's mates etc where intelligence is not a criterion
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Early days but so far Qatar look possibly the worst team I have seen in a World Cup
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I was innocently writing a book about FC Barcelona, going around interviewing dozens of staffers, when suddenly the club imploded. Here's me
@FT
on how Messi became omnipotent inside Barça without really wanting to be
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1. Last thoughts on Euro 2020, before I switch off. Here's the stand near me at Wembley yesterday. More people than seats, whole gangway filled with standing insurgents. The reason this bothered me: I've written about football security officials and what keeps them awake at night
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I'm not an anti-BBC conspiracy theorist but here's my experience. For my book Chums, I've done loads of media interviews but zero for BBC. They haven't asked me, though did cover all my apolitical books. Now Johnson's going, I'm suddenly getting BBC requests. Their fear is gone
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David Cameron's decision to go for that referendum just keeps on paying off. First he put the Europe issue to bed for good, and now he's saved the Tory Party and seen off the Farage threat
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Every Norwich City player has been given a phone list of dozens of elderly club supporters, with instructions to call them for chats during confinement, goalkeeper Tim Krul tells De Telegraaf newspaper. Kudos, and an example to follow
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Quick calculation: after scoring 2 so far at Valencia tonight, Messi has scored or assisted more than half of Barcelona's league goals since Jan 1. That's a crazy proportion - hardly ever equalled in football history, not even by him. See this from my forthcoming book on Barça
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Amazing. French players just broke into Deschamps' press conference chanting "Didier Deschamps!", sprayed him and all the journos with water, sang, danced, and there was a "Vive l'Europe! Vive la Republique!" from Pogba
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Gilets jaunes: a bit over 8,000 in Paris. Marche pour le Climat: about 25,000 in Paris. Which one will get more coverage? (Both marches were also nationwide - the climate one drew many more people across France, with some of the marchers wearing yellow vests in solidarity)
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I wanted to tweet this before June is out: 25 years ago this month, my first book, Football Against the Enemy, appeared. Original cover here. Happy memories but I never want to sleep in an overnight train or a dorm room in a youth hostel again
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You can say, "Many French players have African heritage, they are proud of it, it's part of who they are. They are also French, Parisians, men, humans etc." But for God's sake stop saying - whether you are racist or pan-Africanist - "France is an African team". Harmful nonsense
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Apologies for having tweeted the match report of Italy just now - have deleted. I had been away and have only just heard about poor Christian Eriksen
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Now just waiting for the defeated candidate to make his concession speech
#Frenchelections2017
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This is how a weak referee lets what could have been a great football match degenerate into a 1970s-style display of thuggery, with the possible loss of one of the tournament's best players
#BELPOR
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Like Roger Federer, he is unmatched at what he does and could go on to set a record that could stand for centuries
Boris Johnson has now lost 7 of his first 7 commons votes, the first PM in history to do so. He takes the title away from previous record holder Boris Johnson, who lost 6 of his first 6.
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It's that uniquely football mixture of stupidity plus greed that we saw in action this week
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5. More on the football/stupidity thread: one club president told me that ex-players who get executive jobs don't understand office work, e.g. even the basic concept of working 8-hour days. My response would be: 'So don't hire ex-players.' But fans and media love it when you do
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Author with book. Chums is published today! The roots of the caste of Oxford Tories that runs the country and made Brexit. Why Britain is an Oxocracy, and how to change that. Get your copy here:
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I would have felt much happier if certain footballers had come out against the Super League plan BEFORE it imploded
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As a non-American who doesn't follow the NFL, I feel grateful to Trump to alerting me to what an impressive person Colin Kaepernick is
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#FRAICE
4-0. This sort of puts the greatest humiliation in England's football history in a new, more humiliating perspective
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5. BUT let's not exaggerate the level of turmoil in France. Two weeks ago, there were more people at the (barely reported) women's march in Paris than the 8,000 gilets jaunes who demonstrated the same day
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Frenkie de Jong signs for Man United. Here's my interview/profile of the man whom I then thought of as my favourite footballer, in February 2020
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9. Conclusion: big, long-lasting problem of purchasing power, personal dislike of Macron, persistent French discontent for over a decade now. But last weekend's images of violence (which play beautifully on TV) exaggerate the level of disorder in France. No revolution
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Imagine for a moment that this is you, with your kids, while thousands of children are being killed around you. The Hamas murders of October 7 are unforgivable. None of the people in this video committed them. These bombings will not undo those murders or make Israelis safe
An Israeli air strike blasted the area just outside the Latin Church in Gaza while the Christian community was praying: “Holy Mary, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.”
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250 years of French political culture captured in one video
Far-right yellow vests and far-left yellow vests fight one another.
Lyon, France.
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They're playing Football's Coming Home at Wembley. Memory of England-Holland 4-1 in 1996: towards the end the crowd spontaneously sang the song. From my seat I could see Frank Skinner and
@Baddiel
, who had cowritten it. They were standing up gazing around, entranced, disbelieving
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Author with book - first copy I've had in my hands. Two years of work, or nearly 30 depending when you start counting. Thanks very much,
@shortbooksUK
!
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I was thinking of writing a column trying to explain how the UK got this incredible generation of lazy opportunistic politicians, but I wrote it already in 2016
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If verified this is v. important - it suggests that part of ISIS plan is to discredit refugees, get Europe to close:
Paris police sources say the 2 Syrian passports found on the terrorists were fakes probably made in Turkey
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Big misunderstanding that clubs have been profit-driven since 1990s. In all of Europe, that's only true of Man United + maybe Arsenal. Almost all other clubs lost money. Most didn't even pursue profits. What's new with the Super League is that several owners are in it for profits
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For the first time ever, there's a fully functioning Anglophone country in continental Europe: The Netherlands. What happens to a country when its own language starts to die out. Me
@FT
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Later when I was less naive I thought: ‘well you can get on if you’re stupid but not if you consistently get caught lying.’ Wrong again. Brexit has been an incredible learning opportunity in so many ways
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A strange coincidence that Trump, Johnson and Bolsonaro were all kicked out at the earliest opportunity
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Amsterdam region seriously running out of space to host all these post-Brexit businesses
The world's 2nd biggest music company moves its European base from the UK to Holland. Well done, Brexiters. Another triumph.
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3. The English FA had been complaining for decades that it never got to host a tournament even though it was supposedly brilliantly equipped to do so. Much whining every time they weren't chosen. Then the first time they get to host a tournament final, we're back in the 1970s
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5. Most would have liked England to win, but they understand it's only a game. People at the coffeeshop were talking about completely different things this morning. A football tournament is like a dream, and when it ends, it leaves almost nothing behind, which is just fine
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I got to interview Frenkie de Jong, my favourite footballer. Me on what makes him unique
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My sense at Wembley last night - when there was barely any booing of the knee - is that the players have won that battle. I never believe that football changes much in a society, but that is something
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Spanish results illustrate a more general problem of how we cover politics. Far-right Vox and far-left Sumar are each on around 12% of the vote. Each could be a junior coalition partner - Sumar currently more likely. But which of them made headlines around the world pre-election?
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Supposedly the crowd is limited to 60,000, but in the sections next to me, there are more people than seats. Not sure how people got in. Large crowd of able-bodied people standing in the disabled section right in front of me. Not safe
#ENGITA
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There is a randomness to success - it has v little to do with talent, except in sport - but increasingly I think Anthony Powell got it right with his Widmerpool character: once you correct for high birth, success goes to the people who want it most
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Some career news: I have signed for Barcelona. I had received many offers including from the EPL but playing in the Nou Camp is a dream come true. I am convinced there's space for Messi and me in the same attack. Thank you President Bartomeu!
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Is Rupert Murdoch the main source of disinformation on climate? Is it time to boycott his properties, including his sports channels? I speak to ex-Australian PMs Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull. Now with link fixed: (Thanks
@mrJamesob
)
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Robin van Persie, now into the last 10 matches of his career, remains a star
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Serious question: can they play the all-English Champions League final at Wembley this year, in rapidly opening England, give Istanbul the 2022 final when things should be calmer, and move all subsequent final venues back one year?
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2/ Of the whole squad, 3 players were born abroad: Camavinga, an Angolan refugee who moved to France as a baby; reserve keeper Mandanda, born in Kinshasa, came to France aged 2; and Marcus Thuram, born in Italy cos his dad Lilian played football there. He was in France by age 10
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Ghana players are going out and they have one last mission in this World Cup: make sure Uruguay go home too. Payback for 2010
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