Rory Smith
@RorySmith
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Chief Soccer Correspondent for @nytimes , author of Expected Goals, which you can order here:
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Joined April 2010
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Pinned Tweet
It is my solemn duty to inform you that I have written a book. It's about how data (quietly) conquered and then transformed football. But mostly it's about the people who did it. It also contains a joke about Paul the Octopus. Feel free to pre-order it.
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Boca Juniors fans at a training session. A training session. There’s such a thing as liking football too much.
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Fede Valverde, who has been running around for 110 minutes, just blazed past Christian Pulisic, who has been running around for 27 minutes, lost the ball, turned round, ran back, and then sprinted past him again to regain possession. There's a good chance he's a cyborg.
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Messi’s first interview on the day he joined PSG wasn’t with a TV station or a newspaper. It was with
@IbaiLlanos
, the Twitch streamer even the most elusive players are happy to talk to and, possibly, a pioneer of the future of sports media
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The way football is now conditioned to fetishise money is beyond grim, it really is. Not Newcastle, not Man City: all of it. All of us.
Newcastle's new owners net worth vs. Man City's owners net worth 🤑
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How about instead of celebrating goals all the players shape their bodies in such a way to spell out “football is again being used as a distraction from broader governmental failures, this is just as inane a conversation as the one about scotch eggs”
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The speed with which UEFA’s transparent attempt to blame fans for complete organisational failure has been swallowed despite literally gigabytes of available evidence is really dispiriting.
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The fact that your club has also been wronged by VAR isn’t proof that Liverpool shouldn’t complain, it’s proof there’s an issue with a system that has changed football quite drastically in pursuit of a perfection it isn’t delivering. Your club should also be complaining.
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It’s not sport if there’s no relationship between effort and reward. It’s not sport if success is guaranteed. It’s not sport if you can’t lose. It’s content.
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@chris_sutton73
Yes, he’s done brilliantly to take them from 16th when he took the job to 16th now. Transformative stuff.
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I asked Raheem Sterling about racism, abuse, public portrayals of black athletes, stereotypes, diversity in the media and double standards. He had a lot to say.
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Farewell, Tony Pulis. If God had wanted us to play football on the ground, he wouldn’t have invented the sky.
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So the team that’s second in the PL battered the team that’s second in La Liga, but the team that’s first in the PL lost to the team that’s third in La Liga? It’s almost like a tiny sample of individual games isn’t the perfect gauge for deciding how strong a whole league is.
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No way Jose can be expected to compete with Spurs, given all of the signings they made and he was denied.
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That is really, deeply, desperately unfair on Bukayo Saka. Massive credit for stepping up. But a player of that age, taking a penalty with all that riding on it? Come on.
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Why does Niklas Sule, the largest footballer, not simply eat all of the other footballers?
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Harry Kane announced as Golden Boot winner, and booed heartily by the Croatian and the French fans. It's really nice how England brings people together.
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Not sure there is an articulate or pithy way to say this, but: cricket and rugby won’t be criticised by the Mail and the Telegraph for deciding to go ahead. Football would have been. And that’s probably relevant.
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Last summer, Ajax sat their seven brightest stars down and showed them a video. It’s theme was that they should stay for one more year and make themselves legends. Safe to say it worked, all told.
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I've spent the last 10 months with
@IlkayGuendogan
as he rebuilt his knee.
This is the story of his long road back.
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Lovren, Van Dijk, Henderson and Milner all exceptional, but felt like a defining, defiant performance from Trent Alexander-Arnold. Identified before the game as a weakness, targeted by City, up against their best player, and came through it.
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I went to Naples to meet Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, who is the most compelling, exciting player (and story) in Europe, as far as I can tell. Then I went for a pizza tasting menu, which is the high point of human civilisation.
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You might think Erling Håland is a stroppy teenager because of his post-match monosyllables but I had a chat with him in February and he hung around for 20 minutes after the interview to talk about Yorkshire. So maybe people should just ask him more about Yorkshire.
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Just so we’re clear: if an opposition football manager says something you don’t like about your team, you can now say or sing whatever you like, and the news media will apparently present this logic absolutely uncontested.
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That minute - Sterling's goal, the bedlam, the desolation, the pause, the hush, the bedlam, the desolation - is genuinely one of the most remarkable things I've ever seen.
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It's almost like the Champions League is better when teams from more than just the five countries with the largest TV markets do well and we shouldn't just cram the competition full of as many of them as possible.
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David Silva: more PL titles than Henry, more seasons in England than (peak) Drogba, more assists since he arrived than anyone. So why do people think it's weird when you say he might be the best import in PL history?
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This would be the same Jack Grealish who was the whole country’s darling for the Euros, and who pretty much everyone agreed was such a good signing that £100m was justified? Who were his “doubters”?
Jack Grealish scores his first goal for Man City and sends a message to the doubters 👀
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I’ve been talking to Jordan Henderson, on and off, for the last three months or so. We talked a lot about captaincy and responsibility, but also about the Super League and player welfare and equality and the NHS and abuse. He has a lot to say.
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Apparently, APPARENTLY, the Champions League needs to learn from the Super Bowl to be more exciting.
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When you’ve drawn 2-2 with Trabzonspor at 10 but have to defend the Elvish kingdom against the Orcs at 12
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Luis Suarez was leaving the pitch before the final whistle. Lionel Messi looked lost (this is not a metaphor: he was literally wandering around).
Liverpool, Anfield, and the ecstasy of the impossible
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Thomas Tuchel’s a smart, modern, adventurous coach, but at Dortmund and PSG one of the central issues was his failure to manage upwards. He tends to fall out with the people he works with/for. Lucky that there’s never any power politics at Chelsea.
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It’s the FIFA Best awards tonight. Pitso Mosimane isn’t nominated for coach of the year. Despite winning two Champions Leagues in the space of eight months. It isn’t hard to guess why he’s been ignored.
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Oh good so we're all learning our lessons then
I can confirm Saudi Media Group have made a £2.7bn ($3.5bn) offer to buy Chelsea. Mohamed Alkhereiji is a Chelsea fan and leading a private consortium. No direct government links.
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Famously, in 2009, colour televisions had yet to be invented, and all broadcasts were in black and white. That’s if you had a television at all. Most of us relied on town criers.
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I have been sat in this press conference for 95 minutes and my jaw has dropped, genuinely, about 20 times. I have no idea how the people who do this all the time don't end up sort of howling in objection at the nonsense they're hearing.
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So it’s not actually about health and safety or the morality of playing football during a pandemic at all, then?
Premier League: More clubs open to using neutral venues if relegation removed
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I agree completely. Young players should play regular football against Championship/League One opponents. If only there were some Championship or League One teams they could be contracted to, instead of the PL elite being FORCED to stockpile them.
Pep Guardiola suggests that Manchester City should be able to put their U23 squad into the Championship or League One after Carabao Cup game with Wycombe
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I've seen and heard this a fair bit since last night. It makes zero sense to me. Morocco didn't dig in and hope for the best. They sat back and picked Spain off on the counter. They created the three best chances. One team did offer nothing. It wasn't Morocco.
🎙 Rodri: "Morocco offered absolutely nothing. Without disrespecting them. In the game, they did nothing. They just waited for the counters. They stayed behind and tried to counter us!"
#ESP
|
#MAR
|
#FIFAWorldCup
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This is the weirdest framing, it really is, and Hazard’s not the only one to have done it. What do people think the Germans spent the week doing? Choreographing the protest rather than training? It’s nuts.
Eden Hazard on Germany's symbolic pre-match gesture against Japan 🗣️
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This is a great idea. Maybe you could get all the teams who win their domestic cups to play each other. A cup for cup winners. We can workshop names later.
Uefa plans to introduce a third European club competition alongside the Champions League and Europa League from 2021.
👉
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This may be pushing it, but Andy Robertson’s the sort of transfer that everyone should celebrate. Shows it’s not all about paying premium fees. Spotting the right player, allowing him time, coaching him well still goes a long way.
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Staggered, to be honest, that anyone would be coming out in favour of any method of resolving the season - or annulling it completely - this early. It’s almost like it’s opportunistic self-interest.
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"The next four years, I'll be spending a lot of time in your part of the world," Gianni Infantino says, pointedly, to
@tariqpanja
, which presumably means he's about to move to Hackney.
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Italy’s last knockout game at a World Cup was the final that they won in 2006. They’ll have waited (at least) 20 years before they play another one.
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Bizarre that Everton have sacked Sam Allardyce after his spectacular, memorable victory on away goals against Liverpool.
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Liverpool aren’t top because Klopp pumps his fists and beats his chest. They’re top because they’re extremely well coached, and it might be time to stop seeing Klopp as nothing more than a cheerleader.
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Diego Maradona, and the darkness that could never obscure the light
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@GuillemBalague
Imagine if Manchester City, with its massive budget and its extraordinarily talented coach, hadn't been losing to Lyon for 70 minutes.
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Roman Abramovich is selling Chelsea to whoever will take it off him, as fast as he can, because his presence has raised the possibility the club could be affected by actual economic sanctions.
He is currently being cast as a “good owner.”
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For all you hear about it being a farmer's league, probably worth mentioning that Reims gave PSG just as much of a game as most mid-table PL sides give the top four. It's almost like people dismiss leagues outside England without ever watching them.
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Given that Chelsea collapsed, as champions, under Mourinho, and are now doing a sort of Tesco own brand version under Conte, it is worth pausing to wonder if it’s not the manager.
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Manchester/Merseyside derbies on the same weekends. Amazing how often the Random Fixture Generator throws stuff like that up.
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If Maguire and Fernandes prove anything, it's that United will pay Dortmund's asking price several months after they are first quoted it
Sancho is the one Solskjaer wants. But Maguire + Bruno deals illustrate those negotiating at
#MUFC
do things at their own speed in aim of better terms.
For more context on why a quick resolution seemed unlikely, see below 👇🏻
@TheAthleticUK
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Genuinely staggered, by the way, that Ronaldo wasn't sent off. Not sure you could get a clearer example of a player lashing out at an opponent.
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What follows is a thread about the football season. Sorry. But first, the caveat: no, football isn't important at the moment; but yes, it's OK to be interested in how it will play out, either as a bit of escapism, or because it means something to you.
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That's that, then. There'll be lots of anger at Karius from Liverpool fans, understandably, and lots of memes and laughter from everyone else, but this must be a harrowing, haunting thing to go through.
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Bucketing down now. They've only brought one umbrella, and it's for Putin. He is NOT sharing it.
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If this is what happened, then why on earth wouldn’t the VAR clear up the mistake as soon as he saw Spurs take a free kick, rather than a kick-off?
So the VAR, Darren England, checked offside thinking the onfield decision was "goal."
It was a quick offside check because it was clear Diaz was onside, so he told the referee "check complete".
In telling the ref "check complete" he is saying the onfield decision was correct.
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So in the space of 24 hours, Spurs have ditched Fonseca, thought about Gattuso, and ditched Gattuso, having already wheeled through Flick, Ten Hag, Pochettino and Conte. This is far too good a story for the middle of the Euros. They’re blowing some classic content.
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I’ve been wondering for a while whether we’d all have been a bit quicker to see Son Heung-min as a star if he was Brazilian, or Spanish, or Dutch. It made me ask if we have preconceived ideas of what superstars look like?
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"Where were you when you were shit?" ask the Spurs fans of Manchester City, as they sit in the new stadium that can house an extra 30,000 of them because their team is now good.
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Greenland’s entire football season lasts a week: Monday to Sunday. It is physically exhausting for the players, and mentally draining for everyone. This is the story of football at the end of the world
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Football is too scientific, too professional, too meticulously planned out for atmosphere to mean anything, or to make a difference. Grow up, everyone. It’s a myth. Until it isn’t, and it’s there.
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Genuinely not sure Premier League Twitter could handle the idea of Jordan Henderson, World Cup winner.
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There is literally no phrase in the world less likely to help Britain get a World Cup than "bring football home."
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There have been 10 Serie A games today. Seven of them, I think, kicked off at 2pm local time. And it reminded me that I’ve really started to notice the Pandemic Premier League’s lack of a match-day.
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John Terry's hubris summed up perfectly in a self-arranged farewell: a player so determined to enhance his status he ends up diminishing it.
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This retaking of penalties for being fractionally off the line is utterly insane and Fifa have got to do something about it immediately. It's a complete nonsense.
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Hammer blow for Manchester City missing out on Mahrez. Hard to see them competing with just David Silva, Bernardo, Sterling, Aguero, Gundogan, De Bruyne and Gabriel Jesus.
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Like Lorraine Kelly, important to remember that Roy Keane is now essentially a man playing a character called Roy Keane.
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What's really striking about this (absolutely extraordinary) speech from Infantino is how angry and bitter and...unhappy he seems on the eve of what is, in theory, meant to be the world's greatest sporting carnival and his crowning achievement.
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Trent Alexander-Arnold is that rarest of things: an actual homegrown player.
This is a piece on why the meaning of that has been lost in the PL’s rush to industrialise and internationalise, and why it still matters.
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Man whose job it is to agree transfers because he has consistently refused to appoint someone else to agree transfers even though it’s obvious to the whole world that he needs someone else to agree transfers agrees transfer.
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Nobody plays the transfer market better than
@SevillaFC
, and nobody knows it better than Monchi.
So I went to find out how he does it - turns out his phone goes, a lot - and what a club can achieve when it is actually good at recruitment.
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The problem with this Kane offside debate isn’t the camera angle or whose footage is better or whether VAR is a good or a bad idea, it’s that the way we do offside at the moment is completely, self-defeatingly stupid.
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You can hate VAR and you can hate the format of the Euros, but as a pure minute of drama - Belgium scoring, Denmark celebrating, Belgium not scoring, Denmark not celebrating, Russia getting a penalty, Denmark *really* not celebrating - that is exquisite.
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Looks to me like Liverpool are playing:
Milner - Henderson - Wijnaldum
Firmino
Firmino - Salah - Firmino - Mane - Firmino
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They’ve lost two games in nine seasons. Their goal difference in the last decade is +957. Their success outstrips Barcelona, Real Madrid, the Patriots, and the Golden State Warriors. This is the world’s most dominant sports team: Olympique Lyonnais Féminin
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If you’ve been wondering - and you should have been - how exactly Liverpool fans turned a 1985 Italian disco hit into the soundtrack of their journey to Kiev, I found out.
This is the story of Allez Allez Allez, the chant that’s conquered all of Europe.
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A 5-2 win last week that felt like a defeat, a 4-2 defeat this week that is celebrated like a win. Liverpool: do not take the easy route.
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Morning. A reminder that so many people wanted to watch Boca Juniors train yesterday that they exceeded their capacity and the city council has now shut the stadium down as punishment.
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Anfield greets the end of a season in which Liverpool have bottled their way to 97 points.
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In which “hipster” means anyone who doesn’t exclusively watch the Premier League top six.
You get this in the CL, too. “All the hipsters will be watching Real v Bayern.” Those two little-known underdogs.
Why are the world’s football hipsters loving Napoli right now?
They’re on the verge of history.
Read👉
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It’s weird without fans and it’s not as good and it’s a bit surreal but...I enjoyed seeing some score a goal. The moment where you think there’s a chance, the finish, the sound of the ball hitting the net: it made me smile. And that’s kind of what we’re all in it for, really.
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Genuinely staggered Rio Ferdinand thinks it'll be straightforward for England to beat Croatia. Though I suppose it maybe does explain why the Golden Generation kept going out of tournaments to "underdogs."
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Toes and shoulders and armpits: I wrote about VAR and why it is actually an innocent victim in all of this. Problem is the offside rule, which is no longer fit for purpose, and football’s media culture, which demands a scapegoat.
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Arsenal Fan TV does well when Arsenal FC does badly, because the internet rewards outrage and apoplexy and people shouting at cameras. What does that say about AFTV, Arsenal, football and, well, us?
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Eight. Bayern Munich scored eight. Rome was bad. Anfield was worse. But for Barcelona, this Barcelona, Lisbon will always be the end.
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Belgium becomes the first European league (I think) to make a decision: rest of the season cancelled, and effectively the most recent standings declared final. So Club Brugge are champions, and Gent go into the CL as runners-up. Relegation still to be decided.
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Think Peter Brackley probably meant as much to my generation - thanks to Football Italia, and Pro Evo - as Brian Moore did to the one prior. A soft, warm, funny voice, one that was part of my life for years. Really sad news.
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I think really you have to secretly admire Chiellini for that.
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A country just for old men: Allardyce, Moyes, and why blaming foreigners for blocking the path of young British coaches is, well, nonsense
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Gianni Infantino is unhappy. Budweiser is unhappy. The coaches are unhappy. The players are unhappy. Welcome to the 2022 World Cup, everyone!
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