The England manager leads and supports his players with few words and integrity – virtues that are lacking elsewhere, from the golf course to WestminsterEveryone loves Matt “Kooch” Kuchar, right? The American golfer has cherry‑cheeked and boy-smiled his way around the great courses of the world for years, the affectionate hooting of his fans a harmless counterpoint to the sometimes po-faced mien of the sport.Except “Kooch” is no innocent schoolboy. He is 40 years old and as tough a customer as there is in golf. At the World Match Play in Texas on Saturday, he got properly hard. Related: Gareth Southgate shows Montenegro how to react but what will Uefa do? | Daniel Taylor Related: Raheem Sterling is a better...
Praise for Raheem Sterling for his displays and his standing up to racial abuse is welcome but as a person he hasn’t really changed. Early perceptions of him were wrongOnce again there has been lots of media focus on Raheem Sterling this week, though after scoring a hat-trick against the Czech Republic and another goal in Montenegro, assisting two others and standing up once again to racist abuse, the most recent articles have been entirely positive. I think this is brilliant and totally deserved but while the media are busy praising his skills it is the journalists who have performed a 180-degree turn.Everybody is taking this opportunity to praise Sterling but I think it’s an opportunity to learn from the...
The England manager was questioning himself over his reaction to Monday’s racist abuse while his Montenegrin counterpart denied it had happened. Uefa cannot do likewisePerhaps the most depressing part about what happened in the Podgorica City Stadium is that, by now, those of us who have followed English teams on their foreign excursions have been in this position – expressing outrage, demanding tougher sanctions and all the other noise in this familiar pattern – more times than we can probably remember.Over time what you learn is that it does not get any easier hearing the primitive “ooh-oohing” that assailed Danny Rose, for example, when he was impudent enough to commit a foul, wearing an England shirt, and parts of the...
Across sport and industry all the evidence suggests foreigners do not damage national teams. If anything, they improve themIt sounds like the start of a bad joke. What do Boris Johnson and Silvio Berlusconi have in common? Yes, apart from that. And that. Oh, and that too. Well, both have also warned of the dangers of too many foreign footballers. Johnson, of course, blamed England’s Euro 2016 humiliation on huge numbers of international players “soaking up space on our top teams” while Berlusconi has spoken about how he craves an all-Italian Milan side. Johnson may have been trying to tap into the nation’s worst instincts, singing his siren song when the country was vulnerable after the Brexit referendum. Yet more...
All good purges require a bad guy but Joe Hart deserves better than to be remembered as a punchline to the good timesRemember the bad old days of English exceptionalism? Remember the golden generation, the way England’s footballers seemed to collapse and wither in the tournament sun, running through heavier air?Remember David Beckham, sitting behind Fabio Capello in Bloemfontein in his Victorian undertaker’s suit as England were devoured by Germany, stroking his whiskers in mute confusion and looking all the while like a very clever, very handsome cartoon water vole who lives in a mansion and wears a watch-chain and is only just this moment realising he shouldn’t actually be able to talk or stand up or drive his motor...