John Collins scored a penalty against Brazil in the 1998 World Cup’s opening game. He explains what it means to see Scotland back at a major tournamentI’ll never forget when we played Brazil in the opening game of the 1998 World Cup. I knew I was the penalty taker so, like most athletes, you visualise and think about what you would do in certain positions and I picked my spot the night before. My secret was never to change my mind and thankfully for me it hit the back of the net. It was a special feeling to equalise against the mighty Brazil and get our team back into the game in front of all our fans. Wonderful memories. Related:...
The coronavirus crisis has instilled a spirit of unity among football’s leaders – but the sport’s calendar has been shreddedAs Gareth Southgate put it so eloquently, this is hardly the moment for football to take centre stage. Yet after a week in which almost all of the sport’s global calendar was suspended amid the growing coronavirus pandemic, England’s manager can be forgiven for wondering if what Pelé described as the “beautiful game” will ever recover from this crisis.Thursday’s joint announcement by the Football Association, the Premier League and the EFL that the provisional date of the first weekend in April for the resumption of men’s and women’s professional football had been pushed back almost a month until “no earlier than...
Kane and Rashford can recover, Haaland can get even better but Belgium, Ronaldo and Modric could be on the way downEveryone Related: Big Sport struggles to pivot to its new position of immense irrelevance | Marina Hyde Continue reading...
Looking for crumbs of comfort in the postponement of Euro 2020 is one way of coping as football becomes an immense irrelevance ... but get realSay what you will about our monumentally mind-warping new reality but it certainty offers the opportunity to type sentences that might have appeared to be facetious attempts at satire a mere fortnight ago. Sentences like “Manchester United are working from home.” Or “West Ham’s Karren Brady has suggested there is an antidote to the deadly coronavirus pandemic.”If the latter reference puzzles you, let’s see it in action in Karren’s critically misunderstood Sun column from last weekend (in which she decided, among other things, that the Premier League season should be declared null and void and...
England captain rises to sixth on his country’s all-time scorers’ list on a night to remember the present rather than the pastOver to you then, Harry. From the flames of the Sterling affair, the dark talk of vendettas and humps and all the rest of it; from all this England found a moment of cold, still calm at Wembley.Never mind that they also found opponents so astonishingly poor the Montenegrin defence seemed at times to be putting on a highly crafted, beautifully choreographed piece of physical comedy. Related: England celebrate 1,000th game with seven-goal charge into Euro 2020 finals The two worst things about England football: the urge to sell itself at every turn and a deadly obsession with the...