Gareth Southgate has led a revolution that has produced better results and entertainment while England’s cricketers have also benefited from a more aggressive attitudeAmong the myriad skills that are employed in different sports one that is shared by all is risk assessment. Though it sounds like some dark art practised by insurance agents, it is the basic cost-benefit analysis that most competitors make intuitively and upon which all coaches are fixated. Namely, does a given action increase the likelihood of gaining an advantage more than it increases the likelihood of suffering a setback? That is the question a full-back has to ask each time he sprints down the wing. Or a tennis player when she rushes the net.And overall it...
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...
England’s away following is neither as racist nor as violent as it used to be but the scenes in Seville did the country down and Gareth Southgate and co could have taken a standWe appear to be in that period now that could probably be described as the backlash against the backlash. Social media have certainly been a frothy place since a few of my journalistic colleagues had the temerity to write about England abroad and how, in short, it can be a bit wearing treading through the broken glass or watching brave lads in expensive trainers trying to pick fights with stationary cars.The people who make it their business to cause offence seem to be offended that anyone could...