Bristol City celebration and Cricket World Cup final were among the highlights in a year when sport too often seemed to reflect the corrosion of the world around itThe sight of Bristol City’s manager sweeping up a 10-year-old ballboy in a dance of pure joy to celebrate their team’s last-minute cup victory over mighty Manchester United last week added a note of sweetness to a year of conflict and contradictions. Many sports lovers had found themselves spending too much time in 2017 worrying about the integrity of what they were being asked to applaud: the integrity of the competitor, the integrity of the competition.From state-sponsored doping to tax avoidance, from child-abuse cover-ups to corruption in sport’s most powerful governing bodies, so...
Manchester City player’s stoic reaction to racially aggravated assault is proof he is an impressive young man but it should not gloss over horror of what happenedThere were plenty of extreme reactions to England’s Euro 2016 exit at the hands of Iceland, a defeat so gruelling even the players’ faces seemed to deteriorate in the late stages, mouths drooping, skin the texture of wet cardboard, resembling in their TV close-ups the kind of doomed minor zombie-movie characters who end up lying sweating on their bunks saying things like “It’s not … much of a bite” as the chief zombie-terminator shoots a pained look at his No2 and tenderly cocks his rifle.A common response was to accuse the players of being...
How will Arsenal cope with Liverpool’s fearsome foursome, the Mark Hughes ultimatum and whether Sam Allardyce will ever win over Everton fansIt would be a dereliction of duty if Arsène Wenger has not spent the past few days coming up with a way to stop Liverpool’s fearsome attack from running riot at the Emirates Stadium on Friday night. Arsenal’s manager cannot say that he has not been warned. He knows how much his team has suffered against these opponents since Jürgen Klopp’s arrival on Merseyside in October 2015 and nobody could say it was a surprise when Liverpool hammered Arsenal 4-0 at Anfield in August, with Roberto Firmino, Sadio Mané and Mohamed Salah inspired and Philippe Coutinho not even involved....
Rafael Benítez and Chris Hughton need to turn their ailing teams around but David Moyes can take credit for what he has done with Marko Arnautovic• Sign up now and get our weekly email, The Recap, every Friday Related: The Dozen: the weekend’s best Premier League photos Related: Tottenham are the latest challengers floored by the Manchester City problem | Jonathan Wilson Continue reading...
After David Silva’s exceptional performance in the Manchester derby, it was the exquisitely talented Sané’s turn to shine in the rout of Tottenham HotspurAshes to ashes, dust to dust, if Sergio, Kevin, David, Raheem and Gabriel don’t get you. Well, then, Leroy surely must. With apologies for summoning a distant echo of the cricket, not least on a freezing night in east Manchester when a strange, white, Santa’s beard‑like mist kept drifting in above the Etihad Stadium roof. But Tottenham were undone by raw speed here and above all by the thrilling precision of Leroy Sané on City’s left flank.If last Sunday’s victory at Old Trafford was a tribute to David Silva’s ability to manipulate the ball, a triumph of...