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Jan 27, 2019

Football must go in hard on Bahrain over the Hakeem al-Araibi affair | Sean Ingle

It is time for Fifa and the IOC to threaten serious sporting sanctions if the Bahraini footballer detained in Thailand and facing extradition is not set freeThere is a striking story in The Club, Jonathan Clegg and Joshua Robinson’s new book on how the Premier League went global, that illustrates football’s inimitable ability to tickle the erogenous zones of the powerful. It turns out that when British prime ministers want to make deals, their secret weapon is the Premier League trophy. As the league’s former CEO Richard Scudamore explains: “Everyone who sees it will say, ‘Wow’. Heads of state, prime ministers – they all want a photo with the trophy. It’s what we like to call soft power.” Related: 'Please...

Apr 21, 2017

Leicester City and other clubs work together for refugees’ better future

On the weekend of 80th anniversary of Guernica bombing, from which 3,000 children fled Spain for Britain, English clubs will highlight refugees’ contributionsIt was an atrocity that inspired Picasso’s most famous painting and, more pertinently, a historic U-turn by Britain’s Conservative government. Until the saturation bombing of Guernica 80 years ago on Wednesday Stanley Baldwin, the prime minister, had rejected all calls to accept refugees from the Spanish civil war.Whitehall had argued that doing so would breach its policy of non-intervention in the conflict. Besides, added Baldwin, “the climate would not suit” people from the Basque region. Then, on 26 April 1937, Nazi bombers, acting on behalf of General Franco, embarked on a mission to annihilate Guernica, a town of...