With the Olympics looming and England’s form poor the games in the US in March carry significance – and a chance for revengeFriendly tournaments do not generally warrant much attention. The sponsored mini cup competitions that clubs sign up for in pre-season are a prime example of games that have very little bearing on, well, anything. The US-hosted SheBelieves Cup, though, is seen a little differently generally, as national teams pit themselves against the world champions in their own back yard. This year, for the Lionesses, March’s tournament is about more than bragging rights and the confidence boost of beating the best. Here’s why ... Related: Phil Neville and England relishing tough task of SheBelieves Cup title defence Continue reading...
It was supposed to be a one-off for London 2012 but the team will be back at Tokyo 2020. Some Scotland players are eager to be involved but only the English are really happyIt was an afterthought as England’s campaign ended at the Women’s World Cup this summer, but reaching the last four opened a door widely assumed to have closed for good seven years ago. England cannot play in the Olympic Games but their success in France means Team GB, coached by Phil Neville, will appear in Tokyo. A concept branded unsatisfactory by three of the four constituent parts will trigger further debate as the Games draw closer.The competitive anomaly is highlighted by the fact Scotland were one of...
We should not be obsessed with winning sporting medals, we should be obsessed with playing sport and getting as many people as possible to do itIt’s been a month of incredible success at the Winter Olympics. It was a month, right? It certainly felt like it, though others will know better. As for the success, that was indisputable. Five medals, one of which was not bronze, made it Team GB’s greatest medal haul at the Winter Games, aka the international sporting event we have little aptitude for given our preponderant meteorological conditions hover somewhere between “dreich” and “probably fine without a coat”. Related: Team GB pitch for more funding to join elite of Winter Olympics Related: The first rule of Celebrity...
With UK Sport’s funding set to fall, we need an honest debate about which sports to fully support – and whether medals benefit the nationIt is a question that could soon sound as familiar as a BBC commentator getting overexcited about a potential curling medal. “Why spend a huge amount of money on winter sports,” asked the interrogator, “when we are not a winter sport nation?” Yet when it was uttered, at a press conference to announce Britain’s medal target of five in Pyeongchang, you could have heard a pin drop.That was because the person doing the asking was Katherine Grainger, the new chair of UK Sport, which supplies – and denies – funding to Olympic teams. And the organisation’s...
Leicester City’s unlikely Premier League title is likely to make them favourites, but they will have strong competition from Team GB, Wales’s footballers and England’s rugby union sideIf the most important factor for the judges is which team’s achievement was the most unlikely, they should look no further than Leicester City. Money doesn’t just talk in the Premier League, it stands an inch from your ear and shouts into it with a megaphone, and no one, probably not even Claudio Ranieri’s mother, had Leicester down as title contenders. Promoted from the Championship in 2014, they had escaped relegation by the skin of their teeth and many tipped them to go down after they sacked Nigel Pearson to bring in Ranieri....