Each Remembrance Day we now seem to be reminded just how badly the present crop of moisturised millionaires would struggle in a muddy trench, as if the rest of us would fare any betterIf sport is war by other means, football is always getting found out on the frontline. Even as the annual poppy row rumbles on – this year’s incarnation concerning Fifa’s ban on shirt poppies for England v Scotland on Friday – José Mourinho is presenting white feathers to two of his defenders. Chris Smalling and Luke Shaw have fallen short in a variety of martial metaphors: they haven’t put their bodies on the line, they haven’t played “at any cost”, they are cowards by another name. The...
The Nottingham-born lacemaker, who died in 1916, seems to be Milan’s first guiding spirit after heading to Italy at the end of the 19th century but only now is he being recognised in his home townToday the body of a Nottingham lacemaker who helped found one of the world’s most important football clubs lies alongside those of famous poets, sculptors, actors, politicians, musicians and racing drivers in Milan’s Cimitero Monumentale, a place of ornate marble tombs and elegant tree-shaded avenues. But when Herbert Kilpin died on 22 October 1916, aged 46, the memory of his role in establishing the place of football in Italian life already seemed to be fading fast enough to deny him even a name plate on...
There was much to feel good about in Manchester on Monday but the questions faced by cycling – the sport that most embodies the great British medal rush – after recent revelations continue to dampen the moodBritain’s triumphant Olympians and Paralympians partied beneath sunny skies as they deservedly took the acclaim of the crowds in Trafalgar Square.But during the first leg of their 48‑hour victory lap on Monday, it was not just the traditional Manchester weather that threatened to rain on Team GB’s parade but the bad vibes emanating from the structure in the east of the city that up to now has been championed as the symbol of all that is good about the great National Lottery-fuelled charge up...