Forget the football, a bizarrely exotic touch of history reverberates around the World Cup final in Berlin’s Olympiastadion tomorrow evening. Listen to this: ‘Berlin was crowded with foreigners and the streets beflagged. Went for a walk down the Unter den Linden, an avenue of banners blowing in the breeze, and everywhere the radio booming achtung
The prediction racket is a sportswriting staple. When the World Cup kicked off three weekends ago this corner boldly blogged the prophecies for The Speccie’s website: that is, the England team would be home for the first week of Wimbledon; the Berlin final on 9 July would finish Argentina 2, Czech Republic 2 (the latter
The Wimbledon tennis begins sharp at 2 p.m. Monday and, as has often been the case, competes with a haughtily oblivious lack of concern against the football World Cup in Germany. The tennis will make for far better telly, and see if I’m not right a fortnight today when what Wimbers still refers to as ‘the
Last Saturday afternoon in Frankfurt’s tent-like Waldstadion, British football writing’s dumpling eminence Malcolm Brodie, 80 next birthday, laid out his pad and his pencils at his pressbox desk. ‘What’s new?’ he could have been excused for muttering in that tinny Ulster snort of his, but the rheumy eyes, deep set in his weathered, walnutty old
In the euphorically barmy delusions of upcoming World Cup invincibility — the English never used to be so insanely carried away when their teams even had a real chance of winning the ruddy thing — I was taken by one nicely observant line on how manager Sven-Goran Eriksson’s qualifying syntax invariably hedges the bets with
Hosepipe bans? Standpipes in the streets? Ah, yes, I remember them well. Prepare for a host of anniversary paeans from us old sweats of 30 summers ago. ‘Sweat’ being the word, or ‘Phew!’ as the headlines had it all through that heatwave summer of 1976, the most relentlessly parched since records began in 1727. By
For football’s partisans, a string of cup finals have been fraying nerves, stirring spirits, salting wounds and jerking tear ducts. For football’s partisans, a string of cup finals have been fraying nerves, stirring spirits, salting wounds and jerking tear ducts. Now it is rugby’s turn. This afternoon’s European club final — the Heineken — delivers a
Blossom by blossom, the season changes. So should the headlines. Fat chance. Weird times: roll up, roll up for a Lord’s cricket Test even before the mudlarks of winter have picked the teams for their end-of-term deciders. The hanging-baskets and bunting (and the boaters and blazers) might be in colourful place for the opening overs
Any day now, soccer’s World Cup will obliteratingly dominate every back page Any day now, soccer’s World Cup will obliteratingly dominate every back page (although this one, it goes without saying, shall be soberly discriminating). On Monday week (7 May) Sven, Sweden’s sexpot sphinx who coaches England, nominates his first batch of players, to be