Football

Thursday

Toby Young

Whoops, I’ve given my children a gambling problem

The problem with my gambling, Caroline has always maintained, is not the fact that I nearly always lose. I only ever bet on QPR, so that’s inevitable. No, the issue is that I might pass on the habit to my children, particularly the boys. My bets rarely exceed £25, but my sons might have less self control. What if they become addicts, she wants to know? It will ruin their lives. In her eyes, gambling in front of them is like snorting heroin off the kitchen table. Well, it pains me to say it, but she was right. My youngest recently celebrated his 18th birthday and the first thing he did, at one minute after midnight, was open a bet365 account. The fact that his becoming an adult coincided with the start of the World Cup didn’t help.

Wednesday

James MacMillan

Pity us poor Celtic fans

Although the past few footballing weeks have been dominated by the convulsive conclusion to Arsenal’s season – and the upcoming few will be dominated by the World Cup – I wonder if some of you might spare a thought for my own traumas north of the border. As a Celtic supporter, I’ve had one of the worst seasons imaginable. After years of victory in the relatively impoverished (and severely mocked) Scottish Premier League, my team has had one of their most disastrous stretches, knocked out embarrassingly early from all European competitions and then continually shamed and outperformed by a resurgent Hearts, who haven’t won the Scottish League since 1960.

Roger Alton

Who cares if cricketers drink?

Cricketers Have Beer, Shock: well, who knew! This wretched incident in some joint in Chelsea involving Ben Stokes and Gus Atkinson in a dust-up with some extremely large young Saracens rugby players is hardly world war three, but its ramifications are sending shudders through the cricket establishment. At the time of writing the full details are not entirely clear, though it seems that an England Cricket Board (ECB) security guard might have been accidentally thumped before a full-blown ruckus ensued. Nothing good ever happens after midnight – a sentiment readers will doubtless be familiar with Whether a well-known and widely admired 35-year-old international sportsman should have been out in a nightclub in the early hours of Monday morning is for others to judge.

Charlie Methven

Might England just do it in the World Cup?

The World Cup has never been just a football tournament. Even if we don’t realise it at the time, it tends to reveal something about us. In Germany 2006, it was all about Baden-Baden and the WAGs: the shallowest point of that celebrity-obsessed age. For more romance and happier memories, go back to Italia 90. Pavarotti bellowing ‘Nessun dorma’, Gazza blubbing, Maradona weaving his magic, Roger Milla hip-wiggling the corner flag. Italia 90 was the last gasp of the old order: modestly paid players with mullets and perms; heaving terraces; the USSR, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia playing their last tournaments.

Tuesday

Thomas Munson

Britain wants you to binge drink

I was, aptly, in a pub when I heard the news. Owing to the time difference between Britain and North America, Sir Keir Starmer had confirmed that licensing laws would be relaxed for this year’s Fifa World Cup, allowing pubs to stay open later into the night.  Shortly after the announcement, I found myself wondering about licensing laws generally. Like most Britons, I had long regarded them as part of the natural order of things; as permanent a fixture of pub life as sticky carpets. But what were these laws’ impact on my own relationship with alcohol and those of my fellow countrymen? Why is it, compared with so many other countries, we feel the need to binge drink? The stereotype of the drunk Brit is by now internationally recognisable.

Wednesday

Roger Alton

I’ll be praying for Arsenal’s God squad

Looking forward to the World Cup? I do hope so. You can complain and say that a gargantuan tournament without Italy but with Cape Verde isn’t really worth bothering with. But Italy have been rubbish for years and it’s no bad thing when establishment sides get a good kicking (yes West Ham, we’re looking at you). And dear old volcanic Cape Verde, bless it, is in a group with Spain (shorn of any Real Madrid players), Saudi Arabia and Uruguay. I would love to see any of those games. And England manager Thomas Tuchel has played a blinder. But goodness, he was blessed with options. Take a look at this team: Nick Pope; Lewis Hall, Harry Maguire, Levi Colwill, Trent Alexander-Arnold; Morgan Gibbs-White, Cole Palmer, Adam Wharton; Phil Foden, Jarrod Bowen, Dominic Calvert-Lewin.

James Walton

Undeniably stirring: Dear England reviewed

James Graham has said in interviews that he regards Gareth Southgate as ‘a hero for the ages’. Even if he hadn’t, though, this view wouldn’t be difficult to detect from Dear England, an adaption of his own stage play. In this week’s two episodes, Southgate’s unfailing loveliness succeeded in reviving not just the England football team, but also a sense of what England itself essentially is. At one point, he watched the Queen’s Covid address about ‘the attributes of self-discipline, of quiet, good-humoured resolve and of fellow feeling’ that ‘still characterise this country’ – and, as ‘Jerusalem’ swelled on the soundtrack, he clearly believed every word; not surprisingly given that these sentiments underlay everything he did.

Wednesday

Rupert Hawksley

How Rupert Murdoch destroyed the innocent enjoyment of watching sport

In July 2000, Rupert Murdoch’s Sky acquired an obscure online gambling brand called Surrey Sports. It was little remarked upon at the time but this deal would change football forever. Two years later, Surrey Sports had become Sky Bet and, by 2004, people watching football on Sky Sports could bet on the game via their remote. And why not? After all, as the Sky Bet tagline reminded viewers: ‘It matters more when there’s money on it.’ For football fans, nothing was ever quite the same again. ‘It’s difficult to overstate what the slogan did for the normalisation of gambling in football,’ writes Darragh McGee in his impressive study of how our national sport, seduced by profit, surrendered to the gambling industry.

Wednesday

Roger Alton

Declan Rice is an island of decency in modern football

As all but the most tribal fruitcases would agree, Arsenal’s Declan Rice is an island of decency in the rather foetid river that is modern football. But even he seemed to be performing the Heimlich manoeuvre on a West Ham forward in the grapple-fest that was the epic 95th-minute corner last weekend. Like everyone else, Rice joined the all-in wrestling, bullying, grabbing, judo throw-downs and fouling that have disfigured so many of the corners we have seen this season and made these moments such a dreadful spectacle. As at an orgy, it is hard to see who is doing what to whom. After an eternity, the referee judged that West Ham’s Pedro had his arm across the Arsenal goalkeeper David Raya’s throat and disallowed the West Ham equaliser. Should the goal have stood?

The Spectator

Letters: it’s hard to undo dumbing down

Tales from the City Sir: Simon Jenkins’s article on Liverpool Street Station (‘Horror storeys’, 9 May) is inaccurate, and an insult to every councillor on the City of London planning committee, whose professionalism I defend. Saying the committee was ‘clearly going to approve’ the application amounts to an allegation of predetermination. That is a serious charge against every councillor present. It is also untrue: 22 members heard the case and three voted against. Sir Simon writes that ‘both schemes were presented to a packed City planning committee’. This is also untrue. There was one planning application before the committee that day.

Wednesday

Rod Liddle

I admit it: I was wrong about the Premier League

Yes, of course, one sometimes yearns for the old days. The friend who, appearing in court on a charge of racial hatred for having shouted ‘Pikeys!’ at some Gillingham fans, was able to produce a shirt bought in the Gillingham club shop which bore the slogan ‘Pure Pikey’. Case dismissed. And then the case that was not dismissed – another friend, his face contorted with outrage and disbelief, found guilty of violent and abusive language towards the manager of an opposing team. ‘What sort of game has this become, Rod, when you can get done for calling Russell Slade a fat c**t?’ It is hard to say even from my antediluvian standpoint, that things haven’t got better A salient question.

Tuesday

Simon Kuper

Would W.G. Grace recognise the game of cricket today?

There’s a fascinating thought that the authors of Full Circle pursue for just a couple of pages, then leave hanging: ‘Association football offers an alternative history by which to consider the course cricket might have taken.’ In fact, the book demonstrates that cricket has followed football’s course, albeit about a century late. In cricket, too, professionals ousted amateurs, embraced the market, saw economic power shift east and chose a short format that allowed games to be played in an evening. Like it or loathe it, cricket has effectively become football. Reading this serious and competent work, you wonder at times why the journalists Richard Heller and Peter Oborne bothered to write it. There are already countless cricket histories.

Tuesday

Toby Young

The highs – and low lows – of supporting QPR

At the beginning of the current football season, I thought there was a real chance that QPR would get promoted. We refreshed our squad with some smart recruitment over the summer, brought in a couple of strikers and hired a new manager in the form of Julien Stéphan, who’d steered Rennes to victory in the Coupe de France. The Hoops have been languishing in the second tier of English football for more than ten years and it looked like we might finally escape. I’d even begun to fantasise about launching a campaign to get rid of VAR in the Premier League, where it’s been in use since 2019. Earlier this week, a poll by the Football Supporters’ Association revealed that three-quarters of fans want to scrap it, with 97 per cent saying it hadn’t made watching football more enjoyable.

Druin Burch

My daughter’s living my football dream

Next door to Jeremy Clarkson’s farm, behind spiked steel fencing and overlooked by edge-of-town bungalows, are the grounds of my daughter’s football team, the Chipping Norton Swifts Under-15 Girls. On cold, leaden Saturdays, I stand and watch. The clubhouse does cups of instant coffee for a pound but they take only cash. I don’t bring it because the urge to drink the coffee has never yet found me. What does find me, as I watch the girls’ match, is the urge to play.

Wednesday

Roger Alton

The lost brilliance of football’s Pink ’Un newspapers

If you can remember Pink ’Un newspapers and the days when FA Cup shocks really were shocks, then God bless you, you’ve got a few miles on the clock. Pink ’Uns (occasionally Green ’Uns, as in Sheffield and Bristol) were Saturday evening regional newspapers carrying results and reports of Football League matches that, in a miracle of newspaper production, mesmerising to behold, were on sale on the streets while spectators were still leaving the grounds after the final whistle. All closed now of course, along with the demise of the Saturday 3 p.m. kick-off. Who needs papers anyway when football fans can discover the state of play in matches at any time, anywhere?

Sunday

Mike Jakeman

Can Arteta hold his nerve?

The second half of the Premier League season is brimming with stories and subplots. Hundreds of players are hoping to secure places in their national team squads ahead of the World Cup; Sunderland and Leeds are trying to buck the trend for promoted teams to head straight back to the Championship; Manchester United’s permacrisis has entered its next phase; and BlueCo’s financial revolution at Chelsea has moved into a new gear with the appointment of one of their own as coach – Liam Rosenior, from also-BlueCo-owned Strasbourg. More than anyone else, however, the next six months matter to the Arsenal manager, Mikel Arteta. After seven years in the job and three consecutive second-place finishes, the time has come to land a big prize.

Thursday

Roger Alton

Don’t blame Ben Stokes

So what was the best bit of this dispiriting Ashes series? Lucky you if you’ve found one, but for me – at the time of writing, before Jacob Bethell was belatedly allowed to unfurl his brilliance – it was the moving homage to the heroes of the Bondi massacre at the start of the Sydney Test. It was flawlessly executed, unlike a great deal of the cricket: a group of first responders, including paramedics, lifeguards, police and Ahmed al-Ahmed, the shopkeeper who disarmed one of the terrorists, were given a guard of honour as applause and cheers flooded the ground. If it didn’t bring a tear to the eye, check your pulse. Otherwise, what have we learned?

Wednesday

Maureen Lipman

Another year without an Oscar

With the close of 2025 I crowned a tumultuous year in which I got married, moved house and saw Evelyn, my belligerent character, leave Coronation Street after six years, heading to virtual university at 79 to study law with special emphasis on dogs. The Street may have gone very gay and very murderous lately, but I hope canine-obsessed Evelyn left her mark on its cobbles. I loved my sojourn there, so she’ll be back and she’ll be ugly. My last vainglorious appearance of 2025 was in the Boxing Day episode of ITV’s The Masked Singer, where the panel failed to guess the identity of the seething, exhausted old goose, wobbling and warbling blindly around the stage. I was voted out in favour of Dermot O’Leary dressed as a sprig of mistletoe with Mick Jagger-sized red lips on his hips.

Monday

Toby Young

I’ve been duped by the Toby hoaxers

Going to see QPR on Boxing Day has become a tradition in the Young household – and not because we hold out much hope of winning. The Hoops have only won 19 of the 71 Boxing Day fixtures we’ve played since 1882, when the club was founded. The last time was in 2018, when we beat Ipswich 3-0 at home, and we haven’t won away since 1967. But going to watch our team, however poorly we play, beats festering at home in that fallow period between Christmas Day and 1 January, so my three sons and I piled into the car for the 150-mile round-trip to Fratton Road in Portsmouth. We had an additional reason for making the journey, which was a special Christmas offer from Toby Carvery whereby anyone called Toby could eat for free.

Saturday

Rob Crossan

Football is a masterclass in monogamy

Back in the early 1990s, I was a teenage visitor to an array of dilapidated Victorian cow sheds masquerading as third and fourth division football grounds as I supported my team, Wrexham FC, on their travels. There were still many pre-Hillsborough fences in place, some of which (most notably in the away end at Crewe Alexandra’s Gresty Road ground) successfully blocked around 90 per cent of the view of the pitch for visiting fans. The catering usually only extended to ‘botulism in a bap’ burger vans and it was always, always cold. But what I remember most clearly from those far-off days was the voice register of the fans when things went wrong.