Football

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.

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.

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.

Late in January, while the Washington Post was gearing up for the Olympics, staffers got an email from managing editor Kimi Yoshino. “As we assess our priorities for 2026,” she wrote, “we have decided not to send a contingent to the Winter Olympics.” A few days later the Post announced that it would send four journalists to Italy after all – down from more than a dozen. That’s four people to cover a two-week event with more than 116 medal competitions. Then at the start of this month, all 45 members of the sports team were told the section was being shut down. “We will be closing the Sports department in its current form,” the Post’s executive editor, Matt Murray, said in a statement afterwards.

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?

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.

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.

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.

On my way to the QPR game against Hull last Saturday, I was astonished to discover that Ladbrokes had made QPR the favourites. Eh? Going into this game, the Rs were 18th in the table, whereas Hull were sixth. They’d won four of their last six, whereas we were winless in five. ‘It’s almost worth putting a bet on Hull,’ I joked to Charlie, my 17-year-old son. Then I thought: ‘Why not? At least that way, if QPR lose I’ll make some money.’ But if I was going to do it, I might as well get the most favourable odds, so I did a quick trawl of the online betting apps, all of which I’ve signed up to, and discovered that bet365 was offering 3/1 – by far the best. I transferred some money from my bank account and stuck £25 on the Tigers to win.

Scotland have qualified for the World Cup for the first time in 28 years. I can hardly believe that I have just written that sentence, so fantastical did this eventuality appear at times, and how specialised in failure Scotland’s once proud national team had become. But it is true. I’ve checked the score, and pinched myself several times.  We beat Denmark 4-2 last night (the classic World Cup scoreline) in what may well be the greatest Scotland international match ever played. As someone who was there in France 10,000 days ago the last time we qualified, it was a euphoric occasion and one that underscored that the true heart of football beats far more passionately now for the international game.