Sam McPhail

Sam McPhail

Sam McPhail is The Spectator's Deputy Director of Research

Monday

Sam McPhail

Sven-Goran Eriksson was an England great

From our UK edition

Sven-Goran Eriksson, who has died aged 76, was an unlikely choice for the England job in 2000. He was inexperienced with English football – his only exposure having been as young visiting coach in 1978 when Bobby Robson invited him to sit in the dugout during an Ipswich match. But Sven was a serial winner. He had just won the Italian league, the toughest in the world, with Lazio, the club’s first title in 30 years. Before that, he had won 17 trophies over two decades at clubs in Sweden, Portugal and Italy.  The Football Association had burned through top English managers in the previous decade.

Friday

Sam McPhail

Who are the Olympics for?

From our UK edition

For the first time since its first race in 1903, the Tour de France didn’t finish in Paris this year. The world’s best cyclists, Tadej Pogacar and Jonas Vingegaard, were banished to the south coast after a gruelling three-week race, received by a small crowd as they struggled into the Place Masséna in Nice. Their achievements were purposefully overshadowed by Emmanuel Macron’s political folly: the largest opening ceremony in the history of the Olympic Games. Macron has commandeered the Games as part of his unending mission to save France. He seeks political unity to ‘showcase the entire France’ at the Games but his left-wing opponents accuse him of hiding behind a concocted ‘Olympic truce’. Macron has insisted on the ceremony being larger than any before it.

Saturday

Sam McPhail

Natasha Feroze, Robert Ades, Lucasta Miller, Sam McPhail, Toby Young and Catriona Olding

From our UK edition

38 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Natasha Feroze reports on the return of ex-Labour MP Keith Vaz (1:10); Robert Ades presents the case against sociology A-level (7:39); Lucasta Miller reviews Katherine Bucknell’s book, Christopher Isherwood Inside Out (15:24); Sam McPhail provides his notes on the lager Madri (23:16); Toby Young explains why he will be voting Reform (26:23); and, Catriona Olding reflects on love and friendship (31:17). Presented by Patrick Gibbons.

Thursday

Sam McPhail

Madrí wouldn’t fool a true Spaniard

From our UK edition

Four years ago, Madrí didn’t exist. Today, the faux Spanish lager is sold in a quarter of British pubs, which makes it one of the fastest-growing beers of all time. ‘Madrí’ is the historic name for Madrid, which is peculiar for a beer brewed in Tadcaster – or Tada as the Anglo-Saxon mead-drinkers called it. Madrí has never been brewed in Spain, let alone Madrid. Yet it shares the same sanguine-red label of the real Spanish lagers, such as Estrella Galicia, Mahou (pronounced Mao) and Estrella Damm, which allows it to blend in with them on pub bars and supermarket shelves. ‘People think they are drinking a Spanish beer but it’s not,’ says Aitor de Artaza, international head of Estrella Galicia. He accuses Madrí of ‘lacking transparency’.

Wednesday

Sam McPhail

Don’t get rid of VAR!

From our UK edition

The Premier League’s 20 football clubs will vote tomorrow on whether to scrap video assistant referee (VAR) technology. Five years ago, when it was first introduced, VAR was heralded as a foolproof system. Sneaky handballs, unfair red cards, onside-offside mix-ups: all would be gone. The refereeing would be perfect. But, even after five years, VAR is still too slow and its decision-making too opaque. It’s wrong, too. There have been around 20 game-changing errors every season since its introduction. Football can’t continue in this state. Wolverhampton Wanderers forced the vote, claiming VAR had ‘damaged the relationship between football and fans’. They’re right. VAR ruins the spontaneity of goal celebrations and slows down the game.

Saturday

Sam McPhail

Richard Madeley, Kate Andrews, Lloyd Evans, Sam McPhail and Graeme Thomson

From our UK edition

35 min listen

This week: Richard Madeley reads his diary (01:06), Kate Andrews describes how Kate-gate gripped America (06:18), Lloyd Evans warns against meddling with Shakespeare (11:38), Sam McPhail details how Cruyff changed modern football (18:17), and Graeme Thomson reads his interview with Roxy Music's Phil Manzanera (25:23).  Produced and presented by Oscar Edmondson.

Thursday

Sam McPhail

Johan Cruyff, ‘total football’ and the birth of the modern game

From our UK edition

The greatest rivalry in football for the past decade is coming to an end. Managers Jürgen Klopp and Pep Guardiola clashed in 30 games across Germany and England, but neither came out decisively on top (their final meeting was a 1-1 draw earlier this month). In May, Klopp will leave Liverpool for good. It’s a shame that two of the best managers of all time may never face each other again, because their rivalry has raised the calibre of the sport so spectacularly. Klopp and Guardiola tinkered relentlessly with their squads, tweaking formations, positions and playing styles in order to best one another.

Wednesday

Sam McPhail

Celebrity owners are ruining football

From our UK edition

Tom Brady must get bored easily. After America’s superstar quarterback retired (for a second time) in March, he invested in a Las Vegas women’s basketball team, sorted out his divorce, bought a racing boat team with Rafael Nadal and, this summer, became a minority owner of Birmingham City. A few weeks ago, it was announced that he’d had a meaningful chat with Wayne Rooney, the club’s new manager. ‘It’s important for the players to see Tom Brady have an involvement. It’s very clear that Tom is fully involved in the club’ said Rooney, clearly aware that fans might be sceptical. Brady is just one of several American celebrities who have invested in British football over the past few years.

Saturday

Sam McPhail

Spectator Out Loud: James Heale, Melanie McDonagh and Sam McPhail

From our UK edition

18 min listen

This week (01.07) James Heale meets the Conservative London Mayoral Candidate, Susan Hall, who is ready and willing to take the fight to Sadiq Khan in next year’s elections, (06.51) Melanie McDonagh examines the effects on children’s publishing as sensitivity readers gain more and more influence and (12.39) Sam McPhail explains why football clubs could be in big trouble if fans start following superstar players, rather than the clubs.

Thursday

Sam McPhail

Bankrolled: Labour’s new paymasters

From our UK edition

36 min listen

In this week’s cover story, The Spectator’s political editor Katy Balls writes about Labour’s new paymasters – Keir Starmer’s party now receives more money from private donors than it does from trade unions. What do the new donors want, and what does Starmer want from them? Katy joins Will and Lara alongside the writer and Labour supporter Paul Mason. (01:00) Next up, Webb Keane, from the University of Michigan, and Scott Shapiro, from Yale, write in the magazine this week about the dawn of the godbots – you can now chat online to an artificial intelligence that pretends it’s god. Might people soon start outsourcing their ethics to a chatbot? We're joined by Webb and The Spectator’s commissioning editor Mary Wakefield.

Sam McPhail

Football fans’ loyalty no longer lies with clubs, but players

From our UK edition

The world’s top footballers now have a bigger following than the clubs they play for. Fans are beginning to support superstar players as they move around from club to club rather than sticking with a team – and this threatens the very foundations of the sport. Devotion to a team – for centuries a (largely) peaceful way of channelling our tribalism – is disappearing Streaming and social media are largely to blame. After Pelé signed for the New York Cosmos in the mid-1970s, only 40,000 US football enthusiasts would flock to the old Giants’ stadium. Earlier this month when Lionel Messi joined Inter Miami in Florida, the club’s co-owner David Beckham claimed that Messi’s unveiling had 3.5 billion views online.

Friday

Sam McPhail

What happened to Italian football?

From our UK edition

Neither Sandro Tonali nor AC Milan wanted to part ways. The young midfielder is from the outskirts of the city, has been a fan since boyhood and his dad’s an ultra. He wanted to become a Rossoneri icon like his hero Gennaro Gattuso. The top brass at Milan saw him as a future captain. Tonali was instrumental to the club winning Serie A ­– Italy’s top league – last year and reaching the European Champions League semi-final two months ago. Milan’s legendary manager from the 1990s, Fabio Capello, says Tonali is ‘the recipe to win’ and that he could have played in ‘the great Milan teams’ from 30 years ago.