England players have only four more international games in which to impress Gareth Southgate before the manager names his squad for Euro 2024. Southgate’s team qualified for the tournament, which will be hosted by Germany next summer, with a stylish 3-1 win over reigning champions Italy at Wembley Stadium, the venue for that agonising shootout defeat by […]
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How Sean Dyche turned Everton into a better attacking team than Liverpool
The Merseyside derby features the side second only to Tottenham in the table. Not Liverpool, and not the standings that matter most. But in the shot charts, Everton, with 133, are behind only the actual league leaders. They have a higher expected goals in league football this season than Manchester City. They […]
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Mikel Arteta, Mauricio Pochettino and the ‘love’ at the heart of a fractious rivalry
They aren’t exactly the words you’d expect as part of a rivalry that has become one of the most fractious in the Premier League, certainly for the fans: “I love him and he loves me.” “Like a dad.” The latter statement was nevertheless what Mikel Arteta said about Mauricio Pochettino when a mere player at Arsenal, […]
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The two sides of Rassie Erasmus, the puppet master pulling South Africa’s strings at Rugby World Cup
The mind games began on Sunday night. South Africa had just booked their place in the last four of the Rugby World Cup, pipping France in an instant classic in Paris, and the Springboks’ director of rugby, Rassie Erasmus, was straight on social media to start his game week stirring. As Erasmus searched for England Rugby’s […]
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Argentina’s World Cup hopes crushed beneath frightening display of New Zealand’s strength
Rugby beauty comes in many forms – as New Zealand showed against Argentina. Perhaps it is Will Jordan that takes your fancy, his 31 tries in 30 Tests rugby’s equivalent of the golden ratio. Perhaps you are entranced by Mark Tele’a, sinewy and sinuous, gliding in and out of contact like an electric […]
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Unemployment, isolation, no insurance – the real impact of ACL injuries in women’s football
There is no consensus on how to remedy the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) knee injury crisis in women’s football. Maybe because there is no obvious solution. What exactly do we attribute the Rolodex-worth of 2023 World Cup absentees — England duo Leah Williamson and Beth Mead, Canada’s Janine Beckie and Vivianne Miedema of the Netherlands […]
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Imposing, effortless and unflappable: Who are the Premier League’s true Rolls-Royces?
On August 23, after a seemingly relentless social media marketing campaign in which shouting/cooking ace Gordon Ramsay trumpeted the “Rolls-Royce of pans”, premium cookware manufacturers HexClad were hit with a lawsuit by… Rolls-Royce. Ramsay — who is not a defendant in the trademark case in federal court in the U.S. […]