Publication
Champions of Europe happy to give youth its head . . .
Even the most optimistic Spaniards turned to faith before football after the draw with Cape Verde in Spain’s opening match of this World Cup. As Cape Verde’s goalkeeper Vozinha’s Instagram following soared, the reigning European champions seemed to be...
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Semi- nal beckons a er brilliant Bellingham brace
Make sense of that. Thomas Tuchel’s masterplan was melting in the maddening Florida heat, England in pain and incoherent and verging on incompetent. At half-time Steve Aoki dunked an overexcited bloke’s face in a birthday cake on the big screen before...
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Team Tuchel targets new heights in Mexico
Before woke, England only ever had to play football teams: 11 v 11, mano a mano, blood, sweat and festering failure. That was the hard way, suffering enough. Now it appears their World Cup depends upon beating three Mexicos: their football team, their...
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The world learns to love Erling Haaland
There’s a classic line about Sergio Busquets, attributed to Vicente Del Bosque but actually ripped off a fan forum, that if you watch him, you see the whole game. Well, it turns out to watch just Erling Haaland is to miss the vast majority of the game,...
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Hope springs eternal at the Black Bull
Morocco plainly wanted to stop the singing. Ismael Saibari’s goal just 71 seconds after kick-off stunned the Tartan Army into deep, wretched silence and the Scotland team into a defensiveness from which they took half the game to emerge. It was...
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Flying the flag for patriot games
In the end, Ted Abela decided to go with the more obviously patriotic shoes. That had been his inal conundrum. He had the rest of his wardrobe for watching the United States at a home World Cup ready to go: both the home and the away jerseys, shorts, a...
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Souvenir 1966 Observer World Cup edition poster
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How did it feel to be part of history?
In September 2003, when Paul Tergat broke the world record in the marathon in Berlin, he became the irst athlete to inish the race in less than two hours and ive minutes. The Kenyan was not only a runner of rare grace, he had an ear for a resonant...
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