Jonathan Liew's Blog, page 113
May 21, 2020
Illicit haircuts, Celtic's title and lifting morale – Football Weekly Extra
Max Rushden, Barry Glendenning, Jonathan Wilson and Jonathan Liew discuss the Premier League’s return to training, rogue trims, Celtic being crowned champions of Scotland, the future of women’s football and plenty more
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Max, Barry, Jonathan Wilson and Jonathan Liew discuss the latest news surrounding the return of football in Britain, with Celtic crowned champions and a rift growing in England’s lower leagues.
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May 19, 2020
Ghost player for the ghost game: Thomas Müller is perfect for the pandemic | Jonathan Liew
Bayern Munich returned on Sunday and so did the forward for whom spatial distancing is his entire job
The silence, really, is only a problem if you want it to be a problem. We football fans are an adaptable bunch. What at first feels disconcertingly novel soon becomes part of the furniture. We survived animated advertising hoardings. We survived Saturday 12.30pm kick-offs. We survived club mascots taking part in the minute’s silence. We’ll get through this too.
Perhaps, conversely, it helps to see the silence as an opportunity. As live Bundesliga football returned to our screens over the weekend amid empty stadiums and eerie hush, it was only natural to wonder how the aural void could be filled. Canned crowd noise feels a bit North Korea: Behold, Our Glorious Footballers Undertaking Athletic Endeavours For The Edification Of A Grateful Nation! If it has to be a crowd, might as well make it a real one: simply assemble the home club’s millions of fans on one giant Zoom call, and pipe in the real-time mayhem.
Related: World watches with relief as Bundesliga makes a safe return – for now
Continue reading...May 17, 2020
It's offensive for Premier League clubs to suggest they are the ones at financial risk | Jonathan Liew
Is the Premier League vital when grassroots organisations, lower-league clubs and the women’s game are under threat?
Another week, another Zoom. On the morning after the 2019-20 Premier League was supposed to finish, its 20 clubs will once again gather in their virtual conference room to decide how it will actually finish. There, emboldened by the successful resumption of the Bundesliga over the weekend, they will vote on the league’s protocols for returning to training, before debating how they will play the season’s 92 remaining fixtures, and what should happen if they cannot.
If the first part should be simple enough – the clubs are overwhelmingly expected to vote through the new medical protocols, allowing players to return to formal training by Tuesday morning – then what follows promises to be a good deal more contentious. A potential restart date will be mooted, with 19 June seeming to be the frontrunner at present. At which point, the same people who brought us the VAR armpit debacle will try to convince us, with an entirely straight face, that they can run an impenetrable bio-secure league in the midst of a global pandemic.
Related: Raheem Sterling says 'weeks' of training needed before Premier League restart
Related: Frank Lampard hopes out-of-contract Chelsea players sign extensions
Continue reading...May 15, 2020
Taylor v Sherrock: a thrilling but bloodless glimpse of the future | Jonathan Liew
Phil Taylor edged out rising star Fallon Sherrock in a wonderful match but darts, like any other sport, needs a crowd
Everything was different. The dartboards were electronic. The players were standing in their living rooms. There was no crowd, no raucous singing and the closest thing to fancy dress was the master of ceremonies John McDonald, who had decided to wear a suit and tie but no shoes. Yes, everything was different, in all respects but one: when it came to the crunch, Phil Taylor prevailed, beating the rising star Fallon Sherrock 7-6 on Thursday night in the latest Darts From Home exhibition.
It was a wonderful match, as these things go. Taylor clinched it with a 167 check-out in the final leg, having trailed for most of the contest. Sherrock left empty-handed despite registering a paranormal three-dart average of 120, and twice coming close to a nine-dart finish. Even making allowances for the soft-tip board, with its appreciably larger treble and double segments, Sherrock offered plenty to suggest that she has been making extremely profitable use of her lockdown time.
Related: My favourite game: Van Gerwen v Van Barneveld, 2017 PDC World Championship | Rob Smyth
Related: Oche computer: Darts at Home shows vital importance of bells and whistles
Continue reading...May 11, 2020
The Kyle Walker case: why not all coronavirus offenders are made equal | Jonathan Liew
As foolish as Walker has been, let’s not pretend this is a story motivated solely by a heartfelt concern for public health
You can’t defend Kyle Walker. A common sentiment, albeit one usually expressed with a comma in the middle. To break coronavirus protocol once, by hosting an adult-themed party at his house in April, might be considered unfortunate. To do so twice, by visiting his family in south Yorkshire, unwise. To then compound matters by offering up a defiant statement complaining of “harassment” is probably the point at which someone close to the Manchester City and England right-back should probably have taken him to one side for a quiet, physically-distanced chat.
Related: Premier League and other sports in England get June green light to resume
Related: Manchester City parent company add Belgian team to their stable
Continue reading...May 3, 2020
Betrayal and bombast: the surreal story of the Terry v Bridge saga | Jonathan Liew
More than a decade on, fact and fiction remain entangled in the tale of former teammates turned enemies. The human core of the entire episode, though, is not a footballer
Officially, nothing happened. This is, by the way, no minor detail: to this day Vanessa Perroncel fervently denies that any affair took place between her and John Terry in late 2009, and she has the printed apologies and legal documents to back it up. Normally this bit is begrudgingly buried at the bottom of the piece. But it’s worth dwelling on, if only because it forces us to confront the vast, incalculable gulf between what we definitively know and what, over the years, we’ve simply assumed.
A decade on, fact and fiction remain knottily entangled. Over time, the story of how Terry and his former friend and Chelsea teammate Wayne Bridge found themselves at the centre of one of English football’s most hysterical scandals begins to feel surreal, perhaps even a touch unreal: a bad memory that most would prefer to pretend never happened.
Related: Interview: Vanessa Perroncel
Related: Wayne Bridge, John Terry and the sex caper breaking England hearts a little earlier than usual
Related: We must be free and able to defend private lives against tabloid tyranny | Timothy Garton Ash
Continue reading...My favourite game: Middlesex v Kent, 2008 Twenty20 final
A first trophy in 15 years was secured at the Rose Bowl where an unlikely mix of veterans, youngsters and unknowns secured a rare triumph
When you write about sport for a living, you don’t watch it the way you used to. Subconsciously, you’re documenting: actively remembering, noticing your surroundings, checking in with your sensations, emptying the tableau of details.
Related: Cricket: Middlesex claim Twenty20 Cup in dramatic finish
Related: My favourite game: Iverson stuns Kobe's Lakers in the 2001 NBA finals | Bryan Armen Graham
Related: My favourite game: geek in golf cap stuns world at 1972 Olympics | David Tindall
Continue reading...May 2, 2020
Sport in lockdown: 'Someone pulled the rug out from under the summer'
Our sports team on how they have kept readers supplied with nostalgia, commentary, humour – and even the odd exclusive
Sport’s unravelling happened haphazardly – and then suddenly. With Champions League and Europa League games behind played behind closed doors or postponed, and plenty of debate about whether other sports should continue, the turning point was Arsenal’s head coach Mikel Arteta’s diagnosis with coronavirus, which popped up on Thursday 12 March, a few hours after Boris Johnson had warned that many families would lose their loved ones. The next day, everything fell away.
Match reports have to be filed against tight deadlines. They always involve a mild sense of panic. I miss that
Continue reading...April 27, 2020
Rugby league clubs are the beating heart of their community and must survive | Jonathan Liew
If rugby league clubs suffer their towns can often suffer with them and the coronavirus crisis is hitting the sport hard
This is going to sound like the setup to a surreal joke, but nevertheless: last week, a young man from St Helens called Harry Roberts was lying in bed when he looked up and saw the comedian Johnny Vegas standing at his bedroom window, bearing a box of face masks.
As it turned out, Roberts – a 19-year-old St Helens fan who suffers from cerebral palsy and quadriplegia – had been the unwitting beneficiary of a visit from the Steve Prescott Foundation, the charity set up by the 1990s and 2000s Saints full-back who died in 2013 of a rare form of stomach cancer. Over the last decade the foundation has become one of rugby league’s best known philanthropic enterprises. During the coronavirus crisis it has been delivering food and protective equipment to households in St Helens and, as a proud Saints fan at a temporary loose end, Vegas has been cheerfully mucking in.
Related: 'Referees need supporting too': life in lockdown for rugby league officials | Aaron Bower
Related: Hull KR owner warns rugby league could 'cease to exist' as a full-time sport
Continue reading...April 25, 2020
Coronavirus has given cricket chance to rationalise crazy calendar
The pandemic has underlined what we have have long tacitly known: that the schedule is full well beyond breaking point
Tom Harrison is the sort of guy you want in a crisis. Mainly due to his masterful refusal to acknowledge the fact that there’s a crisis at all. As the chief executive of the England and Wales Cricket Board delivered his latest update on how the game intends to weather the coronavirus pandemic, you wondered whether he had been watching the same sombre bulletins as the rest of us.
The forestalment of the season until 1 July, with the prospect of further setbacks to come, provided “an opportunity, as much as anything”. The challenge of rejigging a schedule already ransacked by cancellations and postponements was “an interesting experiment”. The spirit of cooperation within the game, Harrison insisted, was “very, very positive and optimistic”. By the end of it, you felt weirdly buoyant about the whole scenario. Hurrah for Covid-19! Three cheers for cricket! A clap for our brave, heroic stakeholders!
Related: My favourite game: Piers Morgan v Brett Lee, December 2013 | Russell Cunningham
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