Jonathan Liew's Blog, page 14
January 12, 2025
‘It’d be almost impossible’: Postecoglou defends the scrapping of FA Cup replays
Ange Postecoglou defended the abolition of FA Cup replays after his Tottenham side defied non-league Tamworth 3-0 in extra time of their third-round tie. Under the previous regulations, Tamworth would have earned a lucrative replay at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium when the whistle blew at 90 minutes with the game still goalless.
But from this season, matches are being played to a finish on the day, and a tiring Tamworth were swept aside in the extra period to earn Tottenham a fourth-round tie at Aston Villa. Postecoglou said that scheduling concerns for top clubs justified the change. As well as league and European commitments, Tottenham are currently engaged in a two-legged League Cup semi-final against Liverpool.
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Tottenham break Tamworth hearts in extra time after nervy FA Cup tie
“They’re fucking celebrating,” a Tamworth fan muttered in disbelief as Dejan Kulusevski slammed in Tottenham’s game-sealing second goal. And on an afternoon of little victories for Tamworth, here was another: one of Europe’s best forwards coming off the bench in extra time to secure a win against the 108th-ranked team in England, knackered after 106 minutes of football. The keeper Kulusevski scored past, Jas Singh, is a building surveyor.
Two-nil, was it, in the end? Three? Maybe Brennan Johnson got one near the end. With the press box overflowing, your correspondent was marooned near the back of the main stand, where the view was patchy but the vibes were immaculate, and the corrugated iron roof was taking an absolute battering. Above all, there was the refreshing sensation of these vastly different worlds moving briefly into alignment.
Continue reading...January 10, 2025
Graham Potter’s task is to put human heart back in West Ham’s gormless machine | Jonathan Liew
After Hollywood farce of Chelsea and two years out of game, rags-to-riches manager has seized chance to join ‘family club’
Remember Angrygate? For a few surreal days in February 2023, pretty much the entire talking apparatus of English football was engaged – as is its habit – in a fevered, earnest and yet entirely fatuous debate about whether Graham Potter was angry enough to be the Chelsea manager.
Under an increasingly persistent line of questioning, Potter coped pretty well. He firmly pointed out that you do not go from the ninth tier to one of the biggest clubs in the world without a certain ruthless streak. He subtly rebuked the hypocrisy of the media for demanding greater touchline theatrics from Premier League managers and then pontificating about the culture of abuse towards grassroots referees. So subtly, in fact, that the media blissfully ignored that bit.
Continue reading...January 7, 2025
Dignity and humanity of Afghan women must be worth more than game of cricket | Jonathan Liew
The Taliban uses the success of its men’s team as propaganda – cricket’s powerbrokers should pursue a collective boycott
“There’s all types of lines you can draw. We’ve drawn a line.” So explained Mike Baird, the chair of Cricket Australia, last month in explaining the governing body’s stance on playing against Afghanistan, the country that has just banned women from looking out of windows.
According to a new decree from the Taliban government, new buildings must not be constructed with windows through which women can be seen. Existing buildings with windows must be walled up or covered. “Seeing women working in kitchens, in courtyards or collecting water from wells can lead to obscene acts,” said Zabihullah Mujahid, a spokesperson for the government.
Continue reading...January 4, 2025
Luke Littler’s rise brings darts huge opportunities – and burning questions | Jonathan Liew
The 17-year-old could reign supreme for years but at some point his unassailability risks dulling the sport’s edges
You know what? I reckon this is the year Luke Littler could finally be ready for the Premier League. Obviously we all still want to wrap him up in cotton wool. Obviously we’re all still deeply concerned about how the attention and pressure could affect his game. But my bet – if the evidence of the last 12 months is any guide – is that he might just be able to handle it.
Premier League champion, Grand Slam champion, a slew of victories across eight different countries in the Pro Tour, the European Tour and the World Series. Nine-dart finishes falling out of his sleeves. Had he not also gone on to win his first world championship at the age of 17, we would still be toasting one of the most remarkable full debut seasons ever seen in the sport’s professional era.
Continue reading...January 3, 2025
Luke Littler thrashes Michael van Gerwen to claim historic world title
Tonight the Palace; tomorrow the planet. Whatever Luke Littler goes on to achieve in the fields of darts, celebrity or world peace, nothing will ever quite match the crystalline beauty of this moment.
Champion of the world for the first time, the culmination and fulfilment of a dream that has not – if you think about it – really been in gestation for that long. An ascent this violent and spectacular simply deserved a triumph to match, and in thrashing Michael van Gerwen by seven sets to three, Littler may well have demolished not just one of the greatest players in history, but an entire era. Darts, a game conceived in the pub, may well have been perfected in a teenage bedroom.
Continue reading...January 2, 2025
How Britain fell in love with darts - podcast
Helen Pidd attends the PDC World Darts Championship to find out why the sport has grown in popularity in recent years
Ever since the then 16-year-old Luke Littler stormed to the final of the World Darts Championship last year, Britain has gone darts mad.
Tickets for this year’s tournament sold out in record time. Today in Focus presenter Helen Pidd and producer Tom Glasser were lucky enough to get two, and they went along to see what the fuss is all about.
Continue reading...Luke Littler sails into blockbuster world darts final with Michael van Gerwen
Deep down, we all knew this was going to happen at some point. From the moment Luke Littler stepped through the doors of Alexandra Palace in 2023 and started throwing darts from the gods, a countdown had begun that would ineluctably, irrevocably end with the Sid Waddell Trophy hoisted aloft in his arms.
And yet, with the moment potentially hours away, the thought of it still seems somehow unreal, illusory, transgressive. Darts is on the verge of a new age, a tectonic shift in its history, popularity and cultural footprint.
Continue reading...January 1, 2025
Luke Littler dismantles Aspinall to make PDC world championship last four
Nathan Aspinall probably thinks he just took part in a game of darts. And look, his name was definitely on the scoreboard, and you may have glimpsed him on your television grinning away in the background, and in a few days’ time there will be a hefty bank transfer from the Professional Darts Corporation confirming he did, indeed, participate.
But while Aspinall may have been here corporeally, in a very real sense he wasn’t actually here at all. He was essentially a tower of pixels, a mannequin, an uncredited extra, the silent letter in the middle of a word. He was one of those characters in a noughties video game who walks into a wall and disappears. He was the latest player to stand between Luke Littler and world domination, and that turned out exactly the way you might expect.
Continue reading...Michael van Gerwen edges Callan Rydz in epic at PDC world championship
They call 1 January, world championship quarter-final day, the greatest day in the darting calendar. Well: come back in another 364 days to see if there’s been a better match than this. Michael van Gerwen is a semi-finalist again, beating Callan Rydz, and if the headline facts feel unremarkable enough, then rarely, if ever, will he have been pushed, challenged and interrogated as he was here by the likeable Geordie.
Rydz, perhaps the outstanding performer to this point, was magnificent, outdoing the great Van Gerwen on almost every conceivable metric. He won 18 legs to 17. He averaged 104 to van Gerwen’s 103. He edged checkouts 46% to 45%. He hit 17 180s to Van Gerwen’s 14, at a rate of almost one every other leg. He showed bottle beyond belief, levelling at 1-1, again at 2-2, then pulling one back to trail 4-3 when everyone assumed Van Gerwen would cruise to victory.
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