Taking sport too seriously

The Euros are nearly always better than the World Cup - a more consistent, high quality, entertaining, less overblown festival of pure football. I hope it remains that way with 24 teams - great to see Wales, NI and Ireland in there, anyway. Still, despite myself, I'm going to concentrate on reasons to be cheerful for England. Getting out of the group will be a triumph for the other home teams - it'll be fun to watch Bale, I think NI have the momentum, but they've got a horribly tough group. Republic too, and they're not playing that well. Still, you never know. So, England. I had a strong thought in October that Spurs (who were then only mid-table) would win the league and England would win the Euros. Well, I was wrong on the 1st one, but not that wrong, and I think we'd be happy if England were in the Top 4 of the Euros. So, why might that happen? 1. There's no one player who, if they got injured, it would be a disaster. It's a talented squad which ...

I'll write a little about Muhammad Ali- what's this blog even here for if I don't? He was  a significant figure for me, as for many. His poster was on my wall when I was a teenager and throughout university, I watched all the documentaries and films, read three biographies, have watched all his famous fights  (apart from the later ones, which I could never bring myself to). He was the primary gateway to so many of my main interests - boxing, the counter-culture,  protest music, false history and propaganda, the antihero,  soul music, Africa, what it actually means to be a great man. He met in the middle (like Bob Dylan and Martin Scorsese, but perhaps even more so) of so many areas - he was there in great literature, in hip-hop, soul and folk music, in blockbuster films and documentaries, in postcolonial studies, in civil rights, in poetry, in celebrity, in religious education, in our understanding of health and illness ... but most of all, he was in sport. He ...