Taking sport too seriously

It's seen as a great time for women's sport in the UK. Britain are Olympic Hockey champions, England are world rugby (for at least a few more weeks) and cricket champions, European Football semi-finalists. It's an exceptional level of success, and as people continue to point out, such a contrast to the men's teams. I've touched on women's sport as an issue before, as it often comes up when I write about sporting "greatness" and discrepancies that clearly emerge when making such lists. There is considerable debate at the moment, both polite and otherwise, about fairness in sport, about the pay gap etc. I feel like, on both sides, there is some nonsense being spoken. Safe to say, there is more nonsense being spoken by what we can gently call the "old-fashioned" side, but the "progressive" side is, as far as I can see, playing a little fast and loose with the truth sometimes. Look, I really want to write this. I'm aware that ...

Brian Lara, Sangakkara, McNamee and McNamara, Mayweather, Pacquiao, Oscar de La Hoya, Curtley Ambrose, Courtney Walsh, Akabusi, Jamie Baulch,  Kahn, Courtouis, Cech, Lloris, Manuel Neuer Johnson-Thompson, Joyner-Kersee, Thompson, Johnson, Giggs, Van Persie Graeme Smith, Gilchrist, Shiv Chanderpaul, Phil Tufnell, Ashley Giles, Beth Tweddle, Simone Biles, Hurst, Peters, Hunt, Moore, Banks, Alan Ball John Collins, Collins John, Harry Greb and Billy Conn, Marvin Hagler, Tommy Hearns, Roberto Duran Steve Davis, Tony Meo, Adedayo Adebayo Contador, Quintana, Porte, Froome, Uran Isinbayeva, Rod Laver, Elena Dementieva Wilkinson, Dan Carter, Martin Offiah, David Beckham, Paul Scholes, Tony Drago, Tony Knowles, Dele Alli, Rose, Harry Kane, Eric Dier Andy Farrell, Andy Carroll, Hair, Harper, Darrell, Darryl, Merlene Ottey, Pirlo, Totti, Misbah Ul-Haq Little, Horan, Henman, Goran, Norman Whiteside, Kevin Moran, Fran Cotton, Winterbottom, Hill, Leonard, Back. MS Dhoni, Virat Kohli, ...

Here are my 25 least favourite footballers of all time. I challenge anyone to find a more 'orrible lot. Very scientific method used for this list 1. John Terry Captain. Leader. Legend. Carry on the list as you see appropriate ... 2. Sinisa Mihajlovic Nasty piece of work on and off pitch 3. Roy Keane My least favourite footballing cliche is "Man Utd have struggled to ever find a replacement for Keano ..." you mean when they were winning three straight premier leagues, reaching three champions league finals pretty much as soon as he left. Real struggle. Keane was a very good footballer but he's the most over-rated there is in terms of aura. Teams don't need a Roy Keane. 4. Diego Costa Obviously 5. Luis Suarez Obviously 6. Barry Silkman Better known as an agent, known for saying horrible self-justificatory things on Sky Sports News, but was also a journeyman player, so makes my list 7. Pepe Keeps on outdoing himself in major games ... 8. Paolo Di Cani...

A fun list to put together. The first test match I watched was the second test of the 1984 series vs the West Indies. Anyone who's played a test match for England at all since then is considered (apart from Bob Willis and Derek Randall, who played their last games in that series). Only test match performance is considered. Looking through the full list of every single player, I remembered, or barely remembered, so very many, particularly in the late 80s and early 90s, who came and went. For balance and a bit of fun, I've added 50 of them, who cast no shadow on test cricket (some of them were rather good cricketers, it was all just a total shambles of selection and retention. And some are actually notorious due to the very brevity of their test career - the likes of Mark Lathwell and Darren Pattinson). There's not that much more to say - current ones are only up to this point, so Stokes and Root will obviously be higher soon. Only in English cricket could there b...

There was, as usual, a lot of good writing in this year's Wisden Almanack. I used to pore over it for the match reports and statistics, but now it's the articles at the beginning which grab my attention. There was a particularly lovely piece by Matthew Engel on the 60-year history of Test Match Special. Amongst that and several other good ones, the article called Cricket and Politics, though fine enough, was a bit of a damp squib - little more scope and insight than mentioning that there used to be more working class players, and that most cricketers are probably likely to be right-wing. No shit. So I've decided to have a go myself, ingeniously entitling it Politics and Cricket. Cricket is a special game of rare wonders, rare meaning and context. Sometimes it can be hard to pin that down, but I'll try. John Major's vision of cricket as the sun goes down on an English village green is all well and good - I've been there and I've loved that, I'm not ...

I got thinking about managers a little bit lately, so I've made a list of the Best of the Premier League era. It was pretty interesting, actually, going through the long list of all the managers there've been, at times a real rogue's gallery of forgotten failures, from Jacques Santini to Steve Wigley to Velimir Zejic, but there were also a fair few more who did, at some point, for a significant stretch of time, do a pretty job, than you might remember. There are those who rather lost their reputation who actually did a great job for a while, the likes of George Burley, Joe Kinnear, Steve Coppell - winners of the LMA Manager of the Year award include all of the above (Coppell twice), Dave Jones, Frank Clark, David Moyes three times (I should say that's the overall award - the divisional award is much more dominated by the big guns). My list is pretty arbitrary - I didn't want to be guided by win percentage, for obvious reasons. Number of games is in itself a gr...

Well, obviously not by some people. Not by the people that voted him, without fail, week on week, Sky's Man of the Match in every Man Utd game, however well he'd played. Not by the people for whom he was pretty much the only footballer they'd heard of. But by some people, yes, I rather think so. By those "in the know". Journalists, wizened and know-all, pundits, people down the pub who really think they know their football. The narrative grew after he left the Premier League in 2003 - Beckham, he's only good for free-kicks and corners. He's more of a celebrity than a footballer. People just forgot how good he actually was (and, to a large extent, remained). I'll try to be as lean as possible, just give a few bullet points - he was twice runner up for FIFA World Player of the Year - he had, essentially, eight full seasons at Man Utd. They won the title six times and finished second twice. They failed to win the title the season before he was a ...