Sports Category
Sports news, commentary and scores with wit and added value. We compare and contrast the best and worst sports reporting in the mainstream press, blogs, TV and online. We love the English Premier League (Arsenal, Liverpool, Spurs, Manchester United and Manchester City) and all things football but we cover cricket, rugby, the Olympics, tennis, golf, F1 and highlights of the sporting year.
Patrice Evra and Luis Suarez: All the views on two unlikable spoilt brats
LIVERPOOL’S individual Luis Suarez refuses to shake the hand of Manchester United’s Patrice Evra. The media delights. All the views:
Alex Ferguson (Manchester United manager): “I couldn’t believe it. I just couldn’t believe it. I had a chat with Patrice this morning and he said, ‘I’m going to shake his hand — I have nothing to be ashamed of, I want to keep my dignity’ and then Suarez refuses. He’s a disgrace to Liverpool Football Club. Some players should not be allowed to play for Liverpool again. With the history that club’s got and in a situation like today, he could have caused a riot. I was really disappointed in that guy. That was terrible what he did. It created a tension — the referee didn’t know what to do about it, it caught him off guard. It was a terrible start to the game and a terrible atmosphere it created.”
Not biased at all.
Kenny Dalglish (Liverpool manager):“I didn’t know he [Suarez] refused to shake his hand. It’s contrary to what I was told.”
Love is blind.
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Posted: 12th, February 2012 | In: Sports | Comments (4)
After Suarez and Evra get ugly Thierry Henry makes Arsenal beautiful – Sunderland photos
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SUNDERLAND 1 – Arsenal 2 – and Thierry Henry scores the winner…again.After the churlishness of Patrice Evra and Luis Suarez, does Thierry Henry make the game beautiful once more..?
Police seize Manchester United fanzine Liverpool KKK masks
MANCHESTER United v Liverpool. Patrice Evra v Luis Suarez. Suarez has refused to shake Evra’s hand. Suarez is the player who served an eight-game ban for racially abuasing Evra. Evra is the player who grassed Suarez to the referee, who held aloft the imaginary yellow card. Outside the ground @gmpolice have seized all copies of Manchester United fanzine Red Issue. The organs includes a photo is of a Klu Klux Klan-styled cut-out and-wear hood. The invitation is for United fans to wear it as Liverpool emerge.
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Liverpool’s Luis Suarez refuses Manchester United Evra’s hand – good (photos)
LIVERPOOL’S Luis Suarez has refused to shake the hand of Manchester United’s Patrice Evra. Suarez the racial abuser or Evra the grass? Whose side are you on? The pundits will say this is not a good advert for football. But it is. It’s exposes the bite, bile and nastiness than lies beneath the shiny, SKY TV, corporate veneer of all big matches.
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Posted: 11th, February 2012 | In: Key Posts, Sports | Comment
Racism forces Manchester City’s Micah Richards to close twitter account
MANCHESTER City defender Micah Richards is no longer on twitter. Racists have driven him off the social network site.
The Daily Mail and Daily Mirror say the City and England player had enough of the racist abuse coming his way and shut his account.
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Nick Griffin, Kim Jong Un, Glitter and Jeremy Kyle fight Redknapp for England job
HARRY Redknapp will be the next England manger. Maybe. Says he:
“It wouldn’t be fair to anybody here if I started to let my thoughts wander elsewhere.”
Oh, come on Harry Redknobb. We need to know who we can hate next.
The Anorak Wish List – not in Association with The Sports Journalists’ Association runs:
Nick Griffin
Plus points: Hated
Negative points: Too British – may have Welsh tendencies
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Joey Barton champion free speech by calling Madonna a slapper – the misogynist martyr
HOW was Joey Barton’s week? Barton is the QPR player and self-styled role model with an active twitter account he hopes to help build the Barton legacy. Yet to tweet from the pitch, Barton, nonetheless, offers key live observations on cultural moments. This week, Barton said of Madonna at the Super Bowl show:
“If she’s got her beaver out in a leotard at her age, I’m going to bed.”
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Posted: 10th, February 2012 | In: Sports | Comments (2)
The Stuart Pearce racism story makes John Terry and Luis Suarez laugh
STUART Pearce – nickname: Psycho – has taken charge of England post-Capello. Stuart’s mastery of the English language makes him a shoo-in for the job – albeit a man bettered only by Harry Redknapp and his Sun column that could be written by a two-year-old. But things are looking bleak for Pearce.
The Sun’s front page story reads “England in race storm No. 2“. The paper trawls the history books and finds an 18-year-old story that Pearce, then with Nottingham Forest, apologised for allegedly racially abusing Manchester United’s Paul Ince during a match in 1994.
It was the game at United’s Old Trafford. Pearce shared the same Forest colours with Des Lyttle, Bryan Roy and Stan Collymore. Did Pearce racially abuse his black teammates? No. As a manager, has he picked players on the strength of their colour? No.
Before the Stephen Lawrence murder, football’s Kick It Out campaign and Sir William Macpherson’s new definition of racism (it’s racism if you say it is), people knew that racism was wrong.
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Posted: 10th, February 2012 | In: Key Posts, Sports | Comments (2)
Fabio Capello was a funny foreigner who didn’t undertand the superior English
DO you know why Fabio Capello resigned as England manager? Is it because when the craven FA starts picking the team, the manger is done for? No. Hugh Muir knows. In a piece for the Guardian, Muir writes beneath the headline and teaser:
Fabio Capello failed to understand why John Terry’s trial matters
England’s landscape has changed since Stephen Lawrence was killed. Allegations of racism are taken seriously here now
Stephen Lawrence…? What’s the murder of a black teenager got to do with Capello?
So there goes Fabio Capello, and maybe that’s that for our bold experiment with foreign managers.
Because above all else Capello was a foreigner.
It wasn’t such a problem that Fabio is Italian.
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Posted: 9th, February 2012 | In: Sports | Comments (4)
Photos of sportsmen and women being hit in the face – ouch!
WHEN we saw the photos of Liverpool’s Luis Saurez’s grappling with the face of Spurs’ Scott Parker we wondered if the action was typical of life in the sporting arena. So. We had a look. And it is. Here’s a collection of photos that feature the finest physical specimens taking one full in the face…
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Harry Redknapp is an England meme – photos
HARRY Redknapp is an England meme…with added Spurs teamsheet…
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Why Capello really quit England: he mastered English better than Redknapp
AS Fabio Capello “flees” England (Daily Star), the media goes into overdrive. Will Spurs manager Harry Redknapp now get the nod? Was Capello just warming the bench until Redknapp’s tax evasion trial ended? Was Capello undone because he canna speaka da Ingleeesh so good? Will he be replaced by Harry Redknapp, a man who told a court he he had the writing ability of a two-year-old (a face not recorded in the Sun – the paper for which Redknapp writes a column). Is Harry Redknapp the master of the English language we crave?
The FA’s decision to go over Capello’s head and strip Terry of the captaincy until after his July court case, where he will deny racially abusing Ferdinand, the Queens Park Rangers defender, led to the Italian quitting his £6m-a-year post.
Now read on…
The FA statement in full:
“The Football Association can confirm that Fabio Capello has today resigned as England manager. This follows a meeting involving FA chairman David Bernstein, FA general secretary Alex Horne and Fabio Capello at Wembley Stadium. The discussions focused on the FA board’s decision to remove the England team captaincy from John Terry, and Fabio Capello’s response through an Italian broadcast interview. In a meeting for over an hour, Fabio’s resignation was accepted and he will leave the post of England manager with immediate effect.”
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Posted: 9th, February 2012 | In: Key Posts, Sports | Comments (17)
‘Arryvederci: Fabio Capello out – Harry Redknapp in
“THEY really insulted me and damaged my authority. What really hit me and forced me to take this decision was the fact the much-vaunted Anglo-Saxon sense of justice, as they are the first to claim that everyone is innocent until proven guilty. In Terry’s case, they gravely offended me and damaged my authority at the head of the England side, effectively creating a problem for the squad. I have never tolerated certain crossing of lines, so it was easy for me to spot it and take my decision to leave.” So says Fabio Capello, the outgoing England manager with the 67% win ratio who won…nothing.
Usually we have to wait for in-fighting, pissing-up, shagging, arrogance and spite to destroy England’s chances in an international tournament. This time the Football Association fired the gun early by cravenly giving into absurd media pressure and sacking John Terry as captain and thereby triggering the resignation of Fabio Capello. The Scots would have dreamt up a plan to scupper England yonks ago were the English not so good at it themselves. Five months before Euro 2012, England have no captain and no manager.
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Posted: 8th, February 2012 | In: Sports | Comments (2)
Did Luis Suarez Gouge Scott Parker’s eye as Liverpool played Spurs? – photos
WHAT can Liverpool’s Luis Suarez do to change perceptions about him? Suarez was banned for using racial abusive language towards Manchester United’s Patrice Evra. Can Suarez move on? Can he become well known for something other than calling Evra a “negro”? Over to you Scott Parker..
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Harry Redknapp’s £8m tax bill wasted trying him for tax evasion
HARRY Redknpap, the Spurs manager, did not defraud the taxman. Harry Redknapp has been cleared of tax evasion. Former Porstmouth owner Milan Mandaric did not give Redknapp, the former Porstmouth manager, “bungs” totalling £192,000. Jurors accepted Redknapp’s angry denials that he avoided tax on any payments over £189,000 found in a Monaco bank account.
What now can stop Harry Redknapp becoming England’s next manager?
Said Redknapp:
“Five years this thing has been hanging over [my family], and now I’m looking forward to going home and seeing my wife Sandra. It has been a nightmare…The Wigan game last week was the most moving I have ever felt, for me personally, to have career, with fans singing my name throughout the game, I’ll never forget that.”
Mandaric offered:
“I am delighted that I today been cleared of the totally unfounded allegations of tax evasion. It is clear they should never have been brought to court. I never doubted that the truth would prevail, not the fact that the British justice system would come to the right conclusion.”
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Posted: 8th, February 2012 | In: Sports | Comments (2)
Legalise all drugs in sport – Alberto Contador was just unlucky
ALBERTO Contador has been banned from sport for two years for doping. Contador has been stripped of his 2010 Tour de France win for steroid use. Julian Savulescu gets real:
If cycling is not to completely lose it’s spectacle and credibility, it is time to be realistic and relax the ban on doping. Safe doping – like blood doping up to a level where 50% of the blood is red blood cells – could be permitted. The substances that modern cyclists take are safe enough compared to the risks of professional sport. We should focus on monitoring athletes’ health rather than losing a war on doping.
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Chelsea say they never lost to Manchester Untied in Champion League final
HAVING rebranded Cheslea FC as ‘CHELSE‘, the Blues maketing department are on a roll. Chelsea FC’s newsletter is rewriting history:
“But arguably the most famous meeting in recent years was in April 2006 when we became the first London club to win back-to-back league titles in over 75 years by beating Man Utd 3-0 – it doesn’t get much better.”
Manchester United fans – and, indeed, all fans of clubs beyond Stamford Bridge – may recall Chelsea losing to United in the Champions’ League final of 2008…
Posted: 7th, February 2012 | In: Sports | Comment (1)
Laureus World Sports Awards 2012: more Brits than Oscars (in photos)
THE Laureus World Sports Awards – London, in photos: Novak Djokovic was crowned the Laureus World Sportsman of the Year. We wondered what he’d do with the trophy. When the cameras click and the sportsmen stands before the serried ranks of media and holds his metal statue, muscle memory or madness takes hold. After much uncertainty, Djokovic pretended he was going to take a bite out of his sporting Oscar and the kissed it.
He then explained the secret of his success:
“Mental strength is something you gain after some time, playing at the top level, competing with the best in the world and trying to absorb every challenge that is presented and trying to take the best out of it, to learn and improve every day. The biggest change I felt in my overall game is the emotional stability.”
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Preston North End manager in clear over 9/11 terror tweet
THE Sun wants to clear up any misunderstanding. Its issued an apology on 4 February 2012:
Graham Westley and Preston North End FC
An article on January 30 incorrectly stated that Graham Westley, Manager of Preston North End FC, had sent a bizarre late night text telling players to prepare for a 9/11 style terror attack and encouraging reaction to it. We accept that Mr Westley sent no such text to players or otherwise. We are happy to set the record straight and apologise to Mr Westley and Preston North End FC.
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Chelsea change website address to Chelse FC – Chelsefc rulez
CHELSEA FC have rebranded as Chelse FC. Is this an effort to distance the club from John Terry?
As Chris as Pies says: “If the internet has taught me one thing it’s that spelling errors should be punishable by extremely fatal death.”
Posted: 6th, February 2012 | In: Sports | Comments (3)
In photos – Chelsea 3 – Manchester United 3: John Terry is yesterday’s man
CHELSEA and Manchester United provided a thrilling 3-3 draw in the Premier League. Three goals down, United game back. Is there any football fan who does not admire United? Also, is there a football fan who does not think John Terry’s a weasel? The Chelsea captain did not play in this match. He was injured. He will play for Chelsea again. But Terry is on the slide. The smart money should be on his not playing for England at Euro 2012. The nation doesn’t need him. Not because he’s a scrote. This, after all, is the England team of Ashley Cole and Wayne Rooney. England does not need Terry because he’s not good enough.
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Scotland team seeks RBS 6 Nations win bonus for losing
THE Scotland team have been left wondering if they qualify for win bonus following their 13-6 defeat in the RBS 6 Nations match against England.
Says one player:
“We suffered a downturn but we have invested heavily in the rugby sector and though prevailing market forces have moved towards Andy Murray in tennis futures we hope our shareholders understand that an option of England in the Euro 212 has complicated an already difficult global situation.”
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John Terry: Is it always racism?
JOHN Terry Chelsea captain, is no longer John Terry England captain. The allegation that Terry racially abused QPR’s Anton Ferdinand caused the FA to strip him of the captain’s armband. The illiberal anti-racist campaign – the ridiculous drive to turn the working classes into overt anti-racists patrolled by – get this – the police – has caused the craven FA to damn Terry.
The man Terry replaced as England captain just happens to be Anton Ferdinand’s older brother, Rio Ferdinand, of Manchester United.
Says Rio Ferdinand:
“I’ve felt like I’ve almost been fooled a little bit over the years. You look back to the days when John Barnes and all the guys who came before were playing, and all the stuff they had to deal with — bananas on the pitch. And I’ve always been somebody who’s championed our country for making great strides. I thought that era was gone. It seems it was just put to one side for a while and now it seems to be coming out a little bit more prominent. I hope it’s just a group of small-minded people who are making it newsworthy and it’ll be stamped out, but there are obviously still great strides to be made.”
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Posted: 5th, February 2012 | In: Sports | Comments (4)
Australian accused of fingering opponent’s bum during football match
EDUARDO Nerio, 49, a member of Australia’s over-45s Maroubra United football club, stands accused of poking his finger up an opponent’s bum during a “vigorous” match at Coral Sea Park, Maroubra.
At Sydney’s Downing Centre District Court, Nerio pleads not guilty to charges of indecent assault and common assault.
Nerio says that during a throw in he only pulled the top of the man’s shorts. The alleged victim says Nerio inserted his finger “3cm” inside his anus as they jostled for position. The alleged victim says he complained to the referee, who did not see the incident. He says he has “been violated” and:
“I wouldn’t have chased him if he just pulled at my shorts. I know the difference between someone putting his finger up my arse and someone pulling at my shorts.”
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Craven FA kowtows to anti-racist bigots and strips John Terry of England captaincy
JOHN Terry is no longer the England captain. An allegation of racism was enough to deny Terry the chance of leading his country, as he does Chelsea.
His trial on race abuse charges will take place on July 9 – nine days after the Euro 2012 finals end.
The Football Association, a craven organisation, has kowtowed to the anti-racism campaign and found that an allegation is enough to mar a man’s career.
Terry denies the charges.
Posted: 3rd, February 2012 | In: Sports | Comments (2)
