column on how HAALAND the world cup MESSI turned into a RONALDO cult of the MBAPPE individual www.theguardian.com/football/202...

For those of us who see Palestinians as human beings, this was Starmer's defining moment. It is not sustainable to behave in this way while leading the nominally progressive party in a two party system. Starmer's unpopularity is not one of life's great mysteries. www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8_s...

Thomas Tuchel feels like the most inscrutable England manager we’ve had in decades. There’s no way to rationalise calling up Trevoh Chalobah as replacement for Livramento. This isn’t to say it’s the wrong call – just that only Tuchel can really know why that decision has been made.

Chelsea and Man City in the FA Cup final. No other English clubs have systematically ignored, bent or broken the rules like both have done. In terms of trophies won, no other English clubs have been as successful over the past decade and a half either. The moral of the story - is that there is none.

What’s behind the worrying rise in anti-LGBTQ+ laws across Africa?

vote labour and win some heating oil www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

the war at home www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

column on robbie keane www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

I've spent my life arguing against all football fans being tarred with the same brush, but to not even acknowledge that Maccabi Tel Aviv's far-right fans posed a threat to public order, and Birmingham's Muslims in particular, is next-level racist gaslighting

A political-media class capable of colluding in genocide has *already proven* itself capable of the dehumanisation of Others that can sustain fascism at home. Aimé Césaire wasn't kidding about the imperial boomerang.

Matthew Syed exists solely to flatter the intelligence of men who read fewer than five books a year, all bought at airports, with pieces expressing utterly mundane establishment attitudes neatly packaged as bold contrarian wisdom.

this is stadio! so glad this is finally out there. featuring steven camden aka polarbear on words, duval timothy and yu su on music, the stadio community and some of our favourite people. if you'd like to get involved, join the new era of stadio at patreon.com/stadio youtu.be/XCw27DskYRw?...

I know it might seem strange to write about Palestinian food right now but as Palestinian culture and heritage is being erased, these brilliant restaurant, café and bakery owners in London are fighting back through food. Please support them all. www.cntraveller.com/preview/stor...

Really wish I remember where he did this. Aaaaah man.

this week’s column is on arsenal and thomas partey. www.theguardian.com/football/202...

I want the manager asked about this in every press conference and interview all season, no matter how many times he offers no comment.

Diogo Jota came across as warm, well rounded and unpretentious. Beyond that, he was fantastic to watch. An exhilarating, multifunctional forward who could do everything and played with scary intent. His near post finishing was pretty unrivalled too. I’ll miss him.

Diogo Jota, Liverpool and Portugal footballer, dies aged 28 in car crash

Sending our love to Diogo and André's family, friends, teammates and fans. Such devastating news. 💔

Inter's entire revenue (£327m) is not much over half of PSG's last reported wage bill (£564m), and it's showing...

what a lej

a column on jordan henderson, and the double standards of English football’s leadership discourse www.theguardian.com/football/202...

Another piece @jonathanliew.bsky.social wrote as his peers salivated over the idea of building the entire England team Phil Foden, a player they could all see more clearly than Bukayo Saka. www.theguardian.com/football/art...

For @tribunemagazine.bsky.social. I went to find out why, despite strong grassroots support for sanctions against Israel, and a live investigation, FIFA’s response has been muted. With input from Bassil Mikdadi and others. tribunemag.co.uk/2025/03/pale...

Tragic if some potential future Zarah Sultana or Faiza Shaheen read this and thought "maybe I shouldn't aspire to leadership or elected office. Maybe I should stay in the background and not cause problems for the movement" Obviously that's not what she meant to convey here but its a plausible effect

I don't want to dunk on Ash Sarkar. What I will say, just in the spirit of constructive discussion, is that there's a tension between this paragraph in her latest article, and the subclause at the very start of the next paragraph.

so often the people in a radical space who have done the work or have the most interesting things to say are the ones least likely to be blabbing their mouth off.

Kudus has all the ability. Gabriel was attempting to move him a little while ago and simple couldn’t. Strange he only decides to play this well three times a season.

“A New Formation: How Black Footballers Shaped The Modern Game” is available from: caricom.uk/print

“A New Formation: How Black Footballers Shaped The Modern Game” is available from: caricom.uk/print

you can express pretty much whatever sentiment you want about palestinians but the only one that will generate actual negative consequences for you is “they should live” www.theguardian.com/sport/2025/f...

I’ve not been in England for coming up to 6 months now, so I feel mercifully tuned out of football stuff, but I have just seen Carragher doing this. Like clockwork, he appears to police the club read as too uppity.

My latest for @hyphenonline.com. With the ceasefire into its second week, a piece with British Palestinians reflecting on an uncertain future and weighing up whether to return with families to what remains of their homes and communities. hyphenonline.com/2025/01/30/b...

They had Saka on the referee Gang Matrix for two years, when I saw Lewis-Skelly booked against Spurs for celebrating I knew they’d entered his name into the database.

Apropos of nothing (I don’t watch CBS Champions League coverage) Carragher’s code switching is insane. With the American network defined by a uniquely Black brand of exuberance and comedy he completely buys in and lets loose.

With literally minutes left in his presidency, Joe Biden has granted clemency to Leonard Peltier

I love listening to @stadio.bsky.social and Wrighty’s House. Neither podcast proportions *individual* blame to players or spews toxicity disguised as “schadenfreude”. (I have to fast forward through parts of another podcast Clive appears on to avoid those things.)

I’m so grateful to have heard @ryanhunn.bsky.social, Ian Wright and @clivepafc.bsky.social contextualise Raheem Sterling’s signing – and how the form of the entire Arsenal attack relates to it – on Wrighty’s House with the sensitivity, respect and nuance the topic deserves but has never received.

arsenal have had a big problem with fans leaving early, and fair play to them, they’ve acted

Man. And that includes when they missed Ødegaard for City and went down to 10 for 45 minutes, missed Ødegaard and Rice for Spurs, Saka and Jesus for Spurs, Ø just a sub for the bridge, no Saliba or Ø for Liverpool. Imma keep saying: underrated job being done here

It's analytically inadequate to read the "culture war" as a contrived distraction technique adopted cynically by the ruling class. Often, it's an entirely sincere backlash against emerging, emancipatory forms of socio-political consciousness which have genuinely got under the skin of rich white men.

It brings me no pleasure to inform you that Rasmus Højlund and Amad Diallo are competing for the title of “The Ugliest Man In Football”. Amad is, sadly, bun.

Raheem Sterling never lost that ability to go on the outside and accelerate over tiny distances. He was doing it for Chelsea all last season. I’ve never understood Arteta’s reluctance to use him. Maybe he will now Jesus’s season is over.

NEW: A study by Yale University and other institutions has found that the Gaza war death toll is likely 41% HIGHER than Palestinian health officials reported. It also found that over 59% of those killed were women, children and people over the age of 65. www.reuters.com/world/middle...

The English Disease by @samdiss.bsky.social explores violence not as tabloid mythology, but a prism for understanding how football's darker subcultures emerge from societal fault lines. A profound meditation on belonging, identity and the ghosts of working-class experience. Essential listening

i’m kind of amazed at how this is just the crudest, most obvious n****rbaiting you can imagine. “the people you don’t like, yeah, they are responsible for everything bad.” and it works!

I'm grateful to Che Gossett for their generous and delicate steering of this conversation which I just discovered was loose in the world. genderjawn.libsyn.com/critical-hum...

I don’t think I’ll ever recover from David Ornstein pronouncing the Black Arsenal fan terminology – ‘sign da ting’, as “sign datting”. Why didn’t he practise it at least, relax his mouth muscles a little?