3 d. ago Salah staying doesn’t change one key point: Liverpool still need to rebuild | Barney Ronay

On the face of it the Egyptian’s new contract has no downside – but this is not entirely a free ride for Arne Slot and the clubWell, that’s good then. Things fall apart. But sometime they also don’t. And the centre does actually hold.Perhaps the most interesting part of Mohamed Salah’s contract extension at Liverpool is the fact this is a rare crossover story, a signing that steps outside its own tribal margins. There will of course be localised delight. Liverpool fans can look forward to their own lost weekend in the sun, a sense that the good times will now continue to roll, that the time bar has shifted. Return to your seats. This is a lock-in. Continue reading...

Politics

5 d. ago Declan Rice topples Real Madrid with black swans and silver bullets | Barney Ronay

Arsenal midfielder had never scored a free-kick before nailing two in 12 minutes to sink European championsSo that’s how you beat Real Madrid then. Here it is, the silver bullet. Improbably brilliant, aesthetically lovely, statistically semi‑impossible right-footed free‑kicks. What’s the problem here exactly?Before this fun, wild, unbound night at the Emirates Stadium Declan Rice had scored exactly zero free-kicks across his eight-year professional career. On Tuesday night he scored two in 12 minutes, against the champions of Europe, in Arsenal’s biggest European game in almost 30 years. Continue reading...

Politics

8 d. ago Liverpool’s title stumble shows strength of Premier League, not its weakness | Barney Ronay

Fulham were excellent in beating the champions-elect and credit should be given to the mid-table tier’s progressionHere it comes then. The much‑promised collapse. The improbable, but somehow also deserved and collectively willed disintegration of these champions by default. Something like that anyway. Tell you what though. Fulham are good aren’t they? And particularly so, it should be said, for a team that started the day 10th in an apparently mediocre league. Or is that not part of the story?At the end of a fun, boisterous 3‑2 victory for Marco Silva’s excellent, vigorous upper‑midtable team the talk will of course be about Liverpool, and not necessarily in a very flattering way. Continue reading...

Politics

1 week ago It’s unfair to blame Liverpool for being the best team: that's how you win titles | Barney Ronay

It has been an odd, slow bicycle race of a season, but this is hardly the fault of Arne Slot’s impressive league leadersThere was an extraordinary moment in the seconds after Diogo Jota had scored the only goal of this Merseyside derby, as the home supporters seethed and writhed, bodies tumbling, a wave of noise barrelling around the Anfield stands.At which point a lone middle-aged man could be seen emerging from the seats, waving his fists in the direction of what must have been the fourth official, making wild but oddly precise spectacles gestures with his fingers, all the while being hurled back by the combined efforts of three men in orange jackets. Continue reading...

Society

2 w. ago Infantino’s $1bn prize: act of commercial disruption disguised as benevolence | Barney Ronay

Fifa president’s talk of the Club World Cup promoting access and equity is simply double-think to disguise another land grabIt takes a while for the voice to emerge from the background haze, a mist of generically noodling electronic music, the kind of music that comes filled with a comforting sense of death, hold music from the executive euthanasia clinic.Finally the voice emerges, whispering through your headphones in that familiar rich, reverent Euro-tone, like being spoken to by the sun. This is a voice that says: I am here to command. But I am also just a conduit for a divinity that flows through me and into you. Although mainly, and let’s be absolutely clear, through me. Continue reading...

Politics

3 w. ago Gareth Southgate nails his big lecture in a victory for competitive caring | Barney Ronay

Former England manager may not be right about everything but he remains a good man, fulfilling a role others have vacatedSay what you like, and the haters – we know this about the haters – will continue to hate, are in effect defined by their hating. But Gareth Southgate has now finally delivered on the biggest stage of all.This is of course a reference to the stage at Senate House library, venue for Big Gate’s big Dimbleby lecture, recorded in front of an audience of silent, rapt, nodding people, and broadcast this week on the BBC. This is what elite big-lecture managers do. They seize the moment. They shut out the noise. Gareth at the Dimbleby? Absolutely nailed it. Continue reading...

Sport

3 w. ago Thomas Tuchel’s first task is to solve England’s main problem: Harry Kane | Barney Ronay

Kane had an awful Euros, largely because of his positioning. The new head coach must address this, and the signs are he will So far there has been something astringent and quietly refreshing about the pared-back stylings of Thomas Tuchel’s new England. There are natural caveats to this, not least the built-in obsolescence of the entire Tuchel project (cautious tactics; he’s a German m8; not picking that player I like, etc, etc). But, for now, the lead-in to the reassuringly generic England double-header against Albania and Latvia has been closer to a soft launch than any other head coach era.There will be no roaring, no medieval morris dancing tactical revivalism, also no agonising over the meaning of Albion, no old maids cycling to mass, no West End stage play about a gangly German pragmatist and his efforts to impose the 3-4-1-2 formation. Instead this feels like what it is: an 18-month deal, less the blooming of a new romance, more workmanlike middle-aged dating app. We’re all gr...

Politics

3 w. ago Newcastle’s Carabao Cup win: part feelgood story, part PR triumph for dictator state ambition | Barney Ronay

Supporters are left with a choice of being a conduit for Saudi state propaganda or walking away and letting it winWell, that’s the nice bit done. Warm feelings, heritage bonds, a cocoon of distracting noise. Wembley is such a different place on these domestic cup days, certainly compared with the Cliff Richard concert vibe of a midweek international.And that feeling was there right from the start of the Carabao Cup final on Sunday as Newcastle were awarded their first corner, drawing the most extraordinary outburst of noise, static, shared energy from one end to the other, filling all that empty Wembley air. Continue reading...

Politics

4 w. ago Dan Burn’s odyssey grants Newcastle their own special slice of football history | Barney Ronay

The only locally born starting player for either side proved the catalyst on a day where classic cup final magic won outSometimes football just can’t help itself. Even now, in its glazed and managed state, plaything of propaganda machines and sharp-fanged hedge funds, it will still give you these moments, will follow its own gorgeously hammy storylines.Here it gave Newcastle a story that couldn’t have been more perfectly styled and finished: a Dan Burn day for a Dan Burn team at a Dan Burn Wembley, and a moment before half‑time that seemed to paint the entire world a deep rich shade of Dan Burn. Continue reading...

Events