I Will Always Love You, Neymar – for you are an unrestrained creative genius | Barney Ronay

Brazilian’s move to Al-Hilal is end of his meaningful career but I have adored watching his limitless beauty as a footballer Bittersweet memories. That is all I’m taking with me. So goodbye. Please don’t cry. We both know, I’m not … Ah. Sorry. It’s fine. Just a little dusty in here. When it comes to Neymar and I, me and Ney, the feelings, the farewells, the deeply personal – I’m going to say it – love story of the last 13 years (legal clarification: Neymar has no idea who I am) I feel a lot closer to the Dolly Parton original version right now – rueful, sad, fondly heartbroken – as opposed to the Whitney Houston super-cover: sad but also defiant, hopeful, liberated and ultimately the banshee nemesis of the final chorus, where I Will Always Love You has become I am going to hunt you down and murder you with a scythe. Continue reading...

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Wiegman’s Lionesses rekindle lost energy to fire spectacular comeback | Jonathan Liew

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Nations League victory against the Dutch arrives at the last despite a lack of clarity and brittleness creeping into the team They’ll always have Paris. Throughout this Nations League campaign this has been an England team fighting its own sense of entropy, still giving everything, still trying the same plans and processes in the hope that eventually something would click. And at 9.34pm on a briskly cold Wembley night, it finally did. Ella Toone’s injury-time goal earned England three points and kept their faintly glowing Olympic dream alive. But somehow it also did so much more. It breathed life into a team and a cycle, and a moment that for so much of the evening had felt like it was drawing to its natural conclusion provided a rousing encore to a cast preparing for its final curtain. There will be new challenges and new frontiers to conquer soon enough, a fresh set of European Championship qualifiers in the spring, but for now this iteration of the Lionesses still has tricks up
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US owners understand profit but do they appreciate clubs’ tradition and values?

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Half of the Premier teams are part- or fully-owned by Americans or US companies. Fans’ suspicions are understandable * Sign up to Jonathan’s weekly newsletter here It’s just over a year since Gary Neville declared US owners of English soccer clubs “a clear and present danger to the pyramid and fabric of the game”. The comment provoked a furore but the former England full-back turned high-profile pundit was unrepentant, insisting that if profit is the priority, there are vital aspects of the roles of soccer clubs that risk being lost. The issue, clearly, is not restricted to US owners. It’s unlikely that anybody who is not a fan who takes over a club is going to be acting primarily in the best interests of the community it represents. But given half the 20 Premier League clubs (and seven of the 24 Championship clubs) are part- or fully-owned by Americans or US companies, and given the prevalence of private equity companies whose sole interest is short-term profit, it’s perhaps
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‘Emotional’ Leah Williamson to make first England start in almost a year

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* Euro 2022-winning captain missed World Cup with ACL injury * Defender brings ‘flexibility in defence’, says Sarina Wiegman Sarina Wiegman has confirmed Leah Williamson will start for England against the Republic of Ireland on Tuesday night in their second Euro 2025 qualifying group game. Williamson, the Euro 2022-winning captain, said she would be emotional at the Aviva Stadium when she steps out with England for the first time in almost a year, after she was sidelined with an anterior cruciate ligament injury last April. Continue reading...
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