After his rapid rise at Leverkusen, Liverpool’s new club-record signing is well set to step outside his comfort zone When the Bayern Munich charm offensive starts in earnest, few players are impervious. When months of public flattery and declarations of interest in Florian Wirtz continued past the Rekordmeister’s title celebrations...
‘A perfect storm’: multi-club ownership, Crystal Palace and a looming court threat
Uefa’s legal team is preparing for more action as a complex and increasingly common issue rears its head again In the waterfront offices of Uefa’s House of European Football headquarters in Nyon, the legal team are preparing for an unwanted trip around Lake Geneva to Lausanne. Over the course of...
Freeman and Van der Merwe miss chance to make impression in tough Lions opener | Brendan Fanning
Andy Farrell will want players to display a bit of attitude as well as talent but Argentina showed it will take time Swag is a word more common in the US than in this corner of the world. It’s a made-to-measure term for athletes with attitude as well as talent;...
Michael Vaughan criticises Ben Stokes’s ‘staggering’ decision to put India in to bat
Tourists end opening day at Headingley 359-3 Former England captain Vaughan questions choice The former England captain Michael Vaughan said he was “staggered” that Ben Stokes chose to bowl first after winning the toss on the opening day of the Test series against India. The tourists proceeded to plunder 359...
America is showing us football in its final dictator form – we can’t afford to look away | Barney Ronay
It has been an ominous week for the sport in the US but talk of a boycott of next year’s World Cup misses the point Should we give it a miss? Is it best to stay away from next summer’s Trump-Infantino US World Cup? Depending on your politics the answer...
Nick Kyrgios: ‘If I’d acted a bit differently, I would have had a Wimbledon title’
Tennis’s great disruptor speaks on his highs and lows on Centre Court and the BBC’s ‘very strange’ decision to leave him out of the commentary box Wimbledon runs through Nick Kyrgios’s tumultuous career with a mysterious force full of pain, glory and controversy. It is a tournament defined by history...
Social success not about who you know – it’s about knowing who knows whom
Knowledge trumps popularity in the long haul of trying to be influential, researchers say When it comes to social climbing, it’s not who you know, or how many people you know, it’s about knowing who knows whom, research suggests. Experts studying social connections made by first-year university students say those...
Do medicinal mushroom products actually work? – podcast
More of us are turning to products containing mushroom extracts, with the medicinal fungi market now worth billions of pounds. Promises of benefits to mental and physical health have seen its popularity spill over from wellness influencers to the shelves of Marks & Spencer – but is there any scientific...