Disaster beckons as Barcelona count themselves alive by a miracle after shock Champions League draw
Around Camp Nou, it was mostly an eerie silence on the final whistle of Barcelona’s 3-3 draw with Inter Milan, as it dawned on fans that the Catalan side are almost certainly eliminated from the competition already. As Inter’s players, coaches and fans celebrated in their small pockets, most of...
Kylian Mbappe’s ego’s the epitome of how player brand is eclipsing club and football pre-eminence
It’s the short clip of Neymar being asked ‘What’s Mbappe like? which reveals most about the reality of working life with the footballer who never seems satisfied, even now he’s been crowned the little emperor of Paris. The Brazilian is a picture of contentment as he passes through the player-media...
Return of Talibans: Why 38 million people in Afghanistan are suffering because a few hundred are in power
When the Taliban returned to power 15 months ago, it presented a conundrum to the rest of the world. Although Washington had signed a peace agreement with the group in February 2020, the Islamic Emirate – as the Taliban calls its government – was being led by several men on...
Irony of hunger in Hon of Africa: Governments, relief agencies know what should be done, why don’t they do it?
The 20 million people struggling to survive a scorching drought in the Horn of Africa are victims not only of a climate crisis but of the failings of governments and humanitarians to heed the lessons from earlier disasters. Four consecutive seasons of failed rains have ruined people’s lives and livelihoods...
Revolution eats its children: The poor voted for Brexit to protest fuzzy authority, MPs wanted parliamentary sovereignty
Let me caricature a specifically Conservative Brexitism. Of course, there was the Brexit of the much angrier and poorer north and Midlands. This was a Brexit more about distant power, wage suppression, neglect and inequality. But the mild, mainstream Tory Brexiters talked a lot about parliamentary sovereignty, which the Whig...
British PM Liz Truss on the brink as Conservative-fuelled Brexit revolution devours its children
Can Liz Truss survive? The humiliating U-turn over the top rate tax cut has won her time in the party and in the markets. But within hours of the first U-turn, her premiership was unravelling further in almost every direction. In the crammed bars of the Birmingham Hyatt hotel, seasoned...
How Brazil President Bolsonaro weaponised Covid to cut Black voter numbers to gain advantage over Lula
Last week’s elections in Brazil witnessed belated gains in representation for marginalised and vulnerable communities that have suffered a rise in hate crimes and violence under Jair Bolsonaro. But with the presidential runoff coming on October 30, the fight is far from over. Nearly four years of government led by...
Arsenal steal Liverpool’s ‘monster mentality’ with belief and spirit to go toe-to-toe with Man City
Arsenal proved they are the new “mentality monsters” after twice being pegged back before beating Liverpool. Jurgen Klopp gave his Reds the title after they won the FA Cup in May – yet they looked anything but as they fell 14 points behind the new league leaders. The Gunners are...
Finely balanced: Fans await Arteta’s art-and-guile versus Klopp’s clobber-a-club football stye at Emirates
First takes on ninth as Jurgen Klopp’s struggling Liverpool travel to the Emirates Stadium in London to go to war with Mikel Arteta’s league-leading Arsenal. If you were told this at the beginning of the campaign, you could be forgiven for believing that it was a poor attempt at a...
Trumpism isn’t going away and Obama, for all his virtues, is an imperfect analyst of Trumpism
The last few days of any president’s term are bound to spark moments of melancholy reflection – perhaps for Barack Obama even more so than most commanders in chief. Imagine Obama in the third week of January 2017: He had made history as the first Black US president; he had...
