Argentina
A pioneering centre-back and football’s best thinker
Franz Beckenbauer guided West Germany to its second World Cup victory as captain and 16 years later third as manager – AP Photo, File The Monty Python sketch Philosophers’ Football Match, first broadcast in 1972, pits two groups of history’s great thinkers against each other in a battle of wits. There are the Greeks – … Read more
I thought I was just getting old – it turned out I had a heart condition
Alun Wyn Jones is now looking forward to a new career as a ‘full-time family man’ – Athena Pictures/Dimitris Legakis Alun Wyn Jones feeds his eight-month-old daughter Loti in the kitchen of his Swansea home. Moments later, he lifts the youngest of his three daughters onto his knee as she playfully wrestles with his face, … Read more
To win the Club World Cup, Man City just needs to beat a lineup more suited to Soccer Aid
Marcelo at 35, four-time Club World Cup winner with Real Madrid, will be in Man City’s path along with his fellow veterans on Friday – Lars Baron/FIFA via Getty Images The first Club World Cup final in the history of Manchester City, as Pep Guardiola likes to point out, and on Friday an unlikely opponent … Read more
How Owen Farrell, rugby’s man of steel, was pushed to the breaking point
Farrell has stepped away from international rugby to protect himself and his family – Getty Images/Adam Pretty Two days before England’s Rugby World Cup warm-up match against Ireland in Dublin in August, the first warning sign sounded about Owen Farrell’s true state of mind. Until that point, Farrell had always exuded the air of the … Read more