Boca Juniors fans at a training session. A training session. There’s such a thing as liking football too much.
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Rory Smith
54.8K posts
Rory Smith
@RorySmith
Football Correspondent, The Observer. Also: @meninblazers @podcast_libero @bbc5live’s Monday Night Club. Author of Mister and Expected Goals.
UK
Joined April 2010
- Fede Valverde, who has been running around for 110 minutes, just blazed past Christian Pulisic, who has been running around for 27 minutes, lost the ball, turned round, ran back, and then sprinted past him again to regain possession. There's a good chance he's a cyborg.
- That's one of the most moving things I've seen on a football pitch, I think: Salah standing in front of the Kop, tears in his eyes, keeping the Jota song going. A really admirable public act of grief.
- At Wembley on Saturday, immediately before probably the third biggest game in their team's history, Dortmund fans held up a big banner criticising the club's decision to sign a (relatively minor) sponsorship agreement with Rheinmetall, one of Europe's biggest arms manufacturers.
Manchester City are about to take down the entire Premier League cartel. We have just declared war on the entire football elite. This legal battle will decide the future of football: either it will be monopolized by the big, traditional clubs or their monopoly will be crushed and - Messi’s first interview on the day he joined PSG wasn’t with a TV station or a newspaper. It was with @IbaiLlanos, the Twitch streamer even the most elusive players are happy to talk to and, possibly, a pioneer of the future of sports media
- PSG’s fans have unveiled a tifo in honour of Xana, Luis Enrique’s daughter. That is quite beautiful.
- The way football is now conditioned to fetishise money is beyond grim, it really is. Not Newcastle, not Man City: all of it. All of us.Newcastle's new owners net worth vs. Man City's owners net worth 🤑
- How about instead of celebrating goals all the players shape their bodies in such a way to spell out “football is again being used as a distraction from broader governmental failures, this is just as inane a conversation as the one about scotch eggs”
- The speed with which UEFA’s transparent attempt to blame fans for complete organisational failure has been swallowed despite literally gigabytes of available evidence is really dispiriting.
- The fact that your club has also been wronged by VAR isn’t proof that Liverpool shouldn’t complain, it’s proof there’s an issue with a system that has changed football quite drastically in pursuit of a perfection it isn’t delivering. Your club should also be complaining.
- It’s not sport if there’s no relationship between effort and reward. It’s not sport if success is guaranteed. It’s not sport if you can’t lose. It’s content.
- Wolves can now attempt a legal action to challenge the legality of VAR because they no longer wish to be oppressed by the tyranny of the majorityReplying to @martynzieglerWolves' proposal to scrap VAR was defeated by 19 votes to 1
- Replying to @chris_sutton73Yes, he’s done brilliantly to take them from 16th when he took the job to 16th now. Transformative stuff.
- I asked Raheem Sterling about racism, abuse, public portrayals of black athletes, stereotypes, diversity in the media and double standards. He had a lot to say.
