by Barney Ronay | Oct 18, 2017 | Sports
London – You’d have to try pretty hard not to like Paul Merson as a TV pundit. Even if you insisted on making a public show of not liking him – rolling your eyes, clutching a scented handkerchief, pointing out, pedantically, that he often talks a load of rubbish...
by Barney Ronay | Oct 9, 2017 | Sports
London – Put out more flags. Dust down the red and white jester’s hat. Root out the gumshield, the crumpled Yekaterinburg metro map. And prepare to head once more into that strangely grueling territory between bruised and fearful cynicism and the eternal quiver...
by Barney Ronay | Oct 3, 2017 | Sports
In the years after the fall of the Berlin Wall a phenomenon bubbled up in Eastern Europe called “ostalgie”, or nostalgia for the old east. Seized with ostalgie, citizens of the new world found themselves tiring of the glories of capitalism, with its treacly soft...
by Barney Ronay | Sep 14, 2017 | Sports
London- If you can meet a 5-0 thrashing and a messy 1-1 draw and treat those two impostors exactly the same; well, there is a fair chance you will be a testy, process-obsessed Catalan super-manager, my son. Six months ago Pep Guardiola described Manchester City’s draw...
by Barney Ronay | Jul 18, 2017 | Sports
London – Here’s a semi-interesting football stat, at a time when semi-interesting football stats are in short supply. If Manchester United were to win an unlikely Premier League and Champions League double next season they would, all things being equal, become...
