#but i think about the players who were in their prime without a league in soccer and hockey

[magics-neptunes-things]

Comfort

Hi guys!

It was Cata's birthday tuesday, so here is a little something for her :)

It's from a request too, I really need to sort them x)

Also please Barca, win today i need it.

Enjoy!

TW : Lost, angst.

There you are. The first lost of Barcelona for this season. It’s coming at the first moment of the year honestly, you would have preferred to lose against another Spanish team than to lose against Chelsea during the Champion’s league. You still have another game to win and go to the finale, but it would be at London and pretty hard. You already know it.

Looking around you, you saw that all of your teammates are gutted. Lucy is sitting on the ground; Ona went straight to the locker room and Alexia let another players comfort her. For your point, you just stay up where you were when the whistle whistled. Your hand on your hips, you weren’t looking at something special at first.

Until your eyes went on the silhouette of your girlfriend. Cata is sitting on the ground, a little like Lucy unless that she’s leaning against the goal post. Her knees bent against her and her arms surrounding them, she has her eyes fixed on her feet.

She seems so sad that you forget almost immediately your proper sadness. Walking slowly in her direction, you try not to ignore the other people talking to you. When you reach Cata, you kneel in front of her.

“Hey” you say quietly, putting your hand on her arm.

She looks briefly at you, before shaking her head. You know that she feels guilty about the lost, but you think that every single player of the team has that feeling. You don’t say another word, getting on your feet again before helping her to get up too. You don’t want to have to do the post-game interview, so you take another way to go to the locker room.

Of course, the general mood is awful. Nobody’s talking, nobody’s looking at each other. It’s so tense that you propose at Cata to go take a shower at your apartment to go home sooner. Cata agrees with a nod, still not talking. Knowing how much she’s bubbly, happy and smiling usually, it breaks your heart.

You say goodbye to your other teammates, grabbing Cata’s hand to take her with you. Hiding under her hood, she’s still silence. People forget sometimes that she’s only 22 years old, Cata forget sometimes too you think. She’s always way too hard with herself.

You manage to get to your car without meeting fans or journalists, you usually take time to talk with the people coming to see you, but today your girlfriend’s happiness is more important than anything else.

“You want to put some music?” you ask at your girlfriend when you are on your car.

She nods, taking your phone in her hand before looking at something you both will like. You’re not really hard to satisfy honestly, as long as you can concentrate yourself while driving. When Cata put your phone down, you take her hand in yours, squeezing it lovingly.

She looks at you and make a half-smile, which isn’t so bad. You interlink your fingers and take the way of your apartment. Cata doesn���t ask you where you are going and when she realizes that you’re going to yours, she doesn’t protest either.

“Do you want me to cook something?” you ask softly when you’re home.

Cata just shakes her head, sitting on a stool in your kitchen, where she followed you. You put a bottle of her favorite Prime in front of her and try to cross her eyes before talking again.

“Pa amb oli?” you propose.

“With white onions?”

She raises a hopeful look on you and you can’t help but smile. This meal, coming right from her natal island of Mallorca is like her comfort food. You kiss her cheek softly before turning to the fridge to prepare two plates of the dish. You like it too; the first time you try it, it was when Cata took you in Mallorca to meet her family. You loved every single thing coming from this island, maybe because it’s linked with your girlfriend, who you are really fond of.

You are deep in your thought, rubbing the tomato on the bread with an ability that would have made Alexia proud, when you feel Cata’s body against yours. Hiding her face in your neck from behind, she hugs you so tight that you have the impression that she wants to come under your skin. Literally.

You smile and keep cooking, thankfully you don’t need to move a lot around the kitchen for this dish. When you are finished, you turn around in her arms and take her face between your hands. Looking at her with attention, you try to choose wisely your words, not wanting to hurt her. Or make her feel more terrible that she’s feeling right now.

“You know that we didn’t lose because of you, right?”

She frowns, not answering. That’s exactly what you thought. Right after she sights and look away, you softly pat her cheek to drag her attention in you again.

“I’m serious. No one play good today, unless maybe Alessia. We were all too scared to lose, maybe too tired too. We have 90 minutes left. We can win and go to the finale.”

“I don’t think Jona will put me on the goal again” Cata sights, shaking her head.

“Why that?” you frown.

“I didn’t have a clean sheet. In the World Cup when Misa play bad, she went to the bench for the next matches. Vilda didn’t hesitate for a second.”

“Yeah, well first don’t compare that asshole to Jonatan please” you hiss, hating hearing that man’s name. “And if goalkeepers were benched every time, they let a ball pass the net, we won’t have a lot of them on the pitches.”

She shrugs, not really convinced by what you are saying. But you don’t insist, knowing that she needs some time to figure out all of this. You chose to give her plate and follow her wherever she wants to eat. She chose your balcony, from where you have a good view on the sea and the port.

And, when you see that Cata ate her meal in five minutes, your smirk and push your plate in her direction. The goalkeeper raises an interrogator gaze on you before smiling when you signal her that she can finish your plate.

After that, she takes the dishes in the kitchen without hearing your protests that you can help her. Then she comes back, takes you from your chair in her arm, making you squeak in the process. She laughs and you can only smile. You love hearing her laugh.

When she throws you on the sofa, you already know the end of the evening. Endless cuddles in front of TV. She puts Netflix on before laying on top of you. You let her do it, drawing smalls drawing on her skin, under her top.

“I love you” she mumbles out of the blue, several minutes after.

“I love you too” you smile, kissing her head in a weird angle.

She smiles when she sees you doing it, raising herself a little to be able to kiss you right on the lips. She strokes your face with her thumb, and you find yourself blush under her gaze. It’s quite intense but you love it.

“Thank you” she whispers, almost shyly.

“What for?” you ask with curiosity.

“For being you. And have take the time to learn with my mom how to make the perfect Pa amb oli.”

“All the best for the best” you smirk.

She rolls her eyes before kissing you again several times. Just like you were losing some interest in the film you were watching and getting maybe a little too work up, she stops and smirk before laying on you again.

“You’re the worst” you groan.

“Oh? I thought I was the best?”

You can hear her smile in her voice and you roll your eyes. You don’t answer though, but you know that she knows what you think. She’s the best and you are definitively way to in love with her to be mad at her.

[sharksandjays]

yup thats right folks. its my monthly jay analysis post.

But now!!! Its about Prime Empire.

Ok guys look. Prime Empire is a terrible focus season. Jay had absolutely no character development and no power development. Nada. Nothin. Its just a “focus season” because he came up with the plan to make the villain good again and had more lines than usual (plus his little “abandoned” speech.)

HOWEVER!!! The Prime Empire shorts do say something. So, as we know, the Wildbrain seasons tend to poopoo on Jay’s character and boil him down to the funny cowardice character who is the weakest of the team. But something the shorts do attest to is the fact that Jay is STILL a ninja! The MOMENT he went into Prime Empire and saw something unjust he stood up to it. He tried to warn people. His desire to protect people goes beyond his job its his identity.

(i'm so sorry for the crappy captions. Youtube's gonna youtube.)And like the meme I posted earlier, he handled himself pretty darn well without the others. He didn't even complain about being alone. He accepted his situation pretty quickly and was already starting to fight against Unagami before the ninja found their way in. (Which you could argue could be because he is experienced with the situation in Skybound.)

And about the League…everyone makes fun of it but i beg yall to think about it for a hot moment. Who all was in Prime Empire?

Thats right. Kids.

When Jay fights the red visors in the shorts, you see the squeals of a bunch of players once they recognize him. Its very childlike and you have to realize that these people are just avatars.

All the people we saw get sucked into the game were kids. Of course theyd flock behind a ninja! And Jay had no problem taking them in and entertaining them and keeping them safe because that was his job! And they all dressed up like him and acted like him because he was their idol!!! And Jay wasnt complaining lol.

Jay acts all unsure of himself most of the time, but Skybound and Prime Empire make it canon that he is a great leader! And an even greater ninja! Sure, compared to Cole he's not as strong. Compared to Nya his personality might not stick out. His power isn't focused on like it is with Kai and Zane...and he isn't the main character chosen one like Lloyd. But these small scenes in his focus seasons remind us that he still was chosen to protect people and is very gosh darn good at it!

I mean, look at him kick red visor butt without even an OUNCE of a complaint about being without powers. (WHILE LOOKING LIKE A SOPPING WET CAT THIS MAN) But yeah appreciate this fight scene please.

Anyways, Jay doesn't get enough credit as a ninja. We forget he was trained for longer than Kai, has one of the most dangerous and powerful elements, is the reason the team can handle intense situations without freaking out, is the master of not one--but TWO chained weapons (known to be one of the most difficult types to master!), and is the ENTIRE REASON THE BOUNTY FLIES??? without ever being acknowledged for any of these! Cut him some slack guys he's awesome. Prime Empire does him so so so dirty.

[lemmetreatya]

babyyyyyy we’re gonna need that fútbol player!onyankapon fic asappp😩😩😩

your wish is my command wifeeeyyyy

content: afab!reader, possesive!ony, smut, missionary, marking, creampie, breeding

footballer!onyankopon always had a focused mindset when it came to his career -- seldom not occupied on his craft -- but when it came to you? things were different.

footballer!onyankopon who fell head over heels in love with you whilst you used to cheer on your brother at the stand during sunday league matches. footballer!onyankopon who'd bashfully tell you pre-game that any goal he scores will be for you and would always give you a half looped smile whenever he did

footballer!onyankopon who proposes 3 years into your relationship once he gets the greenlight that hes gonna go pro, telling you it'd be wrong to go any further without making you his sole cheerleader. you end up getting to know most of his new teammates but because youre just naturally so bubbly, sometimes footballer!onyankopon can get a bit jealous

"cant lie, if you ever fumble her, know im next in line" are the words that act as the limit to footballer!onyankopon's patience. he knows that theres a sharing mentality with most footballers and the girls they sleep with but thats just not who you are. so, you can only imagine your absolute surprise when footballer!onyankopon is a lot more pouty that night than he usually ever is

"baby, dont talk to my teammates ever again" he says with his toothbrush half sticking out his mouth.

you cant help but giggle at him from the bed, eyeing him over your book. especially concerning how quickly he rushed out the bathroom to tell you this.

"what happen now? another article suspecting theres a secret affair going on?"

footballer!onyankopon quickly pops back into the bathroom to spit the toothpaste out of his mouth before answering you from the sink, unseen.

"they want you after youre 'done' with me."

you can hear the slight despondency in his voice which makes you place down the book on your bedside table to sit up in bed.

"you know thats silly, right? like you know i could never actually be 'done' with you. its you or death."

"ay, ay, ay dont talk like that!" footballer!onyankopon comes out the bathroom having rinsed and dried his mouth. he seems slightly offput by your words but it doesnt hide the slight pang of pain that he wears on his face. even though he was coming to lie down next to you, you still open his side of the duvet for him to lie under.

"no but its true. its us or nothing. no ones having me after nobody, its only me and you papa."

footballer!onyankopon snuggles in next to you but can only find himself staring at the ceiling. he does however appreciate the heat of you next to him

"i know. its just...i dont like thinking about it."

"then dont." you say softly. "think instead about how you do have me and how you have me now. in fact i want you to show me how no one else gets to touch me but you."

footballer!onyankopon doesnt have to be told twice or given an excuse to show you that you were his. to have your anklet with his initials on practically kissing your earlobes as he fucks into you possessively. he was so eager to prove that you were his alone that hed forgotten to prep you as he revels in the feeling of your cunt hugging his cock.

its a tight fit but with how your calling out his name and no one elses?! who can blame him if "mine, mine, mine" is all he keeps chanting into your slick mouth

footballer!onyankopon doesnt mind too much when you scratch at his back in a possesive manner. it'll probably sting him during the salt water bath tomorrow but he doesnt care. he'll probably be teased by his teammates about it during the locker rooms but fuck it, even better. right now, with how pliably succumbing you were for him, there was nothing you could do that'd put him off you.

footballer!onyankopon didn't usually but he couldnt help but to empty himself inside of you; his prime showcase of possession. maybe if you were to have a swollen stomach and then a child that looked exactly like him, his teammates will know not to utter such futile words to him

"let them know that no ones ever getting a turn with me" you mumble as you lightly finger the swollen cross hatching across footballer!onyankopon's back the morning after.

footballer!onyankopon slightly hisses at the sensitivity of it but hes warmly chuckling in response. considering hes sat on the edge of the bed, he turns round to bend and lay a kiss to your forehead.

"dont worry. theyll be more than aware." he assures, smile warm

[thenhlteaissuperhot]

Watching Edmonton has truly been devastating so far this regular season. I’m constantly thinking about whether Draisaitl and McDavid will stay together or depart to two separate teams.

It's absolutely tragic, honestly.

You have to go to the second page of the goalie stats of the league to find Skinner and Campbell, they are ranked 58th and 59th out of 71 goalies, who have so far made their NHL debut this season. They both have only one win and four losses, a safe percentage around a pitiful 0.850, and four goals let past a game on average... That's anything but a statistic of goalies of a Stanley Cup-deserving team.

McDavid is still not fully healed, he is not playing at 100%, even a blind person can see that. He was rushed to play for the Heritage game because of commercial purposes and now the management is shitting their pants too much to pull him out at this state, and give him a chance to properly heal whatever is bugging him, because they are afraid that it would get even worse without him.

Draisaitl is getting actually and understandably pissy out there because who wouldn't at this point? You are a top 5 player playing on the top 5 shitiest team in the league and wasting your prime there.

Edmonton doesn't even have attractive prospects, let alone an environment, that would create attractive prospects out of underwhelming or mediocre ones after a certain period of time of cautious bringing up outside of the league like for example Boston has.

The current management won't trade Connor or Leon to address the issues the team suffers from in the net and in the defense (well, basically everywhere), those two would have to request the trade themselves or just wait for their contract to run out and leave afterward because those up there are still stuck in the mentality that they can make a Stanley Cup-winning team by having Connor and Leon at the front and a bunch of cheap plaster-like players around them - similar mentality to Toronto, though their case is not as miserable as Edmonton's.

If they were to trade one of them, it would definitely be Leon. The Oilers will never want to let McDavid, their golden boy, go, and if that Leon trade ever happened, it's safe to say that the two of them would probably never end up playing on the same team ever again, even if Connor eventually decided to leave on his own after not renewing a contract in Edmonton - hardly any team is and is going to be in the state where they would be able to afford both of them without creating the same shallow team situation as Edmonton has right now, which both of them would definitely want to avoid diving into again.

Really, it is like a fever dream and while I am curious about how it is going to be handled, cause it NEEDS to be addressed somehow, I am frankly scared of what Edmonton will come up with because I have no trust whatsoever in them making sensible decisions.

[female-buckets]

I have to think, with Layisha not being linked to ANY team yet, and they’ve not been rostered for almost a year, that their time is done. I really don’t want to think there’s any kind of anti-trans bias happening, but what else could be going on? Don’t a few teams need a point guard? Like Seattle? And isn’t Sue really close with them and their wife? And where in the world will Tina Charles end up? Really bummed vandersloot chose NY? How will that work with Sabrina? Seems like a lot of redundancies on that roster.

It seems like there was a conflict between Layshia and the Lynx during the 2022 training camp. Layshia and Angel McCoughtry had some chemistry problems when they played together in Atlanta. Then they both showed up to Lynx training camp in 2022. And then neither of them ended up on the 2022 Lynx roster.

I don't know what happened but if there's a bias in the WNBA, it's a bias against high maintenance veterans. If you're old, cranky, and not a franchise player, you won't make a roster. Tina is dangerously close to falling into that category.

There are some veterans who successfully hop from roster to roster in their mid 30s. They're flexible about what role they'll play on the court. But more importantly, they're social butterflies. They know where all the good restaurants and clubs are in each WNBA city. They've got funny stories and wisdom to share from their global misadventures. Even though they're past their prime, teams pick them up because they make the team environment fun. They're basically vibe ambassadors.

Briann January and Epiphanny Prince were not that useful on the court last year for the Storm. But they're fun to be around. Sami Whitcomb, Alysha Clark, and Kristi Tolliver are fun, too, whether or not their recent stats reflect that.

Angel was always high maintenance in her prime. So was Layshia. I wouldn't be surprised if they both evolved into high maintenance veterans. Candice Dupree had such a calm playing style that she seemed low maintenance and chill in her prime. But her veteran years were weird and she got cranky and inflexible about her role. Being a veteran without a franchise connection is difficult. You need a strong social network in the league and not everyone has that. Not even a friendship with Sue will get you that. The real social networks are built outside of all-star games.

[smokeybrandreviews]

NBA Rant: F*cking Disappointment

NBA Basketball is the blackest sport in the world. It’s genesis lies in the inspiration of a white man and poor Jewish kids gave it visibility, but basketball as we know it today, was innovated by blackness. We built this game up from it’s rather humble beginnings of peach basket hoops and under-the-rim play. It was our unyielding love for the game which caused us to invest so much of our sweat equity into it. We weathered racism, rule changes, and outright boycotts. We took the slander, the bigotry, and the disrespect for decades, using those slights to create something more. We made this league a multi-billion dollar success. Black bodies did that. Not Jewish ones. Not white ones. Not Italian, Irish, English, or whoever else. Black. Specifically, African-American. We made this game our own and, lie the NFL, made that sh*t better. We brought athleticism and style to this game. You think Pistol Pete was out here, learning those handles on his own? Nah. He played with a bunch of black kids on the neighborhood court and took to that sh*t like a moth to a flame. Larry Bird, one of the greatest white dudes to ever pick up a basketball, wouldn’t even think twice about white competition. He played with black kids because, in his own words, thy were the best cats on the court. Basketball is black as f*ck, just like me, so when the sports winningest coach says some out of pocket sh*t about our black struggle in the US, my booty starts to itch.

Phil Jackson has the most championships of any coach, so far, in NBA history. This asshole has eleven titles as a coach and two as a player, none of which he would have without back players leading the way. He won those coaching titles by riding the coattails of some of the greatest players to ever play the game in Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Shaquille O'Neal , and Kobe motherf*cking Bryant. Two of those player are three all time, three are easily top ten, and all four are top seventy-five. That’s the caliber of talent he coached. He rode the bench during the Seventies to claim his two rings on those Walt Frazier/Willis Reed Knicks squads. Motherf*cker didn’t even play in the first one. because of injury. Mans said basketball is worse off because of how much hip hop culture has influenced the game. Have you seen Walt Frazier in his prime? Cat dressed like a straight up pimp but the tattoos and cornrows are the problem? Really? Phil Jackson would literally be nothing without black people so to write off our earned right to call out the frustratingly constant injustices we suffer, day in and day out, in a game we made famous, is f*cking disrespectful.

Phil Jackson basically got on Rick Rubin’s podcast and said the Black Lives Matter movement was “too political”, that “It was trying to cater to an audience or trying to bring a certain audience to the game.” Who? What audience, Phil? Black people? More to the point, he said it was turning off other people. That’s the point. It was turning off other, read WHITE, people off. White people like him. Bro, this is a direct quote: "They did something that was kind of wanky, they did a bubble down in Orlando and all the teams that could qualify went down there and stayed down there. And they had things on their back like, 'Justice.' They made a funny thing like, 'Justice just went to the basket and Equal Opportunity just knocked him down.' … So my grandkids thought that was pretty funny to play up those names. So I couldn't watch that." Bro, the dog whistle couldn’t be louder. Literally tell me you’re a bigot without telling me you’re a bigot. You value the black body but not the black life. Shut up and dribble, basically. The most decorated coach in NBA history, just got on a podcast with the co-founder of Def Jam records, and told the predominately black NBA that their life experience doesn’t matter, that they shouldn’t use their elevated voice to call out the injustices they they have personally suffered, because it f*cks up his fun watching that game. He can’t watch us calling out the brutality of our reality, because it f*cks up his sports fantasy and that’s such a transgression, he’s too disgusted to even watch the sport which made him a multi-millionaire. F*cking ridiculous. F*ck Phil Jackson, man.

[smokeybrand]

NBA Rant: F*cking Disappointment

NBA Basketball is the blackest sport in the world. It’s genesis lies in the inspiration of a white man and poor Jewish kids gave it visibility, but basketball as we know it today, was innovated by blackness. We built this game up from it’s rather humble beginnings of peach basket hoops and under-the-rim play. It was our unyielding love for the game which caused us to invest so much of our sweat equity into it. We weathered racism, rule changes, and outright boycotts. We took the slander, the bigotry, and the disrespect for decades, using those slights to create something more. We made this league a multi-billion dollar success. Black bodies did that. Not Jewish ones. Not white ones. Not Italian, Irish, English, or whoever else. Black. Specifically, African-American. We made this game our own and, lie the NFL, made that sh*t better. We brought athleticism and style to this game. You think Pistol Pete was out here, learning those handles on his own? Nah. He played with a bunch of black kids on the neighborhood court and took to that sh*t like a moth to a flame. Larry Bird, one of the greatest white dudes to ever pick up a basketball, wouldn’t even think twice about white competition. He played with black kids because, in his own words, thy were the best cats on the court. Basketball is black as f*ck, just like me, so when the sports winningest coach says some out of pocket sh*t about our black struggle in the US, my booty starts to itch.

Phil Jackson has the most championships of any coach, so far, in NBA history. This asshole has eleven titles as a coach and two as a player, none of which he would have without back players leading the way. He won those coaching titles by riding the coattails of some of the greatest players to ever play the game in Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Shaquille O'Neal , and Kobe motherf*cking Bryant. Two of those player are three all time, three are easily top ten, and all four are top seventy-five. That’s the caliber of talent he coached. He rode the bench during the Seventies to claim his two rings on those Walt Frazier/Willis Reed Knicks squads. Motherf*cker didn’t even play in the first one. because of injury. Mans said basketball is worse off because of how much hip hop culture has influenced the game. Have you seen Walt Frazier in his prime? Cat dressed like a straight up pimp but the tattoos and cornrows are the problem? Really? Phil Jackson would literally be nothing without black people so to write off our earned right to call out the frustratingly constant injustices we suffer, day in and day out, in a game we made famous, is f*cking disrespectful.

Phil Jackson basically got on Rick Rubin’s podcast and said the Black Lives Matter movement was “too political”, that “It was trying to cater to an audience or trying to bring a certain audience to the game.” Who? What audience, Phil? Black people? More to the point, he said it was turning off other people. That’s the point. It was turning off other, read WHITE, people off. White people like him. Bro, this is a direct quote: "They did something that was kind of wanky, they did a bubble down in Orlando and all the teams that could qualify went down there and stayed down there. And they had things on their back like, 'Justice.' They made a funny thing like, 'Justice just went to the basket and Equal Opportunity just knocked him down.' … So my grandkids thought that was pretty funny to play up those names. So I couldn't watch that." Bro, the dog whistle couldn’t be louder. Literally tell me you’re a bigot without telling me you’re a bigot. You value the black body but not the black life. Shut up and dribble, basically. The most decorated coach in NBA history, just got on a podcast with the co-founder of Def Jam records, and told the predominately black NBA that their life experience doesn’t matter, that they shouldn’t use their elevated voice to call out the injustices they they have personally suffered, because it f*cks up his fun watching that game. He can’t watch us calling out the brutality of our reality, because it f*cks up his sports fantasy and that’s such a transgression, he’s too disgusted to even watch the sport which made him a multi-millionaire. F*cking ridiculous. F*ck Phil Jackson, man.

[alotogifs]

​​The people behind the new A League of Their Own on Prime went into the project with one thing certain: The movie did not need a remake.

Co-creators Abbi Jacobson (Broad City) and Will Graham (Mozart in the Jungle) had both loved the original since childhood. For Jacobson, who also stars in the show, the movie had resonated immediately. A sporty kid who loved softball and soccer, she had never seen anything that so accurately portrayed what it meant to be on a team of girls. “I just wasn’t clued in to anything that felt like a more equal representation of what I was doing as a kid.” For Graham, there was a connection to his own athletic experience, too: He played Little League but never felt like he fit. “I wouldn’t have been able to say I was gay at the time. But I felt like I was very different,” he says. “And for me, there was something in the movie that gave this beautiful sense of, you’re allowed to be on the field, even if you don’t think you’re supposed to be there.”

But years later, rewatching the film while staying in a hotel, Graham found himself curious about the real history of the AAGPBL. It felt like there was so much more to explore: other players, other teams, other scenarios. The movie had one particular moment that hinted at the wealth of women’s baseball stories from the period even beyond the AAGPBL: When a ball at a Peaches game rolls foul, a Black woman watching at the fence steps forward to pick it up, and she’s invited to gently toss it over. Instead, she stuns everyone by showing off a rocket of an arm. Then she nods, steps back and is never seen again. The scene lasts all of 15 seconds. But it evokes a whole world of baseball beyond what’s shown on screen—a reference to the fact that Black women were barred from the AAGPBL, yet they played baseball, too. Three women even broke the gender barrier in the Negro Leagues in the 1950s: Toni Stone, Connie Morgan and Mamie “Peanut” Johnson. There was a history rich in material here that had not been in the original film.

So in 2017, Graham approached Jacobson about the potential to reimagine A League of Their Own for television—not a straight remake, not engaging with the same beloved, impossible-to-imitate characters, but taking the setting and joyous spirit of the film and using it as the basis for a totally new project. “We immediately started talking about how the film didn’t need to be remade,” Jacobson says. “Instead it was, well, if we’re going to do this, it has to be really showcasing the stories that were not in the film.” The possibilities were invigorating. But the pair didn’t want to take them on without Marshall’s blessing.

They were able to meet with the director before she died in 2018. And they were pleasantly surprised by how she opened up the conversation: She told them her original cut of the movie was four and a half hours. She fully understood there was more material here—enough to fill a television series—because she had tried to use so much of it herself.

“There was so much that she had wanted to include and so many stories that she wanted to tell—including the stories of Black women who went on to play in the Negro Leagues—that she was glad there was going to be a chance that those stories might get told,” Graham says.

They soon dived into research. And in watching everything they could find, combing through archives and speaking to the remaining living players, they realized there was another vein of untold stories here—the LGBTQ women in the league. None of them had been out publicly in their playing days. But there had been several of them. (In 2020, Netflix released a documentary called A Secret Love about AAGPBL player Terry Donahue and her wife, Pat Henschel, who had been together since the ’40s but did not come out to their families until 2009.) The showrunners found these women and drew inspiration from them.

[shelledone]

Hi blaseblogger! I'm kinda behind on the parker lore. How many are there and what happened to them all?

hi! you've come to the right place, because i'm the kind of fan who thinks about parker macmillan Every Waking Moment of My Life. this isn't a concise summary, but hopefully it's supplementary: operating under the assumption you already know a little bit about our dear commissioner, there have been four parkers that we've seen so far! starting in pre-history 1 of blaseball, there's the original Parker MacMillan (nicknamed "prime" by fans). prime was a player who came pre-packed with a unique modification called Profit, which let him pay out ten times the amount of coins for any snackholders who idolized him (on a sidenote, it's been heavily implied that this modifier was given to him directly by The Coin thanks to passages in the library, alongside the commissioner's own tweets referencing her - which, coupled with the now-deleted tweet about his mom "working in equity" is definitely, uh, interesting. i'll let you extrapolate from that what you will). making a long story short, some teams were not a fan of prime, and after a series of unfortunate events and hexes, he basically became a harbinger of death for the entire pre-history league: he was forced to roam to a new team every 9 days, with the teams he left behind becoming collectively unstable. this streak of destruction culminated when prime was vaulted - preserved as a player, but removed from play - with the rest of the league being reset, continuing without him for the unforeseeable future. his existence was revealed to us in the library's passages on pre-history in season 23, which prompted an identity crisis out of our poor commissioner and our collective realization that prime would inevitably break out of confinement thanks to certain events. he's alive (though inactive), and currently a player on the (main timeline's) hades tigers. as mentioned, we didn't know of parker prime until season 23 - the first one we met was actually commissioner parker macmillan III (nicknamed "park3r"), who wasn't too different from the ever-confused commissioner we currently have, if a bit more stand-offish. he was the figurehead of the blaseball account up until season 11, where he was unfortunately incinerated by an umpire during an incredibly convoluted in-discord community event that i couldn't possibly explain in this post. he has the record for most crimes committed out of any commissioner, and we miss him every day. RIV. parker macmillan IIII (or "p4rker") appeared a few hours after 3's untimely death, and he was our commissioner for only a couple days before participating in the coffee cup tournament, wherein he was "percolated". p4rker is known best for being the kindest parker we've had so far (though whether or not this was due to his legal obligation to be friends with everybody at SIBR is unclear), and he was incredibly happy to play blaseball for us, even if just for those few rounds. he is also dearly missed. RIV. now, parker macmillan IIII (or "pvrker") is the one we've known the longest now (his first birthday was last month!), and he's made some remarkable strides when compared to his predecessors - most notable of course being the time he wielded The Microphone in order to interrupt The Coin's speech in season 24. despite the literal apocalypse of blackhole(blackhole) nullifying all of blaseball, he's seemingly managed to stick it out okay, and has been doing his best to give us updates on the now-ongoing short circuits being broadcasted through The Microphone (of which we suspect he has no control over, anymore). beyond these guys, there's also the elusive parker II, which we've seen and heard nothing of besides a few offhand (and now deleted?) tweets from park3r that referenced his theoretical existence back during the discipline era. whether or not he's alive or (more likely) dead, we're uncertain, though it's likely pre-history 2 will have some answers as to his existence and fate, whenever those passages make themselves known to us. um. yeah! hope this answers your question? sorry this post is so long. parker's just some guy(s). there's a lot of them, but i love them all very much. i hope this post helps you to enjoy him a little more, as well.

[calciopics]

Kylian Mbappé is Born to Run

The France forward grew up in the suburbs of Paris, steeped in the culture of football. At 22, the World Cup-winner is already a global superstar, and only now entering his prime. Will Euro 2020 be the moment when he overtakes Messi and Ronaldo to become recognised as the best player on the planet?

Kylian Mbappé was 18 when he walked into the changing room of the French national team. “It’s very difficult,” he recalls, “because great players don’t want to give you their place. That’s what makes them great players. They especially don’t want to give you their place if you arrive with the label of ‘Future Great Player’.” Within a year, Mbappé and France had won the World Cup in Moscow.

Three years on, we are talking in a room of his mansion in the leafy, old-money streets of Neuilly, just outside Paris. It isn’t even his home; he bought it to house his foundation, which offers after-school activities to rich and poor children alike. In conversation, Mbappé resembles a veteran TV presenter more than a young footballer. He makes short speeches in complete sentences, as precise in his footing as he is on the field. He sits as straight-backed as he runs. His expressive face keeps breaking into smiles: he likes talking, and is almost unburdened by the usual footballer’s fear of saying the wrong thing.

His burly father Wilfried sits beside us, but only once during the interview will he feel impelled to intervene. Meeting Mbappé, you come to understand how he hit football seemingly already fully formed. At 22, he has achieved more than most great players ever do. Can he take one more step and become the world’s best footballer?

His story starts 10 miles and a universe away from where we’re sitting today. His hometown, Bondy, is a multicultural suburb just northeast of Paris that looks as if someone plonked a Soviet town on top of an ancient French village. The old church is surrounded by fast-food joints and fading 1960s’ apartment blocks, one of them now adorned with a giant mural of Mbappé.

His parents grew up in Bondy: Wilfried, of Cameroonian origin, and Mbappé’s mother Fayza, of Algerian descent. Mixed marriages are common in the Parisian suburbs, the banlieues, but the couple did have to defy some local disapproval.

If a wannabe footballer had to choose the ideal place on earth to grow up, it might have been the Mbappé home in Bondy. Mbappé’s father and uncle were both football coaches, and Fayza, who ran after-school activities, played handball in the French first division. His parents had adopted an older boy, Jirès Kembo Ekoko, who went on to make a long career as a journeyman professional footballer. “I didn’t bring a new passion into the family,” Mbappé says with understatement.

He grew up practically inside the local football club, AS Bondy. “In the Parisian suburbs there are football fields everywhere,” he enthuses. “People here live for football. I was born with the sports ground facing my window.” It’s no wonder, he adds, that Paris’s suburbs are perhaps the deepest talent pool in global football, producing players such as Paul Pogba, Blaise Matuidi, N’Golo Kanté and Riyad Mahrez.

As a non-white kid from the suburbs, did Mbappé always feel accepted as French before he became a French icon? “I’ve always felt French. I don’t renounce my origins, because they are part of who I am, but I’ve made my whole life in France, and never at any moment was I made to feel I wasn’t at home here.” In the banlieues, he says, “We have a love of France because France has given to us and we try to give back to it.”

Mbappé’s parents made him take school seriously, and he was also a not-very-talented flautist at Bondy’s conservatory, but football came first. At AS Bondy, he says, “My father was my coach for 10 years. He helped construct the style of player I wanted to become. But I never felt the pressure of, ‘You have to become a footballer.’ Above all, it was a passion.”

Tagging along with his dad and uncle on their coaching jobs, the child acquired an unusual gift: he became a footballer who thinks like a coach. “Very young, I was always in the changing rooms, listening to the tactical talks and the different points of view, because football is made up of different viewpoints. I learned to have this tolerance, and I think it helped me, because being a coach is putting yourself in somebody else’s place. I think I have the gift of doing that. It helps in football, because if you’re a player, generally you think about yourself, about your own career. I can see, for instance, when something in a game is frustrating a team-mate. I can put him at ease.”

When you’re in the World Cup final, you’re convinced you’re going to win. You walk onto the field, the trophy is there, and you tell yourself it is impossible the other team will take it

Mbappé turned out to be that perfect sporting combination: a natural who is coachable. “He assimilates advice quickly. You ask him something once, and the second time he does it,” Antonio Riccardi, his former youth coach at AS Bondy, told me. Even as a child, Mbappé was an efficient footballer: decisive, never just decorative.

By adolescence, he was being courted by the big European clubs, which all keep close tabs on the Paris region. He visited Chelsea, and celebrated his 14th birthday at Real Madrid, which cannily found him the perfect babysitter: the club’s then assistant coach Zinedine Zidane, the greatest French footballer. When Zidane offered Mbappé a lift in his fabulous car, the overawed child offered to take his shoes off first.

The Mbappés sifted the countless offers and chose Monaco, where the route to the first team looked shortest. Mbappé arrived there, he says, “with my [footballing] baggage well filled.”

Kids in performance-sports families learn that they never arrive. Each step up is just another learning opportunity. In Monaco’s first team, the teenaged Mbappé encountered the veteran Colombian striker Radamel Falcao, freshly returned from unhappy loan spells with Manchester United and Chelsea.

“He was a star,” says Mbappé, “but he had a desire to transmit. He was like a teacher to me. He’s someone who always wants to score, but he left me the space to express myself. He’s very cool in front of goal, calm in his game, and he transmitted this serenity that I didn’t have, because I was young, excited and wanted to go at 2,000 kilometres an hour.”

The kid who didn’t yet have a driving licence scored 15 league goals in his first professional season to help Monaco win the French title in 2017. He added six more in the Champions League knockout rounds. He also passed his baccalauréat, France’s equivalent of A-levels.

Mbappé marvelled at the tension on the faces of other professionals, because he didn’t feel it himself. Everything came easily to him, without great sacrifice, he has said. When I ask about stress in a profession of hypercompetitive men, he shrugs: “Daily life is easy.”

His vertical ascent didn’t surprise him; it just happened a bit quicker than he’d expected. But others were stunned. Here was something new: an 18-year-old complete forward. Built like an Olympic sprinter, Mbappé ran upright, looking around him. He could dribble, cross and shoot. He was more advanced than Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo had been at 18.

How does he describe his style? “The modern attacker who can play anywhere,” he replies. He explains that forwards used to be specialists: “There’d be a number nine, or number 11, or number seven.” Mbappé, though, is the all-in-one. “I think my CV can speak for me. I’ve played alone up front, I’ve played on the left and the right. In all humility, I don’t think it’s given to everyone to change position like that every year and keep a certain standard of performance at the highest level. That didn’t fall from heaven. If I speak of the baggage given me in my teens, it’s all there.”

In one regard he has always been unequalled: the counterattack at speed. He says, “I’ve managed to work on my weak points but above all to perfect my strong points, because I was always told that it’s through your strong points that you’ll exist.”

In March 2017, Mbappé became the youngest player in 62 years to debut for France. Five months later, his hometown club Paris Saint-Germain agreed to sign him for a fee of £166m. He drew on his childhood experiences to navigate two alpha-male changing-rooms. At PSG, his good English and Spanish helped him deal with foreign team-mates. With Les Bleus, France’s assistant coach Guy Stéphan told Mbappé’s biographer Arnaud Hermant: “He knows the codes of the changing room. At table or in the bus, he doesn’t just sit somewhere randomly. For a youngster, he isn’t timid or introverted. He expresses himself.”

By summer 2018, picked for the World Cup in Russia, Mbappé was comfortable enough to claim the blue number 10 shirt — previously worn by Zidane and Michel Platini — and to say in public that he was gunning for the trophy.

“I went to play the matches calmly like I always have. I didn’t want to change just because it was the World Cup,” he says. “We were lucky to have a young squad. We were totally carefree, just a band of mates.”

Hang on, surely a football team isn’t really a band of mates? “No,” he acknowledges. “Just like the baker doesn’t get on with all bakers. You don’t have to eat with your team-mates every evening to win.”

In the World Cup round of 16, his two goals and a 37kmph gallop through Argentina’s defence made his global name. The night before the final against Croatia, he admits, “I was a bit stressed. I didn’t manage to sleep much. But the nearer the match came, the less stressed I was.” Before kick-off he was joking in the changing room. Stéphan recalls: “He experienced the final as if it were a PSG-Dijon game.”

Mbappé says, “When you’re in the World Cup final, you’re convinced that you’re going to win. Even the Croats were convinced they were going to win. You walk onto the field and the trophy is there, between the two teams, and you tell yourself it’s impossible that the other team will take it. That’s why there’s such disappointment afterwards if you don’t win.”

Half of Bondy gathered in front of a giant screen to cheer on the commune’s own “Kylian national”. Scoring in France’s 4–2 victory, he seemed to have reached his career apogee aged 19. He didn’t see it like that. Interviewed the night of the final, he described winning the World Cup as “already good” but only a start.

The next day, as the Bleus’ bus edged along a packed, ecstatic Champs-Élysées, writes Hermant, the ice-cold kid mused to the French Football Federation’s president Noël Le Graët: “Was all this really necessary?”

Mbappé explains now: “For me, it wasn’t an outcome, a finality. I don’t think of that trophy now at all. I don’t look at pictures of the World Cup before going to sleep. Honestly, it’s people on the street who come up and say, ‘You’re world champion, merci, merci.’”

He understood that his early triumph had upset football’s all-important hierarchies. Returning to PSG, he immediately reassured Paris’s Brazilian star Neymar: “I’m not going to walk on your flowerbeds. I’ll be a candidate for the Ballon d’Or [the award for world’s best footballer] this year because you won’t be, but I promise I don’t want to take your place.”

Soon after, he took the World Cup trophy to Bondy, where thousands came out to greet him. “It was a way to say, ‘Thank you.’ I’ve never forgotten which soup I have eaten. So it was important for me to return there after my first World Cup and first international title.” (Note that word, “first”.)

France’s coach, Didier Deschamps, recalls falling into “physical and moral apathy” the season after he lifted the World Cup as a player in 1998. Did Mbappé experience a hangover? He grins: “I finished as best player in the league, highest scorer, best young player, I was chosen in the team of the season, and we won the league.”

Winning the World Cup made Mbappé a national hero. Does he consider himself a star? “I think so. If your face is everywhere in the city, everywhere in the world, that’s for sure. Being a star is a status, but it doesn’t make me a better person than others.”

He lives like a luxury prisoner, who cannot leave home without being mobbed. “It takes an organisation just to go out,” he says. He has joked that when his future children ask him about his youthful adventures, he won’t have any.

“A fan gives you enormous love,” says Mbappé carefully, “but sometimes maybe an excess of love, and he might not respect your intimacy. We give our lives to the people, because we give them pleasure every three days, and we give them our time. It’s impossible to hope for a normal life, but just a little respect for one’s private life isn’t too much to ask for, I think.”

As a young man of non-white origins, he has a particular vulnerability with the French public, one-third of whom voted for the far-right candidate Marine Le Pen in the run-off of the presidential elections in 2017. Even so, he has begun to speak out against police violence.

“I took time to start talking about it, because I wasn’t ready,” he admits. “I had a lot of things to digest: my change of status, my new life. But I have always opposed all types of violence.”

When I note that French police violence is disproportionately directed against people of non-white origins from suburbs like Bondy, his father stirs from his silence: “We’re not answering that. You’re orienting it as if the violence were only against people from the banlieues, which is false.”

In high-level football, nobody will make a place for you. Ego, self-love, isn’t just the caprice of stars. It’s also the will to give the best of yourself

French fans like their stars humble. Mbappé has explained “the French mentality” to Neymar, who favours a bling-bling, poker-playing party lifestyle. Mbappé says, “In Brazil, they are more festive, in France more serious. Here it’s not considered good to display your passions. People will think he’s neglecting PSG because he plays poker. I think he has begun to understand that. At first it was hard for him because he experienced it as an affront. When he arrived, they put his face on the Eiffel Tower, and six months later they’re asking him why he’s playing poker. In France, people know what you have but they don’t want to see it. They just want to see you playing football, smiling.”

But Mbappé believes humility isn’t enough. He thinks great footballers need big egos. “In high-level football, nobody will make a place for you or tell you that you’re capable of things. It’s up to you to persuade yourself that you are. Ego, self-love, isn’t just a caprice of stars. It’s also the will to surpass yourself, to give the best of yourself.” Every time he walks onto the field, he says, he tells himself, “I’m the best.”

In truth, he knows he isn’t the best — Messi and Ronaldo are better. “It’s not only me who knows that,” he laughs. “Everyone knows it. If you tell yourself that you’ll do better than them, it’s beyond ego or determination — it’s lack of awareness. Those players are incomparable. They have broken all laws of statistics. They have had 10 extraordinary years, 15.”

Still, he admits: “You do always compare yourself with the best in your sport, just as the baker compares himself with the best bakers around him. Who makes the best croissant, the best pain au chocolat? I watch matches of other great players to see what they’re doing. ‘I know how to do this, but can the other guy do it too?’ I think other players watch me, too. I think that pushes players to raise their game, just as Messi was good for Ronaldo and Ronaldo was good for Messi.”

Does Mbappé compare himself with the other great forward of his generation, Borussia Dortmund’s Norwegian Erling Braut Haaland? Mbappé’s reply sounds a touch patronising: “It’s his second year, we’re getting to know him. It’s the start for him. I’m happy for him, for what he’s doing.”

The more you become an important person, the more duties you have. I’m no longer the little kid. I’m Kylian Mbappé

In this elite individual competition, the top spot may be coming free. Messi (34 this month) and Ronaldo (36) are “nearer the end than the beginning”, acknowledges Mbappé. In February, his hat-trick helped PSG thrash Messi’s Barcelona 1–4 at the Camp Nou. “The best match of my career,” Mbappé says, “because it was complete. I helped my team both offensively and defensively, and I succeeded in the creation and finishing of my moves, in one-against-ones. I won 90 per cent of my duels, if that stat is correct. All match, I never had a moment when I felt extinguished.” He then scored two at Bayern Munich, before PSG fell to Manchester City.

Some opposing teams now rearrange their entire tactical systems to combat the Mbappé counterattack. “There are quite a few anti-Kylian plans every match,” he says. “It means I’ve been recognised as a great player. It requires you to have multiple strings to your bow. I like that, because I adore challenges.”

Surely he’s now too big a player for the French league? He umms and aws: “France isn’t the best championship in the world, but it’s my responsibility, as a flagship player, to help the league grow.” Yet he may well leave this summer, to Real Madrid or England. The decision, perhaps the biggest he’ll face in his career, will be made inside his family. Almost uniquely for a star footballer, Mbappé doesn’t have an agent, just lawyers.

At 22, he considers himself an experienced footballer. He says he and Neymar “are now the two natural leaders” of PSG. When he kicks off the delayed Euro 2020 with France in June, it will be with more responsibility than at the World Cup. “The more you become an important personality, the more duties you have. I’m no longer the little kid. I’m Kylian Mbappé.”

Kylian Mbappé’s prime may have already arrived. Fast strikers usually peak between 20 and 24. A Euro and a World Cup within 18 months, while France’s generation of 2018 remains almost intact, may be his best chance to make football history. What are his career ambitions? That smile again: “To win everything.” (Esquire Magazine)

[jamesvanriemsdyk]

Best GMs and coaches in the league ACC to you?

we can start with gms because coaching is a bit more complicated. best gms in the league is easy to look at because like, who has a good team? who has had a consistently good team? whose locker room is the most cohesive, whose coaching staff is the best? who is the best at acquiring and keeping the best players, coaches, staff, etc? and you can see that in the way teams play. 

(putting this under the cut because it got long. and i mean Long.)

so, in no particular order: kyle dubas (leafs), steve yzerman (red wings, i will explain this later), don waddell (canes), julien brisebois (lightning), joe sakic (avs), and kelly mccrimmon/george mcphee (golden knights) (god i still hate that name and also will explain this later too) are the best in the league in my opinion. honorable mention to marc bergevin, who has held onto his job much longer than he arguably should have, but still has a decent team on the ice and a decent coaching staff, although the french rule does severely handicap them (i understand why it exists but it does, it just does). 

david poile (preds) is the longest tenured gm in the league (has been the preds gm since fucking 1997, thats insane, thats legit before i was born, what the fuck), and i do genuinely think he is very good at his job, and that he is very hockey smart, but oh boy have his recent decisions been suspect as hell, and that reflects in the state of his team. doug wilson (sharks), who is the second longest tenured gm in the nhl, is in the exact same boat (the karlsson deal is a nightmare, and also did he just forget that his star core was gonna get old and retire or ??).

with dubas, waddell, brisebois, sakic, and mccrimmon/mcphee all have the same basic strengths: they draft well, they have a fundamental understanding of their team structure and how to manage public perception of the team and everything that implies, and they have two fingers on the pulse of their locker room at all times. im not going to pretend to know as much about sakic and mccrimmon/mcphee as i do the eastern gms, but it doesnt take much to figure it out. look at the avs, and their locker room, the success theyve found after being dead fucking last in the league. look at the knights and their incredible success that theyve found after literally not existing before 2017. ive talked about dubas a lot on my blog, but its incredibly easy to see that waddell and brisebois do the same shit he does, and i can do a deep dive on them if asked. bergevin has moments of brilliance, like the suzuki trade and acquiring caufield and anderson, but things like kotkaniemi’s development and their entire blue line give me a massive pause, which is why he’s not in the main list. he’s a good gm. he’s just not the best.

in regards to steve yzerman: you have to understand that this is the man that built the tampa bay lightning as we know them. this man was gm of the bolts until fucking 2018. tampa bay has been a monster in the eastern conference for years, BECAUSE of the work steve yzerman put in. his team set the franchise record for wins, and he was the first and is the only lightning gm to have won gm of the year. look up the 17-18 roster. it is, essentially, the roster that won them the cup last year. make no mistake, i think brisebois is great, and hes on the list for a reason, but the biggest part of brisebois’ success was steve yzerman’s incredible hockey mind. brisebois essentially had to sell off a fourth of his roster, and the lightning are still a top team in their division and in the league, and thats why he’s there (it is so incredibly easy to fuck shit up post cup win), but the brisebois lightning would not exist without steve yzerman, plain and simple.

what steve yzerman is doing in detroit should be watched very, very closely by every single person in the hockey world. youre fucking nuts if youre not paying attention to them, not gonna lie. the mantha trade was excellent, if really sad if you know even a bit about the wings, but the amount of draft picks steve yzerman has amassed and the way he’s using the prospects and players he already has is really fucking admirable. mike babcock left the red wings organization absolutely in tatters, and i think, honestly, it was always steve yzerman’s plan to go home to detroit and rebuild. if there is anyone who is going to strike absolute gold this draft year, it is steve yzerman. watch the red wings, i am telling you, keep a beat on detroit. they are going to be good. its not an if, its a when.

(real quick on the knights situation: mcphee was the first gm of the knights, and was also president of hockey ops at the same time, and then in 2019 mcphee said he was just gonna focus on his job as president, but we all know hes still an integral part of the way the knights are run, and he and mccrimmon have kinda been building the knight together since the beginning anyway bc mccrimmon was originally mcphee’s agm. so. thats why theyre together)

as for coaches, it’s very simple. rod brind’amour (canes), sheldon keefe (leafs, yes im biased, we’ll get into it), jared bednar (avs), joel quenneville (panthers), jon cooper (lightning), barry trotz (isles), and mike sullivan (pens).

(disclaimer: obviously coaching is done as a team, and assistants and specialist coaches and staff are all very important, but the head coaches set the tone and organize the entire machine, if you will, so im going to be talking about head coaches as if theyre the entire coaching staff. its just easier this way im sorry)

im gonna just start with the easy ones: barry trotz, mike sullivan, and jon cooper have been in the league for years. cooper is the longest tenured coach in the nhl for a reason (again, just look at the tampa bay lightning. its the gm’s job to make the coach’s life easier and the coach’s job to make the gm’s life easier, and this is one of the prime examples of it in the league. its dope as hell tbh), trotz is one of the most respected coaches in the hockey world for a reason (the caps lost something when he walked. they just did. and now the isles are absolute hell to play against and that is largely the coaching of barry trotz, you legit cannot tell me im wrong), and while mike sullivan does have his faults, i think hes found a way to please both management and the crosby-and-malkin unit, which has been really really fucking hard to do. he also led the pens to back to back cups, which you can never really uh. ignore. lmao. so theres those three.

i know less about bednar, but again, another example of the coach and gm working together to make each others’ lives easier. sakic gets bednar the players and staff he needs to make the avs better, and bednar takes those players and staff and makes them into the absolute giant they are. it wouldve been really, really easy to fuck up makar’s development, or bowen byram’s, or sam girard’s, or ryan graves’s, or jost or mackinnon or rantanen’s, but he hasn’t, and he hasn’t just given up on players like burakovsky or kadri, he’s given them new life as players and made them more successful.

joel quenneville is the reason the bl/ckh/wks were a legacy team point blank period. sure they had the talent, sure the gm drafted well, but you do not get the legacy of the chicago bl/ckh/wks without joel quenneville. they fired him on a whim and it absolutely was a mistake, and the moment the cats hired him i literally out loud said ‘oh no’ because i knew exactly what that meant for the leafs and their position in the standings. the panthers are underrated generally, yes, but they would not be the powerhouse they are this season without quenneville. just look at q’s wiki stats. he’s absolutely unbeilevable. he won the jack adams in fucking 2000, before he’d even won any of the cups with the h/wks. i cant tell you what kind of a locker room coach this guy is, but i can tell you his teams win and win convincingly, and that firing him was the biggest mistake the h/wks have made in years.

whenever i talk about coaching, i talk about rod brindamour and sheldon keefe in the same breath every single time because there is no match, and i mean none, for the love inside those locker rooms. the avs, maybe, but my point stands. keefe and brindamour fucking BLEED team spirit, it is at the center of their coaching styles and their teams are good because of it specifically. marner and matthews are good, yes, and they always have been, but they have surpassed all expectation and then some with keefe. aho, teravainen, and svechnikov are good, yes, and they always have been, but they have surpassed all expectation with brindamour. brindamour and keefe have both hashtag played the game, so they Get It, and more than that, theyve grown and changed their understanding of the game as the game itself has changed, and so they can command the authority of their teams while also connecting to them on a really deep level. i should make a note here that keefe and brindamour are incredibly, deeply hockey smart, and that they are also just technically good coaches, skimming their wiki or nhl dot com articles will tell you that, but what makes them stand out to me is that their players would fucking die for them. the leafs would go through the end boards for keefe, the canes would do the same for brindamour. travis dermott said it best when keefe got promoted: boys wanna play for him. beyond that, the management skills both brindamour and keefe have are just frankly amazing (the amount of ego keefe specifically has to manage in the leafs locker room is astounding and he does it so incredibly brilliantly). the leafs and the canes are talented, yes, and would have been talented regardless of who was coaching them. but brindamour and keefe bring both of those teams from talented to exceptional, and the true mark of an amazing coach is not only how many games their team wins, but how they win them, and the leafs and canes have been winning games this year for and because of each other, and that starts with their coaches. what makes a great coach, to me, is not the talent on the team (though that certainly helps), but how the coach manages his players no matter who they are, and how he helps those players grow not just as players as people, because no matter how much pure stats people and twitter hockey dudebros wanna deny it, that shit does affect on ice play, and it does make good players better.

so theres my analysis of the best coaches and gms of the nhl, im so sorry this is so long, oh my god. also, shoutout to @bishops--knifetrick for sending me an ask about this literally a month ago that i just never answered, sorry for that, but here i hope this is good. :)

[maeve-of-winter]

not at all here to change ur mind about Kent and chara because we know chara to be a softy off the ice and taking pictures of pigeons to post on social media of course he’s there for this hurt but feral blonde kitten coming into the league lost and hurt

Aw, it makes me so happy to think that other people ship Kentara! Lol, yes, Kent is the feral kitten, and Chara is the gentle giant who takes care of him and lets him cry on his shoulder in Boston when Kent's visits to Samwell end in disaster.

Also, please have this unfinished Kent/Chara WIP:

Everyone in the League knew the story of Kent Parson and Jack Zimmermann. Between Zimmermann being the son of a hockey legend and an award-winning actress, the two of them being rumored to be lovers, and the two of them slated to be top draft picks of their year, culminating in Parson actually being the top draft pick, it was a story that had the hockey world spellbound for weeks. Personally, Zdeno found the fixation on the Zimmermanns’ and Parson’s pain to be both invasive and morbid. Every time he caught a glimpse on TV of some TMZ gossipmonger staking out the Aces prospect camp hotel and then badgering Parson with questions about his feelings on Zimmermann’s condition, he was flooded by renewed disgust.

The Bruins had the dubious privilege of being more familiar with the Parson-Zimmermann saga than anyone else; one of their first-year players for the season was Jordan Caron, who’d played on Parson and Zimmermann’s line in Juniors. The more gossipy of the Bruins (read: Marchy) took full advantage of this connection to attempt to scrounge up details that the press had left uncovered.

“What was he like?” Marchy asked as they stripped off their gear after practice. “Was he, like, an obvious cokehead? Coming to practice high, stuff like that?”

Caron shrugged, and even watching from the corner of his eye, Zdeno could spot the obvious discomfort on his face. “No, nothing like that. He was just an intense guy, you know? He really wasn’t like anyone who you thought would be using. Between them, Parson was the guy who liked to party. I mean, if I’d heard that one of the two of them overdosed without knowing who. . .”

Marchy and several of the younger guys continued to pester Caron with questions, but only until the end of that practice, when Chara firmly told them to knock it off, and they immediately obliged.

Whatever the gossip about Parson, whatever anyone had to say about what he did back in Juniors, no one could deny that he was a phenomenal player on the ice. It wasn’t just that he was good with the puck, either. It wasn’t just that he could score and make it look boring because it came so easily to him. He had speed. During the Olympics, Chara always made a point of watching the speed skaters, following their movements during each event and talking to them later to ask them about their techniques, hoping to improve his own skills. Chara was always conscious of needing to improve himself, always ready to give credit where it was due, so he would readily volunteer that seeing Parson effortlessly outskate any of his opponents was nothing short of incredible

It was utterly astounding to watch. In Zdeno’s experience, first-year players often needed extra help to improve their skating, struggling to catch up to the more stringent demands of the League. But Parson? He was a regular ghost out on the ice, disappearing into the corner of your eye just as you finally thought you’d pinpointed him. It was a good talent for him to possess, given that his size and scoring record made him a prime target for any rival team’s enforcers. Very rarely, however, did any of them catch up to him.

But Parson could catch up to Chara, no question.

It happened near the end of the third period of a particularly rigorous game, with the Bruins leading by one point but the Aces trying their damnedest to bring it into overtime. With Thomas starting to fade on blocking the shots and the Aces’ offense never slowing, Chara was fully expecting them to succeed.

Just as he was steeling himself for the possibility, suddenly, one of the Aces slammed into him at full speed, knocking him against the boards. As Chara fought to keep his balance and also fully realize that, yes, one of the Aces had actually attempted to board him, he vaguely registered that the same player had simply dropped to the ice in a heap. Steadying himself on his skates, Chara glanced down to find that it was Parson, the Aces’s new star and first year player, coughing and convulsing on the ice, seemingly struggling to stand.

Even though it was Parson who came at him, guilt instantly flooded through Chara as he saw the condition of the other player, and cold dread churned in his stomach as Parson let out a hacking cough, dark blood surging out from his throat to splatter across the ice.

Chara didn’t hesitate for a moment before signalling for a ref to halt play at the first opportunity.

It wasn’t until the end of the game, after the Bruins just barely scraped out a win over the Aces, that Chara fully understood what had happened. Parson had lost one of his skate blades mid-stride and, unable to control his direction any longer, plowed straight into Chara. The impact had knocked the wind right out of him and left him with a bloody nose. He’d fallen to the ice, barely able to wheeze in breath, while blood from his nose dripped down his throat as he tried and failed to stand up and locate his missing blade.

Parson somehow found him that night at the bar where the Bruins were celebrating their victory and apologized, backwards snapback hat on his head in all its glory. (It was just beginning to be recognized as his trademark.)

“I’m sorry about what happened during the game,” Parson told him, looking at him directly with an unflinching gaze. “It really was an accident. I really wasn’t trying to hurt you.”

Chara stifled a snort at the idea of Parson, who stood nearly a foot shorter than him and easily weighed at least fifty pounds less, deliberately headhunting him on the ice. He’d either have to be incredibly stupid or a complete goon, and he’d seen the way Parson played and knew he was neither.

“No need to apologize,” he told Parson, hoping that his accent didn’t obscure the sincerity in his voice. “What happens on the ice is fine to leave on the ice. We know this time was an accident and not a dirty play.”

“Thanks.” Parson’s lips tugged up a little bit, like he might smile, and suddenly Chara found himself overcome by the distinct desire to see it out in full force. Thinking back, he wasn’t sure he’d ever seen Parson offer up anything in interviews but a cocky smirk.

“You should let me buy you a drink, though,” Chara continued, letting a playful warmth flood his tone. “To show you I understand your apology.”

Parson laughed and ducked his head slightly, and Chara got his wish fulfilled as he glimpsed a small smile playing across his mouth. Combined with the faint pink tinge in his cheeks, it was, Chara decided, a very good look for him.

[calacuspr]

PR lessons from the European Super League announcement

Fans were allowed back to watch football in person for the first time this year at the weekend when the FA Cup semi-finals took place at Wembley Stadium.

In normal times, that would be something to celebrate and a key story dominating the sports headlines.

But when news broke on social media of the breakaway European Super League (ESL), fans and media alike could talk of nothing else.

Clearly some senior sports news journalists had been briefed, based on the accuracy of the financial information that they shared.

Many of the revelations, which were subsequently confirmed, suggested a tone deafness on the part of those clubs involved, some of whom have instigated redundancies, player pay cuts and even applied for staff furlough grants from the UK government, while millions have struggled during the pandemic.

The story also showed serious communications errors by the organisers and lessons that all sports organisations can learn from when it comes to issues and crises.

TIMING

The news of the proposed European Super League broke on Sunday afternoon but it was not for some hours until the official statement was released to the public.

This gave plenty of time for the news to be digested by media, fans and players alike, who almost universally expressed outrage and fury at the perceived greed and senselessness of the proposals.

Governing bodies, fan groups and politicians were united in their anger and opposition.

A plan should have been in place to ensure that a comprehensive statement was made available at a pre-agreed time to put the ESL’s views across at the point when the story was expected to break.

As it was, the official release was published late at night, ignoring one of the basic tenets of PR that you don’t leave others to fill the void with negativity when controversial developments take place.

NARRATIVE

Whether fans like to admit it or not, they love to see the top stars of world football playing for or against their team.

In the past week, seeing Neymar and Kylian Mbappe going toe-to toe with the might of Bayern Munich’s array of stars, for instance, provided a mouth-watering and engrossing tie that had everyone salivating at its spectacle.

But the Covid-19 pandemic has seen clubs lose tens if not hundreds of millions in lost revenue from ticketing, merchandise and food and beverage which have presented all sorts of financial challenges for clubs, particularly at the top of the game where salaries are sky high.

While some of this could be recovered once fans are allowed back into stadia, UEFA’s own new Champions League proposals appeared not to have convinced the 12 ESL clubs enough to gain their support when it came to it.

The initial ESL statement included: “The formation of the Super League comes at a time when the global pandemic has accelerated the instability in the existing European football economic model.

“The pandemic has shown that a strategic vision and a sustainable commercial approach are required to enhance value and support for the benefit of the entire European football pyramid.”

Given the parlous financial situation most clubs find themselves in, particularly the giants in Spain and Italy, claims that this is motivated by anything other than money lack credibility.

Florentino Pérez admitted as much when he finally spoke to a Spanish news organisation more than 24 hours after the story first broke, citing the need to recover lost earnings caused by the pandemic.

The ESL did not focus on the challenges facing the clubs and the reasons why the UEFA proposals did not make sense.

In doing so, they handed the moral high ground to their critics and rivals who themselves have not always taken into account the views of fans, players or clubs when making their decisions.

LEADERSHIP

The ESL statement quoted just three ESL executives, Real Madrid’s Florentino Pérez, Manchester United’s Joel Glazer and Andrea Agnelli, Chairman of Juventus.

When the press release was published on each club’s website, there were no individual quotes from executives of those clubs (even if they were not included in the original statement) with the curiosity of United’s Glazer even quoted on the website of arch-rivals Liverpool and Manchester City, something that would previously have been considered unthinkable.

With such considerable financial backing, why were the executives of each club not guided on the key messaging so that they could engage with fans and media who are interested in their specific perspectives the day after the announcement?

If their executives really believe in the proposals they are seeking to implement, why not have the confidence to put the ESL case forward in person?

With no Video News Release or interview opportunities – remember that Zoom has been used in these socially-distanced times to great effect – the organisation gave the impression of arrogance and hiding behind its corporate backers at a time when the clubs’ fans are confused, angry and in need of direct engagement.

ENGAGEMENT

Talking of engagement, the late, great Sir Matt Busby, who led Manchester United to the title and European Cup as it then was, once said “Football is nothing without fans.”

What the Covid-19 pandemic has confirmed is that football’s global appeal has not waned in empty stadia, despite the clear lack of atmosphere without fans cheering on their heroes.

The scheduling of matches over the past few years has made the loyal, died-in-the-wool match-going fans feel disengaged and ignored, with long journeys at inconvenient times required to accommodate television schedules in lucrative overseas markets.

Is it any wonder that in his statement, Perez said: “Football is the only global sport in the world, with more than four billion fans.” Hardly a ringing endorsement of those in Madrid who live and breathe their club and undermining his later comments that audiences were falling.

While football tourists make up an increasing number of those who attend matches in person, clubs used to rely on a loyal, mainly local fanbase, whose traditions and rituals are the fabric of the atmosphere and intensity which makes top level football such a spectacle.

Granted, fans have never been an integral part of the decision-making process for clubs and football administrators, but so many of the leaders of the ESL clubs rarely, if ever, give media interviews or talk directly to the stakeholders who should matter most.

No wonder the scenes at Chelsea’s Stamford Bridge were so dramatic, with former goalkeeper and now Technical Director Petr Cech having to plead with fans who were peacefully protesting and blocking the route for team coaches to enter the stadium car park.

The fact that fans from each of the six English clubs came together in a combined effort to thwart the ESL plans and even hold a Zoom call with UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson showed the depth of feeling and the importance fans have in the game.

Coaches of the English ESL clubs claimed not to have known anything about the plans until they were revealed at the weekend. Liverpool coach Jurgen Klopp, forced to speak ahead of the Leeds United game when his club’s owners had not yet faced the media, said: “People are not happy with it, I can understand it. I can't say a lot more because we were not involved in the process - not the players, not me - we didn't know about it. We will have to wait how it develops.”

What of the players? Threatened with the prospect of being excluded from international competitions, how would they feel about these developments that they have had no opportunity to discuss before they were seemingly confirmed?

Liverpool captain Jordan Henderson reportedly led a captains’ call before a co-ordinated campaign by him and his team-mates to express their displeasure on social media.

Liverpool sponsor Tribus pulled out of their deal before the ESL project collapsed. Time will tell how other club sponsors feel given the negative feedback towards their partners.

VISION

Football is all about entertainment, rivalry, and the jeopardy that can see a club win a trophy and be relegated in quick succession.

There is an argument that top clubs playing against top clubs in a closed format without relegation may lose its novelty, but even without engagement, the initial communications did nothing to excite and inspire the fans who loyally follow their teams home and away.

At a time when the football family should be working together to support all levels of the game from grassroots to elite level, these developments showed how little club owners care about their traditional fanbase.

The prospect of shorter games and other rule changes to suit a younger audience whose attention spans are supposedly limited added to the uproar and underlined the lack of understanding of the fundamentals that make football great.

As Adam Crafton, from The Athletic, put it: “It’s amazing. I just spent 48 hours thinking ‘surely there’s more to this? Surely they have a plan to articulate the vision?’ And then you realise, there really isn’t.”

It has been said that football clubs have been brands for some time, and if you subscribe to that train of thought, how much damage has been done to those brands and how will they recover?

***

When clubs started pulling out of the ESL on Tuesday evening, it did not take long for more to follow and forced the ESL to make a second, late statement which was so rushed, it did not even go out on headed notepaper.

Tellingly, almost 24 hours later, the ESL had not been updated to include the latest developments.

The ESL debacle raises further questions about the importance of club owners as custodians of these great institutions rather than simply using them as income-generating playthings with no consideration for culture and tradition.

While there has been widespread criticism and this has continued to be handled poorly from a communications perspective, too many organisations have been sleep walking to the point where this has now happened.

And as a result of that apathy, football’s reputation has been tarnished and it will take a long time to repair it.

[your-dietician]

Over 270,000 people sign petition for France vs Switzerland to be replayed

New Post has been published on https://tattlepress.com/sports/over-270000-people-sign-petition-for-france-vs-switzerland-to-be-replayed/

Over 270,000 people sign petition for France vs Switzerland to be replayed

Switzerland’s goalkeeper Yann Sommer (R) saves a penalty by France’s forward Kylian Mbappe during the UEFA EURO 2020 round of 16 football match between France and Switzerland at the National Arena in Bucharest – GETTY IMAGES

Over 270,000 fans have signed a petition calling on Uefa to replay the Euro 2020 last-16 match between France and Switzerland because “the rules (of the game) were not respected” when Swiss goalkeeper Yann Sommer saved Kylian Mbappé’s decisive penalty.

Mbappé’s miss resulted in the world champions crashing out of the tournament in Bucharest after leading their eventual conquerors 3-1 at one point in the match.

But a petition was launched by a disgruntled French fan, Pierre, in the aftermath of the penalty shootout, demanding that Uefa replay the tie because Sommer’s feet were over the line as Mbappe struck the ball. Goalkeepers need to keep at least one foot on the goal-line when facing a penalty, otherwise the spot-kick can be retaken.

Neither the referee nor Var intervened on Sommer’s save but more than 270,000 people signed the petition – which has now been closed – despite several different angles showing that Sommer’s foot was on the line when Mbappé kicked the ball.

The hosts of the petition, leslignesbougent.org, wrote that “Uefa had been officially approached to gauge its position on the matter”, and that Pierre had informed the host site that he wished for the petition to be closed after the angles showing the legality of Sommer’s position came to light. “Our servers exploded,” the site added.

The original petition read: “During the penalty shootout of the France v Switzerland match, goalkeeper Sommer was not on his line ahead of Mbappé’s shot. We ask that Switzerland’s qualification is cancelled so that the match can be replayed.

“Sport must be played within the rules and that evening the rules were not respected.”

02:53 PM

Czech Republic v Denmark

Denmark coach Kasper Hjulmand says the team is looking to Christian Eriksen as an inspiration ahead of the match against the Czech Republic in the Euro 2020 quarter-finals.

Story continues

Eriksen suffered a cardiac arrest during Denmark’s opening game of the tournament. Team-mates were left shaken after seeing him receive emergency medical treatment on the field.

Hjulmand says “we’ll play with that heart of Christian Eriksen once again.”

The winner will face either England or Ukraine in the semi-finals.

AP

02:49 PM

Masterful Jordan Pickford has joined an elite band valued more by his country than his club

Unlike at Everton, when Pickford wears an England shirt he looks like he is sure he belongs out there, the undisputed No 1.

Jamie Carragher’s latest column for Telegraph Sport.

Jordan Pickford celebrating England’s last-16 win – GETTY IMAGES

02:38 PM

The Battle of Rome

Paul Ince’s bloody headband, chaos in the stands – and Southgate’s dark side.

England’s last trip to the Italian capital, in 1997, was another game they could not contemplate losing. David Seaman looks back on that momentous night.

Paul Gascoigne (L) and a topless Paul Ince (R) – GETTY IMAGES

02:20 PM

England get to work…

… with the quarter-final against Ukraine just over 24 hours away.

Kalvin Phillips of England trains during the England Training Session at St George’s Park on July 02 – GETTY IMAGES

Mason Mount of England trains during the England Training Session at St George’s Park on July 02 – GETTY IMAGES

Tyrone Mings shifting some tin – GETTY IMAGES

01:56 PM

Boris Johnson says he has no plans to reduce Euro 2020 stadium crowds

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Friday he did not plan to order a reduction in crowds attending the remaining Euro 2020 matches due to take place at Wembley.

Crowd capacity at Wembley will be increased to more than 60,000 fans for the semi-finals and final of Euro 2020 under a pilot scheme announced last week.

“Of course we’ll follow the scientific guidance and the advice if we receive any such suggestion,” Johnson said in response to a question at a news conference, alongside German Chancellor Angela Merkel who said she was worried about Uefa’s decision to let more people into stadiums.

“But at the moment… the position is very clear in the UK, which is that we have certain events which we can put on in a very careful and controlled manner with testing of everybody who goes there.”

01:34 PM

England fans in Rome

The first pictures are beginning to filter back home…

Fans gather in Rome ahead of Ukraine v England – Rome, Italy – July 2, 2021 – REUTERS

12:20 PM

Germany’s Kroos announces retirement from international football

Germany midfielder Toni Kroos has announced his retirement from international football after his team’s exit from the European Championship, the 31-year-old said on Instagram.

The 2014 World Cup winner earned 106 caps for his country, contributing 17 goals and 19 assists.

Kroos said it was clear to him “for a long time” that he would not be available for the World Cup in Qatar next year.

He said his priority now would be to focus on his club career with Real Madrid and spending time with his family.

Reuters

12:16 PM

The eight defining games of Raheem Sterling’s England career

From scapegoat to star man, Sterling has been the object of anger and criticism but is now England’s most experienced player and one of Euro 2020’s pre-eminent players.

Here, Sam Wallace runs down the eight matches that have defined his international career to date.

England’s forward Raheem Sterling celebrates the first goal during the UEFA EURO 2020 round of 16 football match between England and Germany at Wembley – GETTY IMAGES

12:00 PM

Emma Hayes signs new Chelsea deal

A revealed by Telegraph Sport in May, Emma Hayes, who has starred as a pundit at Euro 2020, has signed a new deal to remain as manager of Chelsea, the Women’s Super League champions have announced.

The 44-year-old has been with the club since 2012 and guided them to four WSL titles, two FA Cups and two League Cups. Hayes’ side were also Champions League runners-up last season.

She said on Chelsea’s official website: “Everyone knows what this club means to me.

“The work we’ve done together over the last nine years has been hugely rewarding, full of growth of the women’s game, accompanied with winning, which is one of the club’s key values. I really look forward to keep building on the successes we’ve already achieved and I’m delighted to have extended further.

Emma Hayes the manager of Chelsea Women lifts the Barclays FA Women’s Super League trophy after the Barclays FA Women’s Super League match between Chelsea Women and Reading Women at Kingsmeadow on May 09, 2021 in Kingston upon Thame – GETTY IMAGES

“It’s been a year and a half without fans, so I can’t wait to welcome them back to our home and share with them the wonderful team we’ve built together.”

Having retained the WSL trophy and the League Cup in 2020-21, Chelsea fell short of adding the Champions League as they were beaten 4-0 by Barcelona in the final in Gothenburg.

That was a first appearance in the final for the Blues – who reached the semi-finals in 2018 and 2019 – and the first by an English club since Arsenal, who had Hayes as assistant manager at the time, won the competition in 2007.

11:24 AM

Some more Premier League news…

Chelsea midfielder Billy Gilmour has joined Norwich on a season-long loan deal.

The 20-year-old impressed for Scotland in a goalless draw against England at Euro 2020 on June 18, before then having to self-isolate after returning a positive Covid-19 test.

Following his performance at Wembley it was reported that several Premier League clubs were interested in signing Gilmour on a temporary basis.

Newly-promoted Norwich have won the race for his signature and Canaries boss Daniel Farke feels Gilmour is a “perfect fit” for his Canaries team.

“We are really happy to have brought Billy in,” said Farke, who saw midfielder Emiliano Buendia leave for Aston Villa for £33million last month.

“We must say a big thank you to Chelsea and all those involved for making this deal happen. I think it helped that in the past we have shown that young players with potential are in good hands here at Norwich City.

Billy Gilmour – GETTY IMAGES

“He will help us to achieve our targets. We still have to keep in mind that he is an unbelievably young guy and that he hasn’t played regularly on this level. We have to give him some time and space to improve and find his rhythm.”

Gilmour made 11 appearances for Chelsea last season, starting three Premier League matches.

The former Rangers youth player was an unused substitute in both the FA Cup and Champions League finals as Thomas Tuchel’s side lost the domestic showpiece to Leicester but beat Manchester City to become champions of Europe.

PA

11:10 AM

The England team Gareth Southgate should pick to defeat Ukraine

Telegraph football writers pick their XIs – and you can too, by clicking here.

We have asked our writers to pick who they would like to see face the Ukrainians, especially bearing in mind that four of the England squad are on yellow cards.

10:50 AM

How England can beat Ukraine and take another step to glory

What do we know about England’s opponents? What are their strengths and what are the areas to exploit? Who are the players to watch out for?

Telegraph Sport spoke to Ukranian football expert Andrew Todos and former Norther Ireland manager Michael O’Neill, who masterminded a win over Ukraine at Euro 2016.

You can read our big match dossier by clicking here.

Graphic depicting England and Ukraine’s star players

10:30 AM

England at full strength for Ukraine

Gareth Southgate’s 26-man squad all trained on the eve of England’s Euro 2020 quarter-final against Ukraine.

The reward for Tuesday’s 2-0 last-16 win against Germany at Wembley is Saturday’s clash against Andriy Shevchenko’s side in Rome.

The Three Lions fly to Italy on Friday afternoon and the full squad trained at their St George’s Park base that morning.

Mason Mount and Ben Chilwell were among those in action, having left isolation on the day of the Germany match after coming into contact with Chelsea team-mate Billy Gilmour, who tested positive for Covid-19 after playing for Scotland against England.

Harry Maguire, Declan Rice, Kalvin Phillips and Phil Foden are a booking away from a suspension heading into the quarter-final.

Manchester United defender Maguire, who was named man of the match on Tuesday, is set to join manager Southgate at Friday evening’s press conference in Rome.

10:23 AM

Captain Kane reporting for England training

JULY 02: Harry Kane of England trains during the England Training Session at St George’s Park on July 02, 2021 in Burton upon Trent, – GETTY IMAGES

10:08 AM

In Premier League news…

From our reporter, Mike McGrath.

09:44 AM

Achilles

No, not the Trojan war hero, but the cat that lives in St Petersburg’s Hermitage museum. He chose Spain while attempting to predict the result of tonight’s quarter-final.

Probably no need to play tonight now – the cat’s called it…

Achilles the cat, that lives in St. Petersburg’s Hermitage museum, chooses Spain while attempting to predict the result of the UEFA Euro 2020 quarter final match between Switzerland and Spain during an event in Saint Petersburg, – REUTERS

Achilles the cat, that lives in St. Petersburg’s Hermitage museum, chooses Spain while attempting to predict the result of the UEFA Euro 2020 quarter final match between Switzerland and Spain during an event in Saint Petersburg, – REUTERS

Achilles the cat, that lives in St. Petersburg’s Hermitage museum, chooses Spain while attempting to predict the result of the UEFA Euro 2020 quarter final match between Switzerland and Spain during an event in Saint Petersburg, – REUTERS

09:23 AM

De Bruyne and Hazard

Belgium boss Roberto Martinez will give Kevin De Bruyne and Eden Hazard until the last minute to prove their fitness ahead of tonight’s Euro 2020 quarter-final clash with Italy.

Manchester City star De Bruyne suffered an ankle injury during Sunday’s 1-0 win over Portugal, during which Real Madrid’s Hazard also limped off with a muscle problem, and neither was able to train with the rest of the squad on Thursday morning.

However, speaking at his pre-match press conference ahead of the game in Munich, Martinez said: “We all know that we are fighting against time, but we’re going to take until the last minute to make the decision.

“Every day that goes by, every time they can sleep and get three meals and get some treatment, we see an improvement, and then we’ll see [today] if they can be involved or not. Unfortunately at the moment, we cannot make a decision.

“Obviously it will be difficult for [today] – a soft tissue injury in Eden’s case, maybe is difficult for a game like tomorrow, and for Kevin, having a ligament problem maybe is a bit different.

“But it’s more a medical decision. At the moment, it’s not a football decision; [today]it will become a medical decision in the afternoon and then we’ll make a football decision after that.”

De Bruyne left the pitch looking dejected in Belgium’s win over Portugal – GETTY IMAGES

Martinez could do with having all his most potent weapons available for a clash with an Italian side which is unbeaten in 31 matches, while both teams are bidding to become the first to win 15 consecutive European Championship matches since the start of qualification.

PA

09:06 AM

In case you missed it…

Neil Diamond told The Telegraph yesterday how “thrilled” he was that England fans were singing his famous ‘Sweet Caroline’ song at Wembley.

“Well, I hope you can do it again – here’s to England”, he told The Telegraph.

The 1969 song has featured in every England victory celebration at Euro 2020 and was a high point of celebrations after the team beat Germany 2 – 0 in the round of 16.

After the match, striker Harry Kane and coach Gareth Southgate both told the media how much they enjoyed hearing fans belt out the song in unison.

08:52 AM

Tournament odds

The bookies have England now as Euro 2020 favourites – even at 2/1 in some outlets.

Then come Spain (3/1) followed by Italy (4/1), with Ukraine the outside shot with bookmakers at 33/1.

08:41 AM

Magic Monday

A look-back at the day that proved internationals reach parts that the club game cannot.

As if Spain 5 Croatia 3 wasn’t enough, Switzerland and France also served up a classic on Monday night. What made it so memorable?

Read Thom Gibbs’ excellent breakdown here.

08:30 AM

RIP Charlie

08:16 AM

Predictions for this evening

Let us know in the comments below!

I’m going Spain and Italy to progress… just.

08:14 AM

Alvaro Morata

As Sam Dean writes, Alvaro Morata has scored 21 goals in 44 appearances for his country. He has won 14 major trophies in club football. He has played for four of the biggest clubs in the world and he has been transferred between them for a combined total of more than £170 million. If he finds the net against Switzerland on Friday, he will become the highest scorer in Spain’s European Championship history. Everything about his CV, and his list of accomplishments by the age of 28, suggests that Morata must be one of the continent’s elite forwards. And yet, for many people, the former Chelsea striker still seems to be regarded more as a punchline than as a top-level predator.

Read about how Morata has emerged from the darkness in a bright, dangerous Spain side.

Spain’s Alvaro Morata celebrates after scoring his side’s fourth goal during the Euro 2020 soccer championship round of 16 match between Croatia and Spain at the Parken Stadium in Copenhagen – POOL GETTY

07:59 AM

Can Switzerland do it again?

A reminder of how the Swiss got there in the first place.

They knocked out the world champions, France, on penalties, after fighting back from 3-1 down.

Refresh yourself on events in Bucharest by clicking here.

Kylian Mbappe missed the crucial penalty for France – GETTY IMAGES

07:35 AM

The Swiss are back!

Remember this bloke?

Swiss fan reacts to their victory over France

Topless and fully clothed, desperate and ecstatic: a Swiss football supporter has become a viral sensation after cameras zoomed in on his rollercoaster emotions watching his team beat France in the Euro 2020 tournament.

Found by Swiss media after images of him yelling and grimacing during Monday’s match went round the world, Luca Loutenbach has already amended his Twitter account to describe himself as the “Nati’s official meme since 28.06.2021.”

The Nati is the nickname for Switzerland’s national football team.

Loutenbach, 28, told Switzerland’s Blick TV that he was “just a normal fan”.

But those filming the game thought otherwise, zooming in on him several times during the play as he perfectly encapsulated Swiss fans’ ecstasy, dejection and frenzied joy – starting off wearing the Swiss red shirt and ending up topless and screaming.

The images quickly went viral, with London Mayor Sadiq Khan tweeting one with the comment “man of the match”.

“A star is born,” Swiss public television RTS said.

“Thanks for all your messages, what is happening to me is unreal,” he wrote Wednesday on Twitter.

“I’m actually quite discreet, even if that wasn’t on show during the game. So this is fun for one or two days, but I hope it will ease off a bit after a while,” he told Swiss TV.

Such is his fame that Switzerland’s airline Swiss has gifted him a free ticket to Russia to see his team play Spain in the quarter finals on Friday in Saint Petersburg.

The country’s tourism agency has also contacted him via Twitter to offer a relaxing weekend away in Switzerland.

07:18 AM

Good morning!

Hello and welcome to Telegraph Sport’s live coverage of the build-up to quarter-finals day, with the first two last-eight games kicking off tonight. Switzerland face Spain in St Petersburg at 5pm before Belgium take on Italy in Munich at 8pm.

England midfielder Jack Grealish said captain Harry Kane is the best player he has ever played with and tipped the Tottenham Hotspur forward to break the Premier League scoring record.

Kane drew a blank in each of England’s three group games at Euro 2020 but scored the second goal in Tuesday’s 2-0 win over Germany which put them into a quarter-final clash with Ukraine in Rome on Saturday.

Grealish said Kane, or “H”, was a deadly finisher but also praised his work outside the box.

“No one here would ever doubt ‘H’,” Grealish told British media on Thursday. “He’s the best player I’ve ever played with.

“He’ll break the Premier League record and the England one but he’s not just a goalscorer. He’s unbelievable when he drops deep and finds passes and puts it through people’s legs.”

Alan Shearer is the Premier League’s all-time leading scorer with 260. Kane is seventh on the list with 166.

Grealish came off the bench to play a role in both goals in the win over Germany but the 25-year-old said he was uncertain if he would start against Ukraine, given the attacking options at coach Gareth Southgate’s disposal.

“It’s difficult. I’m always playing every minute at Villa. I have to be realistic about myself and the talent that we have, especially in my position,” he said.

“You’ve got six players that play either side of Harry that, in reality, could play for most clubs in the world — myself, Jadon (Sancho), Marcus (Rashford), Raheem (Sterling), Phil (Foden) and Bukayo (Saka),” he said.

“That’s scary how good us six are. That’s not being big-headed. That’s just the truth.”

Reuters

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Post # 149

To err is human...

For the past few days, I have been watching a 8-part, one-hour-each, docu-series called The Test: A New Era for Australia's Team on Amazon Prime Video. I just finished it and am bursting to share my thoughts on it. But a little bit of background first.

24th March, 2018, was a day of infamy in the annals of Australian cricketing history!

On this day, in Cape Town, South Africa, on Day 4 of the 3rd Test between visitors Australia and home team South Africa, Cameron Bancroft, a rookie Australian was caught tampering with the condition of the ball with a yellow sandpaper. He then tried to hide the sandpaper in his underwear. Jeez! What was he thinking? Did he not know that there are at least 50 cameras on the cricket ground these days? No one can scratch his back without being caught on one of the cameras.

Steve Smith, considered the greatest test batsman after Sir Don Bradman, because of his stratospheric batting average in tests, was the captain of that Australian side. Dashing opening batsman, David Warner, was the vice-captain. Apparently, Warner was the mastermind of this incident. Steve Smith supposedly knew what was happening, but chose to look the other way. Basically, the Australian team cheated on the cricket ground! And got caught!

The backlash was swift and severe. Though the ICC penalties were light - Bancroft was fined 75% of his match fees and Smith was banned for just one match, Cricket Australia, the national board for cricket in Australia, came down really harsh. They conducted an investigation of their own. Following public admission of guilt from all three players, Australia's Prime Minister at that time, Malcolm Turnbull, phoned Cricket Australia's chairman directly to express his disappointment and concern, stating that strongest action be taken. Smith, Warner and Bancroft were banned from playing all forms of cricket for 12 months. They were flown back midway from the series and replacements flown in immediately. They lost their IPL contracts that year. Product endorsement contracts were cancelled. Darren Lehmann, though not a guilty party, stepped down as coach of the Australian team.

Australia was rocked like never before. Warner, Smith and Bancroft had shamed the proud, cocky nation. Ex-players shook their heads in disgust and expressed their anguish, in public, on international TV. Someone said that this was the biggest scandal since the underarm ball of the Chappell brothers.

There was a huge debate whether the 12 months ban was too harsh. Personally, I didn't think so. I think they deserved every month of the ban. But public opinion was split. Harsha Bhogle said, "I honestly do not believe any other country would have handed its captain and lead player a one-year ban for attempted ball-tampering." ICC saw how steep Cricket Australia's penalties were and made their punishments steeper!

For a while, Smith, Warner and Bancroft mulled taking legal action against CA, but then decided against it. They decided to wait out their ban, straighten themselves in their own heads and hope to come back to the sport again.

The Australian cricket team, arguably the best in the world, was depleted. Their two best batsmen were not available for selection. The rest of the team was scared of its shadow. Morale was low. There were questions about "culture". Australia and Australians were always competitive. They pioneered sledging & other psychological games and called them "getting under the skin of competition." Now somebody crossed the line and the nation had lost respect!

Tim Paine (who?) was made captain and Justin Langer was made coach. Their job - to rebuild a team and regain the lost respect in the eyes of their fans - the Australian people.

I honestly thought Smith, Warner and Bancroft were finished. I didn't think they would ever come back to play for Australia. And I thought Australia was finished as a team to reckon with, for a long long time.

Smith, Warner and Bancroft did come back and play for Australia again. Warner and Smith were the champions of Australia's dream run till the semis in the World Cup 2019. Smith was the player of the tournament when Australia successfully regained the Ashes later that year. In a year and half, Australian cricket was back on its feet. They are not invincible yet, but they are no pushovers either.

And that to me is an exciting story. It is a story of comebacks. It is the story of the triumph of human spirit. It is the story of a few individuals, a team and a nation, owning up to their mistakes, accepting responsibility, bearing the consequences of their actions and making sterling comebacks. And earning back respect!

The Test - A New Era for Australia's Team is that story. It is a behind-the-scene, real time account, of the way the team regrouped under Coach Langer. Like me, you will wonder how a camera (more than one actually) got into the Australian dressing room and followed each and every player's each and every move or action, reaction, emotion, for 18 months? The answer is - this docu-series was authorised, sponsored and produced by Cricket Australia. I wonder how the players and support staff felt about the constant scrutiny. I guess they didn't have too much of a choice.

The 8-part series takes us through the 18-month journey that the young Australian team took, first without Smith and Warner, through the series against Pakistan in Dubai, then against India at home, then against India again in India, their World Cup campaign, with Smith and Warner back in the team (Bancroft too) and finally the Ashes series.

Coach Justin Langer demonstrates why he, along with Haydos (Matthew Hayden), was the best opening bat in the world in his time. With his usual grit and perseverance, he lays down the process of becoming world class again. This mantra keeps repeating again and again throughout the series.

1. Focus on the next ball!

2. Trust the process to deliver the result.

3. Let not temporary setbacks waver your faith on the process.

4. Keep the noise out of the equation.

It was fascinating to see how individuals responded to the process. Usman Khwaja bats for hours and hours in the scorching heat of Dubai to save the test against Pakistan. Nathan Lyon becomes a powerful weapon in the Aussie bowling arsenal with his frequent fifers. Pat Cummins emerges as the leader of the fast bowling pack. Tim Paine (who again?) begins to come on his own and shapes up into an amazing captain. To my mind, he becomes the first Australian captain I like (not just respect) - a nice guy! That's definitely a first for an Australian captain. Over time, Aaron Finch emerges as the ODI and T20 captain. Then Smith-Warner-Bancroft are back. The series shows how they integrated back into the team, their dream world cup campaign till the disastrous semis against England and their phenomenal 2-2 Ashes result.

The journey wasn't smooth, nor was it easy. The series shows candid dressing room conversations, post match meetings, strategy discussions, coaching staff meetings, some selection discussions and so on.

One particularly touching scene was the post match team meeting the day after they lost to England by 1 wicket - the one where Ben Stokes plays and plays and plays, probably the best innings ever, okay, maybe one of the best innings ever - to prevent Aussies the series win. The match was Aussies, till Ben Stokes decided he didn't want to lose yet. Morale in the Aussie camp was low. Coach Langer swallows his own disappointment and holds the meeting to discuss what went wrong and how to do things differently next time. That one was tough to watch. My heart went out for Tim Paine and his team.

It was cool to see some greats of Aussie cricket come into the camp and assist Coach Langer and his staff. Ricky Ponting was Assistant Coach for the World Cup campaign and Steve Waugh joined the team for the Ashes tour. Their interactions with the players and comments and expressions during key moments during the match, caught real time, are fascinating.

But to me, the one person I will watch the series for - again - is Steve Smith. The docu-series begins with Steve Smith being disgraced, deservingly, for his involvement in the scandal. There is a scene where Smith is being escorted by a team of about ten odd security people in the airport - the narrator says, like a common criminal. Of course, we have all seen Smith cry on national and international TV in his oft-repeat-telecast press conference admitting his guilt. I cannot imagine what this man must have gone through. It could have crushed him. Infact, there is a scene where he says he almost decided to hang his boots. But he didn't. He came back.

In the World Cup in England, everywhere he went, he was booed and heckled. There is a scene where Justin Langer is caught making a remark about the booing crowd, "These guys behave as if they have not made a single mistake in their lives." Maybe they have, maybe it is just Karmic justice. The Aussie crowds have been bigger assholes in the past. But this is not about the crowd. This is about Smith. He played out of his skin. He was never the greatest ODI batsman. But he was the pillar of the Aussie batting during that campaign. His was the prize wicket. The match was not over till he was out. He was one of the key players who were instrumental in Australia going to the semis, second on the league table, just below India. And for a team rocking just about an year back, that was not bad. Of course, the semi finals against England was forgettable.

Then came the Ashes in England. More intense booing. Everytime he came in to bat, tens of thousands welcomed him with booes. But that Ashes series, Smith was para-normal. He says, he was in a bubble. He says, the levels of concentration he achieved were super-human. The results show. Two hundreds on his return test, one each in both innings, a double hundred in the fourth test, 774 in a five test series in which he didn't play in one of the tests because of an injury, 300 plus more runs than the second best batter in the series (Ben Stokes, another Superman) and 400 plus runs more than the second best Aussie batter (Marcus Labuschagne).

What will forever be etched in my heart's mind is - When Steve Smith got out for 25 odd runs in the rain-shortened last test (his last innings of the Ashes) and started his walk back to the dressing room, the erstwhile hostile English crowd at The Oval stood on its feet and applauded its adversary all the way back to the pavilion. Steve Smith lifted his bat, acknowledged the ovation, went into the dressing room, acknowledged the pats-on-his-back from his team mates and sat in a corner of the dressing room, a satisfied smile on his lips. It was redemption. He had earned back his lost respect. The world had acknowledged him to be the best again. I could feel that moment for him.

The story of the comebacks of Smith, Warner, Bancroft and Australia is an extraordinary story, but in no way unique. Australia themselves have gone through a similar rebuilding phase in the 1980s post the World Series Cup turmoil. South Africa came back stronger after the Hansie Cronje scandal. India became a world beating side under Saurav Ganguly after the match fixing scandals of 2000. There are other such instances.

What caught my imagination is the story of the indomitable human spirit. A human being can be down in the dumps one day, and comeback the next. Nothing is permanently gone. Lost wealth can be regained, lost respect can be re-earned, the mistakes can be pardoned if they are owned and accepted. Life doesn't judge. Life offers second chances, third chances, multiple chances. Infact, every moment of life is an opportunity - to scale new heights or comeback from behind!