Carlos Alcaraz shakes off Tarvet from his back without inhibitions or regrets | Jonathan Liew

2 juillet 2025 à 21:14

Defending champion is essentially a magic-eye puzzle you can read any way you want but has the inconsistency all but one of his rivals would dream of

There were negatives, of course. Shall we focus on the negatives? Shall we dwell on the frailties a little? The uncharacteristic errors, the double faults, an occasional scruffiness at the net, the frequent slumps in intensity? Shall we marvel at the fact that the lowest-ranked player in the tournament earned more break points (11) than one of the greatest players of his generation (10)? Shall we warn, in a tone of affected sternness, that the defending champion will have to raise his game on this evidence?

Of course we shall, because this is Carlos Alcaraz, and because there is an entire cottage industry built around maintaining the idea that Alcaraz is in a state of crisis at all times, a state of crisis so acute that it is necessary to feign round-the-clock concern for him. We just want to see all that rich talent fulfilled. That’s all it is. Sincerely and genuinely. And definitely not a weirdly prurient interest in his holidays to Ibiza, or whether him and Emma Raducanu are, you know. Just the talent. Thinking of the talent here.

A moment to sense the sheer scale of progress: Euro 2025 set for kick-off | Jonathan Liew

The Guardian

Par :Jonathan Liew

1 juillet 2025 à 20:00

The narrative arc of women’s football in Switzerland is a familiar one: from apathy to hostility to mockery to inertia to change. Now the country will host one of the biggest events in the sporting calendar

In 1957 the Swiss newspaper Sport published a short editorial under the headline “Women’s Football?” Furious that a women’s friendly between Germany and the Netherlands was being hosted in Basel, the writer mocked: “This event is not about football, but rather should be classified as an exhibition or circus performance.”

On Wednesday evening, in front of a sell-out crowd, Switzerland will play their opening game of a home European Championship that will be one of the biggest sporting events held in the country. Sport newspaper, sadly, will be unable to chronicle the event, having folded in 1999. Life moves on you pretty fast.

Cristiano Ronaldo’s £492m Saudi deal: two cynical regimes form a strategic alliance | Jonathan Liew

The Guardian

Par :Jonathan Liew

1 juillet 2025 à 13:31

In the social media age, football is a fraction of the Portuguese Übermensch’s appeal and he is untroubled by his paymasters’ morals

The winners of next season’s AFC Champions League Two, Asia’s second-tier club competition, will receive about £1.8m. The winners of the Saudi King’s Cup will receive just over £1m. Prize money for the Saudi Pro League is not disclosed, but by the most recent available figures (for 2022-23) is in roughly the same area. Weekly attendances at the King Saud University Stadium, where top-tier ticket prices start at about £12, range between 10,000 and 25,000, although of course you also have to factor in pie and programme sales above that.

And so you really have to applaud Al-Nassr’s ambition in handing an estimated £492m to Cristiano Ronaldo over the next two years. Even if they sweep the board at domestic level, if they fight their way past Istiklol of Tajikistan’s 1xBet Higher League and Al-Wehdat of the Jordanian Pro League, if they extract maximum value from merch and sponsorships, you still struggle to see how they can cover a basic salary that comes to £488,000 a day, even before the bonuses and blandishments that will push the total package well beyond that.

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