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After much hesitant wallchart-filling, Geopolitics World Cup fans are finally able to feast their eyes on a complete knockout stage and plot their team’s route to a painful penalty shootout exit. Unlike in previous tournaments, there is no rest day for the wicked this time, with the first last-32 tie – a blockbuster tie between Canada and South Africa – taking place 15 hours after the final group reached its dramatic conclusion. Despite what their supporters sing, the GWC party will now continue without Scotland … who will continue without Steve Clarke. The GWC mixed zone’s least popular man has asked himself whether he is best placed to lead the nation into the next major tournament and has accepted the answer (‘no’) with good grace. “Thanks for having me and good luck to my successor,” Clarke sniffed as he backed away from the lectern and headed for the door marked Do One.
Re: Mike Towers’ request for potential walking football terms (yesterday’s letters). If two neighbouring Scottish teams play each other, is it known as the ‘infirm derby’?” – Roger Mart.
If Mike Towers wanted to sample walking football, he needn’t even have left his house. He could have just watched Cristiano Ronaldo playing for Portugal” – Derek McGee.
As we enter the knockout stages of the GWC, I thought it time to put down a marker. On at least four occasions in the last couple of years, you have predicted penalty shootouts to finish 1-0. According to RSSSF, this has happened maybe twice ever in a normal shootout (including Silures’ 1-0 win on penalties against Hafia in the second round of the African Champions’ Cup 1979 are not known). So stop it – I’m on to you” – Neil Rose [never! – Football Daily Ed].
Kev the Poet’s suggestion that Odysseas Vlachodimos is a midfielder might explain why he was so bad whenever he played in goal” – Jim Hearson.
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Continue reading...Kimi Antonelli claims third behind Red Bull’s Verstappen
Russell overtakes Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton in standings
George Russell won the Austrian Grand Prix after a tense and gripping battle with what was a resurgent Red Bull in the hands of Max Verstappen. Russell held his nerve to ground out the victory even as the Dutchman charged at him in the final laps at the Red Bull Ring to take a win the British driver sorely wanted.
His Mercedes teammate Kimi Antonelli was in third, having harried Verstappen to the flag with the top three separated by just two-seconds at the end. However, Ferrari’s expected challenge failed to materialise, their car’s struggling for grip and pace in Austria, with Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc finishing fifth and eighth. Oscar Piastri was fourth for McLaren with his teammate Lando Norris in seventh, while Isack Hadjar took sixth for Red Bull.
Continue reading...We were exhausted and in need of rest. In the morning, the kind locals prepared a huge breakfast and refused to accept any payment
Read more in the kindness of strangers series
Sudan in the 1980s was relatively quiet. In 1987 I was based there, working for aid agency Care in the final years before Omar al-Bashir seized power.
One day I was returning from the city of El Obeid to the capital, Khartoum. After two weeks of dust and extreme heat we were thankful to be travelling overland across the desert at night, when it would be cooler. There were no tarmac roads, just dusty tracks. Two colleagues, our driver and I left at sundown for what should have been a six or seven-hour drive.
Continue reading...ChatGPT relieves me of my discomfort, but in doing so it robs me of contemplation, of the holy ground between question and answer
Making sense of it is a column about spirituality and how it can be used to navigate everyday life
As a person of faith raised in a religious household, I have a fairly clear picture of what prayer means to me. Prayer is the practice by which I draw closer to God, petition for my needs and desires, request guidance and ask forgiveness.
The deal has always been that in times of trouble I cast my anxieties and questions and emerge with either some answers or some sustaining sense of peace. Take it to the Lord in prayer, the song goes.
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