“He was driven to Feltham Young Offenders Institution and shown the small, bare cell where he would spend around 20 hours a day. Food was provided at 4pm and then not until 11am the next morning. He was 19 years old, alone in a foreign country. Feltham is one of Britain’s most notorious juvenile prisons. It is afflicted by drug use, racism, gang warfare, endemic bullying and what a 2013 government report described as “unacceptably high levels of violence”. Former guards allege that in many cases fights were arranged by staff. In 2000 a British Asian teenager called Zahid Mubarek was bludgeoned to death by a fellow inmate while he slept in his cell. Self-harm and attempted suicides are common.”
– The Telegraph’s Jonathan Liew on the redemption of Pakistan bowler Mohammad Amir, who returned to Lord’s this week for the first time since serving a five-year ban for spot-fixing at the same venue in 2010.
“For like captain Mario Coluna and two other mainstays of the Portugal team that finished a best-ever third, Eusebio was effectively African. All four were born in Mozambique, which was then a Portuguese colony. With minnows punching above their weight and an ‘African’ finishing as the tournament’s top scorer, the winds of change were blowing through the World Cup. Fifa finally reacted. Two years after the finals, it unanimously voted to give Africa a World Cup place all of its own. Asia got one too. The boycott had worked.”
– Piers Edwards recounts Africa’s boycott of the 1966 World Cup in England for the BBC.
“Then there was the Anquan Boldin deal in 2010. Boldin had caught 84 passes for more than 1,000 yards in 2009, but at the time he was also 29, had a growing history of nagging ailments, and was entering the final year of his contract. He was shipped from Arizona to Baltimore (along with a fifth-round draft pick) for third- and fourth-round picks the following March and handed a three-year, $25 million extension. With Larry Fitzgerald then midway through a four-year, $45 million deal, it was tough for the Cardinals to rationalize lumping another $8 million a year onto their wide receiver bill. And it’s hard to blame them for lacking the foresight to know that Boldin was created to outlive us all, catching 65 passes a season until he shuffles off this mortal coil and spends eternity orbiting Earth in his rocket coffin.”
– The Ringer’s Robert Mays examines what happens when NFL greats leave the franchises that made them famous.
“Last year, long before the winter transfer-window frenzy that brought Martinez, Teixeira, Ramires and others to China, an official document was released that initially made no impression in the West but was seen as little short of extraordinary in China. Premier Xi Jinping commissioned a 50-point plan called the ‘Chinese football reform and development program’ to revitalise Chinese football. ‘Since Comrade Xi Jinping became general secretary in the 18th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), he has placed the development of football on the agenda in order to build China as a great sports nation,’ the opening line of the report reads. Many of the reforms are functional and straightforward, others borderline incendiary. On the one hand it calls for the mass building of football pitches; on the other it calls for the removal of government control from the Chinese Football Association (which, technically, is outlawed under FIFA’s rules anyway). It calls for academies to be set up across the country, while also urging that football be used to ‘promote the spirit of patriotism and collectivism’.”
– For Bleacher Report, James Montague looks at China’s quest to become a football superpower.
“Over the next month, Bruno became a media darling, but his presence caused an unexpected division among the German public, pitting environmentalists against farmers and hunters. While the World Cup filled the back pages of Germany’s newspapers, Bruno filled the front. With each sighting, his legend grew. The government tried to kill and capture him. Bruno became a renegade, a hero to some. He ate livestock and pets, including one poor 12-year-old girl’s guinea pig, which somehow made him even more likeable. Environmentalists wrote songs about him. Hunters armed themselves and tried to find him in the forest but were repeatedly, comically outwitted. His saga became political. The Bavarian Archdiocese weighed in. US diplomats wrote about Bruno in State Department cables. The Italians claimed him as their own. The Bavarians told the Italians, politely, to go fuck themselves.”
– Brian Blickenstaff of Vice Sports remembers Bruno, the problem bear that overshadowed the 2006 World Cup.
