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Bribes, fixing and Kim Kardashian: it's some of the week's best sportswriting

Here’s the best the internet had to offer this week.

1. “Clough was always uneasy about the appointment of Emilio Guruceta Muro as referee. The Spaniard was already getting a reputation after sending off two Italians and awarding Standard Liège a dubious penalty in a game against Napoli. Hart had his own concerns…

30 years later, Daniel Taylor of The Guardian tells the story of the bribery that denied Nottingham Forest a UEFA Cup final.

2.Don’t you think celebrities acted more irresponsibly back then partly because there were fewer checks and balances?

Think about Ted Kennedy’s unfathomable car accident at Chappaquiddick. Leaves a party with a lady who isn’t his wife. Drunkenly drives off a bridge. Swims to shore as his passenger dies in the sinking vehicle. Doesn’t tell the authorities about the accident until almost 10 HOURS LATER. And somehow, he only ends up with a suspended two-month jail sentence.”

Grantland published this cool conversation between Malcolm Gladwell and Bill Simmons.

3. “Cedric then explained the small print – if at any time I was unable to settle the debts within a three-month period, he would ask me to ‘help him out’. Failure to comply with these instructions could result in serious consequences. He was upfront and personable, explaining the credit was there to use but I should only run up an amount I could afford to lose.”

Off The Chest re-published this timely account of Operation Yellow, making match-fixing possible in the Premier League.

4. Owen Hargreaves remains the highest profile player England have capped through parentage and the complications of his international career shows how the issue is rarely straightforward. Hargreaves was born in Calgary, Canada, to an English father and Welsh mother. His career took him to Germany to play for Bayern Munich as a teenager.

Stephen Finn takes a step back to take a cold hard look at who has actually benefited from ‘The Granny Rule’

5. “Guy: Want to go out to dinner? Me: Of course! Except my metabolism went missing when I turned 25, so I now have to kind of be careful as to what I eat. Sucky, I know. How do you feel about sticking to my diet? Did you know beets help your VO2 Max AND taste like dirt?”

Phoebe Wright’s blog about the difficulties of meeting that special someone is pretty funny.

LeBron James explodes at teammate during a timeout, has to be held back

The Redzone: Week 16 and still all to play for