“Just as that first half summed up the title race to that point, the whole game would prove a microcosm of the entire season.
“That 1995-96 campaign has become remembered for more football culture imprints than almost any other – Alan Hansen’s “kids”, Tony Yeboah’s volley, Eric Cantona’s return and redemption, 4-3, grey shirts, white suits, “I will love it” – but it is more than anything a precious illustration of how the game actually works, and how it is won.
“It was not just a vintage Premier League season, but a vintage title run-in, and the ultimate story of a race that becomes a chase.”
– The Independent’s Miguel Delaney revisits one of the seminal Premier League finales, the dramatic end to the 95/96 season.
“The exhibits in the Japan Olympic Museum in central Tokyo, near the new $1.4 billion national stadium, are devoted primarily to the history of the Olympics and Japan’s participation, most notably in 1964, when Tokyo last hosted the Summer Games.
“But tucked into a corner, almost as if it were an afterthought, is a display about the 1940 Tokyo Games, sometimes called the “Missing Olympics.””
– Ken Benson remembers the 1940 Tokyo Olympics that never were in this dispatch for the New York Times from Japan.
“Every day since I canceled my trip, I’ve thought about Italy. Followed the news and checked on friends. Oddly enough, I’ve found myself longing for a night at the restaurant I love most in Rome, a place called Matricianella, which does all the classic Roman pastas just perfectly. The last time I was in Rome to cover the eternal derby, I ate there two nights in a row. There’s a waiter I always request. His name is Gianni. I’ve found myself wondering this week what’s happened to him, and to his family, wondering what kind of world is going to be waiting on us once all of this finally ends.”
– On lockdown in America instead of travelling to Italy to report on the history of Maradona’s Napoli, ESPN’s Wright Thompson writes a love letter to Serie A, pasta and friendship.
“By the time Ons Jabeur had finished her rhapsodic three-set win over the world No 3, Karolina Pliskova, in Doha at the end of February, the crowd had ascended to a state of sheer delirium. It was the best win of her career and, for the audience, a mixture of proud Tunisians and other Arab nationalities scattered around Doha, it was a rare sight of one of their own thriving in this alien sport. And so they chanted her name before, during and after points, cheering endlessly into the night.”
– Ons Jabeur is the first Arab woman to break into the world top 50 in tennis. The Guardian’s Tumaini Carayol traces the Tunisian trailblazer’s journey.
“Most evenings that summer, you’d see them outside the Florida after training; faces flushed, gear bags dumped at their feet, enjoying the dusk and the gossip. The cafe was just a few minutes walk from Casement Park and from their homes. They were local boys in a city that was about to turn molten and complex with violence even if, in 1969, nobody could have guessed at the black enormity the coming decades would hold.”
– Not published this week, but sneaks in by virtue of its recognition in the GAA’s 2019 MacNamee Awards: the Irish Times’ Keith Duggan on the Summer of 69 when Antrim’s footballers won the U21 All-Ireland. It’s long, but you’ve time…
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