England

Subterms

    More stories

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in Tennis

      Wimbledon: Andy Murray, Battling Injuries and Age, Faces Final Call

      by

      He is the last British man to have won this very English tournament. He did it twice, along with grabbing two Olympic golds.“I guess I’ll just need to win Wimbledon to shut everyone up.” — Andy Murray to The Daily Telegraph in June 2004Mission accomplished, although it took nearly a decade for Murray to manage it. He had to scrap and scream through all sorts of tennis trouble before finally putting a halt to all the annual chatter about when a British man might finally win Wimbledon again.Now, at 37 and at the end of his career — win or lose (or forced to withdraw because of recent back surgery) — he is saying goodbye to a tournament he conquered not once, but twice. Three years elapsed between his first victory in 2013 and his second in 2016, when his proud country rewarded Murray with a knighthood. In that same year, he won his second Olympic gold.For more than 70 years, the hope that a British man would win Wimbledon had become a tradition in a country that still likes its tradition: a part of the landscape at the well-tended All England Club where Fred Perry had won the men’s singles in 1936, but had long gone without a British successor.Tim Henman was still the local focal point when Murray emerged in 2005. Henman had reached four singles semifinals by rushing the net, but had always fallen short, handling each setback with a firm handshake and a dignified demeanor.Murray — a scruffy shock-absorbing baseliner from Scotland — managed the pressure and the project quite differently: muttering, moaning and sometimes swearing between points. But above all, he embraced the challenge as he trundled about the grass with a heavy gait only to move with astonishing quickness once the ball was in play.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Tennis

      At Wimbledon, Players Must Deal With the Challenge of Grass

      by

      Fewer and fewer events are held on that surface. It can be tricky, and injuries are common.For Debbie Jevans, a seat on Centre Court at Wimbledon requires no more than a left turn out of her office, then a right turn past the trophies honoring past champions. A few short steps further, the same steps taken by the competitors on finals day, and Jevans finds herself on hallowed grass.“Centre Court is such a special place,” said Jevans, the first female chair of the All England Club, by video call last month. “The court is pristine, the flowers look amazing, the overviews of St. Mary’s Church in the background. I feel an enormous sense of pride and thanks to the hundreds of people who have got us to this point.”Seeing the elegance and lush lawns on opening day at Wimbledon is, for players and fans, like stepping back in time. One of the biggest reasons is because professional play on grass is as elusive as a Wimbledon title itself.Wimbledon groundskeepers work most of the year to maintain the rye grass courts, which allows the ground underneath to remain dry and firm.Jane Stockdale for The New York TimesIga Swiatek has played 23 WTA grass-court singles matches out of almost 400 total in her career. Swiatek, the world No. 1, has not advanced beyond the quarterfinals at Wimbledon.Jannik Sinner, the newly named world No. 1 in men’s tennis, enters Wimbledon having played just one ATP grass-court tournament this year — which he won over Hubert Hurkacz in Halle, Germany, on June 23 — and only nine in his career. One of those matches was a five-set Wimbledon quarterfinal loss to Novak Djokovic in 2022.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares129 Views

      in Tennis

      Wimbledon: For Marketa Vondrousova, Winning the Title Was a Family Affair

      by

      Last year, she became the first unseeded player in the Open era to win the event’s women’s singles title. A celebration ensued.It was past dusk when Marketa Vondrousova and her coach, Jan Hernych, made it back to their rented house near the Southfields Underground Station, almost a mile from the All England Lawn Tennis Club. Hours earlier, Vondrousova had beaten Ons Jabeur, 6-4, 6-4, to become the first unseeded player in the Open era to win the Wimbledon women’s singles title.Waiting for Vondrousova at the house were family members, coaches and close friends. Many of them were inebriated from a combination of champagne and beer, including Hernych.“I just went for the press and after two hours I came back and they were all drunk,” said Vondrousova during a phone interview in late May. It is her fondest memory of that Wimbledon win and what she thinks about most often as she begins the defense of her title on Centre Court this Tuesday.“I always think about my family and the celebration with my box,” said Vondrousova, who marked the occasion by adding a tattoo of the numbers 150723, the date of the final, to a body already dotted with tattoo artistry. “That was the main thing that I wanted to do since I was playing in the final.”Vondrousova’s career has been a series of spirals. The Czech, who turned 25 last week was the top-ranked junior in the world and won her first career title, in Biel, Switzerland, when she was 17. She also reached the final of the 2019 French Open, losing to Ashleigh Barty, 6-1, 6-3, and captured a silver medal at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.Vondrousova has also been injured. She has had two wrist surgeries that sidelined her for more than six months shortly after her 2019 run at the French Open.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 63 Shares99 Views

      in Soccer

      The Premier League’s Asterisk Season

      by

      As it concludes an epic title race, soccer’s richest competition is a picture of health on the field. Away from it, the league faces lawsuits, infighting and the threat of government regulation.With five minutes left in his team’s penultimate game of the Premier League season, Manchester City Manager Pep Guardiola found the tension just a little too much. As a rival striker bore down on his team’s goal, Guardiola — crouching on his haunches on the sideline — lost his balance and toppled over onto his back.Lying on the grass and expecting the worst, he missed what may yet prove to be the pivotal moment in the Premier League’s most enthralling title race in a decade.But the striker did not score. His effort was parried by goalkeeper Stefan Ortega, sending Manchester City above its title rival Arsenal in the standings and positioning it, if it can win again on Sunday, to become the first English team to win four consecutive championships.“Ortega saved us,” Guardiola said afterward. “Otherwise, Arsenal is champion.”That the destiny of the championship should have been determined only so late in the season seems fitting for what has, on the surface, been a vintage Premier League campaign.All of that drama, though, comes with a figurative asterisk. This season’s Premier League has been defined as much by turbulence off the field — points deductions, internecine bickering, legal disputes, fraud accusations and the looming threat of government intervention — as it has been by City’s (eventual) smooth sailing through it.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 100 Shares149 Views

      in Soccer

      Luton Learns the Power of Premier League Status

      by

      Having a team in the world’s richest sports competition might alter how people think of Luton, a place long dogged by a ramshackle image and links to extremism.As the announcement trilled out over Kenilworth Road, the jumble of rusted metal and peeling paint that Luton Town F.C. calls home, the tone started to shift. At the start of the sentence, it was little more than the traditional polite welcome to the stadium for that evening’s visiting team, Manchester City.By the end, though, the voice of the announcer seemed overcome by what sounded a little like awe. Luton, the fans in the stands and the players on the field were reminded, was about to face “the champions of the F.A. Cup, the champions of England and the champions of Europe.” Luton seems to be having a hard time believing the company it now keeps.There is a reason for that. Fifteen years ago, Luton Town had been relegated to the fifth tier of English soccer, a world away from the power and the prestige of the Premier League. There was, for a time, a genuine risk that the club, founded in 1885, several years before the invention of the zipper, might fold altogether. For years afterward, money remained tight, ambitions modest.Now, Luton Town’s horizons are much grander. Last summer, it won an unexpected promotion to the world’s richest, most popular sports league. Three decades after it last played in England’s top division, it could again call Manchester City, Manchester United and the rest its peers.Outside Luton Town’s Kenilworth Road stadium, which offers none of the polished sheen of the homes of many of its Premier League rivals.Andrew Testa for The New York TimesThat meant an immediate transformation in the club’s financial outlook: Playing in the Premier League for a single season is worth around $150 million. More important, the status that came with it gave the town — a place that has long suffered a chronic reputation problem — a global platform on which to change not just how it is perceived by others, but how it thinks of itself.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 188 Shares99 Views

      in Soccer

      Want to Lose a Lot of Money, Fast? Buy a Small Soccer Team in England.

      by

      The country’s lower leagues offer a tempting entry to ownership. But the sport’s economics mean even multimillionaires can struggle to compete.Geoff Thompson knows there are plenty of people who want to buy what he has to sell. The phone calls and emails over the last few weeks have left no doubt. And really, that is no surprise. Few industries are quite as appealing or as prestigious as English soccer, and Mr. Thompson has a piece of it.It is, admittedly, a comparatively small piece: South Shields F.C., the team he has owned for almost a decade, operates in English soccer’s sixth tier, several levels below, and a number of worlds away, from the dazzling light and international allure of the Premier League. But while his team might be small, Mr. Thompson is of the view that it is, at least, as perfectly formed as any minor-league English soccer club could hope to be.South Shields has earned four promotions to higher leagues in his nine years as chairman. The team owns its stadium. Mr. Thompson has spent considerable sums of money modernizing the bathrooms, the club shop and the private boxes. There is a thriving youth academy and an active charitable foundation. “We have done most of the hard yards,” Mr. Thompson said.After a cancer scare last year led him to reassess his priorities, Mr. Thompson has, reluctantly, decided that he has to “hand the baton” to someone else.That is where things becomes complicated. There are plenty of very wealthy people who want to buy their way into English soccer. It is, as Mr. Thompson said, “fun.” Owning a team offers the chance to “be a hero” to a place. It is a pitch sufficiently compelling that, in a matter of weeks, at least four suitors — two British, two American — have inquired about taking South Shields off his hands.That is the upside. The downside is that — as the Premier League has become a playground for private equity firms and sovereign wealth funds, and as the “Welcome to Wrexham” success has focused Hollywood’s searchlight on the romance of the game’s backwaters — England’s minor leagues have become a place where even the very rich can feel poor.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 175 Shares159 Views

      in Soccer

      Bobby Charlton, an England Soccer World Cup and Manchester United Icon, Dies at 86

      by

      A mainstay of Manchester United and one of the game’s best-loved figures, he won the World Cup in 1966 and the European Cup in 1968. Bobby Charlton, one of soccer’s greatest players, who won the World Cup with England in 1966 in a dazzling career that was tinged by the tragedy of losing eight of his Manchester United teammates in a plane crash at the start of his playing days, died on Saturday. He was 86.His death was confirmed in a statement from Manchester United, which called him one of the club’s “greatest and most beloved players.” The statement did not say where he died or cite a cause. It was revealed in November 2020 that Charlton had dementia.Charlton was famed for his bullet shot and his relentless goal scoring, even though he did not play as a traditional striker. He was England’s top scorer, with 49 goals, for 45 years until Wayne Rooney beat the mark in September 2015. Charlton was also Manchester United’s top scorer for decades, with 249 goals in 758 appearances over 17 years, until Rooney surpassed that figure, too, in January 2017. In addition to his scoring feats, Charlton’s career was indelibly marked by a plane crash in 1958, shortly after he had become a professional player. Following a European Cup match against Red Star Belgrade, the plane on which the Manchester United team was traveling crashed in heavy snow during a refueling stop in Munich. Of the 23 who died, eight were players. Charlton, who was dragged from the wreckage by a teammate, was 21 years old at the time.Barely three weeks later, with the United manager, Matt Busby, still in a hospital in Germany, Charlton was back on the field. Because of his dignity in leading the Manchester United team through that dark period, his sportsmanship, and his central role in United’s revival and in his country’s sole success on the international stage, several commentators referred to him as the first gentleman of soccer.Charlton became a director and ambassador of Manchester United in 1984. A statue of Charlton, alongside his fabled teammates George Best and Denis Law — known as the United Trinity — was erected outside Manchester United’s stadium, Old Trafford, in 2008, and in 2016 the club renamed the south stand of the stadium in his honor. Charlton is also credited with giving Old Trafford its nickname, the Theater of Dreams.Robert Charlton was born on Oct. 11, 1937, in Ashington, Northumberland, in the north of England, to Robert and Elizabeth (Milburn) Charlton. His father was a miner, but the family had soccer in its genes. Four of his uncles were professional players, and his mother’s cousin Jackie Milburn was a legendary striker for Newcastle United; Bobby’s brother Jack became a professional player with Leeds and also represented England.“There was nothing else in life, it didn’t appear to me, except football,” Bobby Charlton said in a 2010 Sky Sports documentary.Charlton turned professional in 1954 and made his first appearance for Manchester United on Oct. 6, 1956, at age 18. When called up to the first team by Busby, he had to hide the fact that he had an injury.“I actually had a sprained ankle, but I wasn’t going to admit to it,” Charlton said in a 2011 BBC documentary. He scored twice in his debut.Manchester United won the league title in the 1956-57 season, with Charlton becoming a central player. The team was known as the Busby Babes after the manager, who had combed the playing fields of England to find the best young talent to fit his vision of soccer played with panache, pace and quick passing.Its league success earned Manchester United a place in the European Cup, the forerunner of the Champions League, the next season. After a 3-3 draw with Red Star secured a spot in the semifinals, the plane carrying the team home stopped to refuel in Munich. Amid terrible weather conditions, two attempts to take off were aborted. On the third, the plane crashed.Crawling to safety through a hole in the fuselage, the team’s goalkeeper, Harry Gregg, dragged Charlton and another teammate, Dennis Viollet, clear. “I left them there dead,” Gregg told the BBC in 2011. “The biggest shock I had was when I turned and there was Bobby Charlton and Dennis Viollet staring at the rest of the plane exploding in the petrol dump. Just staring.”Charlton was 21 years old in 1958 when the plane carrying the Manchester United team crashed in a heavy snowfall. The crash killed 23, people including eight of his teammates.Allsport/Hulton ArchiveCharlton returned home to recover from his injuries, which were relatively minor. He also faced the psychological trauma of trying to return to the field of play without his lost teammates.But after watching a scratch United team featuring several youth-team players and loanees overcome Sheffield Wednesday in an F.A. Cup fixture soon after the accident, Charlton told the acting manager, Jimmy Murphy, that he would return. Many saw Charlton’s stoicism and refusal to give up as a ray of hope amid the tragedy.United rebuilt around Charlton. Busby recovered from his injuries, and through the course of the 1960s he set about creating a new team. By the middle of the decade, Charlton was a Manchester United mainstay and a linchpin of the England side as the country prepared to host the 1966 World Cup.England started the tournament slowly, but in the second game, against Mexico, Charlton provided the inspiration with a trademark goal. Advancing across the halfway line, he bore down on the opposition penalty area as the defender retreated, and he thumped a shot into the top corner of the net with such languid violence that the ball almost tore the goal posts out of the ground.“I hit it, and it was sweet as a nut,” Charlton said in 2011. “I thought, people will remember that, because I’ll remember it for a long time.”In the semifinal against Portugal, Charlton scored two more goals to put his team into the final against West Germany, thus setting up one of the most memorable games in World Cup history.Charlton was told by the England coach, Alf Ramsey, to shadow Germany’s best player, Franz Beckenbauer. Unknown to the English, Beckenbauer had been given the same instructions in reverse by his own coach.“He was so fit,” Beckenbauer later recalled. “He was running like a horse. It was very, very difficult to stop him. It was almost impossible.”Beckenbauer and Charlton largely canceled each other out, but the pulsating game went to extra time, when England took the lead, 3-2, with a disputed goal by Geoff Hurst. The shot hit the crossbar and bounced down, and the Russian linesman, Tofiq Bahramov, flagged for a goal. Whether the ball crossed the line is still a subject of dispute. Buoyed by the lead, England scored a fourth, with Hurst hitting his third of the match in the dying seconds. As Hurst lined up his shot and fired into the net, the BBC commentator Kenneth Wolstenholme uttered perhaps the most famous lines in English football: “Some people are on the pitch, they think it’s all over. It is now! It’s four!”Charlton and his wife, Norma, were applauded after a stand was named in his honor in 2016 at the Old Trafford stadium in Manchester.Nigel Roddis/European Pressphoto AgencyWith the trophy won, Charlton and his teammates were feted as heroes. But the Charlton fairy tale had not yet turned the final page.Busby had added Law, a predatory Scottish striker, and Best, a willowy, mercurial genius from Northern Ireland, to his retooled Manchester United team, which still had Charlton as its fulcrum. In the 1967-68 season, a decade after the Munich disaster, Manchester United again qualified for the European Cup.The team overcame Real Madrid, then a six-time champion, in the semifinal, and went on to meet Benfica of Portugal in the final at Wembley Stadium in London. Flushed with the memories of the players lost a decade before, the occasion dripped with poignancy.“The most important thing leading right up to it was that we were going to win the match,” Charlton said. “There was no alternative. We had to win that match.”Charlton opened the scoring with a headed goal, but the match went to extra time. Drooping with exhaustion but fired with the determination to finally win the trophy that had cost the club so much, United’s players dug deep. Best put the team ahead, Brian Kidd scored a third, and Charlton added the coup de grâce with a fourth.“We’d done it,” Charlton recalled in 2011. “When the final whistle went, everybody dashed to Sir Matt. They were his players that got lost in Munich. They were his lads, his team, and everybody in the whole crowd, maybe even in the whole country, thought a little bit about Matt Busby’s feelings that night.”Charlton is survived by his wife, Norma, whom he married in 1961; two daughters, Suzanne and Andrea; and grandchildren.Charlton finished his career in 1973 with a playing record that bears comparison with the world’s greatest. In his later role as a Manchester United director, he provided an important link between the era of the Busby Babes and a new period of dominance forged by another Scottish manager, Alex Ferguson.“Unquestionably the best player of all time,” Ferguson said of Charlton in 2011. “He could float across the ground just like a piece of silver paper.”Beloved by Manchester United fans, Charlton was also lionized by supporters of all teams, not only at home but also throughout the world. He became the embodiment of the fabled, perhaps mythical, nobility of English soccer.Hurst, his England teammate, said that when talking to people who didn’t speak English, Charlton’s reach became clear. “There’s only one piece of English they can say,” Hurst explained. “And that’s ‘Bobby Charlton.’” More

    • 113 Shares119 Views

      in Soccer

      Nike Says It Will Offer Mary Earps’s Goalkeeper Jersey

      by

      After being criticized for not offering replicas of the jerseys worn by the English goalkeeper Mary Earps and others in the Women’s World Cup, Nike said limited quantities would be available.With each breathtaking save made by Mary Earps, the goalkeeper who helped England’s national team take second place in the Women’s World Cup, the complaints from fans got louder: Why couldn’t they buy a replica of her Nike jersey?Nike, which outfitted the team, has attempted to present itself as being ahead of the curve in terms of offering support to female athletes and emerging sports talent. Though the company, the world’s largest sportswear maker by sales, acknowledged fans’ interest in replica goalkeeper jerseys, it initially did not commit to making them.That changed on Wednesday, after thousands of people had signed a petition requesting that replicas of the jerseys worn by Ms. Earps and other women goalkeepers be released, and after a motion addressing the issue was submitted in the British Parliament.“Nike has secured limited quantities of goalkeeper jerseys for England, U.S., France and the Netherlands to be sold through the federation websites over the coming days, and we are also in conversations with our other federation partners,” a spokeswoman for Nike said in a statement emailed to The New York Times on Wednesday evening, referring to members of FIFA, soccer’s global governing body.Nike is “committed to retailing women’s goalkeeping jerseys for major tournaments in the future,” the spokeswoman said in the statement, which did not specify how many jerseys would be available or when they could be purchased.In the days before, Nike, which outfitted 13 of the 32 teams in the Women’s World Cup, had faced an escalating backlash from soccer fans on the issue. (Replica goalkeeper jerseys were available for four of the men’s teams Nike sponsored in last year’s World Cup.)Many of the complaints centered around Ms. Earps, 30, who received the Golden Glove, an award recognizing the top goalkeeper in the tournament. “She’s the best in the world right now, and she doesn’t have a jersey,” Beth Mead, who has played for England’s women’s national team, told the BBC. “She doesn’t have a shirt that young boys and girls can buy.”Why wouldn’t Nike want to offer replica jerseys for popular goalkeepers?In the past, goalkeeper jerseys have not been best sellers for athletic-wear companies, for a few reasons.With a few exceptions, goalkeepers typically do not cultivate the kind of passionate fan base that other players like forwards can, meaning potentially fewer jersey sales.A goalkeeper’s jersey is also different from that of other teammates to ensure they stand out on the field. (Ms. Earps’s World Cup jerseys were emerald green and pink; her teammates’ were blue and white.) While a team’s main shirt can be produced en masse — with versions for various players requiring a simple name change on the back — a goalkeeper’s jersey requires a much smaller and more customized manufacturing run.Though interest in women’s soccer has risen, the sport still drives fewer apparel sales globally compared to men’s soccer.Did other brands make jerseys for goalkeepers playing in the Women’s World Cup?Adidas, which outfitted 10 teams for the tournament, did not offer replica goalkeeper jerseys. Neither did Puma, which made kits for Morocco and Switzerland.But Hummel, which made jerseys for Denmark’s national women’s team, and Castore, which made them for Ireland, each have released replica goalkeeper jerseys for those teams.How did the controversy start?At a news conference at the start of the Women’s World Cup, Ms. Earps expressed frustration about Nike’s decision not to offer replicas of the jerseys worn by participating teams’ goalkeepers. “It is hugely disappointing and very hurtful,” she said, adding that she had sought talks with both Nike and the Football Association, the governing body for English soccer, after England won the European Women’s Championship tournament last year.Ms. Earps, who is a goalkeeper for Manchester United in the Women’s Super League, also pushed back on the idea that her jersey would not sell. “My shirt on the Manchester United website was sold out last season,” she said.By the time England faced off against Spain in the Women’s World Cup final, Ms. Earps had made several vital saves that helped keep her team in the tournament. Her star performance only intensified questions about Nike’s decision.David Seaman, a former goalkeeper for Arsenal and England’s men’s national team, posted a message of support for Ms. Earps while she was playing in the final. “Bet Nike are regretting not selling the #maryearps shirt now,” he wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.Another post on X shared that day read in part: “My 10 year old daughter is the goalie in her school team. She’s just gone online to buy a jersey for next year and wanted one like Mary Earps’s only to find Nike don’t do one. ‘That’s a bit stupid’ she said.”In the absence of an official replica jersey by Nike, some of Ms. Earps’s fans made their own jerseys using tape. Several small retailers also started manufacturing jerseys similar to her Nike shirt.How did Nike respond at first?In a statement released after the Women’s World Cup final on Sunday, which England lost 1-0 to Spain, Nike tried to put the focus on the future.“We are working toward solutions for future tournaments in partnership with FIFA and the federations,” the company said. “The fact that there’s a conversation on this topic is a testament to the continued passion and energy around the women’s game, and we believe that’s encouraging.”That did not satisfy Ms. Earps. On Tuesday, she reposted Nike’s statement to her Instagram account, adding the text: “Is this your version of an apology/taking accountability/a powerful statement of intent?”In another Instagram post, she shared a link to a Change.org petition that had been created in her support. It has received more than 150,000 signatures.Ms. Earps, through a representative, declined to comment for this article.How did Parliament get involved?This week, Tracey Crouch, a member of Parliament and former sports minister, submitted a motion calling on Nike to release a jersey for Ms. Earps.Nike “could have changed this,” Ms. Crouch wrote in an essay published in The Independent on Wednesday. “They still can if they take their fingers out of their tin ears and listen to the hundreds of thousands of women who have signed the petition, gone on social media, listened to the outcry on the media.”The change of course by Nike, and the loud online chorus that apparently prompted it, underscore the growing influence of the global women’s game and its major names. More