James Calder explains how the World Cup winners have benefitted from a change of generation and clever management
Inclusiveness has been a feature of Spain’s World Cup-winning side. While Ángel María Villar, the president of the federation, dedicated the team’s South Africa 2010 success to the “entire Spanish football family”, the players also made a point of celebrating the triumph with the reporters covering their campaign.
Relive four weeks of statements of the obvious from the pundits, daily complaints about the wobbly ball and over-emphatic pronunciations of Brazilian names
June 11
South Africa 1 Mexico 1
“It’s in Africa where humanity began and it is to Africa humanity now returns,” says Peter Drury who you feel would be available for film trailer voiceover work when it’s quieter next summer. Mexico dominate and have a goal disallowed when the flapping Itumeleng Khune inadvertently plays Carlos Vela offside. ITV establish that it was the right decision: “Where’s that linesman from, that football hotbed Uzbekistan?” asks Gareth Southgate who had previously seemed like a nice man. "What a moment in the history of sport… A goal for all Africa,” says Drury after Siphiwe Tshabalala crashes in the opener. We cut to Tshbalala’s home township – “they’ve only just got electricity” – where the game is being watched on a big screen which Jim Beglin thinks is a sheet. Cuauhtémoc Blanco looks about as athletic as a crab but nonetheless has a role in Mexico’s goal, his badly mishit pass being crossed for Rafael Márquez to score thanks to a woeful lack of marking. The hosts nearly get an undeserved winner a minute from time when Katlego Mphela hits the post. Óscar Pérez is described as “a personality goalkeeper” as if that is a tactical term like an attacking midfielder. Drury says “Bafana Bafana” so often it’s like he’s doing a Red Nose event where he earns a pound for an irrigation scheme in the Sudan every time he manages to fit it in.
Neil Andrews explains the sharp and sudden decline of a defender who found himself more popular with supporters than managers
There are not many former Millwall players who can claim to have played their last game for the club in an FA Cup final. In fact, there are only two. Australian midfielder Tim Cahill is one. The other is an amiable young Irishman named Robbie Ryan, who was part of a young Lions side that went from near relegation to the bottom tier of English football to European football in just six years. He was also one of the most popular footballers to have played at The Den in recent memory.
Simon Goodley looks back on a successful but deeply uncomfortable season
I have an awful admission to make. I am a Notts County fan (that’s not it) and a strange thing has happened to me during our farcical season. Having had nothing much to celebrate since we won the old Third Division championship in 1998, I spent the majority of my team’s League Two title-winning season hoping that our challenge crumbled.
As the press pick apart Liverpool's fall from grace, Tottenham and Manchester City's Champions League 'play-off' sparks a punfest in Fleet Street
Liverpool began the season hoping to win a 19th League championship. They ended it with 19 defeats. Rafa Benítez guaranteed supporters a top-four finish, but the club dropped to seventh place in the league, went out of the FA Cup in the third round and faced the ignominy of being knocked out of two European competitions. To put it mildly, the 20th anniversary of their last Championship-winning season has not been their most memorable. Putting it mildly, however, is not one of the charms of British newspapers. If the facts were difficult reading for Benítez, he will have wanted to avoid the back pages.