A Sticker's Worth 500 Words

You wait over fifty years for football to supposedly “come home” and then it turns up twice in the space of three years. While England’s Lionesses emulated the infamous 1966 World Cup victory with an extra-time win over Germany on home turf back in 2022 they retained their title in Switzerland this year with penalty shootout success against world champions Spain . Their path to glory had all of the twists and turns one could want from a major tournament with an early setback against France , snatching victory from the jaws of defeat in both knockout stages through a young player who didn’t even make the competition’s sticker album culminating in a cathartic final exorcising ghosts of their World Cup final defeat to the same opponents in 2023. The list of Lioness heroines is hard to cap. Leah Williamson led her side admirably with solid performances in defence. Lucy Bronze, seen performing her own physio during the quarter final, revealed she played the entire tournament with a fractur...

The new Premier League season is less than a week away and, as always, clubs will be entering the campaign with the baggage of hope, expectation and new challenges to overcome. As hilarious as it was to watch it is unlikely that the plucky underdogs of Manchester City will be quite as inept this time around while Arsenal will look to avoid yet another season of near misses. Nottingham Forest and Crystal Palace will have the added burden of European football while Tottenham Hotspur have turned to Thomas Frank to spearhead their Champions League jaunt with a clear remit to avoid finishing seventeenth however comical it might be. Reigning champions Liverpool, meanwhile, have endured a horrific summer following the tragic death of Diogo Jota which highlighted that none of this really matters in the grand scheme of things. Chelsea enter the season with a potential target on their backs following their summer exploits in the USA. Although they have been denied the physical evidence, owin...