Athletic Club – Barcelona: The Last Romantic Standing in a World That Swiped Right on Moneyball There are, roughly speaking, two kinds of football clubs left on the planet: those that treat the beautiful game as a balance sheet appendage, and Athletic Club, the stubborn Basque outpost that still insists football is a birthright rather…
MANCHESTER — Somewhere between the 17th replay of Marcus Rashford’s missed sitter and the 23rd VAR freeze-frame of a Leicester toenail in offside purgatory, the planet remembered that football is still the most efficient way to export existential dread. Manchester United versus Leicester City at Old Trafford wasn’t merely a mid-table squabble over the right…
CINCINNATI, OHIO—Somewhere between the Mekong Delta and the Ohio River Valley, the word “Bengal” mutates like a passport-forged variant. In Delhi it conjures visions of Royal Bengal tigers padding through Sunderbans mud; in London it evokes the 1970s curry houses of Brick Lane; and here, inside a $650-million riverside coliseum, it refers to a football…
The Granite State’s weekly ritual of scratching, tapping, and weeping over the New Hampshire Lottery looks, from 30,000 feet, like a charming New England quirk—until you notice the same scene playing out in 200-plus nations, each with its own fluorescent ticket and slightly more depressing odds. In Mumbai, commuters queue for “Playwin”; in São Paulo,…
Jane McDonald and the Curious Soft Power of a Cruise-Ship Chanteuse Dave’s Locker – International Desk, somewhere between the buffet and the lifeboats If you mention “Jane McDonald” in a Manchester pub, someone will involuntarily hum “Cruise,” raise an imaginary piña colada, and reminisce about 1998—the year Britain briefly convinced itself that nautical karaoke could…
Time Zones, Tyrants, and Tire Strategy: The Existential Question of “What Time Is F1 Today?” By our jaded correspondent in the cheap seats with a warm beer and a hotter passport Every race weekend, the planet’s most affluent insomniacs raise the same plaintive query: “What time is F1 today?” It sounds innocent—almost childlike—yet the question…
PARIS—Somewhere between the Seine and the shattered dreams of every indie-film hopeful who thought raw talent alone could still buy a croissant, Shailene Woodley has become a trans-Atlantic paradox: an American starlet who keeps pretending she’s just a barefoot herbalist with a passport and an opinion on algae. The French cultural attaché at the Quai…
England vs South Africa: A Scorecard for the End of Empire By Our Man in the Long Room, nursing a warm gin and a colder worldview The Oval, London – 27 July 2023. When the final wicket cart-wheeled into the Kennington dusk and South Africa’s Marco Jansen pogo-sticked off in triumph, the electronic scoreboard froze…
Dodging alien artillery or congressional subpoenas with the same square-jawed equanimity, Chris Evans has become the world’s most export-ready piece of modern American soft power. From Seoul to São Paulo, the man is less an actor these days than a geopolitical utility: a walking, occasionally shield-flinging reminder that the empire can still package its anxieties…
Jennifer Lopez and the Global Mirage of Endless Reinvention By Our Correspondent, drinking airport coffee that tastes like geopolitics Somewhere over the Atlantic, the in-flight entertainment system lurches into life and there she is again: Jennifer Lopez, ageless and suspiciously pore-free, gyrating through a medley that has already been adopted as the unofficial soundtrack in…
**The Gentle Art of Global Domination: How Alan Titchmarsh Conquered the World One Petunia at a Time** While the planet burns and democracy crumbles like overbaked shortbread, there’s something almost subversive about a 74-year-old British gardener who has quietly become more influential than most world leaders. Alan Titchmarsh—yes, that affable chap with the perpetual tan…
The world’s collective attention span, already shorter than a TikTok reel, has latched onto Eilish McColgan with the same ferocity it reserves for missing submersibles and celebrity divorces. From a windswept track in Eugene, Oregon, to a floodlit stadium in Doha, the Scottish distance runner has become an unlikely geopolitical weather vane: whichever way she…
