Champions League draw reaction: English clubs face daunting ties in the last 16 December 16, 2019 In a change to the usual reaction of despair at familiar match-ups, today’s Champions League last 16 draw was met with a widespread reaction of excitement. In recent years the random draw has far too often thrown up repeat fixtures, with Europe’s best club sides getting used to lining up against each other every season. [...]
Review of 2019: Koepka and McIlroy inseparable after brilliant years, Lowry’s Open triumph the stand-out moment December 16, 2019 Golf has enjoyed another great year and with 2019 drawing to a close it is time for me to look back on its stand-out protagonists, moments and more. Player of the year This is a tricky one, but the world rankings don’t lie: Brooks Koepka and Rory McIlroy are No1 and No2 for a good [...]
EFL Cup and Club World Cup: How Liverpool are planning to fight on two fronts this week December 16, 2019 Liverpool will play Aston Villa tomorrow night in the EFL Cup quarter-final less than 24 hours before they are due to play in the Club World Cup semi-final half-way across the world in Qatar. It means Jurgen Klopp’s side will have played three games in the space of five days, following Saturday’s 2-0 win over [...]
Jumanji: The Next Level review: Jack Black and Danny DeVito’s star power doesn’t make up for shaky plot December 16, 2019 As a die-hard defender of the 1994 original, and a some-time apologist for its 2017 remake, I was willing to forgive a lot of Jumanji: The Next Level. It is, once again, a body-swap comedy in which a group of teenagers become characters in a 1990s video game. And while you don’t ask much of [...]
Arsenal 0-3 Manchester City: Kevin De Bruyne masterclass leads City to comfortable win at the Emirates December 15, 2019 Being torn apart by a player as brilliant as Kevin De Bruyne is not in itself embarrassing. But the ease and speed with which the Belgian playmaker ended Manchester City’s trip to Arsenal as a contest was dispiriting. As the popular refrain goes, Gunners fans arriving at the Emirates Stadium this afternoon expected little and [...]
Sports business in 2019: Industry insiders pick the trends that defined the year December 15, 2019 Izzy Wray, consultant in Deloitte’s Sport Business Group Women’s football The growing popularity of women’s football has been one of the defining sports trends of 2019. The Women’s World Cup smashed TV audience records, with a reported 1bn people watching it worldwide and over 28m people tuning in to the tournament on the BBC. Numerous [...]
The Ocean at the End of the Lane at the National Theatre review December 13, 2019 Neil Gaiman’s The Ocean at the End of the Lane is one of those novels that seems impossible to stage. It’s a tangled tale that takes place across dimensions, flitting between the real and the imagined, the domestic and the cosmic. It features civilised family diners and epic battles with giant, many-legged monstrosities. And you’d [...]
A Taste of Honey at Trafalgar Studios review: A kitchen sink drama with real heart December 13, 2019 I first heard about A Taste of Honey through Morrissey, who had a penchant for nicking its best lines. I’m clearly not the only one: the delivery of “I dreamt about you last night. Fell out of bed twice” and “The dream has gone but the baby is real” were met with a ripple of [...]
The Duchess of Malfi at the Almeida review: A shocking, brilliant drama December 13, 2019 Since the explosion of the #MeToo movement, theatre directors have been bringing to the fore the themes of patriarchal violence in everything from Shakespeare to Ibsen. Director Rebecca Frecknall’s production of The Duchess of Malfi takes this close to its logical conclusion with this unflinching, often outright horrific portrait of the terrible consequences of men [...]
Fairview at the Young Vic review: A strange and thrilling masterpiece December 13, 2019 When talking about her Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Fairview, writer Jackie Sibblies Drury explains that she cannot reveal what it is about without spoiling it. And she has a point – this really is a see-it-to-believe-it surprise of a show, and is thoroughly deserving of such anticipation. In simple terms, the story concerns a black middle-class [...]