Farage’s view on football (he likes cricket but the interns who run his social media clearly cant grasp the complexities of the game)has varied.
He was not happy about players taking the knee against racism and demanded that politics be kept out of sport.
More recently he was presiding over a football game featuring a Farage No.10 team somewhere near Clacton.
He has struggled with the World Cup. First there was the Euro 2024 picture. For the DCR match his team simply reposted the official England tweet.
I note that some argue he doesn’t like football so why bother. Because as the leader of a supposedly patriotic party supporting in this case England its part of his job to show support. Albeit unfortunately for Farage monetising that is not easy.
The Sunday Times graphic underlines the imperial diaspora of world football. Players were born in European countries to parents who originally came from elsewhere, because European countries had been in those elsewheres…
An England sporting side are in a World Cup final on Sunday in London. It’s obviously not the men’s football side (yet…) and its certainly not the men’s cricket team. Rather England women face Australia’s women at Lords in the T20 World Cup Final.
The Men’s Football World Cup kicked off in Mexico City on 11th June. Mexico beat South Africa. The game was unremarkable aside from three red cards but the atmosphere was fitting for such an occasion. It was however, as not reported on ITV, for the few not the many. Standard tickets cost £750 which is the average monthly wage in Mexico.
The tournament might well have been better if it had been played in Mexico and Canada only but as it is the majority of the 104 games will be played in the US.
As the Round of 32 has been reached its become clear that there are two World Cups. Trump has stayed away so far. Harassment of players and officials, Iran being a prime example, has been a deplorable feature. On the other hand as Simon Kuper argues in the Financial Times (27th June) there is also a fan led World Cup, with supporters of teams in the stadiums- Scotland being an obvious UK focused example- but also with watch parties and big screens.
The Men’s Football World Cup is of course a global event with a global audience and wall to wall media coverage.
Meanwhile another World Cup is reaching its conclusion as England Women beat the current holders New Zealand at The Oval on 27th June and South Africa in the semi-final on Thursday 2nd July as part of the T20 series that ends with a Final at Lords on July 5th. There were 21,128 spectators at the Oval on Thursday evening.
Media coverage is of course minimal. The Times manages a column by Elizabeth Ammon. You’d expect an England team reaching a World Cup Final to make the front pages. It seems unfortunately unlikely.
Yet the tournament has had global reach with India playing Pakistan a game which usually attracts the biggest screen based global audience of any sport.
The whole thing is screened on Sky and on ICC.TV and radio commentary is on Radio 5 via Test Match Special.
When I posted this on Blue Sky its fair to say it did not find a good response.
I have tried it and in my view (I prefer savoury to sweet generally) it was perfectly edible and not sickly.
However whether its a good idea is another matter. M&S are once again doing a strawberry and whipped creme fraiche on brioche sandwich to go with Wimbledon. That is a little sweet but I think works better.
In the era of Andy Burnham perhaps we’d do better sticking to chips and gravy, or curry sauce maybe
Quite what Nigel Farage has done to annoy Rupert Murdoch is unclear but The Times(2nd July 2026) has printed a detailed investigation into his property empire in Kent and Surrey.
There are some amusing anecdotes.
At his beach front home in Kent a neighbour has put a LGBTQ flag on the fence that seperates the properties.
The Times also reports an altercation in the local Co-Op because it had run out of Farage’s favourite Rothman Blue cigs.
Finally it appears that the road outside Farage’s house has been resurfaced and potholes sorted. Nothing to do with him of course but rather the Reform led Kent Council…
Ben Stokes the England cricket captain has stepped down. Brendan MCullum the coach across all formats- Tests, 50 and 20 overs remains in place, and from the Managing Director of England cricket Rob Key, silence.
As Scyld Berry argues however the issues go further up, with those administering cricket overall. They may have business experience but they don’t have first hand experience of cricket,
As Duncan Stone underlines in his book Different Class, until the way English and Welsh cricket is run changes fundamentally, the crises will continue to come and the marginalisation of the game from the top down threatens.
An England sporting side are in a World Cup semi-final on Thursday in London. It’s obviously not the men’s football side (yet…) and its certainly not the men’s cricket team. Rather England women face South Africa’s women at Lords..
The Men’s Football World Cup kicked off in Mexico City on 11th June. Mexico beat South Africa. The game was unremarkable aside from three red cards but the atmosphere was fitting for such an occasion. It was however, as not reported on ITV, for the few not the many. Standard tickets cost £750 which is the average monthly wage in Mexico.
The tournament might well have been better if it had been played in Mexico and Canada only but as it is the majority of the 104 games will be played in the US. Since Trump has never heard of sports washing who knows if it will manage to get to the Final.
As the Round of 32 has been reached its become clear that there are two World Cups. Trump has stayed away so far. Harassment of players and officials, Iran being a prime example, has been a deplorable feature. On the other hand as Simon Kuper argues in the Financial Times (27th June) there is also a fan led World Cup, with supporters of teams in the stadiums- Scotland being an obvious UK focused example- but also with watch parties and big screens.
The Men’s Football World Cup is of course a global event with a global audience and wall to wall media coverage.
Meanwhile another World Cup is reaching its conclusion as England Women beat the current holders New Zealand at The Oval on 27th June as part of the T20 series that will end with a Final at Lords on July 5th. There was a capacity 21,018 crowd despite the fact that England Men were playing in the football World Cup on the same evening.
Media coverage is of course minimal. The Times manages a column by Elizabeth Ammon.
Yet the tournament has a global reach with India playing Pakistan a game which usually attracts the biggest screen based global audience of any sport.
The whole thing is screened on Sky and on ICC.TV and radio commentary is on Radio 5 via Test Match Special.
With two goals against DRC to see England progress to the last 16 of the World Cup, Harry Kane has taken his tally so far to five goals.
While the focus is on the Golden Boot, the number of goals scored where players like Messi and Mbappe are in competition, the Beard Liberation Front say that in modern football the Golden Beard is as important as the Boot.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett, said Beard Power is an under appreciated and under analysed part of the World Cup and Harry Kane is a leading exponent of it.
This Editorial on the Trent Bridge Test which England lost to New Zealand was posted by @michaelappleton on Twitter.
It provides an alternative view of proceedings from a NZ paper which I suspect will find an echo among at least some England cricket supporters. The irony of course is that in a previous life Brendan McCullum was a Kiwi Test cricketer of some repute
The owner of Sam Smith’s brewery in Tadcaster, Humphrey Smith has died aged 81. He was a divisive character and the most polite word my brief appreciation could find was ‘idiosyncratic’
However the BBC have published a report including comments by those who thought he was a decent man
The Mayor of Tadcaster describes him as a ‘true gentleman’ and a ‘man of principle’. Indeed like Dave Cameron and Boris Johnson he went to Eton
The York Press has a range of tributes including descriptions of Smith as ‘distinctive’ and ‘eccentric’. I’m sticking with ‘idiosyncratic’. I hope the brewery and beers survive and it is run more in keeping with the 2020s rather than the 1950s. Strangely the mobile phone ban may actually be entering the mainstream. Humphrey Smith a man before his time? Hmmmm
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