Quiz - what are England's Euro U21 winners of 2023 up to now?
England are about to begin their European Under-21 Championship defence in Slovakia.The Young Lions face the Czech Republic in their Group B opener, but how well do you remember the 2023 heroes?Can you name the 17 players who featured in more than two games two years ago - with a clue about each one from the campaign just finished?
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Daily Mail
21 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Zak Crawley and Ollie Pope among THREE England centurions on day one of the Test summer against Zimbabwe to give selectors a headache
The first day of the Test summer at times felt more like a charity match, but Zak Crawley and Ollie Pope were in no mood to take pity. Comments from Ben Stokes on the eve of this well-meaning but mismatched Test against Zimbabwe suggested that Jacob Bethell – currently at the IPL – would resume at No 3 against India next month, which sounded ominous news for one of the top order. England tried to clarify Stokes's remarks, insisting he meant Bethell would return to the squad but not necessarily the team. But the narrative was unavoidable: when Craig Ervine won the toss and chose – reasonably enough – to bowl under grey Nottingham skies, neither Crawley nor Pope could afford to fail. The fact that each scored an accomplished century could yet turn what head coach Brendon McCullum has called a 'good headache' into a full-blown migraine. Who on earth do the selectors leave out now? The sense that the afternoon had turned into a glorified bat-off between an opener who averaged eight in New Zealand before Christmas and a No 3 with a poor record against India and Australia – England's next two opponents – meant that a sparkling 140 off just 134 balls from Ben Duckett passed by as unobtrusively as the River Trent. But Stokes and McCullum spent the build-up to this game declaring their determination to move to the next level, and if that means omitting one of the players they have spent the last three years buffing and bolstering, so be it. England will not regain the Ashes by avoiding awkward conversations. The subplot lent some desperately needed context to a day when England did as they pleased in racking up 498 for three at 5.66 an over against a modest attack weakened further by a back spasm in the field to opening bowler Richard Ngarava. There were five maidens all day, and it was a surprise there were as many. Duckett, deftly exploiting the unusual angles of his home ground, and Crawley, driving powerfully, set the tone with a punishing stand of 231 in 41 overs – England's highest at home for the first wicket since 1960, when Colin Cowdrey and Geoff Pullar began with 290 against South Africa at The Oval. Crawley and Pope then added an equally untroubled 137, before Crawley – hobbling after edging a ball into his hip – fell for 124. To highlight Zimbabwe's plight, the man who walked out with the scoreboard reading 368 for two was Joe Root, who needed just 28 to reach 13,000 in Tests, and duly ticked them off before miscuing a pull off Blessing Muzarabani to fine leg. At stumps, Pope had 169 from just 163 deliveries, and was no doubt feeling better about life. Crawley, too, was breathing a little more freely after his winter working-over by New Zealand's Matt Henry – and grateful for the faith shown in him. 'It's awesome to be backed by two people I respect massively,' he said. 'They obviously think I'm the right man in the job, and I have that belief in myself as well. 'When you're playing for your country, you're surrounded by good players and that pressure's coming all the time. It's a great thing for our national side at the moment. But I love being around this team, and I wish we could play every week.' Whether yesterday's events were good for Test cricket was another matter. Trent Bridge was half full, and less lovely than normal while the pavilion undergoes redevelopment beneath a blanket of scaffolding and tarpaulin. And Zimbabwe, in their first Test against England for 22 years, looked what they were: a committed but limited group of cricketers, many of whom would struggle at county level. As if to prove the point, they had warmed up with a heavy defeat at Leicester by a bunch of peripheral domestic players. Muzarabani had little luck with the new ball, and the medium-pace Victor Nyauchi occasionally troubled Duckett from round the wicket. But England may not be gifted as many leg-stump half-volleys in 10 Tests against India and Australia as they were in one day here. Perhaps the only potential loser, despite Stokes's pledge, was Bethell himself. His performances in New Zealand, where he was thrown in at No 3, revealed a special talent. Yet English cricket's slavish desire to remain on the right side of India meant his central contract – signed at great expense to the ECB – was deemed less important than his loyalty to Royal Challengers Bengaluru. As a result, he has missed out on the chance to score a confidence-boosting Test hundred before the real stuff begins. Instead, England will have a job explaining themselves to whichever player Bethell replaces against India at Headingley on June 20. The only scenario that spares both Crawley and Pope is to drop off-spinner Shoaib Bashir, and share the slow-bowling duties between Bethell's left-armers and Root's off-breaks. While Stokes will not care to admit it, that could strengthen his side in all departments. For the time being, the first day confirmed that England are a stronger team when Crawley and Pope are both firing. It's just that there has been plenty of misfiring too. Crawley's first-innings average for Kent this season has been two, and he played within himself to the extent that he had contributed just a third of the total by the time he missed a sweep and fell lbw to Sikandar Raza. Pope, by contrast, reached 50 from 48 balls and his eighth Test hundred from 109. If he wasn't quite batting with the freedom of a condemned man, he did give the impression of a player who knew he had a point to make. Here's hoping the selectors have stocked up on the aspirin.
Times
42 minutes ago
- Times
Thomas Tuchel, being fluent in a foreign language can be dangerous
Thomas Tuchel, the German coach who is the newish manager of the England men's football team, is a notable polyglot, eloquent in French and Italian and possessing a greater command of English than many of his predecessors in the job, including several of the native speakers. He is certainly a big improvement on Graham Taylor's 'do I not like that!', Sven-Goran Eriksson's 'first haff good, second haff not so good' mantra and Fabio Capello, who claimed he needed just 100 words of English to instruct his players, yet barely made it into double figures. Another ex-England boss, Steve McClaren, when managing a club side in the Netherlands, bizarrely decided communication was best achieved speaking English with a comedy Dutch accent. Tuchel's very fluency, however, has now caused a potential rift with one of his best players, the young Real Madrid star Jude Bellingham. Asked to comment on Bellingham's histrionics following a miserable defeat to Senegal this week, Tuchel heaped praise on his player but added that sometimes his 'rage and fire … comes out in a way that can be a bit repulsive. For example, for my mother, when she sits in front of the TV.' Tuchel's grasp of vocabulary is commendable, yet lacks nuance. Frau Gabriele Tuchel may indeed be 'repulsed by' Bellingham's loss of temper, but for her son to say she finds the same behaviour 'repulsive' takes the criticism up a notch. 'Unpalatable' would have been a better choice. Or 'distasteful'. • Thomas Tuchel struggles to hide annoyance — in German or English 'Repulsive' is a strong word, summoning the instinctive human aversion to infection, injury and waste products. And if in time and translation the word is detached from describing his mother's reaction to the specific misdeeds and extended instead to cover the character of the miscreant, then Tuchel may find he has caused serious offence. Not least to Denise, Jude Bellingham's own mum.
BBC News
an hour ago
- BBC News
'Really special' - Devils celebrate GOAT Martin
"It's difficult to describe the impact Joey Martin has had on this organisation on and off the ice."For managing director Todd Kelman, Cardiff Devils' number 88 is, "our best player over the last decade". For most fans, forward Martin is simply the GOAT - the greatest of all Saturday (17:00 BST) at the Vindico Arena, the 36-year-old from Ontario joins a select group of players the club has hounored in recent seasons; Great Britain internationals Mark Richardson, Matthew Myers, Josh Batch and Ben is the first non-British player to be awarded a testimonial game in the past eleven years of the current ownership."I'm extremely grateful, it's really special, it's made me reflect on all the years I've been here."I always feel very fortunate that I landed at this club and have so many great memories that I can look back on," said Martin. Martin first joined the Devils in 2014 and after a brief spell away during Covid returned in his first five-season spell with Cardiff, he won the league's Forward of the Year three times, Player of the Year twice and made the league's All-Star team every the 2024-25 season - his ninth at the Welsh club - he became the highest scoring import player in Elite Ice Hockey League (EIHL) history and was Devils' Players' Player of the Year."As the league has improved, he has still always been one of the top players," added Kelman on announcing Martin would be back for a 10th campaign in a Devils jersey. "We are very lucky to have had him all these years." 'My love for the game started in the driveway' Martin was born and bred in the small city of Thorold, ten miles west of Niagara Falls on the United States border."Like most Canadian kids my love for the game started in the driveway and the street playing with my brothers and friends and then in the winters on the frozen lakes and ponds," recalls started his junior hockey with local club Thorold Blackhawks, then as a teenager he joined Aurora Tigers in the Ontario Provincial Junior Hockey League, winning the 2007 Canadian National Junior Championship, the Royal Bank hockey followed whilst studying physical education at the University of Nebraska in Omaha, sometimes in front of 17,000 after captaining Omaha Mavericks in his final student season, in 2011 Martin went professional with Ohio-based Toledo Walleye."Going from school to the East Coast Hockey League (ECHL) was a bit of an adjustment. Sometimes you play four games in five nights, a lot of road trips on the bus, it's a bit of a grind," added ECHL sits third in the North America hierarchy, below the American Hockey League (AHL) and the dream destination for all hockey players, the globally-dominant NHL."I had a few different call ups [to the AHL] with Houston Aeros, Texas Stars and Bridgeport Sound Tigers."After three years of that, getting called up and sent down, I was over that whole lifestyle and that's why I ended up pursuing options over here [the UK]." 'I thought, oh no!' In late July 2014 Martin received a call from an old Toledo teammate, Doug Clarkson, who had signed for a British club under new ownership – the Cardiff Devils. They were looking for a centre-mid forward and wanted to know if Martin was the time Martin knew very little about professional hockey in the UK."I thought that people generally came here and did their master's degree at the end of their career," he remembers."I knew it was more of a North American style, it was physical, they had enforcers, so I thought it'd be similar to the East Coast Hockey League but other than that I wasn't familiar with Cardiff, the club or the history."I kind of made a quick decision and I'm very happy with that decision now!"Martin also had no idea that his new hockey home, Devils' ice rink, was just a timber prefab, clad with bright blue tarpaulin."I remember coming on the bus and seeing this big, beautiful glass building and I said, 'Wow! That's a beautiful arena.' And they said, 'No, that's the international swimming pool, the arena's round the corner'."And then we kept driving and I saw the Big Blue Tent and I thought, 'Oh, no!'"But we had a team that just embraced it, we actually loved playing in the tent. It was a hostile environment for other teams, it was definitely an advantage for us." That first season for Martin saw the Devils unexpectedly reach the Challenge Cup Final, where they faced the sizeable challenge of taking on Sheffield Steelers in their own Sheffield was, though, a huge migration of Welsh fans from Cardiff, one that lives long in the memories of those that were there."I remember stepping on the ice for the warm-up and seeing half that arena filled with our fans. I remember thinking this is pretty special," said Martin."That's when you really saw how much it meant to the club, to the fans."Goals from player-coach Andrew Lord and centreman Chris Culligan gave Cardiff a 2-1 victory to lift their first trophy in eight years."Winning that game was awesome, just to see the look on everybody's faces and the joy especially with the season before being a tough one when they hadn't made the play-offs," Martin added."The expectations weren't for us to even be there, let alone win it. It was a really special moment."Over the next four seasons Cardiff Devils experienced a golden period winning the league twice, the 2017 Challenge Cup and two Play-Off hockey in the UK was suspended due to the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, Martin went to Norway, playing in front of reduced crowds for Stavanger Oilers though eventually their 2021 season was curtailed before the Elite Hockey Ligaen then joined Graz99ers in Austria who were more than aware of Martin's qualities after he had been a crucial part of Cardiff's two group victories against them in the 2019 Champions Hockey halfway through the season Martin decided it was time to return to Cardiff."I really enjoyed my time in Graz, but I just felt that I wanted to come back to a club where the expectations were to win, and I wanted to be back in that kind of culture."And it just felt like the time to come back home." 'It's been an awesome ride - I never want it to end' Somewhat unexpectedly for Martin, the first two seasons after his return were trophyless for in January 2025 the Devils won their first European title - the IIHF Continental Cup. "That was the third year in a row of us being in that competition and I felt in the years prior we had a good chance to win it but let it slip," Martin said."I think we were just laser focused this year and it was a huge deal not just for us players, all the fans and all the people in the organisation."Following that win the Devils' chase for the league title fell away to finish in fourth place having also lost the Challenge Cup final to Belfast Giants in feels the extra games played competing in the Continental Cup, and the squad being blighted by injuries thoughout the season, caught up with them."We were playing three lines it felt like for months, and that's hard to do when you're playing three games a week, back-to-back games on the weekend and injuries keep piling up," he said."We held on for as long as we could but it just came to the point where the wheels fell off. It was tough to be a part of."We're not the only team that goes through this, but we were hit pretty hard by injuries this year."It was a campaign so nearly polished off with the shine of a second peice of in the final game of the season Cardiff lost the Play-Off final in double over-time to Nottingham - a tumultuous final that will not be forgotten soon by Panthers fans and neutrals who witnessed the for the Martin and his Devils team-mates losing that epic final, where they came back from 3-0 down to force over-time, will simply rankle forever."We were stunned for a few days to be honest, it's still hard to reflect on because we were so close to winning a trophy that I think this group deserved," reflects Martin."I think losing that Play-Off final ignited something in me that I just wanted to sign back to get another chance to win another trophy."I'm very proud of what we've done here over the years, a lot of success, a lot of good times, a lot of hard work, but I feel that we're not done yet."We need to have some more trophies; we need to create some more memories and hopefully we can do that."If you look at where the game has taken me, I feel fortunate, it's been an awesome ride. I never want it to end."
