Latest news with #Hoddle
Sydney Morning Herald
12-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
The koala has crashed the party – and London's elite are paying attention
In the process, he is fostering a new form of 'koala diplomacy'. His event, which brings together prominent figures from Britain and Australia, is a reminder of how cultural ties can be leveraged to drive change. 'There was a real opportunity here to raise awareness for Australia's threatened wildlife, many of which people in the UK may not know about,' Hoddle says. 'I just don't think Australia was doing enough to take advantage of the obvious soft-power advantage it has here for causes like this.' This year's gala, which attracted 275 guests, was held at London's Merchant Taylors' Hall. Inside the 800-year-old venue – where King Henry VIII once feasted and Winston Churchill dined – a glittering crowd of British aristocrats, Australian expats and diplomatic heavyweights raised glasses of Clare Valley Riesling in honour of a small, sleepy marsupial some had never seen outside a zoo. Notable attendees included author Kathy Lette, socialite Lady Colin Campbell, and former Australian high commissioner to the UK George Brandis and his date, former British prime minister Liz Truss. The evening's entertainment featured Australian Amy Dickson, acknowledged by BBC Music Magazine as one of the world's best classical saxophonists to date. She performed a meditative piece inspired by the sounds of the Australian bush. Last year's event was featured in the pages of Tatler, a prestigious British society magazine renowned for its coverage of the upper echelons of high society, targeting affluent, influential individuals interested in fashion, culture, philanthropy and the arts. It will again feature in the July issue. The funds raised will support the AWC's efforts at Waulinbakh Wildlife Sanctuary, a vital koala habitat in NSW. AWC, founded by the late British businessman and philanthropist Martin Copley in 1991 and boasting King Charles III as its patron, is the largest private conservation organisation in Australia, managing more than 12.9 million hectares of land across 33 sanctuaries. Its science-led approach to conservation includes habitat restoration, feral predator control and Indigenous partnerships, with a focus on reversing the decline of species such as the koala. In just two years, the Koala Gala has more than doubled its guest list from the previous year. Hoddle hopes to continue expanding the event, ultimately building it into a high-profile celebration of Australian wildlife akin to Tusk's African gala. 'We want to take it even further,' Hoddle says. 'It's not just about raising money; it's about creating a global conversation about Australia's biodiversity crisis. The koala is just the start – there's so much more to protect. 'I really have a vision where members of the royal family – who care so much about Australia, biodiversity and protecting endangered species – are the guests of honour.' Koalas, which are often considered the face of Australian wildlife, are a flagship species for AWC. Their habitat is critical not only for their survival but also for myriad other species that share the same environment. Loading 'While koalas are the focus, they represent so much more,' says Elizabeth Crotty, head of development for Australian Wildlife Conservancy UK. 'Protecting their habitat means safeguarding the future of many other species.'
The Age
12-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
The koala has crashed the party – and London's elite are paying attention
In the process, he is fostering a new form of 'koala diplomacy'. His event, which brings together prominent figures from Britain and Australia, is a reminder of how cultural ties can be leveraged to drive change. 'There was a real opportunity here to raise awareness for Australia's threatened wildlife, many of which people in the UK may not know about,' Hoddle says. 'I just don't think Australia was doing enough to take advantage of the obvious soft-power advantage it has here for causes like this.' This year's gala, which attracted 275 guests, was held at London's Merchant Taylors' Hall. Inside the 800-year-old venue – where King Henry VIII once feasted and Winston Churchill dined – a glittering crowd of British aristocrats, Australian expats and diplomatic heavyweights raised glasses of Clare Valley Riesling in honour of a small, sleepy marsupial some had never seen outside a zoo. Notable attendees included author Kathy Lette, socialite Lady Colin Campbell, and former Australian high commissioner to the UK George Brandis and his date, former British prime minister Liz Truss. The evening's entertainment featured Australian Amy Dickson, acknowledged by BBC Music Magazine as one of the world's best classical saxophonists to date. She performed a meditative piece inspired by the sounds of the Australian bush. Last year's event was featured in the pages of Tatler, a prestigious British society magazine renowned for its coverage of the upper echelons of high society, targeting affluent, influential individuals interested in fashion, culture, philanthropy and the arts. It will again feature in the July issue. The funds raised will support the AWC's efforts at Waulinbakh Wildlife Sanctuary, a vital koala habitat in NSW. AWC, founded by the late British businessman and philanthropist Martin Copley in 1991 and boasting King Charles III as its patron, is the largest private conservation organisation in Australia, managing more than 12.9 million hectares of land across 33 sanctuaries. Its science-led approach to conservation includes habitat restoration, feral predator control and Indigenous partnerships, with a focus on reversing the decline of species such as the koala. In just two years, the Koala Gala has more than doubled its guest list from the previous year. Hoddle hopes to continue expanding the event, ultimately building it into a high-profile celebration of Australian wildlife akin to Tusk's African gala. 'We want to take it even further,' Hoddle says. 'It's not just about raising money; it's about creating a global conversation about Australia's biodiversity crisis. The koala is just the start – there's so much more to protect. 'I really have a vision where members of the royal family – who care so much about Australia, biodiversity and protecting endangered species – are the guests of honour.' Koalas, which are often considered the face of Australian wildlife, are a flagship species for AWC. Their habitat is critical not only for their survival but also for myriad other species that share the same environment. Loading 'While koalas are the focus, they represent so much more,' says Elizabeth Crotty, head of development for Australian Wildlife Conservancy UK. 'Protecting their habitat means safeguarding the future of many other species.'
Yahoo
08-05-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Tottenham told of 'slight problem' ahead of Europa League final vs Manchester United
Glenn Hoddle has revealed the 'slight problem' facing Tottenham in an all-English Europa League final against Manchester United. Spurs sealed their place in the showpiece fixture on May 21 with a 5-1 aggregate win over Bodo/Glimt in the semi-final, claiming a 2-0 victory in the second leg thanks to a professional performance in Norway on Thursday night. Meanwhile, Man Utd thumped Athletic Club 7-1 across two legs. It means the Premier League rivals will face-off in Bilbao in less than two weeks, and for one side it is a chance to save what has been a disappointing campaign. Interestingly, Tottenham have beaten Man United three times this season. They recorded a Premier League double over the Red Devils without conceding a goal in addition to knocking them out of the Carabao Cup at the quarter-final stage. However, when speaking on TNT Sports after the win over Bodo/Glimt, Hoddle explained how difficult it is to beat one side four times in one season. He said: "A slight problem for me on a downer, to beat a team four times in one season from the Premier League is really tough, it really is. "But, it's a one-off game, Spurs, when they're on their game, when they defend properly, they're a match for anyone and they've proved that with some of the performances they have put in this year. "Go on and win it, and beat Man Utd" 😅David Bentley & Glenn Hoddle assess Spurs' victory tonight, and their chances in the all-English Final with Man Utd 👀🎙️ @lynseyhipgrave1 | 📺 @tntsports & @discoveryplusUK — Football on TNT Sports (@footballontnt) May 8, 2025 "But it's just wonderful for Ange and those lads, they have worked hard, they have had a real up and down season, so many different injuries, lots of things being said about the club. "At the end of the day, they've found themselves in a final now against Manchester United. "They do love a European final against English opposition. They've had Wolves, Liverpool and now they've got another English team. It's ironic really but it is a fabulous night for the club."
New York Times
20-02-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
Glenn Hoddle on Enzo Maresca and Chelsea: ‘You have to cut the negative noise out'
Glenn Hoddle knows what Enzo Maresca is going through as Chelsea's head coach. Maresca is coming under heavy criticism from Chelsea supporters during his first season in charge at Stamford Bridge — just as Hoddle endured 32 years ago. Their situations are not identical — Hoddle's Chelsea squad did not have the hundreds of millions spent on it that Maresca's has — but, even though a lot of time separates the two eras, there are a lot of similarities. Both men enjoyed successful playing careers (Maresca won five major trophies at Juventus and Sevilla, Hoddle claimed four at Tottenham and Monaco). They arrived at Chelsea having just won promotion from the Championship with a less fashionable team and little other managerial experience to call upon. In Hoddle's case, he had spent two years at Swindon Town, whereas Maresca lasted only 14 games at Parma in 2021 before making his mark at Leicester City in 2023-24. Advertisement Hoddle wanted Chelsea to play with three at the back; Maresca asks his men to go to three at the back when they are in possession. After making a bright start, Hoddle went on a run of nine defeats in 11 league games to put the club in a relegation battle and the fans got on his back. Maresca is beginning to get similar treatment after collecting only nine points from as many games. While Chelsea's position is not quite as dire, the Italian's bad run has still proved costly. Chelsea have dropped from second to sixth in the table and are now just six points clear of Brighton in 10th. If Maresca is looking for a source of comfort right now, then Hoddle might provide some of it. The former England midfielder turned around the negative momentum to get Chelsea to a mid-table finish and, more impressively, the 1994 FA Cup final. It was their first appearance in the FA Cup final for 24 years and there was an open-top parade the following day to celebrate the achievement, despite losing to Manchester United at Wembley. The crowd remained on Hoddle's side until he left to take over the national team in 1996. Hoddle tells The Athletic: 'As a manager, you have to cut out that negative noise from the outside. I had to do it when I was at Chelsea. I remember going through it myself because of my Tottenham background. I will never forget walking out after Chelsea lost 3-1 at Southampton on December 27 to drop to second bottom in the table and we had Newcastle the next day who were near the top of the league. We got on the bus and were getting loads of abuse from Chelsea fans. They were calling me all sorts of things and saying, 'Why don't you piss off back to Tottenham?'. 'It is not a nice situation. The pressure was on. But we beat Newcastle and it changed our season. You just have to stay focused on what your beliefs are. If you start doubting what you are doing, you are history, you are gone. 'Maresca will be hearing it (the criticism), but looking at him as a character, he can ignore it. Being a former player helps you cope with that, it teaches you to have no self-doubt. You have ups and downs as a player, injuries, bad form, and that is the life of a manager, too. You learn to respond to that pressure, it is in your DNA. But when things are not going great, that is when you really do your job.' Advertisement Hoddle tweaked his tactics to go with four at the back and a diamond midfield to improve Chelsea's fortunes. Maresca has shown little sign of abandoning how he sets up his team, hardly enhancing his popularity. Chelsea's form has also not been helped by a run of injuries to key players over the past two months. Maresca is without Nicolas Jackson, Wesley Fofana, Romeo Lavia, Noni Madueke, Benoit Badiashile, Marc Guiu and Mykhailo Mudryk (suspended). Maresca is still changing his first XI regularly despite his diminished options and Hoddle believes this has to stop. 'Chelsea went to another level and suddenly something has happened, something has gone,' said Hoddle, who now works as a pundit on TNT Sports — where Chelsea's game against Southampton will be broadcast, along with all of the fixtures from matchday 27 of the Premier League. 'There is a frailty there and injuries, too, but now is the time for a settled side. 'They need the same team week in, week out, so they can understand how to play together. He just needs to choose who it is. If Chelsea lose the first one, just go again. Not enough teams do that. If they get a couple of good results, the team will grow and then the players from the bench know they have to do more to break into the XI. 'Here's just one example. Reece James has had to be protected a little as he comes back from an injury. But now he has played a few games, if he is the one you want, play him for the next five games. The same goes for Marc Cucurella on the other side. Maresca has options, but don't tinker with it, just play your strongest team and they can get back to where they were.' Cole Palmer is on his longest run without a goal or assist (five games) since joining Chelsea in 2023. His numbers for this season are still excellent, but some of the spark has gone from his displays in recent weeks as Maresca tries to find a solution for Jackson's absence. During the 3-0 defeat at Brighton last week, Palmer was often the furthest man forward, rather than Christopher Nkunku. Advertisement Hoddle is convinced Palmer will soon come good again but added: 'He has to play as a No 10 (attacking midfielder). Sometimes the higher up the pitch you go, the less ball you will get. You will be marked tight, so he is going to come deep to get it. 'Cole is the game-changer for Chelsea. If he scores one, he will be back on track. He has to play what I call the arc, to work across the width of the area. Things happen when he is on the ball. 'I would be saying to Enzo Fernandez and Moises Caicedo, 'Just give him the ball'. If Chelsea get him on the ball 90 per cent more than they are doing right now, he will make the difference. He will turn it around. 'But someone else has got to step up, too, to take that pressure. That's what has been difficult for him. It is hard to keep playing to that level of excellence, to always be the saviour, the one that scores or assists. It's impossible. So when he does have a blip like he is maybe having now, someone else has to take over.' So who does Hoddle see as needing to do that? France forward Nkunku, who has scored just twice in 21 league appearances this season, is unsurprisingly one of them. But Hoddle is also a big admirer of Pedro Neto and wants to see more from the winger signed from Wolves for £51.4million last summer. 'Neto is a top player,' he says. 'He can play on the left side, but he is lethal coming onto his left foot from the right. If he knows he is in the team every week, you will see him grow into the player he was at Wolves. We have seen a few big moments, but he has not been consistent because he has been in and out of the side. Give him the shirt and let him play on the right flank. 'Nkunku now has to become a striker, one looking to go in behind the centre-backs. I don't want him drifting anywhere else to get the ball. Play him in between the 18-yard box and if any cross comes in, he has to be in a position to be on the end of it. That will give Palmer a bit more space anyway because the centre-backs will have to drop off. Advertisement 'Maresca has done a really good job. To have that number of players on taking over, to filter out what he had to very quickly, to do what he felt was right for his team and to keep the camp buying into what he is doing, he has done very well. 'This Chelsea side are not in a relegation fight like mine was. They are on the tipping point of going up the table again. They just need a striker who can put the ball in the back of the net and not rely on Cole Palmer. If they score from a few other areas, players like Nkunku, then it can all turn.'
The Guardian
11-02-2025
- Sport
- The Guardian
‘Why can't it be us?': Exeter target FA Cup shock and fly fan-ownership flag
A Tottenham team of Hoddle, Ardiles and Archibald were the opponents that stopped Exeter City the last time the Devon club went beyond the third round of the FA Cup. A quarter-final defeat by the eventual winners 44 years ago came after the scalps of Leicester and Newcastle in earlier rounds. 'I remember it like it was yesterday,' says Nick Hawker, the chairman of Exeter City Supporters' Trust – which owns the club – since 2017 and a fan for much longer. 'The thrill of it. Going to White Hart Lane was just amazing.' In the intervening decades Exeter have encountered near-extinction but also enjoyed other noteworthy Cup occasions, with the fourth-round visit on Tuesday of Nottingham Forest, third in the Premier League, the next in line. Nuno Espírito Santo follows Alex Ferguson and Jürgen Klopp in taking teams to St James Park. The financial influx from the third-round tie against Manchester United in 2005, when non-league Exeter secured a goalless draw at Old Trafford before losing the replay, is credited with pulling the club, which had recently come under fan ownership, out of the mire. 'We were still firefighting,' says the club secretary, Andy Gillard, who volunteered at the time to help prevent City from going under. The president, Julian Tagg, often says that before the United tie Exeter were £4.5m in debt, and that after those two games they simply had no money. By the time they drew Liverpool at home in 2016, the Grecians were an established Football League club but still a bit of a novelty. A dazed Klopp gave his post-match interview in St James Park's pokey kitchen after watching his second string eke out a 2-2 draw. Given the financial significance to Exeter of the replays against United and Liverpool, it is no surprise that the decision to scrap them is unpopular here. 'Travesty,' Hawker says before he has even waited until the end of the question. 'It just says: 'We're OK if a Premier League club goes to Saudi Arabia or Australia or the United States to do lots of exhibition matches but not OK playing a competitive replay.'' Exeter's manager, Gary Caldwell, has a grand FA Cup history of his own, having lifted the trophy as club captain when Wigan shocked Manchester City in the 2013 final. 'It was an amazing achievement for such a small club,' Caldwell says. 'In this competition, a club always rises above what it can do. I said to the players at the start of this year: 'Why can't that be us?'' Since knocking out Championship Oxford in round three, the Scot's injury-hit side have endured heavy defeats in League One, conceding 13 goals in their past three games. The sale of their leading goalscorer, Millenic Alli, to Luton last month – a year after he was signed from non-league Halifax – has been another problem to contend with but one that comes with the territory, especially at the only fan-owned club in the top three tiers of English football. 'We have to do it a different way,' Caldwell says. 'The Alli sale is probably the greatest example of that. We signed him a year ago for a very small fee and in 12 months' time turned that into a very large fee.' This sustainable model, also fuelled by the resale value of academy graduates such as Ollie Watkins, is not a choice, though. 'That is what the club needs to do, not what it wants to do,' Caldwell says. One initiative run by the ownership is the 1931 Fund, named after the year of another famous FA Cup run, whereby fans who cannot regularly attend matches contribute to the wages of a player, who wears the No 31 shirt. 'It's quite special,' says Exeter's captain, Pierce Sweeney, whose initial move to the club in 2016 was made possible by the fund. 'Now looking back, it meant an awful lot more to me knowing the fans have paid towards me being here.' Since joining City, Sweeney has witnessed the club transform. The size of the squad, coaching staff and home attendances have steadily grown and their training facilities have been upgraded. 'It was quite derelict,' Sweeney says as he remembers the old building at the training ground that was replaced two years ago. 'The canteen was in the same room as the gym. Somebody would be having breakfast and somebody else would be doing a session on the bike beside.' Now, the chef-staffed canteen is located the floor above the kitted-out gym. The stairway that connects them is flanked by a timeline of the club's history, with markers for the 1931 and 1981 Cup runs, as well as for their tour of South America in 1914, when they faced a combined team of players from Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo – widely recognised to be the first match featuring a Brazilian national team. 'You speak to Brazilian football fans and you mention Exeter, and it's incredible how many of them know: 'Ah, Exeter City, yes,'' Gillard says. Alongside a number of Brazilians, Forest could field the in-form Chris Wood and Morgan Gibbs-White. St James Park, with the largest standing-only terrace in the EFL, has also received facelifts. On Tuesday it welcomes a Nottingham Forest side that could include the in-form Chris Wood and Morgan Gibbs-White. 'We're hoping they leave them at home,' Caldwell says with a smile. 'We've got to do the dark arts well,' says Sweeney, who will endure a 'nerve-racking' watch from the stands owing to a calf injury but jokes he hopes to be fit for 'Man United away in the fifth round'. Does he think Forest's long journey south could be a factor? 'I would say it's a long way but I think they'll probably fly.' Tickets for the big night are the same price as for a regular league match. That, and the refusal to sign sponsorship deals with betting companies, are signs of a club with a moral compass. 'We do what the independent regulator is trying to achieve for other clubs,' Hawker says. 'It's not about winning last week or next week, it's about where is the club in three to five years' time.' Exeter's short-term survival no longer hinges on a Cup fairytale, but another scalp on Tuesday would not hurt their long-term prospects.
