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The Independent
3 days ago
- Sport
- The Independent
Harry Kane saves the day for England against Andorra - but drab display a worrying sign for Thomas Tuchel
After a game that was so dismally lacking in spark, Thomas Tuchel had one message he clearly wanted to repeat, doing so in three different interviews: 'We were playing with fire.' It says much that a Champions League -winning manager genuinely thought there was a chance that England might slip up to Andorra. Another comment after this dreadful 1-0 win said even more. Tuchel was so alarmed by England's 'attitude' in the last 30 minutes of this match that he plans a meeting on Sunday to let the squad 'know what we want from them'. That is what might make an otherwise completely forgettable game somewhat significant. Tuchel was furious. And yet, through all of this, it was difficult not to think back to words the England manager said in March: 'The Fifa June window is I think debatable if it makes sense.' Tuchel was at the time talking about how some players won't have played a game for four weeks but, given the amount of discussion about the calendar right now, it's hard not to put that into a wider context. At Espanyol's new stadium, England looked like what they are: a group of elite-league players who have had long seasons, and need a break. Some of them instead have to go to the Club World Cup. They played as if they wanted to be anywhere but here. And that is what most aggravated Tuchel. It was why he was completely unwilling to re-assert his reservations about the June window. 'No excuses,' he said. 'The window is the window.' In other words, they can all have arguments about what this international break should be but that doesn't mean they should allow themselves to drop off in the way they did in the last half-hour. Tuchel simply said he didn't like it. 'I think we lacked the seriousness and the urgency that is needed in a World Cup qualifier. I think we played with fire. I didn't like the attitude in the end. I didn't like the body language. It was not what the occasion needed.' Tuchel instead likened it to an FA Cup game, where the favourite fails to realise there is a real risk of an upset. Andorra's Guillaume Lopez even caused a late scare. 'Matches like this can become awkward when you don't score or you don't score a second goal,' Tuchel said. 'It can be stuck. Even then it's more necessary to not get frustrated, to not let your energy drop, to do the little things right. I had the feeling after 25 minutes that it becomes like we are frustrated with the little things, then everybody tried a little bit different than we tried in the first 25. It looked slower and slower and slower. 'There were no more movements in the last third to attack the box. Everyone wanted the ball then into the foot, no more speeding up the game with runs. You need runs, you need counter-movements, you need nonstop movement. If you don't invest, then it becomes suddenly a stuck game and you get frustrated. 'I think in the end, we played with fire, honestly. I felt it almost like in a cup game where the favourite does not smell the danger. I didn't feel a team that was aware it was only 1-0 in a World Cup qualifier.' It's actually a perfect summation of these types of games, that aptly explains the psychology of such occasions. What Tuchel described was very visible, right up to players forcing dribbles or long shots. There was that growing angst about England. In the end, it was just a natural lack of quality from a side ranked 173rd in the world that settled the game. That's so low it's well over 100 places more than Fifa's absurd World Cup expansion. Either way, Curtis Jones played the ball through, Harry Kane finally got inside, the initial effort was diverted - Andorra's Iker did have a good game - and Noni Madueke diverted it back for the captain. It was Kane's 72nd goal for England, putting him joint 15th in the overall international rankings. Madueke himself missed a good late chance for a second, but that was pretty much it. England had created so little. Even Tuchel remarked how they 'created an xG of three and underperformed with one goal, which is very unusual in a match like this where you usually over-perform an xG'. The manager had said before the game that he was almost seeing this as a training exercise to prepare for low blocks. Except, England weren't playing with the necessary edge, and no one plays a block as low as Andorra. There were long periods when they had five players in their own six-yard box. That ensured Dan Burn was on the ball so much that it was hard not to wonder if Cole Palmer would be better served in that position. England might have benefited from some searching balls. As it was, they toiled to find a way through. Andorra had a well-executed tactical plan, and the game was clearly well worth it for Andorra. They could be proud of this, and Tuchel praised them for their resilience and how 'well drilled' they were. 'It is the third time we have played a deep block, the third time we have played a 5-4-1 from the opponent, and we struggled heavily in the ending of the first and second halves to create, to show the quality in one-on-ones, to create overloads and decisive situations for us.' From all of that, you could say England ultimately won and this game barely matters. Gareth Southgate 's side used to rack up heavy scores in such matches only for it to have no bearing on actual tournaments. It's like a different level of football. Except, there was a wider significance. Tuchel well knows that successful sides can't just switch it on and off like that. Spain 2008-12 weren't like that. Germany 2014 weren't like that. What made them successful was the absolutely punishing standards, and the expectation that they would fully execute their great quality in all moments. They acted as if any drop-off would be fatal. That is what Tuchel demands. 'We got away with a win,' he concluded. 'I think we still deserved the win and we've got three wins and three clean sheets. OK, we will not stop encouraging them and make clear after we have a proper look at the match what we want from them.' It's not about a 1-0 against Andorra. It's about the standards of champions.
CBS News
30-05-2025
- Health
- CBS News
After a devastating crash, 2 Minnesota brothers return to the baseball field
When you're fielding a baseball team, there's an obvious place to start. "Tristan was always a pitcher, so you need a catcher if you have pitcher," explained Tyson Moore, a sophomore catcher. "So that's really how it started." With Tyson, two years younger, behind the plate, and Tristan on the mound, growing up was good for the Moore brothers. "It was fun. Super fun," said Tristan. "We're always super competitive playing sports at a young age, wrestling, all that type of stuff." They've both bloomed into elite players, currently training at a specialized school in Blaine. The brothers live in Buffalo, Minnesota. "Tristan's more like an underdog," explained Tyson, a sophomore at Buffalo High School. "He's not the biggest guy on the field. As you can see, I'm just as big as him. Two years younger than him. He's an underdog, but it's kind of good because he plays with a lot of swag." "He knows what he's gonna do before he does it," complimented older brother Tristan. "He puts his mind to it and once he does it, he does it. If he wants to for 4-for-4 he'll go 4-for-4." Tyson is the top ranked sophomore in Minnesota. "I just feel like I gotta keep working hard," said Tyson. "We're in here four days, sometimes five days a week. Doing speed with my dad, hitting lifting. You just gotta stay humble in that situation." Training every day with each other is the norm. But one fall day, driving to a workout in 2023 was far from normal. "There was a car stopped in the middle of the road, didn't see it in time," remembered Tristan, who was driving. "Hit the right rear door and I flipped four times. Got ejected out of the car and got rushed to the hospital after that." Tristan broke his back and clavicle and collapsed both lungs. "I thought I was never gonna play baseball again. I didn't know if my lungs were ever gonna recover," said Tristan. "I was really heartbroken." After months of grueling rehab, Tristan bounced back. Despite his doubts, earning an offer from the University of Minnesota, where he'll play next season. "It was really rewarding. I wasn't thinking about my past. It was just all focused on what's in front of me. So it was really nice once I got that offer and that call." It was potentially a career-ender for a promising player. But his little brother, in the car at the time of the crash, was Tristan's priority. "I was really worried about my brother the most. Because if anything were to happen to him I would have never been able to forgive myself. So I thank every day that he's safe," said Tristan. "I'm glad everything happened to me rather than him."
Irish Times
12-05-2025
- Sport
- Irish Times
Denis Walsh: This photo strips the camogie skorts controversy back to its absurd essence
Matchday shots of referees and captains have been a staple of sports photography for generations. Once upon a time, those photographs had a certain currency, like a ribbon-cutting ceremony, or communion pictures with the bishop. Newspapers were suckers for ceremony. Those kinds of photographs are rarely published now. Nick Bradshaw's picture from the Kilkenny v Dublin camogie match eight days ago, though, discarded the usual protocols. Absent were the plastic smiles and the prompted handshake between the captains. Instead, the image was arresting and lucid. Bradshaw took the shot from a distance and from behind the referee's back. Nobody is posing for the camera or pretending. You can tell from the expression on the captains' faces and from the referee's hand gesture that their conversation has gone beyond small talk . At the heart of the image, though, the story was stripped back to its absurd essence: a person wearing shorts is telling two other people that they cannot wear shorts. On whose authority? The person in the middle, wearing shorts, enforcing rules dictated by the Camogie Association. READ MORE The hand-me-down photographs of the referee and the captains through the decades never had anything to say, but this one screamed. The picture was a portal into a mixed-up world. What the events of the last week have exposed, yet again, is a dysfunctional relationship between the officer class of the Camogie Association and its elite players. The delegates who voted a year ago to exclude shorts as an option wilfully ignored the wishes of their players, just as they might do again at the emergency Special Congress in a week's time. But this is not an isolated occurrence. It belongs to a pattern. Four years ago, the Camogie Association tried to ram through a fixture schedule against the wishes of its intercounty players. The association's proposal was that the intercounty season would be split in two, with the leagues run off in the spring and the championship staged in the autumn and early winter. It was approved by Central Council and rejected by the players. In a snap poll of its members by the Gaelic Players Association (GPA), 84 per cent voted to boycott the National Leagues if the proposed fixture schedule was adopted. Eight days after the outcome of that poll was communicated to the Camogie Association, its president Hilda Breslin gave an interview to the Irish News. In it, she extolled the virtues of the original proposal. City Hall had no mind to back down. Ultimately, the issue was decided by a referendum of the clubs, which, by a narrow margin, supported the intercounty players. But why should the players have been forced into conflict? At the end of the previous year, 2020, the Women's Gaelic Players Association (WGPA) merged with the GPA. Until that point, however, the Camogie Association had very little truck with the players' representative body and effectively only dealt with them in relation to state funding. At the time, grants from Sport Ireland required a memorandum of understanding to be signed each year by the Camogie Association, the Ladies Gaelic Football Association (LGFA) and the WGPA. That was the only context in which the Camogie Association was prepared to do business with the WGPA – when they had no choice. How did that make their players feel? Valued? Heard? No? Two years later, the Camogie Association flew into turbulence with its elite players again, alongside the LGFA. Neither federation had a player charter in place to meet the kind of basic welfare provisions that their male counterparts were guaranteed. [ 'Scant regard' for players: Cork and Waterford express disappointment over Munster final postponement Opens in new window ] [ Girls' participation in sport falls off a cliff in their teens. The skorts row shows why Opens in new window ] Pre-match, sit-down protests started in mid-June. They continued, with incremental escalations, until mid-July. At that point, the Camogie Association and LGFA relented to the pressure. The players charter that was agreed in 2024 is far from ideal, but it was a start. But why should the players have been forced into conflict? Why was there resistance from the officer class? Should they not have wanted the best for their players? The Kilkenny camogie team in shorts ahead of their Leinster semi-final against Dublin on May 3rd. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw The Munster final was postponed on Friday evening, with less than a day's notice. On Saturday afternoon, the Cork and Waterford players issued a joint statement expressing their anger at how the situation was handled. 'As a united group we want to express our bitter disappointment,' it read. 'It shows scant regard for the preparation of players both mentally and physically to be ready for a provincial showpiece to make this decision just 16 hours before the scheduled throw-in … We feel completely let down.' Between camogie's elite players and the game's officer class, the breakdown in trust is absolute. The responsibility for that lies with the game's leadership. In Gaelic games, this is the era of player power. If a manager has 'lost the dressingroom', county boards or club executives won't close their eyes and ears and hope it goes away. A change will be made. If they have a new manager in mind, senior players will be discreetly consulted. That is accepted as best practice now. On Thursday night, members of the Cork county board executive tried to persuade their players to back down The management of the Waterford camogie team changed in recent weeks. The players influenced that turn of events. Now, intercounty players expect to enter partnership arrangements with intercounty managers and county boards. They expect leadership groups within squads and open channels for dialogue. They're not afraid to ask for whatever they feel they need. The days of autocratic rule are gone. Since the fixtures stand-off in 2021, intercounty camogie players have found their voices. It is strange, perhaps, that it took a year from when Congress rejected two motions on shorts for the kind of uprising that we have witnessed in the last week. But there is no turning back now. On Thursday night, members of the Cork county board executive tried to persuade their players to back down and wear skorts in the Munster final. The players refused to buckle. If delegates at Special Congress vote once again to reject shorts as an option, all the indications are that the players will simply not accept it. This is not a battle that the Camogie Association and its officer class can win. It is not a battle that the players can afford to lose. The bolshiness will prevail. It must.
