Sports

It’s Jesse Lingard’s birthday. He turns 31 today and, at this stage of his life, he must realise it is not going to be easy shifting some of the perceptions that come from being a non-footballing footballer. For now, at least.Speak to Lingard’s former team-mates and they will talk about a guy who has been popular at all his clubs and played at a level, including a World Cup semi-final, that automatically commands respect among his fellow pros.But it is also a harsh reality that many others will be wondering how a player with Lingard’s record of achievement has spent so long without a club and seems less troubled by that situation than you might assume.Lingard last played competitive football in April, a two-minute substitute appearance for Nottingham Forest against his old club Manchester ...

There can’t be many footballers who have gone from playing for a military team to the cover of Vogue in a few months.But that’s just one of the ways South Korean striker Cho Gue-sung’s life has changed in the last year or so.Last year was a decent one for Cho. He joined Jeonbuk Hyundai Motors, one of Korea’s top teams, in 2020 but took a while to find his feet. He had been a defensive midfielder until only a few years before, moving up front to take better advantage of his 6ft 2in (188cm) height and pace, but he was still relatively young in the position.As Korean players sometimes do, he used his mandatory period of military service as a bit of a reset, and to help improve his physical condition. He joined Gimcheon Sangmu — a team comprised of players on military service that was in the s...

It might be time to start taking the Dallas Cowboys seriously as Super Bowl contenders.Because they’ve never looked better in the Dak Prescott era, and their quarterback’s never played better.The knock that’s trailed the Cowboys throughout this season — their lack of a signature victory over a legit contender — was silenced quite convincingly Sunday night. Dallas whupped the Philadelphia Eagles 33-13 in a game the Cowboys were in control of from the start.That means there’s a three-team tie atop the NFC, with the 49ers, Cowboys and Eagles all 10-3. San Francisco owns tiebreakers over both due to head-to-head victories this season, and the Cowboys’ 4-1 division record gives them a slight edge over the Eagles, who are 3-1 in the NFC East. But with four games to play, plenty can change.Dallas...

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — Tell me about your mom.Whoosh. Back to 1985. To the perfect family — Mom, Dad, older brother, younger sister — and their suburban Virginia home. Narrow driveway. Basketball hoop out front. That big window on your right when you walk in the front door, with a little ledge to sit on and peer out.And the soundtrack to this memory? Maybe an old soap opera, playing in the living room background; “General Hospital” was always Mom’s favorite. Or maybe a Jackson 5 record on the turntable. Or a ball clanking off the driveway rim, then bounce-bouncing across the street. Or, more likely, the soft snap of the net as the boy’s ball fell through.“Just a loving home,” Hubert Davis says, beaming. “Just … great.”Until it wasn’t. Until Mom — Bobbie Webb Davis — got that canker sore in he...

In 2017, Joye Lee-McNelis began writing her obituary.Where she was born. In the southern Mississippi community of Leetown.Preceded in death by. Then a blank space, not knowing if she would die before her parents.A note of thanks to her family, to the players she had coached, to the staffs she had worked with and the administrations she had worked for.McNelis had been diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. While thinking about her death, she focused on how her life would be remembered. Her husband, Dennis, thought she was crazy. She reassured him she wasn’t concerned about the act of dying. “I just want to plan it all out,” she told him. “There’s no need having you and our children worrying about it.” She wanted it to feel like a celebration.McNelis is now 61 and in her 20th season as Southern...

Raheem Mostert and Alec Ingold have been doubted by fans, opponents and even their own teams. It’s why they could never doubt each other. More information