Author: The Guardian

The elements knocked a wild, sometimes thrilling match off kilter and then the deadening technocracy that is smothering elite football took its turn, too. At the end of it all Germany could celebrate to the strains of new wave classic Major Tom, their unofficial anthem, and perhaps dare to fantasise about a new summer fairytale. Much of the night had resembled a fever dream but the prospect of going all the way in their home tournament has become real for Julian Nagelsmann’s team.They will need to be better than this if, as seems likely, they face Spain in the quarter-finals.…

wattWhen we last heard from Gareth Southgate, his tone was filled with contempt, a characteristic stoicism, but also a weariness. He was jeered by England fans after Tuesday night’s 0-0 draw with Slovenia, with a few throwing plastic cups at him.Tensions have risen. From Iceland’s disastrous defeat at Wembley Stadium in what was supposed to be the grand finale of the European Cup in 2024, to the disastrous defeat by Serbia in the first round of the group stage, and then the disastrous performance in the draw with Denmark. There was growing dissatisfaction, lots of booing, and then the manager…

It was the early 90s and I was a 22-year-old fringe dweller living under a tarp at a campground at the base of Mount Arapiles – a rock-climbing hub in western Victoria – alongside a tribe of fellow climbers. On weekends we’d often travel down to the coast to meet up with other young climbers and camp by the beach.One memorable weekend, Jon turned up. I’d met him briefly the summer before at Mount Arapiles and felt an instant attraction to this boisterous and charismatic man.At sundown, we all set off from the camp to spend the night wandering the…

“I take responsibility for what happened,” Luciano Spalletti declared after Italy’s withdrawal from the European Championships. It was a laudable sentiment, although it was somewhat obscured by the rest of his speech, in which he blamed in turn: the heat, the effort of the players in training, his lack of preparation time, the lack of physicality of the footballers produced in Italy Quality.It was indeed the most remarkable outpouring of emotion and analysis from the mercurial national team coach, and to be fair, most of Spalletti’s observations – which he admitted could be seen as “grasping at straws, looking for…

A prime mover behind the Shirion Collective, a conspiracy-minded, pro-Israel disinformation network seeking to shape public opinion about the Gaza conflict in the US, Australia and the UK, is a tech entrepreneur named Daniel Linden living in Florida who co-wrote a guidebook for OnlyFans users, the Guardian can reveal.Shirion has harassed pro-Palestinian activists, including many Jews, offered bounties for the identity of pro-Palestinian protesters, spread conspiracy narratives centered on figures like George Soros, and boasted of an AI-surveillance platform but offered few concrete details of how the technology functions.The Guardian investigation used public records and open source materials to corroborate…

Wimbledon kicks off next week, ushering in the return of a quintessentially British event. Sadly, there will be another rain – rain.Tennis matches begin on Monday. Forecasters are predicting showers for part of the opening week, but the tournament is expected to get off to a sunny start.Met Office meteorologist Ellie Glaisyer said it would feel pleasant on Monday as the weather was “mainly dry” with maximum temperatures around 20 to 22 degrees Celsius.She added: “Looking ahead to Tuesday, there may be a few showers around the afternoon.”There will be some sunny periods between these showers and maybe a little…

Susan, 59 He isn’t afraid to experiment with acrobatic positions Every month, I pay Samuel £840 to meet me for four hours in a Brisbane motel room. I always book the same motel, because it’s wheelchair-accessible: I’m paraplegic, so I have certain accessibility needs. I make sure to arrive early, so I can do my makeup. We’ve been meeting this way for a year, but I still feel a flutter of nerves as I’m waiting for his knock on the door. As soon as I set eyes on him, I feel calmer. He has a gentlemanly, soft way about him,…

Mark Cavendish is fighting for his life after suffering an apparent heat stroke and vomiting at the start of the brutal Tour de France race from Florence to Rimini. In his final Tour de France, the British sprinter managed to get through the stage with the help of four team-mates but ended up nearly 40 minutes behind stage winner Romain Bardet of France.The highly regarded Bardet launched the attack on the Cote de Montemaggio hill, 40 kilometers from Rimini, alongside DSM Firmenich PostNL teammate Frank van den Broek. Finally won the stage and won the yellow jersey. Entering the final…

Emmanuel Macron’s centrist grouping was fighting for survival this weekend before the first round of France’s high-stakes snap election, which could see the far-right National Rally (RN) become the biggest force in parliament.Macron, who warned last week that France risked “civil war” if Marine Le Pen’s anti-immigration RN, or the leftwing New Popular Front coalition, came to power, said at the European summit in Brussels that “uninhibited racism and antisemitism” had been unleashed in France.But his strategy of stoking a climate of fear, in which his centrists are presented as the only rational force to hold back the breakdown of…

Joe Biden’s poor performance in the debates has alarmed Democrats, with some looking for a replacement to replace the 81-year-old president as the party’s standard-bearer.Biden has given no indication that he plans to withdraw from the race, and his campaign has flatly rejected the suggestion. But that hasn’t silenced critics, who have openly questioned whether Biden is the right person to confront Donald Trump, whom the president and his party view as a serious threat to American democracy.In the unlikely event that Biden decides not to run, the most obvious choice to succeed him would be his 59-year-old vice president…