Sports Poets Society

Manchester City’s manager turned on the charm as he faced the media in his last pre-match press conference He might ponder how long it will take for the England manager’s job to become available 23 May 2026 - THE GUARDIAN / Sport Will Unwin Pep Guardiola cracked a joke about fielding questions on facing Aston Villa as he entered the room. But after more than 1,100 press conferences in 10 years at Manchester City he knew this one was never going to be normal, requiring him to run through the past decade in half an hour. He has been building up to this for a while, the end nigh for weeks, the energy levels depleted and a break needed, especially from journalists. Guardiola recently revealed that John Stones experienced great relief after announcing he would be leaving City and the manager was embracing the same feelings. There was plenty of emotion initially, Guardiola admitting his leaving speech to the players earlier in the day was “a disaster”. Finding the right words in these situat...

The world’s top women’s cyclist, Demi Vollering, tells Jeremy Whittle about the pressure of speaking out about big issues such as mental health, menstruation and eating disorders Jeremy Whittle 24 May 2026 - THE OBSERVER / Sport Demi Vollering’s first experience of Mont Ventoux came as a teenager, when she was an amateur cyclist, working as a florist in the family business. “It was my first time in the mountains,” she says, “because my parents didn’t go much further during the holidays than the Netherlands or Belgium.” This summer, the 29-year-old Dutch rider will return to the vertiginous “Giant of Provence”, as the highest-paid rider in the women’s peloton, seeking a second win in the Tour de France Femmes. In the past five years or so, women’s cycling has exploded in popularity and Vollering has been at the heart of it. She has finished on the podium of every edition of the Tour de France Femmes since the race was reinvented by French promoters, ASO, in 2022. She also has a “persona...

Kirill Kudryavtsev/ AFP/Getty ImagesCentre of attention:  Luis Enrique celebrates PSG’s Champions League triumph last season. Luis Enrique: a changed man and changed manager How the PSG manager dealt with the death of his nine-year-old daughter Xana ‘He had first-class technique, but he wasn’t a magician.  He knew how to play good football wherever he was’     - Luis Enrique 24 May 2026 - THE OBSERVER / Sport Rory Smith The moment came and went so quickly that it may not have happened at all. In the couple of seconds that the camera lingered on Luis Enrique’s face, he seemed to shift through surprise, realisation, pleasure and pain almost instantly. But maybe “seemed” was the operative word. Maybe it was transference. Maybe that was just how it felt like he would feel. It came in the aftermath of the high point of his managerial career. Paris Saint-Germain team had just completed their obliteration of Inter Milan, following the most one-sided Champions League fi...

Manager who’s transformed English football was beautiful tool for his club, says Rory Smith Rory Smith 24 May 2026 - THE OBSERVER / Sport The many and varied individual prizes on offer in English football tend not to cause the clubs of the Premier League to lose a vast amount of sleep. Having the players’ or fans’ or even Football Writers’ player of the year in the ranks is worth celebrating, but the awards are treated as somewhere between bonus and afterthought. Nice to have, rather than must-win. On more than one occasion in recent years, though, they have caused genuine irritation inside Manchester City. Plenty inside the club were annoyed when Mohamed Salah swept the board in 2018, the year that City accumulated 100 points. There was indignation the following season, too, when Virgil van Dijk claimed the Premier League award, and in 2022, when Salah picked up a hat-trick of honours. City had won the title in both of those campaigns. To many of the club’s executives, this was concre...

Gunners are hardly innocent paupers in the game’s modern financial arms race, but Champions League victory over Qatari-owned Paris Saint-Germain will give the Boys of 26 another chance to prove their ‘bottle’ 24 May 2026 - the observer / Sport Paul Hayward The most affecting image of the season now ending might be those four Arsenal players ambling across the concourse of the Emirates Stadium at 5am like lads merrily leaving a casino at dawn. Dressed in what might be called the opposite of George Grahamera blazers, ties and flannel slacks, Declan Rice, Eberechi Eze and Bukayo Sako are sporting gear this commentary would make a horrible mess of describing, and therefore will not try (Jurriën Timber is more understatedly attired). Except to say that to see title-winning footballers framed by the community they represent and the society they are part of was uplifting. You reach an age where the practicalities feel like everything. So when the happy quartet skipped down the steps of the st...

Assessing the best and worst of the season, with one game to play 23 May 2026 - THE GUARDIAN / Sport Arsenal Bernard Azulay @Goonern5 Onlinegooner.com In this age of the managerial revolving door, I’m enormously proud that the Premier League champions (man, does that sound sweet!) stand as the antithesis to that. Admittedly, “trusting the process” aged a lot of us massively, but the agony of the past three campaigns evaporated with the final whistle at the Vitality. Sure, it would’ve been great to have enjoyed the sort of free-flowing football that the Cherries produced, but you won’t find a Gooner anywhere who gives a monkey’s how Mikel got us over the line. 19 great clean sheets. In the words of Fergie, attack wins games, but defence wins titles. 10/10 Stars/flops Raya, Gabriel, Saliba and Rice were so consistent. But Martinelli managed only one league goal, Madueke lacked composure in front of goal and, while Eze’s one-man demolition of Spurs guarantees him cult status, he’s often s...