John Brewin

Timeline.

🔴13 Nov - Ronaldo gets red card in Portugal’s game v ireland. (Should miss opening 2 games of World Cup.)

🟠18 Nov - Ronaldo meets Donald Trump at White House.

🟢25 Nov - FIFA clears Ronaldo to play in World Cup from start.

Bravo The Times, bravo.

I endured an English public school. But that’s not the only reason I’m unsurprised about the Farage allegations | Let’s put aside the schooldays accusations and look, instead, at the Reform leader’s path since then. I think a pretty clear picture of the man emerges, says author and podcaster Musa Okwonga

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre... - my new article, if of interest please share.

Good call

On the left

Ricky Ross, with Lorraine at No 10.

Andy Murray? Fergie?

Rod or Billy up front for Scotland?

Congratulations, Scotland

‘It’s Paul McCartney or Prince William isn’t it?’

What would happen if every country had to play their most famous person up front?

The Football Weekly panel try to answer that question.

@maxrushden.bsky.social
@barneyronay.bsky.social
@jonawils.bsky.social
@brewin.bsky.social

Libero: Libero 071 | Cristiano Ronaldo’s Search For A Happy Ending Cristiano Ronaldo might not have done it exactly how he would have wanted — getting sent off while losing to Ireland — but the 40-year-old Al Nassr frontman is now on his way to a sixth World C...

New Libero

The final act of Cristiano Ronaldo?

@rorysmith.bsky.social
@brewin.bsky.social
@jameshorncastle.bsky.social

pod.fo/e/354d01

⚽ Football Weekly ⚽

🦜 Troy Parrott's hat-trick heroics sends Ireland into the World Cup playoffs.

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 England make it eight clean sheets out of eight.

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 Scotland and Wales have it all to play for.

@maxrushden.bsky.social @barneyronay.bsky.social , @jonawils.bsky.social @brewin.bsky.social

“Show us yer medals.”

YouTube video by Whitesnake TV Whitesnake - Fare Thee Well (Important Announcement) - Official 2025 Remix 'Forevermore'

Happy retirement, David Coverdale, one of the best frontmen and swordsmen to do it. youtu.be/GNTRgkd4gB0?...

Roman Abramovich complains about his money, but he is winning, even as a pariah | The Observer

Why Ukraine, not Roman Abramovich, is the real victim of the three and half year freeze on the Chelsea sale money...
My commentary
observer.co.uk/news/sport/a...

You know a country by its values. By what a country values. And it turns out that what a country values can change over time. Sometimes, though, there’s a sort of cognitive delay between the country you think you are in, and the country you’ve actually become. For example, you can keep selling yourself, to foreigners, as the country of William Shakespeare and Jane Austen, and luring busloads of tourists to Stratford-upon-Avon and Bath, and put a statue of George Orwell in front of the BBC, and imagine yourself a cultured and literate nation, which the rest of the world admires for its devotion to the written word – but if you then chronically underfund your cultural institutions, and treat your cultural workers with contempt, many people will suspect you of being full of it. And as the decades pass – and fewer and fewer Shakespeares and Austens and Orwells emerge from your little island – even more people will begin to suspect that in truth you do not value culture at all, and are in fact running a giant heritage museum in which the only cultural workers you respect are the dead ones.

Great piece by Zadie Smith. When the right talks about classics or "Western" culture, these works are only important to the extent that it demonstrates their superiority, they have no interest in art in and of itself beyond that www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Libero: Libero 069 | Liverpool's Mo Salah Conundrum Liverpool fans rejoiced when the club signed Mo Salah to a new contract. With Liverpool’s title defence in tatters, the team in chaos, have Liverpool got a Mo Salah problem? The Egyptian has lit ...

New Libero

What’s eating Liverpool?

@rorysmith.bsky.social
@tariqpanja.bsky.social
@brewin.bsky.social

pod.fo/e/3505f9

Rob Steen obituary Other lives: Sports writer who authored a series of accomplished biographies and a cult football classic, The Mavericks

This is sad news. His football book, The Mavericks, is a classic read - and re-read, too, which I did quite recently.
www.theguardian.com/sport/2025/n...

Libero: Libero 068 | The Premier League’s Goldilocks Clubs There is one big question that today's Libero is seeking to answer and that is: is it fundamentally easier to change the fortunes of a club with less historical baggage? Are the likes of Bournemout...

New Libero

Is it easier to be a small club or a big club?

@rorysmith.bsky.social
@jonawils.bsky.social
@brewin.bsky.social

pod.fo/e/34d3cf

Das Toot

Libero: Libero 067 | Is The Premier League Boring? A quarter of the way through this Premier League season, people are starting to ask: is the football we are watching this year any good? Or has the rise of set pieces turned it into a different gam...

New Libero

Is the Premier League boring now?

@jonawils.bsky.social
@brewin.bsky.social
@jackpittbrooke.bsky.social

pod.fo/e/34a63b

Written by an Australian, I think.

Now, Willie was a jockey but he’s also Willie Mullins, the master jumps trainer of the 21st century. From the BBC’s Melbourne Cup report.

Libero: Libero 066 | Celtic And Rangers On The Brink... Is The Old Firm Dying? The rule of thumb in Scottish football is that if one Old Firm club is doing badly, then the other is doing well. So what happens when both Celtic and Rangers are both in troubled times concurrentl...

New Libero

Is this the end of the Old Firm? Are Hearts perfectly placed to exploit it?

@rorysmith.bsky.social
@brewin.bsky.social
@jackpittbrooke.bsky.social

pod.fo/e/347e61

Libero: Libero 066 | Celtic And Rangers On The Brink... Is The Old Firm Dying? The rule of thumb in Scottish football is that if one Old Firm club is doing badly, then the other is doing well. So what happens when both Celtic and Rangers are both in troubled times concurrentl...

Have Rangers and Celtic ever been in simultaneous crises before like they are now? What has happened to two huge clubs over the last 20 years? And can Hearts make the most of their opportunity?

Today's @liberopodcast.bsky.social with @rorysmith.bsky.social and @brewin.bsky.social

pod.fo/e/347e61

Libero: Libero 064 | Real Madrid v Barcelona: A Health Check On El Clasico John Brewin, Jonathan Wilson and Tariq Panja are here to talk about the world’s biggest domestic fixture - self-styled, perhaps, but deservedly so - it's 'El Clasico'. Real Madrid v Barcelona, as...

Great podcast, including a mention of that Rivaldo bicycle kick.

Hosted by @brewin.bsky.social, with @tariqpanja.bsky.social and @jonawils.bsky.social.

pod.fo/e/343860

In which I mistakenly call Barcelona’s franchise player “Limahl”.

Welbeck’s career revival can put him back on England’s World Cup radar Brighton’s Danny Welbeck is playing the best football of his career at 34 and Thomas Tuchel could have a vacancy for an intelligent, hard-working goal-scorer

Danny Welbeck for England? Yeah, maybe.

@brewin.bsky.social for @sport.theguardian.com on the Manchester boy who appears to be getting better with age as he prepares to return to Old Trafford.

www.theguardian.com/football/202...

Libero: Libero 064 | Real Madrid v Barcelona: A Health Check On El Clasico John Brewin, Jonathan Wilson and Tariq Panja are here to talk about the world’s biggest domestic fixture - self-styled, perhaps, but deservedly so - it's 'El Clasico'. Real Madrid v Barcelona, as...

New Libero

El Clasico: still the biggest game in the world?

@brewin.bsky.social
@jonawils.bsky.social
@tariqpanja.bsky.social

pod.fo/e/343860