Sporting trailblazer

Many kids come from council estates, but not many came from a council estate in Camden Town, when Britpop was at its peak. It was the ’90s, Oasis were huge and Noel Gallagher would go to the boozer wi

The room erupts. Not with cheers, but laughter. There are around 400 people at Gateshead’s Hilton Hotel, including Dan Burn, and a joke has just been cracked on the microphone at the defender’s expens

You don’t usually join Chelsea halfway through a Club World Cup. And you definitely don’t normally land at the tournament, lace up your boots, then immediately win the thing. Joao Pedro, apparently, d

HARDY PERENNIAL

For the first time in 17 years, Tottenham actually won a trophy – a first European trophy since 1984, no less. That they did it in the same season as their lowest league finish for 47 years made it al

J ack Wilshere is such a smiling character that it’s occasionally easy to forget how much of a competitor he is. Short in stature but not willpower, Wilshere was training alongside Thierry Henry at 14