Netherlands players celebrate after booking their place in the 2019 Women’s World Cup final. Source: EMPICS Sport
“Nothing demeans a Women’s World Cup more than the tendency to velcro a wider meaning on to everything that happens in it or around it. Over the past three weeks so much of the babble around the matches has been shot through the prism of comparisons with the men’s game when really the difference is fairly basic. The Women’s World Cup is basically the men’s tournament but with more thinkpieces.”
– Malachy Clerkin expresses his views on the potential impact of the Women’s World Cup in the Irish Times.
Spectators at Wimbledon’s Centre Court. Source: Nigel French
“Wimbledon attendees — be it first-timers, fairweather fans or firm afficionados — are, it seems, automatically bestowed with a different sort of knowledge: equal parts giddiness, star-struckness, smugness and self-awareness. A knowledgeable Wimbledon crowd on Centre Court, at any time, is essentially 14,979 people who absolutely cannot stop themselves saying ‘Oh, I love this bit!’ when you’re watching a film they have already seen eighteen times.”
– The galleries at Wimbledon are put under the microscope by The Telegraph’s Adam Hurrey.
USA soccer star Megan Rapinoe. Source: Imago/PA Images
“It would be ridiculous to the point of laughter, if it wasn’t so gross. (And if his legislations and policies weren’t ruining the lives of so many innocent people.) And then what’s legitimately scary, I guess, is like….. how it’s not just his tweets. Because now suddenly you’ve got all these MAGA peeps getting hostile in your mentions. And you’ve got all these crazy blogs writing terrible things about this person you care so much about. And now they’re doing takedowns of Megan on Fox News, and who knows whatever else. It’s like an out-of-body experience, really — that’s how I’d describe it. That’s how it was for me.”
– Sue Bird, girlfriend of USA soccer star Megan Rapinoe, writes for The Players Tribune about her partner’s verbal fracas with President Donald Trump.