Steve Sidwell: ‘I wanted the tears to happen. Then I was done as a player’

Much-travelled midfielder reflects on career as a Premier League player and on the tough decision to call it a day earlier this year

“I’ve been with my wife since we were kids at school and she had never seen me cry, ever,” Steve Sidwell says as he remembers the spring evening this year when he sat next to her on their bathroom floor. Sidwell cried for a long time, his tears leaving little marks wherever he looked, as he finally accepted that his career as a professional footballer was over.

He had joined the Arsenal academy 26 years before, aged nine, and played in the Premier League for Reading, Chelsea, Aston Villa, Fulham and Stoke before joining Brighton in 2016. Sidwell helped Brighton gain promotion to the Premier League last year but he had been injured for the whole of their first season back in the top flight. A varied career, which saw him work under managers as different as Arsène Wenger and José Mourinho, had ended and Sidwell felt overwhelmed.

Continue reading...

from The Guardian https://ift.tt/2oHT6Cs

Comments

REPORT: Furious Spike Lee Paces Aisle, Turns Back To Stage...

REPORT: Furious Spike Lee Paces Aisle, Turns Back To Stage... (Top headline, 5th story, link ) Related stories: REVIEW: Hostless Show Starts With Rock & Rolls Off Rails... Actor knocks borders, walls during speech in Spanish... Stage designed to look like Trump hair? 'GREEN BOOK' OVERCOMES BACKLASH, NABS BEST PICTURE... Top Critics Fume... LIST: WINNERS... Advertise here from Drudge Report Feed https://ift.tt/2SUpIKy

Tiny Love Stories: ‘Who Was I to Deprive Him of Joy?’

By Unknown Author from NYT Style https://ift.tt/2UV7YAG

The Ugly History of Dual-Loyalty Charges

When Representative Ilhan Omar recently complained about “the political influence in this country that says it is okay to push for allegiance to a foreign country,” many noted accurately that she had deployed a trope—dual loyalty—that had been used against Jews for years. But this accusation has a broader history in the United States, having been used against several religious minorities—including Muslims like Omar. Indeed, many battles over religious freedom have revolved around dual-loyalty claims. [ Read: Ilhan Omar just made it harder to have a nuanced debate about Israel ] In the 19th century, many attacks on Catholics stressed that these immigrants were pawns of a foreign power. In the 1830s, Samuel Morse—then a prominent painter and later the inventor of the telegraph—urged Americans to build “walls” and “gates” to keep out Catholic immigrants, who would always be loyal to Rome. Because these Catholic immigrants were decrepit —“halt, and blind, and naked”—they were easy to co...

KnightViral

Search This Blog