It is farcical that the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal is being analysed through the prism of how it may affect Gareth Southgate’s England side at the World Cup in RussiaTo properly stress-test any theory,you have to take it to extremes. We can now be confident England’s agonised relationship with the World Cup is a tractor beam into which everything gets sucked eventually. And I mean everything. The poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, and in Salisbury is the latest event to be subsumed in the much bigger fable of England’s mystifying decades of tournament underperformance.
Over here,the sports pages have earnestly contemplated what the fallout from the deployment of nerve agent on British soil means for Gareth Southgate’s squad as Russia 2018 looms into view, with much made of an intervention final month by one security expert. The Russians could insert contamination into the England side’s doping samples, or Edward Lucas told the Jeremy Vine demonstrate,and they could nobble the referees and linesmen. They could also drug England players to “slow them down”. (Leave it – it’s too easy.)Continue reading...
Source: guardian.co.uk