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1. “It was only when the man sat near him in a restaurant in Berlin, three hundred miles east, that he was sure he was being followed. The rest of the Spiegel team believed that their e-mails and movements were being tracked, too. “They knew more than we would like,” Wulzinger said. When Buschmann travelled to Las Vegas to investigate the rape allegation, he saw the man again, watching from a parked Volvo…”
An enthralling New Yorker Magazine piece by Sam Knight on the man fuelling Football Leaks.
2. “I heard someone screaming my name and climbing the stairs, stamping their feet,” Pinet told French media. “It was Rocky Elsom, in a black rage, who had forced past my secretary. He was accompanied by (Tongan player) Lei Tomiki, who stayed at the door. Once in my office, Elsom looked at me, face to face and yelled, ‘My cheque! My cheque!’ I thought he was going to hit me.”
Gavin Cummiskey pulls together an array of threads to try to figure out Leinster’s 2009 hero Rocky Elsom, for the Irish Times.
3. “Özil is a vessel. Look at him before each Arsenal game and you’ll see him perform the dua, the Muslim prayer, head bowed, palms turned upward to the sky in a gesture of openness. Even as a player, he is more of a conduit — patiently channelling his inspiration in the service of others rather than seizing the platform for himself. He doesn’t play football in a German way, summoning the forces of Sturm und Drang. Instead, he lets the game flow through him like a prayer.
“That partly explains why the German public’s attitude to Özil the player was always more ambiguous than to others.”
For the Times, James Gheerbrant tries to make sense out of the enigmatic Mesut Ozil.
4. “You hear echoes of old-line British trade unionism in embargoes, said former Independent sports editor Ed Malyon. Sometimes, you just hear the sound of hackery. “Around October or November time in the football season,” said Liew, “somebody, generally at one of the tabloids, will get a particularly productive interview or a particularly productive set of interviews from the mixed zone and will suggest … holding it for Boxing Day.”