Sports
Steph Houghton spoke from the heart – why have people been so quick to judge or condemn?
It feels like we’ve seen more of Steph Houghton since she’s retired. Not literally — although maybe her burgeoning media career means she is more visible to rival fans who would only glimpse her twice a season — but in a deeper, more human sense.
Houghton’s interactions with the media were always cordial and insightful, but you got the sense there was more under the surface.
In recent months, Houghton has emerged from her shell to become a more candid, forthright voice. Consequently, it’s easier to glimpse the leader who not only represented Manchester City and England with distinction but transformed the women’s game along the way.
Even more so in her memoir, Leading From The Back: My Journey to the Top of Women’s Football, out this week. In it, Houghton lays bare her role as off-field leader, chiefly in her negotiations with the Football Association over contracts and bonuses.
Houghton’s England teams had it better than their predecessors but did not have the luxury, for instance, of direct or business class flights home from the World Cup in Canada in 2015, where they won bronze. They played in the Women’s Super League (WSL) four days later. The most moving chapters are on Houghton’s husband, the former footballer Stephen Darby, and his 2018 motor neurone disease diagnosis, of plans derailed and a player forced to choose between family and football.
There is doubtless a vulnerability and discomfort in drawing back the curtain, if a catharsis, too. As Houghton put it to Ian Wright on Crossways, their shared podcast, she wanted the book to be raw and real. “Sometimes people just see us as footballers, but there’s a lot more going on behind the scenes,” she said.
This brings us to Houghton’s interview with the Guardian about the end of her England career — and, moreover, the backlash. Those who felt Houghton had spoken out of turn, and came across as entitled or bitter, were quick to let her know. (I wonder how many are newer fans of the women’s game and, unfamiliar with her career, have only ever seen Houghton in this light.)
Houghton had received a similar response to a Daily Mail interview before the 2023 World Cup. She detailed the pressure she had put on herself and how hard it had been to justify that dedication when Darby had fallen at home and been rushed to hospital while she was on the bench for a game at Aston Villa.
Houghton’s response on Friday’s podcast was to hope that people would read her feelings in their full context, in her book. Only then will they truly understand her side of the story.
I have read it. I don’t think she came across as entitled or bitter. Rather, as Houghton told of the demise of her England career, all that came through was sadness. Houghton played her final game for England against the Republic of Ireland in a behind-closed-doors match at St George’s Park. Compare that to Jill Scott and Ellen White’s final bows for England: winning the European Championship against Germany at Wembley.
Houghton was thrilled for them but inevitably wished she was among them. She did, at least, get a send-off at Wembley last month, leading the team out one final time, against Germany, in what might have felt like a facsimile of the Euros final — the alternate universe where Houghton has one last run of sold-out games.
Steph Houghton with the England team before their game against Germany at Wembley last month (Marc Atkins/Getty Images)
Houghton details the rehab programme for a torn Achilles that she undertook with England’s blessing — she recorded 10-hour days visiting a physio in Crewe — and says all parties had understood all along that she wouldn’t play for her club before the Euros in 2022. England checked in every six weeks. She made the provisional squad of 30 for the tournament. In the end, manager Sarina Wiegman’s view was that Houghton had not played enough games; the player’s view was that they knew this would be the case.
Houghton recalls her tears when she takes the phone call from Wiegman in which she learns she will no longer be England captain. “I was upset that I’d found out over the phone,” she writes. “For me, that’s a face-to-face conversation.”
I don’t disagree. Houghton never had anything against her successor Leah Williamson but was heartbroken that “the best thing (she) ever had a chance to do” was ending after eight years.
World Cup rejection hits her less hard but is still painful. She felt she had done all Wiegman asked: playing regularly for her club, winning against Chelsea and Arsenal. Wiegman offers a tactical assessment and adds that she doesn’t feel she can take anyone out of the squad for Houghton. Houghton feels like Wiegman has moved the goalposts. Wiegman delivers this news at St George’s Park, where Houghton, allegedly unbeknownst to Wiegman, had been working with Nike. There, Houghton is told she will probably never play for England while Wiegman is in charge.
“I also found myself wondering if this would have been a face-to-face conversation if I hadn’t already been at St George’s,” Houghton concludes. “The problem was more that I think she’d intended to have this conversation over the phone, and she knew she was going to tell me I wasn’t in her plans at all. I thought that called for a face-to-face conversation given the career I’d had.”
Suffice to say it is, as Houghton promised, a little more complex than some responses would have you believe.
This column isn’t about whether you would have taken Houghton to either of those tournaments or about Wiegman’s alleged handling of it all. It is about the reaction to Houghton’s pain, and the expectation we have of female footballers to expose all their vulnerabilities when the audience is not prepared to meet them with empathy.
Why does everyone find it so hard to acknowledge that Houghton was in pain — and understandably so? Her last notable act for England at a major tournament was missing a penalty against the U.S. in the semi-final of the 2019 World Cup. All of it — from the injury to missing out on the Lionesses’ first major trophy — will have triggered complex emotions in a player whose 121 caps were won in such a critical period for women’s football. That is before you examine how Houghton’s personal circumstances make the stakes, in that area of her life, so much higher.
Of late, women’s football has seemed to steep itself in the idea that the sport moves forward when we hear of players’ pain in full. No varnish, no euphemisms: tell us of every horror of your rehabilitation from your anterior cruciate ligament injury, so that we can understand and make change. Tell us of your mental health struggles and your relationships — in which fans are invested — to inspire those watching. Tell us, Houghton, of what really happened with England, because after all this time, we want to know.
Many players, from the WSL’s record goalscorer Vivianne Miedema to the two-time FIFA Best women’s goalkeeper Mary Earps, have been met with understanding for expressing their vulnerabilities. Why not Houghton here?
Is it personal? The criticism of Houghton always seems to have a different kind of fire behind it — is it that her replacement was the hugely popular Williamson, so among a newer, younger, more chronically online fanbase, it is convenient to cast Houghton as a villain? On some level do we still expect sportswomen to be compliant, grateful, and magnanimous when it comes to team selection and tactics? Or simply that the minute those feelings become complex or unpalatable — too much light and shade to fit in a tweet — people don’t want to hear them? That people can’t separate a divisive subject like team selection from the human at the centre of it all?
EPISODE 7 💃 @crosswayspod
My guy helping with some context @IanWright0 ❤️ https://t.co/ttcIxyiIKU
— Steph Houghton MBE (@stephhoughton2) November 8, 2024
I don’t know, but many women’s football fans approached Houghton’s comments — and the end of her England career — with a lack of respect and understanding. Sportspeople, in particular, have devoted their lives to pushing themselves to lengths most of us would rather not, but surely most of us would have felt the same in Houghton’s position. Add in the extraordinary choices she had to make and I’m not sure how many of us would have even had it in us to keep chasing major tournaments.
We should, as a minimum, allow Houghton to give voice to her experience without being so quick to judge, dismiss or condemn.
Sport is a fundamentally human thing. You don’t have to agree with Houghton, but she’s allowed to say all this: allowed to say that it hurt and allowed to say that she wishes it all could have been different. At least let her speak. Given the ending, and the scale of her contribution, she deserves that.
(Top photo: Jacques Feeney/Offside/Offside via Getty Images)
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Ali Haji-Sheikh and Shar Pourdanesh share the fact they are retired NFL players living beyond the glow of the NFL spotlight. But they also share another distinction tying them to current events: They are part of the Iranian diaspora hoping for the downfall of the Islamic revolution.
They make up part of a small group of men who played in the NFL – along with David Bakhtiari, his brother Eric Bakhtiari and T.J. Housmandzadeh – who are decedents of Iranians.
Washington Redskins kicker Ali Haji-Sheikh (6) talks to reporters at Jack Murphy Stadium during media day prior to Super Bowl XXII against the Denver Broncos. San Diego, California, on Jan. 26, 1988.(Darr Beiser/USA TODAY Sports)
Haji-Sheikh: Self-Determination For Iranians
Haji-Sheikh, 65, played in the 1980s for the New York Giants, Atlanta Falcons and Washington Redskins. He was a first-team All-Pro, made the Pro Bowl and was on the NFL All-Rookie team in 1983 for the Giants and, in his final season, won a Super Bowl XXII ring playing for the Washington Redskins and kicking six extra points in a 42-10 blowout of the Denver Broncos.
Now, Haji-Sheikh is the general manager at a Michigan Porsche-Audi dealership and is like the rest of us: Keeping up with world events when time permits.
Except the war the United States is currently waging against the Islamic Republic of Iran is kind of different because Haji-Sheikh’s dad emigrated from Iran to the United States in the 1950s and built a life here.
And his son would like to see freedom come to a country he’s never visited but has a kinship to.
“It’s a world event,” Haji-Sheikh said on Monday. “I am not a big fan of the Islamic revolution because I am not Islamic. I would like to see the people of Iran be able to determine their own future rather than it be determined by a few people. It would be nice to see them having a stable government where the people can actually decide how they want it to go.
Green Bay Packers kicker Al Del Greco (10) talks with New York Giants kicker Ali Haji-Sheikh (6) on Sept. 15, 1985, at Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The Packers defeated the Giants 23-20.
Iranians Celebrating And Americans Protesting
Haji-Sheikh hasn’t taken to the streets of his native Michigan to celebrate a liberation that hasn’t fully manifested mere days after the American and Israeli bombing and elimination of the Ayatollah.
“I’m so far removed from that,” Haji-Sheikh said. “My mom is from Michigan and of Eastern European background. My dad is from Iran. But it’s like, he hasn’t been back since I was in eighth grade, so that’s a long time ago. That was when the Shah was still in power, mid-70s, ‘74 or ’75, because if he ever went back after that he never would have left. They would have held him, so there was no intention of going back.
“But if things change he might want to go, you never know.”
Despite being removed from any activism about what is happening in Iran Haji-Sheikh is an astute observer.
“My favorite thing I’m seeing right now on TV is the Iranians in America celebrating because there’s a chance, a glimpse, maybe a hope for freedom,” Haji-Sheikh said. “And you have these people in New York protesting. What are you protesting?”
Pourdanesh Thanks America, Israel
Pourdanesh retired from the NFL in 2000 after a seven-year career with the Redskins and Steelers. The six-foot-six and 312-pound offensive tackle was born in Tehran. He proudly tells people he was the NFL’s first Iranian-born player.
Pourdanesh is much more visible and open about his feelings about his country than others. And, bottom line, he loves that President Donald Trump is bombing the Islamic regime.
“This is a great day for all Iranians across the world,” Pourdanesh posted on his Instagram account on Saturday when the war began. “Thank you, President Trump, thank you to the nation of Israel. Thank you for everybody that has been standing up for my people, my brothers and sisters in Iran across the world. This is a great day.
“The infamous dictator is dead – the one person who has contributed to deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iranians and other people around the world, if not more. So, congratulations to my Iranian brothers and sisters. Now, go and take back the country.”
This message was not a one-off. Pourdanesh has been posting about what has been happening in Iran since January, when people in Iran took to the streets demanding liberty and the government’s thugs began killing them, with some estimates rising to 36,500 deaths.
Offensive lineman Shar Pourdanesh (68) of the Pittsburgh Steelers blocks against defensive lineman Jevon Kearse (90) of the Tennessee Titans during a game at Three Rivers Stadium on Sept. 24, 2000, in Pittsburgh. The Titans defeated the Steelers 23-20. (Photo by George Gojkovich/Getty Images)
‘Islam Does Not Represent The Iranian People’
“[The] Islamic Republic does not represent the Iranian people,” Pourdanesh said in another post. “Islam does not represent the Iranian people. For almost 50 years, the Iranian people and our country of Iran has been taken hostage by a terrorist regime, and it’s time to take that regime down.”
Pourdanesh was not available for comment on Monday. I did speak to a handful of other Iranian-Americans on Monday. They didn’t play in the NFL, but their opinions are no less valuable than those of former NFL players.
And these people, some of them participating in rallies on behalf of a free Iran, do not understand the thinking of some Americans and mainstream media.
One complained that media that reports on reparations for black Americans based on slavery in the 1800s dismisses the Islamic takeover of the American Embassy in 1979 as an old grievance.
Another said his brother lives in England, where Prime Minister Keir Starmer immediately called the American and Israeli attacks on the Ayatollah’s regime “illegal” but, as the head of the Crown Prosecution Service took years to do the same of Muslim rape (grooming) gangs in the country.
(Starmer announced a national “statutory inquiry” in June 2025).
Offensive lineman Shar Pourdanesh of the Washington Redskins looks on from the sideline during a game against the Pittsburgh Steelers at Three Rivers Stadium on Sept. 7, 1997, in Pittsburgh. The Steelers defeated the Redskins 14-13. (Photo by George Gojkovich/Getty Images)
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Pourdanesh Calls Out NFL Silence
And finally, Pourdanesh put the NFL on blast. He said in yet another post that during his career, the NFL asked him to honor black history, asked him to stand for women’s rights, asked him to fight for equality for those who cannot defend themselves.
“I did everything they asked, and now I ask the NFL this: Where are you now? Why haven’t we heard a single word out of the NFL? NFL, Commissioner Roger Goodell, all the NFL teams out there, all the players who say they stand for social justice, where are you now?
“Why haven’t we heard a single word out of you with regard to the people who have been killed as of today? The very values you claim to espouse are being trampled right now. Why haven’t we heard a single word?”
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The day after he saved the Dodgers’ season, Will Klein was hungry. He ordered from Mod Pizza.
He drove over to pick up his order. The guy that handed him the pizza told him he looked just like Will Klein.
“You should just look at the name on the order,” Klein told him.
Chaos ensued.
“He actually started screaming,” Klein said. “He just started flipping out, which was funny.”
Thing is, if it were two days earlier, the guy would have had no idea what Klein looked like. Neither would you.
On Oct. 26, Klein was the last man in the Dodgers’ bullpen, a wild thing on his fourth organization in two years, a last-minute addition to the World Series roster.
On Oct. 27, the Dodgers played 18 innings, and the last man in the Dodgers’ bullpen delivered the game of his life: four shutout innings, holding the Toronto Blue Jays at bay until Freddie Freeman hit a walk-off home run.
Dodgers pitcher Will Klein celebrates during the 16th inning of Game 3 of the World Series against the Toronto Blue Jays at Dodger Stadium on Oct. 27.
(Mark J. Terrill / Associated Press)
When Klein returned to the clubhouse, Sandy Koufax walked over to shake hands and congratulate him.
That was Game 3 of the World Series. The Dodgers, the significantly older team, slogged through the next two games, batting .164 and losing both.
If not for Klein, that would have been the end. The Blue Jays would have won the series in five games, and there would have been no Kiké Hernández launching a game-ending double play on the run in Game 6, no Miguel Rojas tying home run and game-saving throw in Game 7, no Andy Pages game-saving catch and Will Smith winning home run in Game 7, no Yoshinobu Yamamoto winning Game 6 as a starter and Game 7 as a reliever.
There would have been no parade.
When Klein rescued the Dodgers, he had pitched one inning in the previous 30 days.
“You can never take your mind out of it,” he said. “You’ve got to stay prepared. Something might come up, and you don’t want to be the guy that gets thrown in the fire and just burns.”
The Dodgers are not shy about grabbing a minor league pitcher, telling him what he can do better and what he should stop doing, and seeing what sticks. If nothing sticks, the Dodgers are also not shy about spitting out the pitcher and designating him for assignment.
In his minor league career, Klein struck out 13 batters every nine innings, which is tremendous. He walked seven batters every nine innings, which is hideous.
The Dodgers scrapped his slider, mixed in a sweeper, and told him his arm was so good that he should stop trying to make perfect pitches and just let fly.
“A lot of times, pitchers are guilty of giving hitters too much credit, and hitters are guilty of giving pitchers too much credit,” said Andrew Friedman, the Dodgers’ president of baseball operations.
“Part of our job is to show them information that helps instill some confidence. I think that really landed with Will.”
In his four September appearances with the Dodgers — after a minor-league stint to apply the team’s advice — he faced 17 batters, walked one, and did not give up a run. That’s why he isn’t buying the suggestion that something suddenly clicked in the World Series.
“Things were incrementally getting better,” he said, “and then you add that to the atmosphere. It amplifies it to 100. All the prep work and mental stuff that I had been doing, I finally got a chance to shine.”
Said Dodgers manager Dave Roberts: “He’s done it in the highest of leverage. You can’t manufacture that. You’ve got to live it and do it. So, since he’s done it, I think he’s got a real confidence.”
Dodgers pitcher Will Klein speaks during DodgerFest at Dodger Stadium on Jan. 31.
(John McCoy / Getty Images)
Klein last started a game three years ago, at triple A. After making 72 pitches in those four innings of Game 3, did he entertain the thought that maybe, just maybe, he was meant to be a starter after all?
“No,” he said abruptly. “I hate waiting four or five days to pitch and knowing exactly when I’m going to pitch.
“When I did, the anxiety just built. I want to go pitch. I hate sitting there and waiting. That kind of eats at you. I like being able to go out to the bullpen and have a chance to pitch every day.”
The Dodgers are so deep that Klein might not make the team out of spring training. Whatever happens, he’ll always have Game 3.
In the wake of that game, a fan wanted to buy a Klein jersey but could not find one. So the fan made one himself before Game 4, using white electrical tape on the back of a Dodger blue jersey. I showed Klein a picture.
“That’s cool,” Klein said. “That’s pretty funny.”
Dave Wong, a Dodgers fan living in San Francisco Giants territory, also wanted to buy a Klein jersey.
“They didn’t have a jersey for him,” Wong said.
He settled for the Dodger blue T-shirt he found online and wore it to last Friday’s Cactus League game against the Giants, with these words in white letters: “Will Klein Appreciation Shirt.”
This, then, would be a Will Klein Appreciation Column.
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NBA player calls for Hawks to cancel their ‘Magic City’ strip club promotional night out of respect for women
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An NBA player has taken exception to an Atlanta Hawks promotional night, which is a nod to a famed strip club in the city.
The Hawks have “Magic City Night” scheduled for March 16 against the Orlando Magic, but a player for neither team isn’t too fond of paying tribute to a strip club, which has been famed for its late-night stories involving athletes, celebrities and more.
While the Hawks call it an ode to a “cultural institution,” San Antonio Spurs center Luke Kornet shared his displeasure in a letter posted on Medium.
Luke Kornet of the San Antonio Spurs reaches for the ball during the third quarter against the Brooklyn Nets at Barclays Center on Feb. 26, 2026 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. (Ishika Samant/Getty Images)
Kornet, a nine-year veteran and 2024 NBA champion with the Boston Celtics, called for the Hawks’ promotional night to be canceled later this month, saying that it is disrespectful to women to honor the strip club.
“In its press release, the Hawks failed to acknowledge that this place is, as the business itself boasts, “Atlanta’s premier strip club.” Given this fact, I would like to respectfully ask that the Atlanta Hawks cancel this promotional night with Magic City,” Kornet wrote in his post.
“The NBA should desire to protect and esteem women, many of whom work diligently every day to make this the best basketball league in the world. We should promote an atmosphere that is protective and respectful of the daughters, wives, sisters, mothers, and partners that we know and love.”
The Hawks boasted about the theme night in its press release, including a live performance by famous Atlanta rapper T.I., a co-branded, limited-edition hoodie and even the establishment’s “World Famous” lemon-pepper chicken wings in the arena.
A general view of signage with the State Farm Arena logo on Nov. 14, 2025, outside State Farm Arena, in Atlanta, GA. (Erica Denhoff/Icon Sportswire)
“This collaboration and theme night is very meaningful to me after all the work that we did to put together ’Magic City: An American Fantasy’,” said Hawks principal owner, filmmaker and actor, Jami Gertz, said in a press release. “The iconic Atlanta institution has made such an incredible impact on our city and its unique culture.”
Kornet wrote that allowing the night to continue “without protest would reflect poorly on us as an NBA community, “specifically in being complicit in the potential objectification and mistreatment of women in our society.”
Kornet wrote that “others throughout the league” were surprised by the Hawks’ decision to have this promotional night.
“We desire to provide an environment where fans of all ages can safely come and enjoy the game of basketball and where we can celebrate the history and culture of communities in good conscience. The celebration of a strip club is not conduct aligned with that vision,” he wrote.
Luke Kornet of the San Antonio Spurs defends against the Charlotte Hornets during their game at Spectrum Center on Jan. 31, 2026 in Charlotte, North Carolina. (Jacob Kupferman/Getty Images)
The Hawks have seen good reception for the promotional night, as Tick Pick reported a get-in price was initially $10 for the game and has since skyrocketed to $94.
Kornet is in his first season with the Spurs, his sixth NBA team, where he has played mainly in a bench role. He averages 7.1 points and 6.5 rebounds per game across 50 contests.
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