Culture
Milk and murder: The tragedy that overshadows Liverpool vs Accrington Stanley

Belmont Drive runs parallel to Rocky Lane, a noisy thoroughfare in Liverpool that blurs into West Derby Road, connecting the city centre with Anfield and its famous football stadium.
Here, the peeling grandeur of brooding Victorian homes stand incongruously against steel-shuttered shops and their grilles, reflecting the different stages of Liverpool’s past as well as its present.
This was once a highly desirable area, where rich sea merchants bought mansions on Judges Drive. Now, it is synonymous with the red light district of Sheil Road and an abandoned orphanage — supposedly haunted — on the other side of Newsham Park.
Something else is notable about Belmont Drive. It is the location of a block of six flats, one of which was the scene of a murder that linked Liverpool and Accrington Stanley Football Clubs, a television milk advert and Merseyside’s violent drugs scene.
The killing occurred on July 27, 2022. According to the Crown Prosecution Service’s (CPS) account of the incident, the flat’s tenant, Mark Kelly, had left the property to top up the electricity meter. When he returned, he found Learoy Venner — who was living with Kelly temporarily — lying on his back on a camper bed in the lounge. He had suffered a brain injury so severe that the trauma was compared in a post-mortem examination to one akin to a victim of a car crash.
Venner, 53, had sustained his injuries after being punched and kicked in a frenzied attack by Kevin Spaine, a 43-year-old homeless man who was a frequent visitor to Kelly’s property as he bedhopped between flats. All three men were, according to the CPS, drug dependent. In February 2023, Spaine received a life sentence for the killing at Liverpool Crown Court and must serve a minimum of 18 years before he can be considered for release.
The incident would have been noted as shocking but, sadly, not all that unusual in a city that has grappled with drug-related crime for decades. The twist, however, emerged only during Spaine’s sentencing when it was revealed that he was one of the stars of arguably the most famous football-themed advert in British television history.
In 1989, Spaine, then aged eight or nine, had featured in a commercial for the United Kingdom’s Milk Marketing Board. In it, another young boy, dressed in a Liverpool shirt, pours himself a glass of milk after coming in from a game of football. When Spaine reacts in disgust, the boy tells him that Ian Rush — then Liverpool’s star striker — drinks it and that if he didn’t follow his example, he wouldn’t even be good enough to play for Accrington Stanley, then a non-League club.
“Accrington Stanley, who are they?” Spaine asks.
“Exactly,” replies his friend, which prompts a scrap between the two boys over the remaining milk in the glass.
It became one of English football’s most quoted exchanges, endlessly mimicked in playgrounds and pubs the length of the country, yet nobody knew Spaine had featured in it. Despite being a serial criminal offender across nearly 25 years, Spaine’s connection to the advert was never made because when local media in Liverpool had written about it, his surname had been incorrectly reported as Staine.
This weekend, in an FA Cup third-round tie at Anfield, Liverpool face Accrington, now in League Two (the fourth tier of English football), for only the second time. Ordinarily, it would be a tie suffused with romance, the epitome of a cup underdog having its day out at one of the sport’s aristocrats.
Instead, the vicious events that played out in a drug den less than two miles from Anfield on a summer’s afternoon in 2022 offer the grimmest of sub-plots.
You only get fleeting glimpses of Spaine in the milk advert: once when he enters with his friend and again towards the end when they pretend to fight over the glass. On neither occasion can you see his face.
The other boy in the advert was also born on Merseyside, although Carl Rice had already moved to Widnes in nearby Cheshire by the time he travelled to Shepperton Studios in Surrey in 1989, aged eight, where he met Spaine for the first time.
Both children were shot from different angles to try to help them relax and, when the advert was released, Rice did not know that only his face was going to be shown.
During a 2013 interview with the Liverpool Echo, Rice revealed he was paid just £90 ($110.80 at current rates) for his role, joking: “I think my dad spent it on Skol (lager)!” He recalled how eight children from the Merseyside area had been selected to travel to London, with Spaine and Rice making the final cut.
Rice compared the set to being “like a load of kids on their holidays”, but the experience had a huge bearing on his life, even if he never received royalties for it. It set him on a path to a successful acting and writing career, which included stints in famous British soap operas such as Coronation Street and Brookside, the comedy-drama Brassic, and more recently a minor role in the Disney film Cruella alongside Emma Stone.
In 2016, he even reprised his milk role in an advert for Black Cow, a UK-based vodka producer, that parodied the original, although the commercial was subsequently banned by the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority for potentially encouraging excessive drinking.
Rice has embraced the advert’s legacy. He attended Accrington’s FA Cup second-round win over Swindon in December, making a short film with Mitre, the competition’s ball manufacturers, in the process.
You might know Carl Rice from TV drama ‘Brassic’.
But did you know he was the kid in the 80’s Milk advert with the famous line “Accrington Stanley… Who are they?”
We went to @ASFCofficial 2nd Round cup tie against Swindon. It had it all – balls, milk, pens & Holloway. Enjoy! pic.twitter.com/xVrRdhjEQq
— Mitre Sports (@MitreSports) December 4, 2024
There are many reasons why the original advert became such a cultural touchstone in Britain. In 2013, Rice concluded it was because of his “broad Scouse accent, it was ludicrously strong and high-pitched”. The timing of its release also played its part: any link to Merseyside was always going to gain attention, especially in the 1980s, when Liverpool and Everton had dominated English football, sharing all but two of the league titles won that decade.
The city, too, was never far from the headlines. There had been race riots in the suburb of Toxteth in 1981, while the city’s far-left council had been taken to court by the government for passing an illegal budget four years later.
Toxteth burns during the 1981 riots (Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Liverpool was, in short, a city that generated strong opinions and the advert was effectively sending a powerful message: even Scouse urchins drink milk.
In 2006, Rice suggested Tottenham Hotspur was in the original script, only for the club to object, although quite why Accrington was chosen remains unclear. Perhaps it simply served as shorthand for a club which was as far removed from the elite as possible: Accrington were in the Northern Premier League Division One in 1989, English football’s eighth tier. It was another 17 years before they re-entered the Football League.
In 2012, former England cricketer and commentator David Lloyd, a non-executive director at Accrington, claimed the advert, which was still appearing on television screens six years after its release, helped boost the club’s profile, as well as providing a £10,000 cash injection. With Accrington on the verge of promotion to the Football League in 2006, its managing director, Robert Heyes, told the Manchester Evening News: “To this day it has brought us worldwide fame and thousands in merchandise sales to countries as far away as Australia, Canada and America.”

Accrington Stanley celebrate promotion to the Football League in 2006 (Gary M.Prior/Getty Images)
Yet next to nothing was known about Spaine, a Black boy from a family with deep connections to Liverpool’s music scene as far back as the 1970s.
When he appeared in court for the murder of Venner, it was suggested he was originally cast thanks in part due to his football talent. His defence lawyer, John Harrison KC, described him as “a very promising young footballer” but acknowledged that he had “a very long history of criminal offending”.
In his sentencing, covered in forensic detail at the time by the Liverpool Echo, it was revealed that Spaine had made around 40 court appearances for close to 100 offences over more than 20 years, with offences ranging from dealing and possession with intent to supply heroin and crack cocaine, assault, affray, wounding, threatening behaviour, theft and racially aggravated harassment.
Only three months before Venner’s murder, Spaine walked free from court having been handed an eight-week suspended prison sentence for assaulting an emergency worker before he was arrested again for another assault on an emergency worker. During his sentencing for Venner’s killing, prosecuting KC Alan Kent told the court that Spaine’s record pointed “to a man who is short-tempered, who starts fights and reacts in a violent manner”.
Belmont Drive is not exactly secluded.
The flat where Venner was killed is just a few hundred yards from Tuebrook police station, but it also sits by a busy road where the dull roar of car engines rarely subsides. If someone was fighting for their life inside one of the properties, it would be difficult to hear them.
According to the CPS, by July 27, 2022, Spaine was homeless and wanted to access the flat on Belmont Drive. Yet when he rang the doorbell, Venner ignored it, messaging Kelly, telling him that he didn’t want Spaine coming in.

The block of flats in Belmont Drive where the 2022 murder took place (Simon Hughes/The Athletic; house numbers blurred)
When Kelly returned to the flat, Spaine was still hanging around outside. Though he convinced Kelly that he needed a shower, the electric was out and Kelly left to get a top-up. Spaine followed him out soon after, but when he bumped into Kelly, he told him that Venner had left the property as well. Instead, Kelly would find Venner badly beaten. Though paramedics worked on him for longer than an hour, he later died in hospital.
Kelly was initially arrested, but it quickly became clear he was not responsible for the murder. Spaine was banned from his mother’s home under bail conditions following a row, but he went there regardless, telling her he wanted to get changed. She refused to let him in but passed him an outfit. Venner’s blood was later found on Spaine’s discarded clothing.
He denied murder but admitted manslaughter. In court, as reported by the Echo, he claimed he was in a “scatty situation” after a decade of crack cocaine abuse and that “things went t**s up” when he battered Venner to death.
Spaine also denied an intent to rob Venner on the day he received his benefits for drug money — insisting he would have sooner “run out of the Asda (supermarket) with a bag of steak” — and had instead retaliated after punches were thrown at him, as Venner supposedly tried to usher him from the property. After responding to “two swings”, Spaine responded with a flurry of punches and kicks before stopping when “he was no longer a threat”.
“We had chaotic lives, our lives were a mess,” Spaine continued. “I wasn’t thinking straight, Learoy weren’t — we were in a bad place. It all happened so fast. I hadn’t slept for days, I hadn’t eaten for days. How can you expect me to know what I was doing? I wasn’t in control.”
In sentencing, Judge Brian Cummings KC was sure that Spaine wanted to access the flat to try to access drugs or money but concluded this was not “a murder for gain”, accepting that an “eruption of violence occurred spontaneously”, Spaine having become agitated as he waited impatiently outside.
Spaine’s first significant encounter with the law came in 2001 when, aged 22, he was arrested as part of Operation Camelia — a major drugs investigation by Merseyside Police.
He was arrested an hour’s walk south of Belmont Drive in Upper Parliament Street, the road where he was living and one which dissects the Liverpool 8 area of Toxteth, the name a nod to its postcode. On one side there is the Georgian quarter — home to some restored as well as faded townhouses — and on the other, the streets housing the city’s Black community.
“Parli”, as it is known locally, was the scene of the infamous riots of 1981, which took place when Spaine was just a baby. Those involved in the violence prefer to call it an uprising, an en-masse response to the treatment of a police force regularly accused of institutional racism.

GO DEEPER
Liverpool, L8 and the city’s complicated history with Black footballers
For a few years after the uprising, L8 became a frontline for disregarded youngsters. A freedom hung in the air, cafes played loud music and groups would stand outside shops eating food. The summers always seemed to be hot and streets like Granby thronged.
Dealers sold drugs, cannabis initially, before those with greater ambitions moved in and a heroin epidemic ripped through the city, with guns becoming a major problem in the 1990s, just as young men like Spaine and Venner were making their way in the world.
Full social consequences followed: addicts became sex workers and struggled with the stigma for years afterwards; thefts and muggings increased, forcing an older generation to feel more cut off than they already were because they were afraid to go out, especially in the dark.
Though many of the dealers are now in jail for a long time and the mood in L8 is much calmer, it took discipline to resist the pernicious environment. As Jimi Jagne, the son of Gambian and Chinese parents, who emerged as a community leader after the events of 1981, says, “Anyone else who got caught up in the wash was a victim.”
Though Liverpool 8 has increasingly become defined by a large Asian community, hardened attitudes and suspicion of outsiders remain. It is one of the reasons it is difficult to tell the full story of Spaine and Venner, whose families have strong connections to L8. The Athletic contacted several people from the community who knew Spaine but did not want to speak.

Kevin Spaine’s mugshot when he was arrested in 2023 (Merseyside Police)
It is a fair assumption, however, that Spaine fell prey to the same issues that plagued L8 in the 1990s, a period when many locals felt like the authorities gave up on the district altogether and drug dealers, some of them who established international connections, took hold.
According to the Echo, Spaine described himself in court as being a “dependent crack addict”, saying, “I was in a mad state — erratic, paranoid, fidgeting. My mind was ticking overtime. I was dealing with a lot of things. If me and Learoy weren’t on drugs, this wouldn’t have happened.”
In mitigation, Harrison argued that his client was “ruined and dominated by the abuse of illegal drugs”, subsequently leading to his long history of criminal offending. “It’s not an unfamiliar spiral to the court, but it is a tragic one,” he suggested.
Spaine looked a much older man than he actually was when, in his mid-30s, he posted a picture of himself on Facebook in 2016 wearing tatty Liverpool training gear. By that point in his life, Venner also had a major drug problem, to the extent that for a long time before his death, he was a virtual recluse.
When Spaine appeared in the milk advert, his voice had sounded full of youthful enthusiasm and innocence. What happened after is a bleak, sad story, far removed from the feel-good atmosphere that will envelope Anfield tomorrow as Accrington attempt to pull off one of the greatest shocks in the FA Cup’s long history.
The commercial will surely get an airing in the television broadcasters’ pre-match packages and Rush has acknowledged its legacy by inviting Rice to meet him before kick-off at tomorrow’s match.
If his life had taken a different course, Spaine would probably have been joining him at Anfield, sharing his memories and maybe even recreating that famous exchange with Rice for the television cameras.
Instead, he is facing years to reflect on a life of terrible decisions that sucked him away in a destructive vortex of drugs and violence that has claimed so many like him.
(Top photos: Merseyside Police, Milk Marketing Board, Getty Images; design: Eamonn Dalton)

Culture
Romance Books Like ‘Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy’ by Helen Fielding

Good news for fans of everyone’s favorite hapless British diarist: Bridget Jones is back.
The wearer of short skirts, smoker of endless cigarettes and romancer of the playboy Daniel Cleaver and the stealth charmer Mark Darcy takes her fourth turn on the big screen in “Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy.” The movie, which premieres on Peacock on Feb. 13, finds Bridget as a widowed 51-year-old mother re-entering the bizarre world of dating.
The movies are based on a best-selling book series by Helen Fielding, and there are many things to love about Bridget in both formats: the cheeky reinterpretation of Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice,” the zany British humor, the irrepressible heroine herself. If you’ve already torn through the originals and are craving more romance books with similar vibes, we’ve got some suggestions — whichever aspect of the Jonesiverse you’re craving.
If Austen retellings are your dearest love
By Aamna Qureshi
This retelling of “Emma,” set on Long Island, retains all of the original’s charming banter and complex emotions. Humaira Mirza is a matchmaker with an impressive success rate, and when it comes time to find her own perfect man, Rizwan Ali ticks all her boxes. The only problem? Her longtime family friend and verbal sparring partner Fawad Sheikh disapproves, forcing Humaira to confront her own feelings about Fawad and how well he sees her, flaws and all.
By Nikki Payne
Liza Bennett, an activist and D.J., is determined to stop the developer Dorsey Fitzgerald from building expensive condos in her Washington, D.C., neighborhood. But when Liza’s protest spawns a viral meme that turns her life upside down, the foes find themselves turning to each other. Payne gives the hallmarks of “Pride and Prejudice” a modern spin: Dorsey is a Filipino adoptee who feels like a misfit, while Liza’s family, true to the original, causes her endless embarrassment. If you want your Austen with more spice, you’ll find plenty here!
By Gabe Cole Novoa
Part of the Remixed Classics series, “Most Ardently” reimagines Elizabeth Bennett as Oliver, a closeted trans man who feels trapped by the unavoidable expectation that he will become someone’s wife. While sneaking out to explore the world as a gentleman, Oliver meets Darcy — who was rude to “Elizabeth” but is kind and charming to Oliver. The more Oliver experiences the world as himself, with Darcy by his side, the more he dreams of a future defined on his own terms.
By Jenny Holiday
Adam Elliot is having a rough time: His family lost their vineyard to foreclosure, and the new owner is the sister of Freddy Wentworth, the only man Adam has loved. When Freddy, now a world famous chef, returns to the town he hasn’t seen since Adam broke his heart, it is inevitable that the two men’s paths will cross. This modern, queer love story includes all the yearning, grief and heart-wrenching chemistry of Austen’s “Persuasion.”
If British rom-coms are your favorite
By Clare Ashton
Charlotte Albright, a highbrow and bookish lesbian, met the ebullient, working-class Millie Banks at the University of Oxford. They were instant best friends — until they weren’t. Ten years later, Charlotte returns to Oxford with a prestigious job and finds that Millie, who has since realized she’s bisexual, is as fascinating as ever and wants to reconnect. In this charming slow-burn love story, the women’s friendship is as important as their romance, and the development of both is magical.
By Mhairi McFarlane
Laurie Watkinson cannot escape her terrible breakup: It’s bad enough that she and her ex work at the same law firm but according to the office rumor mill, the new girlfriend he ditched her for is pregnant. The rumor mill also reports that Jamie Carter is a Lothario whose sordid reputation has kept him from being promoted. When Laurie and Jamie get trapped in an elevator, they hatch a fauxmance plan to change the narrative. But their fake relationship quickly starts to feel very real.
By Talia Hibbert
The ambitious, exacting bed-and-breakfast owner Jacob Wayne relishes his high standards, so he rejects Eve Brown, chaos personified, when she interviews to be his new chef. But after Eve accidentally breaks his arm with her car (oops), she sticks around to help. Suddenly the unpredictable, impossible Eve is taking up way too much space in Jacob’s kitchen, in his spare room and in his head, and their opposition becomes a spicy and comedic attraction.
By Jack Strange
Quinn Oxford owns Kings and Queens, the only queer bookstore in Hay-on-Wye, Wales. But his stepfather owns the building and wants to evict him. Enter Noah Sage, a romance novelist with sour memories of Wye who finds himself trapped there after a snowstorm. Quinn and Noah’s connection leads to flirting, then kissing, then more. But Noah has no interest in staying in Wye, while Quinn is an integral part of the community. It’s a simple conflict on the surface, but beneath is a cozy and emotional holiday romance.
If fiercely fabulous older protagonists are your jam
By Beverly Jenkins
After 52-year-old Bernadine Brown divorces her cheating husband, she uses the settlement money to buy Henry Adams, Kan. — one of the last surviving towns founded by freed slaves — in an online auction. Henry Adams has become more familiar with foreclosures than opportunities, but Bernadine brings hope to the town’s residents — especially the handsome diner owner Malachi July. This is the first novel in an 11-book series, so there’s plenty more to explore.
By Beth O’Leary
When Leena Cotton is forced to take a two-month sabbatical from work, she retreats to her grandmother Eileen’s cottage in rural Yorkshire. Eileen, who is approaching 80, is lonely and would like another shot at romance, but the pickings in her village are slim. So Leena proposes a swap: Eileen will relocate to London to hunt silver foxes, while Leena decompresses in the countryside. The lessons they learn about being present and celebrating life as it comes yield a delightfully sweet happily ever after.
By Meryl Wilsner
Erin Bennett isn’t expecting anything beyond a night of fun when she connects with a sexy stranger at an off-campus bar, where she’s avoiding her ex-husband during their daughter’s college family weekend. But at breakfast the next morning, she’s stunned when her daughter brings along her friend Cassie Klein — a charming senior, and Erin’s hookup. The women tell themselves it’s wrong, but their spicy chemistry, and deeper connection, is irresistible.
By Jasmine Guillory
Vivian Forest, a 54-year-old social worker, agrees to tag along on a once-in-a-lifetime vacation when her daughter, Maddie, is asked to style a member of the royal family. Left to her own devices while Maddie works, Vivian meets Malcolm Hudson, a private secretary to the queen who is enchanted by Vivian, rearranging his schedule to keep spending time with her. Their flirtation progresses into a holiday fling, tempered by a pragmatic awareness of its expiration date. But despite living thousands of miles apart, Vivian and Malcolm’s quiet determination to be together makes for a perfect confection of a romance.
Culture
Champions League: Man City have Madrid mountain to climb, are PSG better minus Mbappe?

Erling Haaland scored against Real Madrid for the first time in his career.
And then scored another.
But Manchester City still lost at home to the Champions League holders.
It will have felt all too familiar for Pep Guardiola and his team as they threw away a 2-1 lead with four minutes of normal time to play at the Etihad, being stung first by one of their former players, Brahim Diaz, and then the tireless Jude Bellingham, who steered the ball home from close range in added time.
Oh, and earlier in the game Kylian Mbappe had scored with his shin.
Carlo Ancelotti’s side take a 3-2 advantage into the playoff second leg next Wednesday at the Bernabeu, with a place in the Champions League last 16 at stake.
Elsewhere in Europe’s elite club competition, a rocket from Weston McKennie helped Juventus beat PSV, Borussia Dortmund thrashed Sporting CP in Lisbon and Ousmane Dembele continued his ludicrous start to 2025 with two goals as Paris Saint-Germain beat Brest 3-0.
Elias Burke and Seb Stafford-Bloor analyse the key moments from all the Champions League action on Tuesday night…
Typical City… and typical Madrid?
In the battle between the Champions League’s perennial comeback kings Real Madrid, and City, who have made a habit of getting pegged back this season, it should come as no surprise it ended the way it did.
GO DEEPER
The Briefing: Man City 2 Real Madrid 3 – Bellingham’s late, late winner and another City collapse
After an exceptional assist for Mbappe’s goal, Dani Ceballos went from hero to villain 20 minutes later, tripping Phil Foden just inside the box in the 80th minute. Haaland tucked away the resulting penalty, his 49th goal in 48 Champions League games.
Fortunately for Ceballos, two errors in quick succession from Ederson allowed Diaz, who has a Premier League medal with City from their centurion 2017-18 season, to level the scores at 2-2.
Then, after Vinicius Junior went through and lifted a shot/pass over Ederson’s head, Bellingham gambled to tap in a stoppage-time winner from close range to put Madrid 3-2 up ahead of the second leg in Spain.
For City, it was yet another disastrous late collapse after the Feyenoord and PSG debacles in the league phase. Now, they have given themselves a mountain to climb in overturning the deficit at the hardest place to win at in the Champions League.
Are PSG actually better without Mbappe?
Few would have expected PSG to improve when Mbappe left for Real Madrid last summer. But, judging from their comfortable 3-0 win against Brest and impressive form in 2025, coach Luis Enrique appears to have found a harmony in Paris that he struggled to create when the France superstar was leading the line.
As it’s transpired, Ousmane Dembele, 27, once considered a talent so promising that Barcelona paid a fee rising to £135 million, reported by BBC, to sign him as a 20-year-old from Borussia Dortmund in 2017, has more than filled his shoes after an inspired tactical switch from the coach.
Since Enrique brought Dembele into the central striker role from the wings, the position he has fulfilled since emerging as a talented youngster, his goalscoring production has exploded — and his two goals against Brest were another example. His first demonstrated his confidence, dribbling into the box before whipping a left-footed effort into the near post. His second, a deflected finish with his right foot after reacting quicker to a loose ball than the Brest defenders, highlighted his anticipation as a goalscorer. Scoring with both feet is not an unfamiliar feat for Dembele, who famously does not know which is his stronger foot.
Ousmane Dembéle since the middle of December…
Ridiculous form 😂#UCL pic.twitter.com/pgpgXXY4Nd
— Opta Analyst (@OptaAnalyst) February 11, 2025
It was his third brace of the year to go along with two hat-tricks and 15 goals in total — already more than his entire tally in 2024. This switch has given PSG a fresh attacking verve and resulted in a more balanced unit.
Who knows, it might be enough to push the French champions from a side that was teetering above the elimination zone for much of the league phase to contenders for the trophy.
USMNT midfielder McKennie sprinkles some magic for Juventus
McKennie dedicated his celebration to Harry Potter but it was his wand of a right boot that provided the magic as he opened the scoring for Juventus against PSV.
With the USMNT midfielder lurking on the edge of PSV’s box, the ball broke in his direction, bouncing at a good height to strike. McKennie, who is no stranger to scoring spectacular goals, approached the ball at an angle, allowing him to shift his body weight to the left to get over the shot and control his effort while striking through it.
The result was an unstoppable blend of control and power. His shot flew past Walter Benitez in the PSV net, inches below the crossbar. It’s probably a good thing the ball missed him, too, as it would have taken him with it into the back of the net if he was in the way.
Good luck saving that.
Weston McKennie’s shot flies past Walter Benitez, and gives Juventus the lead against PSV.#JUVPSV
🎥 @footballontntpic.twitter.com/AZvhnFdiuH
— The Athletic | Football (@TheAthleticFC) February 11, 2025
WESTON MCKENNIE NEARLY TORE THE COVER OFF THE BALL WITH THIS GOLAZO 🚀 pic.twitter.com/zFdXV6hSDE
— CBS Sports Golazo ⚽️ (@CBSSportsGolazo) February 11, 2025
McKennie, who is a huge Harry Potter fan, celebrated with an imitation of the “Expelliarmus” spell from the film and book franchise. He has a lightning bolt tattooed on his finger in tribute to the speedy Gryffindor seeker, and in 2023 he was pictured alongside Matthew Lewis, who plays Neville Longbottom in the films, posing with a USMNT shirt alongside Brenden Aaronson.
In December, club and national team-mate Timothy Weah joined in on the fun, celebrating together with the “Expelliarmus” after McKennie scored against City.
Rooney and Mbappe: masters of the shinned volley against Man City
Wayne Rooney’s brilliant overhead kick in Manchester United’s 2-1 win over City in 2011 will take some beating as the greatest shinned goal ever scored against City (and perhaps anyone), but Kylian Mbappe surely claimed the silver medal with his goal in the second half for Madrid.
Dani Ceballos, who was playing in his first Champions League knockout match for Real Madrid seven-and-a-half years after signing from Real Betis, played a perfectly weighted lofted pass in the danger area between City’s goalkeeper and defence, which Mbappe latched onto.
With an astoundingly similar technique to his second goal against Argentina in the 2022 World Cup final, Mbappe leapt and volleyed across the ball with his right foot while falling away to the left.
— EuroFoot (@eurofootcom) February 11, 2025
While his effort in Qatar flew past Emi Martinez, the connection wasn’t so pure in this instance, the ball looping off his shin, over Ederson, and into the corner.
Rooney, watching from pitchside at the Etihad while working for Amazon Prime, must surely have been impressed.
Why did it take four minutes to award Haaland’s first goal?
Premier League fans are now accustomed to seeing footage of VAR officials in Stockley Park drawing lines to determine whether a player was offside, but things operate differently in the Champions League — and Manchester City fans found out the hard way.
The Etihad Stadium erupted after Haaland put the home side ahead with a left-footed finish from close range after Josko Gvardiol played a chested pass in his direction. Three minutes and 50 seconds later, another cheer went up around the stadium as the Champions League’s semi-automated offside technology confirmed the goal.
Gvardiol was visibly onside when the initial cross was played towards him, but he, and Haaland, had moved beyond the Madrid defence by the time the Croatian made contact. As long as Haaland was in line with or behind Gvardiol, he’d have been onside, but, as evidenced by the time it took for the technology to confirm, it was very tight.
As the name suggests, the technology eliminates the potential for human error, with the offside pictures taken from cameras in real time. It debuted in the Champions League in 2022-23 and was used at the 2022 World Cup. According to the Premier League, which has plans to bring in this technology this season, offside check delays should be reduced by 31 seconds.
In this case, however, the check took so long that Alan Shearer intimated the wait may have had some relation to Jack Grealish being replaced due to a non-impact injury 10 minutes later.
“It certainly doesn’t help when you’ve got elite athletes standing around for almost four minutes,” Shearer said on co-commentary during Amazon Prime’s UK coverage of the match. “It cannot help you, or your body. It’s not acceptable that players are having to wait around for that long.”
Judging by this incident those marginal calls will continue to take time. At least we got the right decision, eh?
Who exactly is Serhou Guirassy?
The Champions League has an unlikely top-scorer this season: Borussia Dortmund’s 28-year-old Guinean Serhou Guirassy. His tenth goal of the competition might have been his best; it was certainly the most important. An authoritative header that looped up and into the far corner, it settled a Dortmund team who, for much of the first half in Portugal, had had to withstand pressure.
That was vital, because Dortmund have endured a torrid season and are naturally fragile. They sit a distant 11th in the Bundesliga and are now coached by Niko Kovac, who was appointed to replaced the sacked Nuri Sahin two weeks ago.
This was Kovac’s first win. More importantly, it was a result (and performance) that Dortmund will feel they can build on in coming weeks — and that sense of a first step taken owes much to Guirassy.
He was signed from Stuttgart in the summer of 2024 after scoring 28 Bundesliga goals from 28 appearances last season. It was the first truly prolific top-flight season of his career, but at times the season he has laboured at the head of a team who do not create nearly enough chances. He can snatch at opportunities and drift out of games. So, while nine goals from 18 league appearances is hardly bad, it’s not quite what it could have been.
But Guirassy is an elegant, technical footballer rather than just a goalscorer. There were times in the first half when his languid skill on the ball seemed to reassure team-mates clearly short on confidence. And, having scored the goal which changed the entire complexion of the game — truly, an exemplary header — he created the second with a perfect cross for Pascal Gross, who kneed the ball in at the back-post to give Dortmund a 2-0 advantage on the night.
With 10 goals this campaign, Serhou Guirassy has now equalled the record for the most European Cup/Champions League goals scored in a single season by a Borussia Dortmund player
He shares that record with Erling Haaland (10 in 2020-21) and Robert Lewandowski (10 in 2012-13) #UCL pic.twitter.com/pShUgla74f
— Opta Analyst (@OptaAnalyst) February 11, 2025
Even before Karim Adeyemi had scored a third from a flowing counter attack to effectively finish the tie as a contest, Dortmund had started to play with a confidence and security that they have lacked for many months. Guirassy alone did not provide that. By full-time, this had become a commendable team performance. But goals so often change a side’s mood and that could not have been more the case for Kovac’s BVB than it was on Tuesday night.
There were plenty of individual contributions to that, but they followed Guirassy’s lead.
Seb Stafford-Bloor
What happens next?
Champions League playoffs
Tuesday’s results
Brest 0 Paris Saint-Germain 3
Juventus 2 PSV Eindhoven 1
Manchester City 2 Real Madrid 3
Sporting CP 0 Borussia Dortmund 3
Wednesday’s fixtures
(8pm BST, 3pm ET unless stated)
Club Bruges v Atalanta (5.45pm BST, 12.45pm ET)
Celtic v Bayern Munich
Feyenoord v Milan
Monaco v Benfica
The second legs will be played on February 18/19.
Eight teams will advance to the last 16, to join Liverpool, Barcelona, Arsenal, Inter, Atletico Madrid, Bayer Leverkusen, Lille and Aston Villa.
The draw for the last 16, quarter-final and semi-final will take place on Friday February 21.
(Top photo: Carl Recine/Getty Images)
Culture
Maria Teresa Horta, the Last of Portugal’s ‘Three Marias,’ Dies at 87

Maria Teresa Horta, a Portuguese feminist writer who helped shatter her conservative country’s strictures on women, died on Feb. 4 at her home in Lisbon. She was 87.
Her death was announced on Facebook by her publisher, Dom Quixote. The Portuguese prime minister, Luis Montenegro, paid tribute to her on X, calling her “an important example of freedom and the struggle to recognize the place of women.”
Ms. Horta was the last surviving member of the celebrated writers known as the “Three Marias,” who together wrote the landmark 1972 book “Novas Cartas Portuguesas” (“New Portuguese Letters”). A collection of letters the women wrote to one another about their problems as women in Portugal, it opened up a world of repressed female sexuality, infuriated the country’s ham-fisted dictatorship and led to their arrest and criminal prosecution on charges of indecency and abuse of freedom of the press.
“To feminists around the world, as well as to champions of a free press, the police action against the Portuguese women in June 1972 was an outrage that slowly became the focus of an international protest movement,” Time magazine wrote in July 1973.
The Three Marias — Ms. Horta, Maria Isabel Barreno (1939-2016) and Maria Velho da Costa (1938-2020) — became international feminist folk heroes, and the book’s fame alerted the world to repression under the Portuguese dictatorship. Simone de Beauvoir, Marguerite Duras and Adrienne Rich were among the writers who declared their public support. The National Organization for Women voted to make the case its first international feminist cause.
The case was not Ms. Horta’s first brush with controversy.
In 1967 she had been “beaten in the street” after the publication of her breakthrough volume of poetry, “Minha Senhora de Mim” (“My Lady of Me”), she told her biographer Patrícia Reis in 2019. That book “challenged something deeply rooted in this country,” she said: “the silencing of female sexuality.”
Frequent knocks on the door by the Portuguese secret police became part of her life.
The themes of her work grew from what she characterized as a dual oppression: being a woman in Portugal’s male-dominated society and growing up in a police state.
“I was born in a fascist country, a country that stole liberty, a country of cruelty, prisons, torture,” she told an Italian interviewer in 2018. “And I understood very early on that I couldn’t stand for this.”
She also wouldn’t stand for the oppression of women in Portugal’s traditional macho culture. “Women are beaten or raped just as much by a doctor, a lawyer, a politician, whoever, as by a worker, a peasant and so on,” she told the Lisbon daily Diário de Notícias in 2017. “Women have always been beaten and have always been raped. People do not consider the violence that goes on in bed, in the sexual act with their husband.”
In 1971, these preoccupations inspired Ms. Horta to start meeting every week with two friends and fellow authors, Ms. Barreno and Ms. da Costa, to share written reflections on the common themes that troubled them.
They were inspired by a classic work from the 17th century, “Letters of a Portuguese Nun,” supposedly written by a young woman shut up in a Portuguese convent to the French cavalry officer who had abandoned her. Scholars now believe the work was fiction, but its powerful expression of pent-up longing and frustration resonated with the three Marias.
Like the nun in the book, they used letters to one another, as well as poems, to express their unhappiness as women in their early 30s, educated by nuns, married and with children, in a Lisbon stifling under a 35-year dictatorship, rigid Catholicism and ill-judged colonial wars in Africa.
When they published the writings as “New Portuguese Letters,” they vowed never to reveal to outsiders, much less the police, who had written what.
“Their views and natures were far apart,” Neal Ascherson wrote in The New York Review of Books in a review of the 1975 English translation, titled “The Three Marias.” “Maria Isabel the coolest, Maria Teresa the gaudiest personality, Maria Fátima the one who swerved away from pure feminism toward social and psychological analyses of a whole people’s oppression.”
The strange hybrid — Mr. Ascherson called it “a huge and complicated garland” — is suffused with repressed rage at the condition the women find themselves in.
“They wanted the three of us to sit in parlors, patiently embroidering our days with the many silences, the many soft words and gestures that custom dictates,” one of the letters says. “But whether it be here or in Beja, we have refused to be cloistered, we are quietly, or brazenly, stripping ourselves of our habits all of a sudden.”
Another letter says, “We have also won the right to choose vengeance, since vengeance is part of love, and love is a right long since granted us in practice: practicing love with our thighs, our long legs that expertly fulfill the exercise expected of them.”
Although Mr. Ascherson found the book “often maddeningly imprecise, self-indulgent and flatulent,” he said that “where it is precise, the book still bites” and “where it is erotic, it is neither exhibitionist nor coy but well calculated to touch the mind through emotion.”
A few Portuguese reviewers welcomed it as “brave, daring and violent,” as the author Nuno de Sampayo put it in the Lisbon newspaper A Capital. They predicted a difficult reception.
Prime Minister Marcello Caetano attempted to put the authors in jail, calling them “women who shame the country, who are unpatriotic.”
On May 25, 1972, the state press censor banned the book. The next day it was sent to the criminal police department in Lisbon. When the authors’ trial opened in 1973, the crowd was so great that the judge ordered the courtroom cleared.
In May 1974, nearly two years after their arrests and two weeks after the Portuguese dictatorship was overthrown, the Three Marias were acquitted.
Judge Artur Lopes Cardoso, who had been overseeing the case, became a sudden convert, declaring the book “neither pornographic nor immoral.” “On the contrary,” he said, “it is a work of art of high level, following other works of art produced by the same authors.”
Maria Teresa de Mascarenhas Horta Barros was born in Lisbon on May 20, 1937, the daughter of Jorge Augusto da Silva Horta, a prominent doctor and a conservative who supported the dictatorship, and Carlota Maria Mascarenhas. Her paternal grandmother had been prominent in the Portuguese suffragist movement.
Maria attended Filipa de Lencastre High School, graduated from the Faculty of Arts at the University of Lisbon, and published her first book of poetry at 23. She would go on to write nearly 30 more, as well as 10 novels.
She was also a critic and reporter for several newspapers and the literary editor of A Capital.
In the 1980s, she edited the feminist magazine Mulheres, which was linked to the Portuguese Communist Party. (She was a member of the party from 1975 to 1989.)
No matter the genre — poetry, fiction or journalism — she considered writing a public duty.
“The obligation of a poet is not to be in an ivory tower; it is not to be isolated but to be among people,” she told the online magazine Guernica in 2014. “As a journalist, I never isolated myself. I was a journalist at a daily newspaper and every day I went out on the street. Every day I had contact with people.”
She won most of her country’s top literary prizes, but she caused a stir in 2012 when she refused to accept the D. Dinis Award because she objected to the government’s right-leaning politics.
She is survived by her son, Luis Jorge Horta de Barros, and two grandsons. Her husband, the journalist Luis de Barros, a former editor of the newspaper O Diário, died in 2019.
“People ask me why I am a feminist,” Ms. Horta told Guernica in 2014. “Because I am a woman of freedom and equality and it is not possible to have freedom in the world when half of humanity has no rights.”
Kirsten Noyes and Daphné Anglès contributed research.
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