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Peter Byrne

The secret diary of 'Jose Mourinho' and more of the week's best sportswriting

Plus, Cleveland’s traumatic sports history and the beautiful game of basketball.

1. “What’s that you’re asking? Why on earth am I discussing Donald Trump’s presidential ambitions with the former Scotland and Liverpool striker Ian St John? Because he met him, 25 years ago, in New York, and for the fifth-round draw of the Rumbelows Cup.”

Sachin Nakrani dives back into the Saint and Greavsie archive to a simpler time when Donald Trump was just a humble millionaire, for the Guardian.

2. “Pogba get in the lift, go up to top floor, stay in lift, go down to ground floor, go up to the top floor, again and again. Never get out of lift. For 90 minutes.”

In The Telegraph, Jonathan Liew ghostwrites the secret diary of Jose Mourinho.

3. ’No team does it like the Warriors. Overloaded with talent, they are basketball impressionists following a darker age of rugged realists. And to many basketball purists and critics, what we are watching now is the highest form of basketball as art, in which style is the substance.”

The Beautiful Game is alive and played by the Golden State Warriors, writes John Branch of the New York Times.

4. “Soon after, she was wowing her elders at the Philadelphia Daily News andNew York Times, and, in an era before the internet, writing reported stories at a blogger’s pace. Frey was also living like someone ready to take Manhattan and then the world. Everybody who knew her through the 1990s remembers Frey as both the organizer and the life of every party, and a party could be found in every town Frey filed copy from.”

Ignored by many, Deadspin carry the tragic story of Jennifer Grey, by Dave McKenna.

5. ”All who speak of Dong’s early career talk positively of this imposing physicality he possessed, but the language barrier remained a problem. It takes a certain type of personality to succeed as a player with the challenge of taking on a new language and a new culture rolled in. Dong seemed to be lacking in that department.”

Whatever happened to Manchester United’s Dong Fangshuo? Rory Martin explains for Bleacher Report.

6. “And the gods laughed. Cleveland baseball fans have suffered exquisitely over the last 70-odd years, though the particulars of their misery are not nearly as well known as the anguish in Chicago. For every curse of the Billy Goat, for every foul ball stirring Steve Bartman’s 10th-man instincts, there is a Cleveland moment to match.

“Consider this: The Indians were two outs — two outs! — from winning the seventh game of the 1997 World Series. On that soul-crushing night, this shot-and-a-beer town said to hell with the beer, just keep the shots coming.”

With all the talk of Chicago Cubs’ long wait for a World Series, spare a thought for Cleveland. Dan Barry for the New York Times.

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‘If you want to have a lot of good cream, you’ve got to produce a lot of milk’

Inside the Hurricanes, current champions of Super Rugby

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Sean Farrell
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