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'The wrong summer to go', Klopp the hero and more of the week's best sportswriting

Football’s back and dominating our picks this week.

1. “Michael Thomas’ goal with just 38 seconds remaining took the League crown south to Highbury, drawing the starkest of lines under Liverpool’s season. The squad duly dispersed for summer, most of them broken and emotionally lost.”

In the Independent, Vincent Hogan hails Jurgen Klopp as Liverpool’s drought ends.

2. ‘In that first season of top-flight football Parma did not even have a fixed training location. The players travelled to the club’s Tardini stadium every morning and got changed in the dressing rooms before boarding a bus – sometimes it would take them to facilities owned by another club, sometimes to whatever patch of council-owned land could be found in their home town.’

For The Guardian, Nicky Bandini looks back on the superb Parma side that captured so many imaginations.

3. ‘The students who couldn’t wait to get away from home and who are working in London and Boston for the summer wish that their timing had been better. Every night on their televisions they see a country in carnival, a Dublin city gone mad. In no other June in their memories did people wander around the streets all night beating drums, did guards on point duty ask passing motorists the score, did total strangers embrace each other in crowded pubs. It was the wrong summer to go away.’

30 years on, Maeve Binchy‘s depiction of Ireland in the haze of Italia 90 is just what your Sunday needs. From the Irish Times.

4. ‘I was eight, I think, and just for a cthange, Newcastle United were flailing. They were old-Second-Division bad, beginning a spell of six years in the wilderness, a spell which Kevin Keegan ended, this time — the first time — as a player. It was 1978-79, a season which would conclude with a home game against Wrexham and a gate of 7,134, a post-war low. And so whatever else I was, it was not a glory-hunter.’

A brilliant personal tale of love, loss and football by The Athletic’s George Caulkin.

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    Mute Bazalicous Dunne
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    Oct 22nd 2016, 9:01 AM

    Toulon are a shadow of themselves this season. . Chickens coming home to roost it would seem. . Hopefully the same happens at Saracens soon but this year I feel they are head and shoulders above the rest and likely wont be stopped from retaining the BT cup.

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    Mute Robert James Behan
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    Oct 22nd 2016, 12:17 PM

    The smart money is on Wasps this year! Sure they have bloody well spent enough to win it.

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    Mute John Carey
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    Oct 22nd 2016, 11:34 AM

    Fair play to Peter Stringer for playing the match , a true gentleman and professional.However it was a poor match. Toulon don’t play as well as they used to , that’s for sure. They should’ve blown Sale out of the water. There was some good performances from Halfpenny, Gorgodze and Vermeulen.
    Vermeulen was superb at the breakdown winning 3 key turnovers and working hard clearing out conceding no turnovers and gave a very physical performance up front despite a stupid yellow card. The Springboks in November will need him at his world class form. Wales will also be happy to see a fit Halfpenny for the internationals . Gorgodze gave his standard physical carries and metres helping Ollivon score his 5th try of the season which is great for a blindside and should be expecting that French call up soon.

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    Mute Robert James Behan
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    Oct 22nd 2016, 12:16 PM

    Please can we have anyone but Toulon or Sarries win it this year?

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    Mute Range Rover P38
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    Oct 22nd 2016, 10:48 AM

    Shocking match.

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