​By. Guillem Balague. BBC Sport Columnist. 26 minutes ago. 9 Comments. Julian Alvarez’s phone kept ringing, every day.. It was Rodrigo de Paul, then Antoine Griezmann, then Giuliano Simeone, the Atletico Madrid’s manager’s son.. And behind every call, pulling the strings, was Diego Simeone himself, firing messages into Alvarez’s phone during the Copa America and the Paris Olympics of the summer of 2024.. In the end, the World Cup-winning Argentina striker, who had just clinched the Premier League with Manchester City, had to beg for it to stop.. “Tell your dad to stop calling,” Alvarez finally told Giuliano. He was coming, so could they all back off?. The story shows the first time Alvarez encountered the intensity of Diego Simeone, and also why he chose Atletico Madrid over Paris St-Germain, who were reportedly offering up to £8.7m a season in wages.. Image source, Getty Images. ‘The Little Spider’. Alvarez grew up in Calchin, a town of 3,000 people in the province of Cordoba, Argentina.. His brother Rafael started calling him ‘La Aranita’ – the Little Spider. When he played on the neighbourhood pitch, 50 metres from his front door, no-one could get the ball off him. He seemed to have too many legs.. Opponents from other villages would show up asking: “Is La Aranita playing today?” The name stuck and his teachers were the only people who ever called him Julian.. Aged 11, he impressed in a trial with Real Madrid, but returned home anyway, a decision he calls one of the most formative of his life.. At 15, a River Plate scout named Juanjo Borrelli needed only one training session to decide that this kid from a tiny Cordoban town had to come to Buenos Aires. Borrelli told him he would start on the bench but he did not stay there for long.. River Plate made Alvarez. In one extraordinary Copa Libertadores performance against Alianza Lima, he scored six goals in a 8-1 win, which announced him to the world.. Playing for one of South America’s giants, where winning every game is an obligation, forged the competitive instinct that now defines him. “Once you’re at River,” he said, “you can never lose a game without it hurting you.”. From River Plate, he went to Manchester City in January 2022. There he won the Champions League in his debut season, becoming part of Pep Guardiola’s machine and thriving within it. He was 23. It was all happening very fast. Then came the calls.. Image source, Getty Images. ‘The chance to be my best’. What Atletico manager Simeone sold him was a football project that had the striker at the centre of it. Alvarez wanted to feel wanted.. “He told me I could give the club something huge,” he recalls. “That I’d have the space and the opportunity to be my best version.”. The Argentines already at the club helped too – De Paul, Griezmann’s warmth, the Spanish language, a culture that felt closer to home than Paris or Manchester ever could.. In August 2024, Atletico Madrid confirmed the deal – 95m euros (£81.5m), a club record receive  

​Image source, Reuters. 59 minutes ago. 19 Comments. It’s just over two weeks until the 2026 Formula 1 season resumes with the Miami Grand Prix, following the cancellations of the races in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.. BBC F1 correspondent Andrew Benson answers your latest questions.. Of the drivers, whose contracts are up this year and who has something to prove? – Christopher. This is a really tricky question to answer because Formula 1 teams have become increasingly secretive about the lengths of their driver contracts in recent years.. However, some things are known for certain.. The big one is Max Verstappen. He’s the keystone of the driver market because he is regarded by everyone as the best out there.. The four-time champion has a contract with Red Bull that runs until 2028. However, it has performance clauses in it, which mean he is free to leave the team if he is not in a certain position in the championship by a certain point of the season.. The way Red Bull are performing at the moment, there is absolutely no chance that Verstappen will be high enough in the championship to lock him in by the summer break unless they have a massive turnaround in form.. So, we can assume that Verstappen is a free agent this summer if he wants to be.. The questions then would be: a) does he want to leave Red Bull; b) does he want to go to another F1 team and if so which one; and c) might he leave F1 and go and race elsewhere? In Japan, he confirmed he was considering the last option.. If he wants to stay in F1, the obvious destination would be Mercedes. Team principal Toto Wolff has been courting Verstappen pretty openly for the past two years.. However, both George Russell and Kimi Antonelli are said to have contracts that lock them in at Mercedes beyond the end of this year.. Wolff said in an interview with Austria’s OE24 last month: “We have two drivers with whom we have long-term, multi-year contracts. I couldn’t be happier with both of them.. “Both are delivering top performances, so there’s absolutely no reason to even consider a line-up change, or other drivers. I say this with the utmost respect for Max.”. Of course, in F1 no contract is completely concrete, there is always room for manoeuvre. But on the face of it, that does suggest the door at Mercedes is shut for Verstappen for now.. McLaren might also be appealing to Verstappen, especially with his race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase heading there.. Both Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri are under contract at least until the end of 2027, according to the team. And McLaren Racing chief executive officer Zak Brown has said on a number of occasions that he believes they have the best driver line-up in F1.. It’s also hard to see how Verstappen would fit in with McLaren’s racing philosophy and the way they operated with their drivers in the championship fight last year.. The other leading team is Ferrari. BBC Sport’s sources say that Lewis Hamilton signed a firm three-year deal when he joined the team for  

 Former NATO leader Lord George Robertson, who authored the government’s Strategic Defence Review, has warned that Britain’s security is “in peril” and accused political leaders of corrosive complacency toward defence. In a speech to be delivered on Tuesday, he also targeted so‑called non‑military experts in the Treasury, whom he described as vandalising the SDR’s aims. He argues that the government’s plan to publish a ten‑year defence investment programme to fund the SDR’s vision has been repeatedly delayed, and a spokesperson stressed that the strategy is backed by the largest sustained increase in defence spending since the Cold War, with more than £270 billion being invested across this Parliament.

In a direct political intervention, Robertson will say that Britain cannot defend itself with an ever‑growing welfare budget. Speaking in Salisbury, the former Labour defence secretary will warn: “We are underprepared. We are underinsured. We are under attack. We are not safe… Britain’s national security and safety is in peril.” He will add that there is corrosive complacency today in Britain’s political leadership, with lip service paid to threats and risk signals, and that even a promised national conversation about defence cannot be started.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has previously said the investment plan is on his desk and being finalised. A defence official highlighted the government’s target to spend 3% of GDP on defence by the end of the next Parliament. A government spokesperson said: “We are delivering on the Strategic Defence Review to meet the threats we face.”

There is ongoing debate about NATO members’ defence commitments as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has intensified scrutiny of allied spending. The head of the British armed forces told the BBC last month that he rejected claims Britain was ill‑prepared for the current Middle East conflict, which began on 28 February with a joint US‑Israeli attack on Iran, describing it as probably the most dangerous period in the last 30 years. Some have questioned the UK’s response, including the decision to send a Royal Navy ship to Cyprus to protect the UK military base RAF Akrotiri, which was targeted by a drone attack.

Keir Starmer remains a central figure as the UK weighs how to balance defence needs with other commitments while NATO allies face similar pressures. 

​ByMark Woods. BBC Sport. Alex McKechnie chuckles at the leap of faith he took when he packed up almost all his belongings in Glasgow and booked a one-way flight to Vancouver, Canada on 7 September 1974.. “I had $300 in my pocket,” he recounts. “And no job.”. At that point it might have been hard for the newly qualified physiotherapist to imagine he would one day be telling basketball great Shaquille O’Neal – with his full entourage in tow – to wait his turn to see him.. Or that an idea he had when looking at a children’s playground would spark a novel way to improve recovery from knee injuries.. His pioneering methods would make him one of sport’s most sought-after physios and even earn him a small slice of British sporting history as the only Briton to win an NBA championship ring as either a player or member of the sideline staff.. He has now won six, and at the age of 74 the man credited with bringing players back from career-threatening injuries is still very much in demand.. Image source, Getty Images. Darting with a football in his youth around the mean Scottish streets of Easterhouse – at the time the centre of Glasgow’s notorious ganglands – McKechnie dreamed of playing for Rangers.. But a car crash that injured his father and brother provided his introduction to a different career path.. Watching them recover steadily fascinated a young McKechnie. It persuaded him to study physiotherapy at a technical college in Leeds before heading to North America in search of a job.. Within a week he secured a temporary role at a hospital, and within a month he was working at a university with athletes from many sports. It sparked a fascination with an area of sports science that was under-researched – anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injuries.. When he first started practising there was no surgery that offered a certain cure.. “It was basically an ACL tear, and your career was basically over,” says McKechnie.. Working with athletes, he started to notice a link between cruciate injuries, core strength and pelvic control, and so devised a rehabilitation process based on this.. He got his patients to wear elastic bands – which simulated resistance – while doing a series of exercises that would strengthen their core.. This approach is now common, but back then it was innovative.. Image source, Getty Images. His next Eureka moment came while walking his dog through a park in which children were rocking on spring-mounted horses.. It sowed the seed for the idea of a wobble board which could heighten core strength through muscle movement, training the body to learn healthy patterns which promote overall stability.. The first prototype was “built with a large engineering spring” and Reebok subsequently licensed the idea in 1999, turning it into a mass-market product sold worldwide.. Word was already spreading about the physio who was piloting new approaches and saving careers.. In 1997, when LA Lakers star O’Neal, then the most dominant centre in the NBA, sus  

​’It’s a real issue’ – who is the back-up to Lucy Bronze?. ‘It’s a real issue’ – who is the back-up to Lucy Bronze?. Alex Scott, Fara Williams, Ellen White and Steph Houghton discuss the challenge England face in finding a back-up and eventual successor to Lucy Bronze.. READ MORE: How do Lionesses solve full-back succession problem?. England Women. 1 hour ago. Share page. About sharing