Like a cockroach surviving a nuclear apocalypse, Taylor has escaped again
THIS was supposed to be about brain injury in sport. Not the failed Super League. Not Arsenal’s potential new owner Daniel Ek and his Spotify billions. So to hear Gordon Taylor asked those fluffy questions in front of the DCMS committee yesterday was sickening. This wasn’t a grilling of the PFA’s chief executive. Hell, Alan Shearer got a bigger kicking for apparently declining to appear. Taylor wasn’t asked the questions that the families of former footballers who developed dementia wanted and deserved. Even when Taylor cclaimed he could provide a timetable for what’s been done bby the PFA in the llast 19 years, since the death of Jeff Astle, it wasn’t fofollowed up on. SSo I’ll follow up hhere — let’s see ththat timetable ththen. Let’s see wwhat’s written downdo between 2002 — when Jeff died and a coroner ruled it was because of heading footballs — and in 2014, when a journalist informed Jeff’s daughter Dawn that, unbeknownst to her, research into brain injury in football had been discontinued. It is no wonder Dawn is so upset by what she witnessed yesterday. She’s waited almost two decades for this, and yet Taylor was not held to account. He wasn’t asked about that shelved research. Or why the ‘full and open review’ into the PFA has never been published in full. Or even whether he can understand why so many families feel let down. Instead Taylor was allowed to ramble on and worm his way off the hook. What a missed opportunity. All we can do is move on. Like how they say cockroaches could survive a nuclear apocalypse, Taylor survived this scandal. To the bitter end of his time as chief executive, he has not been held to account in the way he should have.
hours and 44 minutes, but entirely merited.
Another counter-attack, Kante finding Pulisic who moved the ball on to Ben Chilwell, ended with a weak shot wide at the far post, but slowly Madrid came back into the game with Benzema very much at the heart of their revival.
In the 23rd minute, teed up by Vinicius Junior, he struck a shot from 25 yards that clipped the outside of a post — then six minutes later got the equaliser that erased much of Chelsea’s excellent early work.
It started with a short Kroos corner, out to Modric, and on to Marcelo, who struck a deep cross, headed back across goal by Casemiro. Eder Militao then won the second header for Benzema to keep it up before smashing the ball over his shoulder on the volley.
Edouard Mendy had no chance. It was a brilliant strike — the work of the man who has truly stepped up to the plate for Madrid in the absence of Cristiano Ronaldo, the role it was said Gareth Bale would assume, or even Eden Hazard. He came on as a second-half substitute but offered little that Chelsea could not handle. They looked very comfortable. Again.