On Sunday I saw two completely different games of football happening at the same time in Southern Town Park. This was the weekend of the annual Abingdon Youth FC Festival of Football. So on one side 150 teams, from age under 9 to under 15, were playing in a series or tournaments.

Nearby over on the rugby pitches, American Football had started, and the Oxford Saints beat Gloucester Centurions 41-0. The Saints next host Bristol Apache at Abingdon RFC on Sunday 27th May.

They bring their own goalposts and vocabulary such as “…the oxford Defence was generating turnovers through fumble recoveries…” and “… a brief spell of punt trading…” and “…Jonny Dover tacked on his 3rd PAT out of 4…”

Back at the Youth Football there was a replica FA Cup, and lots of stalls. On one stall there was a signed picture of the Chelsea team who have just won the UEFA Champions League on Saturday beating Bayern Munich on penalties.

After this victory, the headline in the Süddeutsche Zeitung read “How much bad luck fits into one match?”. The Gazzetta dello Sport reported on the temporary  Chelsea Manager Di Matteo saying “Two and a half months at the helm were sufficient to initiate a series of miracles”.

In The Guardian we read of “The Great Escape.”