We are not yet halfway through the season but already there is a possibility that Leicester City's Jamie Vardy could end up as the season's leading scorer. That would make him the first Englishman to do so since the 1999/2000 season. Here are the last five English strikers to finish top of the charts.
Kevin Phillips (Sunderland, 99/00 – 30 goals)
Like Vardy, Phillips also began his career with a non-league side and actually played with Vardy for Leicester in 2013-14. That haul secured him the European Golden Boot and he remains the only Englishman to win that. Vardy will want to make a greater international impact though: Phillips did not score in his eight England appearances.
Dion Dublin (Coventry City, 97/98 – 18 goals)
If Dublin was the answer, then the question could only have been which season were the Premier League’s defences at their worst. To be fair, he was joint top-scorer with two other Englishmen Michael Owen and Chris Sutton. To be fairer, Dublin was pretty prolific, but never shed the impression that he was a centre-half-turned-striker.
Alan Shearer (Newcastle, 96/97, 25 goals)
If you look for a definition of a typical English centre-forward (at least in the days when such things existed), then look no further Shearer. This was the third successive season he had finished as the season’s top goal-scorer, an absolute peak stretch for one of the country’s greatest. He did it in a time when England had an unusually rich crop of homegrown strikers.
Andy Cole (Newcastle, 93/94, 34 goals)
At his peak, was there a sharper sniffer of chances in England than Cole? He did later give the impression that he needed more than a couple of chances to score but during this season, in particular, he had a sixth sense for where the ball would end up inside the penalty area. His 41 goals in all competitions this season broke a 70-year-old club record.
Teddy Sheringham (Nottingham Forest/Tottenham, 92/93, 22 goals)
Has there been a smarter striker in modern England than Sheringham, or a player more ahead of his time? It is tempting to wonder how well Sheringham would have gone today, or on the continent, where out-and-out strikers are a little meh. He was never quick, but made up for it with his smarts and great vision. This season, the Premier League’s first, he scored the first goal that Sky Sports showed live.
The biog
Name: Marie Byrne
Nationality: Irish
Favourite film: The Shawshank Redemption
Book: Seagull by Jonathan Livingston
Life lesson: A person is not old until regret takes the place of their dreams
Some of Darwish's last words
"They see their tomorrows slipping out of their reach. And though it seems to them that everything outside this reality is heaven, yet they do not want to go to that heaven. They stay, because they are afflicted with hope." - Mahmoud Darwish, to attendees of the Palestine Festival of Literature, 2008
His life in brief: Born in a village near Galilee, he lived in exile for most of his life and started writing poetry after high school. He was arrested several times by Israel for what were deemed to be inciteful poems. Most of his work focused on the love and yearning for his homeland, and he was regarded the Palestinian poet of resistance. Over the course of his life, he published more than 30 poetry collections and books of prose, with his work translated into more than 20 languages. Many of his poems were set to music by Arab composers, most significantly Marcel Khalife. Darwish died on August 9, 2008 after undergoing heart surgery in the United States. He was later buried in Ramallah where a shrine was erected in his honour.
The smuggler
Eldarir had arrived at JFK in January 2020 with three suitcases, containing goods he valued at $300, when he was directed to a search area.
Officers found 41 gold artefacts among the bags, including amulets from a funerary set which prepared the deceased for the afterlife.
Also found was a cartouche of a Ptolemaic king on a relief that was originally part of a royal building or temple.
The largest single group of items found in Eldarir’s cases were 400 shabtis, or figurines.
Khouli conviction
Khouli smuggled items into the US by making false declarations to customs about the country of origin and value of the items.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he provided “false provenances which stated that [two] Egyptian antiquities were part of a collection assembled by Khouli's father in Israel in the 1960s” when in fact “Khouli acquired the Egyptian antiquities from other dealers”.
He was sentenced to one year of probation, six months of home confinement and 200 hours of community service in 2012 after admitting buying and smuggling Egyptian antiquities, including coffins, funerary boats and limestone figures.
For sale
A number of other items said to come from the collection of Ezeldeen Taha Eldarir are currently or recently for sale.
Their provenance is described in near identical terms as the British Museum shabti: bought from Salahaddin Sirmali, "authenticated and appraised" by Hossen Rashed, then imported to the US in 1948.
- An Egyptian Mummy mask dating from 700BC-30BC, is on offer for £11,807 ($15,275) online by a seller in Mexico
- A coffin lid dating back to 664BC-332BC was offered for sale by a Colorado-based art dealer, with a starting price of $65,000
- A shabti that was on sale through a Chicago-based coin dealer, dating from 1567BC-1085BC, is up for $1,950
In numbers: PKK’s money network in Europe
Germany: PKK collectors typically bring in $18 million in cash a year – amount has trebled since 2010
Revolutionary tax: Investigators say about $2 million a year raised from ‘tax collection’ around Marseille
Extortion: Gunman convicted in 2023 of demanding $10,000 from Kurdish businessman in Stockholm
Drug trade: PKK income claimed by Turkish anti-drugs force in 2024 to be as high as $500 million a year
Denmark: PKK one of two terrorist groups along with Iranian separatists ASMLA to raise “two-digit million amounts”
Contributions: Hundreds of euros expected from typical Kurdish families and thousands from business owners
TV channel: Kurdish Roj TV accounts frozen and went bankrupt after Denmark fined it more than $1 million over PKK links in 2013
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
Miss Granny
Director: Joyce Bernal
Starring: Sarah Geronimo, James Reid, Xian Lim, Nova Villa
3/5
(Tagalog with Eng/Ar subtitles)
MORE ON IRAN'S PROXY WARS
THE SPECS
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Transmission: 8-speed automatic
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