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'Hearts were won watching you play' - ex-Real Madrid star Toni Kroos awarded Germany’s Knight’s Cross in Madrid

'Hearts were won watching you play' - ex-Real Madrid star Toni Kroos awarded Germany’s Knight’s Cross in Madrid

"German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier presented former Real Madrid midfielder Toni Kroos with the Knight's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany at a ceremony held at the Santiago Bernabeu Stadium in Madrid on Thursday, recognising his contributions both on and off the pitch. "In recognition of the special merits acquired by the Federal Republic of Germany, I award Mr Toni Kroos Madrid the Cross of Merit with Ribbon of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany," Steinmeier said during the presentation. The award ceremony, held in the stadium that served as Kroos' home for a decade, brought together teammates, club officials, and journalists. Kroos reflected on his career and the responsibilities that come with being a public figure in professional sports. "Sporting successes are not the only reason for this award. This stadium has been my home for the last ten years. From a footballing point of view, I've experienced my best moments here. But beyond football, it is also about the responsibility of being in the public eye and conveying values through our work," Kroos said, highlighting the charitable initiatives he and his wife Jessica have championed through their foundation supporting seriously ill children. Real Madrid President Florentino Perez said that Kross has 'won the hearts of everyone who has seen you play.' "As president of Real Madrid, it has been an honour to have you with us during one of the most successful periods in our history. Thank you also for your charitable work with the foundation you created with your wife," Perez said. Kroos is regarded as one of the most decorated German footballers of his generation. With the national team, he won the 2014 FIFA World Cup and earned over 100 caps. At club level, he secured five UEFA Champions League titles - four with Real Madrid and one with Bayern Munich - along with multiple La Liga, Bundesliga, and FIFA Club World Cup titles."

The Abandons to With Love, Meghan: Holiday Celebration – the seven best shows to stream this week

The Abandons to With Love, Meghan: Holiday Celebration – the seven best shows to stream this week

Gillian Anderson’s wealthy landowner threatens rural smallholders in a zippily entertaining period drama set in 1850’s Oregon, while the Sussexes’ rental mansion is awash with enough festive kitsch to bother even Santa As his biker epic Sons of Anarchy proved, Kurt Sutter is helpless to resist the iconography of the American outlaw. This western is set in the 1850s, a gritty era of cattle rustlers, blood vendettas and murders with pitchforks. In rural Oregon, the brutal Van Ness family are threatening smallholders as they expand their territory. Will the locals join forces to protect their homesteads? Lena Headey stars as sad-eyed Irish emigre Fiona Nolan, a woman who cannot bear children but has gathered a band of orphans around her. Looming menacingly over her is Constance Van Ness (Gillian Anderson), an amusingly one-note villain. Pure hokum but it rattles along entertainingly. Netflix, from Thursday 4 December Continue reading...

Bog People: A Working-Class Anthology of Folk Horror review – dark tales with a sting

Bog People: A Working-Class Anthology of Folk Horror review – dark tales with a sting

This collection of macabre stories set across England explores class, hierarchy and the enduring nature of inequality Folk horror may have had a dramatic resurgence in recent years, but it has always been the backbone of much of our national storytelling. A new anthology of 10 stories set across England, Bog People, brings together some of the most accomplished names in the genre. In her introduction, editor Hollie Starling describes an ancient ritual in a Devon village: the rich throw heated pennies from their windows, watching those in need burn their fingers. Folk horror by its nature is inherently connected to class and hierarchy. Reverence for tradition is a double-edged sword – or a burning-hot coin. The rain stops, the sun shows, another night comes dark and flowing with energy. I don’t sleep; I feel my way through the landscape, the trees that reach and catch my shirt sleeves, holding on to me, saving me from slipping on mossy roots, the unfriendly gorse keeping me at a distance, saying don’t step here, stopping me from tearing my feet on its throne of thorns. Stars alive, alight, I wish you could see them… First light fattened like a dying star and formed the signature of an industrial town already at toil predawn, its factory stacks belching the new day black, the mills dyeing the forked-tongue river sterile inside that Hellmouth north of Halifax where paternal cotton kings had housed their workers in spoked rows of blind back-to-backs quick to tilt and rot. Continue reading...