“As well as upping weekend revenue for DIY stores everywhere, the international break produced two hat-tricks — one each for Jermain Defoe (England) and Klaas-Jan Huntelaar (Netherlands). Variety, technique, a dollop of selfishness, they all go into the mix to score a treble at this level, and competitive international hat tricks are getting harder to come by — the last three World Cups have produced about a quarter of the total produced by the first three. Argentina striker Gonzalo Higuain bagged one this summer with the same cool exterior as his predecessor Gabriel Batistuta, but an international hat trick of tournament-changing magnitude, of tear-jerking quality or just of eyebrow-raising novelty is a rare thing indeed. Here’s a list of memorable ones…” (SI)

“Some teams play to win trophies, but there are others who play for the sake of entertaining the fans. These teams rarely win titles, but they are often remembered more fondly than champions. We take a look at five such ‘fun’ teams.” (TheHardTackle)

“Brazilian Roberto Carlos’s 1997 free-kick against France curved so sharply that it left goalkeeper Fabian Barthez standing still and looking puzzled. Now, a study published in the New Journal of Physics suggests that the long-held assumption that the goal was a fantastic fluke is wrong. A French team of scientists discovered the trajectory of the goal and developed an equation to describe it.” (BBC)

“I’m thinking about David Foster Wallace’s essay on Roger Federer, the famous one that ran in the New York Times’s now-defunct sports magazine, Play, in 2006. If you don’t remember it for the argument, you might remember it for the title, ‘Roger Federer as Religious Experience,’ which even back in ’06 felt like a strange combination of terms. It’s a little hard to remember this now, with Federer’s career having settled into its gentle downward glide, but at that point Roger Federer was annihilating sports.” (Run of Play)

“At his peak Rui Costa had the complete attacking game – he could dribble, shoot and pass brilliantly – defenders simply didn’t know how to deal with him. Add to that a tremendous footballing brain and his tendency to drift around the pitch and make things happen rather than waiting for the ball to come to him, and he was almost impossible to nullify. He was the archetypal playmaker because he was very much a team player, always looking for a pass rather than personal glory; he had an amazing ability to utterly dominate a game without finding himself in the headlines.” (FourFourTwo)

“The football World Cup today lost one of its final links with its origins, when Francisco Varallo, the former Boca Juniors forward, died in the early hours in La Plata, aged 100 years and six months. He had been the last living player to take part in the final of the inaugural tournament in Montevideo, Uruguay in 1930, when Argentina lost to the host nation 4-2. When Martín Palermo finally, in 2008, became Boca Juniors’ highest goalscorer of the professional era, it was Varallo’s record he’d surpassed.” (Hasta El Gol Siempre)