Publishing Company Blog | 10 favourite things this week: the best sports journalism from around the web

Featuring 8,400 words on Novak Djokovic, a Mario Balotelli interview and Malcolm Gladwell on the 10,000 hours principle

Thanks for all your comments and suggestions on our last blog. Here are a few highlights from this week.

The article of the week

Reading The New Yorker is always a joy, but this 8,400-word article about Novak Djokovic is a real treat. Lauren Collins' first few pages read like a lost Ernest Hemingway novel, with short staccato sentences that punch their way through the facts of young man's life. She then flies off into a long and rich dissection of his upbringing and career, sharing anecdotes you have never heard and facts you would never have known. Few magazines can afford to give writers the time to research pieces like this. Let's hope The New Yorker is rewarded for its bravery with its survival.

Other stories we like

2) Belief doesn't excuse complacency

Liverpool have started the season well. The Premier League table is barely worth the pixels on which it is displayed, but Liverpool fans should be pleased that their team and Spurs are the only clubs with 100% records. They can be heartened, but should not become complacent, warns Sachin Nakrani, who has compared the current team to the old side of the glory days in this piece for the Anfield Wrap. Liverpool's 4-2 victory over Notts County in the Capitol One Cup this week showed their talents and frailties; if the team is to progress, they will need to rediscover the ruthlessness that once swept through the club.

3) The greatest try of all time

Goodbye Cliff Morgan.

4) NBC and the $250m gamble

Why are NBC spending $80m a year to show Premier League football matches? Not because there is a huge audience wanting to watch the sport, but because they have forecast that there will be a huge audience wanting to watch in the near future. According to Aaron Wolfe, the Brooklyn-based blogger who runs the Lilywhite and Blue website, NBC are not interested in the niche audience football now attracts, but they are banking on the sport's popularity exploding after next summer's World Cup. Brazil 2014 could be massive for football in the US and NBC have already blown their competitors out of the water.

5) Mario Balotelli has a talent as electric as his personality

Grant Wahl of Sports Illustrated has been given a private audience with Mario Balotelli. These interviews do not come around very often; Balotelli can now command an afternoon with the Pope, so he rarely has to concern himself with magazine journalists. Perhaps Balotelli is more forthcoming in America, a place where only fans recognise him and the local press have not yet resorted to following him for zany tales. That might change soon. The photoshoot for this SI cover placed Balotelli on top of a swimming pool, where he stood bare-chested with his arms outstretched like some sort of athletic messiah walking on water. His anonymity will not last for long – perhaps that is the point.

6) Complexity and the 10,000-hour rule

A few weeks ago this blog featured a piece by David Epstein entitled Why Hard Work Isn't Always Enough. Epstein's article covered the topic of greatness and how it is achieved, something close to the heart of Malcolm Gladwell, the New Yorker staff writer whose book Outliers pushed the 10,000 hours thesis. Gladwell has returned to the subject to respond to points made in Epstein's work and elsewhere. As ever he is hugely entertaining and more insightful that his critics would like to believe.

7) College football's most dominant player? It's ESPN

Premier League fans like to bemoan the influence of Sky Sports on their league. They say Rupert Murdoch's company ruined the tradition of 3pm kick-offs, ended the era of affordable seats and wiped away the history of the Football League. Well, maybe it could be worse. James Andrew Miller, Steve Eder and Richard Sandomir of The New York Times have put together an impressive and comprehensive analysis of the influence of ESPN on college football in the US: "ESPN has become both puppet-master and kingmaker, arranging games, setting schedules and bestowing the gift of nationwide exposure on its chosen universities, players and coaches."

8) Is Danny Welbeck the English Thomas Muller?

Danny Welbeck scored a single Premier League goal last season; Thomas Muller knocked in 23 in all competitions for Bayern Munich, but Sam Wilson of the Friendly Fussball blog has a point. Both emerged from the youth systems of the dominant clubs in their countries. Both represented their national teams at early ages and have become key figures. Both combine athletic, skinny frames with technical excellence. Both are geared towards the 4-2-3-1 system and can play any position in the front four. Both are tailor-made for football as a game of sprints, a never-ending pull and push of movement as they race to either cover for or join in with counterattacks. So what makes Muller the goalscorer and Welbeck the unfulfilled talent?

9) Getting ready for a car crash

An interview with Triple H subtitled "The WWE superstar and corporate honcho discusses his career and the business", on Grantland, by a writer called "The Masked Man". What's not to like?

10) Women in sport

It takes a brave publisher to launch a magazine in the 21st century, but who could not wish the makers of Women in Sport all the best in their new venture. By the looks of this sample issue, WiS could become a superb addition to the newsstand. "We are barging our way into the media space and featuring women's sports stories," says editor Jo Gunston. "We're following the characters, the drama, the achievements; igniting thought-provoking debates; laughing together at sexist outlooks and supporting other women in sporting ventures and hoping that one day soon when someone says 'you play like a girl' the response will be 'thank you'."