David Miller obituary

Sports journalist who became a leading authority on football and the Olympics

In 1956 a young science graduate fresh out of Cambridge was given a junior job on the sports desk at the Times. Two years later he made his own way on starvation rations to the football World Cup in Sweden. He reported some of the less enticing matches for his paper for six guineas a game.

By 2012, when David Miller’s career in regular sports journalism finally drew to a close, he had watched 25 Summer and Winter Olympic Games, 14 Fifa World Cups, 62 FA Cup finals, 450 England football internationals and 53 Wimbledon championships. In at least two of those fields – football and the Olympics – he was acknowledged as one of the world’s leading experts.