Monthly Archives: March 2013
Pope Francis can do without Mrs Fernandez
Trust Argentina’s President Cristina Fernandez to use her first audience with Pope Francis to press her country’s claim over the Falklands Islands. With the demagoguery that has has marked her time in office,Fernandez has seized the opportunity to try and restore her own dwindling popularity by raising a cause that Argentines have historically rallied around. This is the same President that has viewed Jorge Bergoglio as an opponent when he served as Cardinal Archbishop of Buenos Aires and has allowed her allies in the Argentine media to try and wreck …
Barca shows that football can be more than just a game
I knew I hadn’t been dreaming when early this morning my local Battersea street flower vendor Steve told me: “You must pleased, mate”, before congratulating Barca on a “master class in football.” You see, Steve is not only football mad, he is a fanatical Chelsea supporter and, as followers of my blogs and specifically of one of my assiduous stalkers Captain Terry will know, I don’t normally get such genial comments from across the river. Steve is of course not alone. Last night’s game at the Nou Camp delivered …
Barca: The challenge of being more than a football club
Next to feeling that things are not going right, there is nothing worse for a football club, as it is for one’s own life, than not knowing quite why, or not being able to find a way of expressing it. For all the club’s historically self-conscious sense of cultural and political identity, this Sunday it’s difficult to find a Barca fan without a deep sense of foreboding. The defeat in Milan, and the two Clasico defeats have left cules struggling to keep faith in a project they had come to …
