A week away from one’s daily existence seems all that much longer a break when it has been spent in Lourdes and I write this now while the experience is not only still fresh in my mind but also hopefully resistant to old habits settling in again. Pilgrimage is a journey and a discovery, and how ever many times I return to this holy enclave in the foothills of the Pyrenees, the process endures- each trip providing both renewal and a fresh encounter in most unexpected ways. It is in …
La Liga: Another two horse race
There are many months ahead filled with potential pitfalls-not least injuries and general exhaustion brought on by an increasingly manic schedule-but the opening La Liga games have provided some tantalising clues as to what awaits us. Building on their performances in the Super Cup, both Real Madrid and FC Barcelona have got off to an impressive start that suggest not only that La Liga will be a battle royal between them, but that they will also prove difficult to beat in the Champions League. But first let us not forget …
Rediscovering The Common Good
Rediscovering the Common Good One of my favourite stories- and you don’t have to be a Christian to identify with it- is that of Saint Peter caught in a terrible storm while out fishing, and with Jesus seemingly far away and up a mountain. With no fish and his boat flooding, Peter throws himself into the water and starts sinking, convinced that God has abandoned him and all is lost. Then he sees Jesus reaching out his hand and he is rescued. I guess I am not alone in feeling …
Barcagate
If the media empire of Rupert Murdoch has its hackgate, Spanish football has its Barcagate– or does it? One of the longest serving football club presidents in the history of the game, Jose Luis Núñez, has just been condemned to a prison sentence of six years by a Spanish court after being found guilty on charges of bribery and falsification of documents. Also found guilty, and condemned to a prison sentence of eleven year years was Josep Maria Huguet, the inspector of taxes in Catalonia between 1985 and 1994 who …
Mr Murdoch’s Vatican connection
An interesting twist to the ‘Hackgate’ saga is to be found in the latest issue of the excellent UK based international Catholic weekly The Tablet which points out the Vatican connections of the besieged Murdoch Empire. The magazine ‘s editor Catherine Pepinster( formerly of The Independent on Sunday) recalls her surprise and that of Tony Gallagher, editor of the Daily Telegraph last September when they spotted James Murdoch in the pew behind them during a Mass celebrated by Pope Benedict XV1 at Westminster Cathedral. But perhaps it shouldn’t have been …
Diego & Messi
That there are Argentines beginning to demand that Maradona is brought back as national coach while at the same blaming Messi for the failures of the nation’s team says something about a country, and a lot about a club. Maradona was once probably the best player in the history of football but it’s also true that his personal and professional decline as a player began after the World Cup in Mexico 1986, and that in South Africa 2010 this overweight drug addict was entertaining as a coach but a disaster …
Diego y Messi
Que algunos Argentinos empiecen a clamar por el retorno de Maradona mientras que le echen a Messi las culpas de los fallos de su selección nos dice algo sobre un país, y mucho sobre un club. Maradona en su momento fue tal vez el mejor jugador de la historia del futbol pero también es cierto que su declive personal y profesional como jugador fue en aumento a partir del Mundial de México 1986, y que en Sudáfrica 2010 este ex drogadicto gordinflón fue entretenido como entrenador pero un desastre en …
The fall-out of Hackgate
One of the many joys of retiring from the manic intensity of 24 hour news has been to be able to sit back and watch my former colleagues grind away without myself being stuck inside the same machine. I haven’t given up writing, but when I do hit the keyboard, it in my own time and when the mood stirs me, much like any other ordinary citizen. Book writing endures with its own demands so if I haven’t got engaged with the wider world since FC Barcelona’s victory at Wembley it is because …
Diana at 50
DIANA cumple 50. (Transalation of piece by Jimmy Burns published in El Mundo (Magazine) on the occasion of Ist July, Diana Princess of Wales’s birthday – This is not a fable but a story as real as it can be imagined about what Diana Princess of Wales might have become had her life not be cut short so tragically on that night in August 1997 in an underpass in Paris. Permit me , dear reader, some literary license in assuming that had it not been for that terrible accident, …
A Wembley Dream
Of all the chants resounding round the Barca section of Wembley last night, few proved as popular as ‘ Porque,Porque, Porque’. Why does Barca win was the question’s football’s agent provocateur Jose Mourinho asked, insinuating-as only he would-that the answer may lie in diving and deranged referees. Well Mourinho eat your hat. The answer, as Alex Ferguson recognised, was blowing in the sweet air of a team’s collective genius which made an opponent of the quality of Manchester United struggle to keep in the game for much of the …
