Category Archives: Football
Shakira cule
My candidate for the best news of the week is a report in the Spanish media today that Shakira is thinking of buying a house in Catalonia where her sister already lives. The beautiful, talented, and engaging Columbian star is one of my favourite singers and dancers and it will be great to see more of her along with my regular visits to the Nou Camp. A real bonus would be her finding a house she likes in Sitges where I like to take my holidays and have many friends. …
Football’s Globe Trotters?
FC Barcelona are making their Spanish League wins look so easy that they are in danger of becoming football’s equivalent of the Harlem Globe Trotters. For those of you unfamiliar with the HBT, they are the legendary basketball team that became just so skilful and so much better than any of their rivals that at one point they decided just to focus on exhibition matches- with a bit of theatrics thrown in- as there was no point in pretending there was any competition capable of beating them. They became very successful, …
A night to remember
Now and again one has the luck to be present in a football stadium where something very special and historic is in the air. To be at the Nou Camp on Monday night was to have the privilege of witnessing the best team in the world playing its best, football at its most sublime, surrounded by the warm glow of 98,000 cules joined together in collective ecstasy. Barca’s 5-0 thrashing of Real Madrid was a magnificent achievement played with a style and team ethos that was a perfect symphony of …
Football for the couch
My wife had to suffer me as a couch potato on Saturday night as I switched on my satellite TV and watched first Almeria vs Barca followed by Real Madrid vs, Athletic de Bilbao. It hurts me to tell you that having briefly sacrificed my marriage, I temporarily fell asleep in the first match, and temporarily switched to a movie while watching the second. Why? Well, the first match was not a match in its true sense at all, not a friendly, not an exhibition, not a competition. It …
My Maradona talk
See you at Canning House, 2 Belgrave Square, London SW1 at 6.30 this evening:”Maradona: A Very Argentine Myth”.
Football in contrasts
Barca were on form and did well on Saturday to beat Villareal-in my view the third best team in La Liga at present, and not just in points. Real Madrid seemed to have lost their spark on Sunday playing scrappily against the near demotion but brave and resilient Sporting, and didn’t deserve their belated winning goal. Guardiola showed his usual respect towards his players, his fans, and the opponent while former FC Barcelona president Joan Laporta ,watched the game at the Nou Camp, like any other ordinary member- that is …
The must watch football match
So Spain’s football authorities-with the agreement of the respective clubs-have switched the date of the next ‘Classico’ between FC Barcelona and Real Madrid at the Camp Nou at this end of this month from the weekend to the Monday. To have held it on the Saturday or the Sunday would have coincided with the staging of the highly emotive Catalan regional elections, thus guaranteeing the event being turned into a potential political battleground. Politics and history is of course partly responsible for making this one of the high points of …
Ossie Ardiles & Maradona
Word reaches me that Ossie plans not to attend my forthcoming talk at London’s Canning House on “The myth of Maradona (see news)”out of loyalty to his old friend”. Diego, as it is public knowledge, did not take kindly to the publication of my biography Hand of God, because it exposed his descent into drugs and other demons. The book could not have been written without the cooperation of several of Maradona’s friends who recognised that I was attempting to move beyond the normal confines of sports journalism to get at …
Diego turns 50
That Maradona was among the first Argentine celebrities to grieve publicly over Nestor Kirchner ‘s dead body is not surprising. As I relate in the updated edition of my biography of Maradona , Hand of God , the player not only shared an anti-US ‘Bolivarian revolution’ platform with Kirchner (and with Chaves), but also counted on the former Argentine president’s political support for his controversial appointment as national football coach in the run-up to last year’s World Cup in 2010. I was told that Julio Grondona, the president of the …
Chemistry
Interesting observing Real Madrid and FC Barcelona play in their respective Champions League games this week. Both teams frustrated by the defensive tactics of lesser mortals. But there all comparisons end. What I find hugely striking is the tension and poor chemistry that is evident not just between Mourinho and his players but among the Madrid players themselves. The Madrid players seem not to be enjoying themselves. They also show signs of genuine fear of what Mourinho might do to them. By contrast Barca players , even under pressure, …
