Category Archives: Blog
Lourdes revisited (with thanks to Fr Nicholas King S.J.)
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
Carta a Pep
28 de Mayo 2011 For the attention of Pep Guardiola, FC Barcelona Querido Pep, Te escribo como autor, cule (nacido en Madrid de padre escoces y madre Castellana), y Londinense para expresar mi profundo agradecimiento por la gran ilusión y alegría que tu y tus jugadores habeis inspirado en el Barca, profundizando en una gran tradición de humanidad y buen futbol. Anoche estuve en una cena en un hotel de la capital ingles organizada por la Penya del Londres al cual pertenezco. Había cules de toda la peninsula …
Thanks, Bob Dylan
As I read my newspaper over the breakfast table this morning, one news item more than any other today brought instant stirrings of nostalgia, faith , and mortality: Bob Dylan is 70. Thanks to Bob, I invested in my first guitar, wrote my first poem, busked as a student, turned socialist in my Christianity, romanced my first girl-friend and now wife, and kept believing in the benevolent artistic creativity of mankind, under God. His music drew from primitive roots, his words from the dramatic landscape of history and its mystical …
Wembley Bound
Less than a week to go before the Champions League final at Wembley, and my nerves are already on edge, tension rising. I am assured of a ticket, but I am also seriously contemplating asking for help from a neighbour who is a hypnotherapist. This is a match I’m reluctant to predict the outcome of. My heart sees a Barca victory, but my head throbs with the fear that Ferguson might just clinch it. The more I think of it though, the less does the last encounter in Rome strike …
