Category Archives: Blog
My Book of the Month is Giles Tremlett’s Catherine of Aragon
Catherine of Aragon is not a name that slips easily off the lips of most English schoolboys, unless they’ve been educated as Catholics, still a minority breed. Few early students of English history have failed to memorise where she was in the Tudor pecking order: ‘divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, and survived. ’ Oh yes, Catherine was the one who was divorced first. Of Henry V111’s eight wives, it is Catherine who has endured in the collective memory of the English people, arguably for the wrong reasons. Catherine was mythified …
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”.
A Royal Day to Celebrate
This is an English version of an Opinion piece which I have written for Spain’s El Mundo newspaper as part of their coverage of the Royal engagement. Like the crisp autumn sun that broke through the heavy mist shrouding much of England on the same day, the royal announcement brought in an instant a sense of clarity to the nation’s citizens. One can say what one likes about the British Royal family, but history has shown its capacity to bring as much fortitude and hope as division and sadness- and this …
ROUND-UP NEWS
UPCOMING EVENTS – HOPE TO SEE YOU THERE 18 NOVEMBER MARADONA: I shall be drawing on my experience of researching, writing and updating several editions of Hand of God- my biography of Diego Maradona for a talk entitled: “MARADONA: A VERY ARGENTINE MYTH .” The talk will cover his life and times from birth in the shanty-town of Villa Fiorito to last summer’s extraordinary appearance at the World Cup. Venue: Canning House, 2 Belgrave Square, London SW1X (telef: 02072352303) Time: 6.30 pm The event is being organised by The …
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 …
