Roger Alton Roger Alton

Time to waste, money to burn

Plus: Manchester City’s rise, José Mourinho’s decline, Graeme Swann’s dancing

issue 17 November 2018

Marvellous team, the All Blacks, of course. But they certainly know how to waste some time. Here are some things you may want to do when the New Zealand forwards are making their way to a line-out with a one-point lead and the clock running down: change your energy supplier, clear those clogged winter gutters or, for the more adventurous, nip out to Santa Pod Raceway in Bedfordshire and do a quarter of a mile in a drag-racing car. Either way, those mighty Kiwi forwards won’t have moved far.

Much to the annoyance of some big footballing beasts like Bayern Munich, Manchester City appear to have been channelling away millions of pounds in funding from owner Sheikh Mansour so as to beat the Financial Fair Play rules. (It’s no coincidence that the leaks came via Der Spiegel, a German news magazine.) But we know that City’s sponsors are owned by the Abu Dhabi royal family, as is the stadium, and as is more or less everything connected to City.

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