Ugly face of the beautiful game

Football, bloody hell, as that old bruiser Sir Alex Ferguson twinkled bibulously at the turn of the century. But it’s not looking so good now, Sir Alex. Bloody hell, it’s in a pretty dark place: the game’s a beauty of course, but otherwise nothing but racial abuse, wholesale cheating, assault, shocking levels of officiating and terrace savagery. And that’s on a good day. Even the great gum-chewer himself is reduced to ranting about how there was no need for Chelsea’s Fernando Torres to go down, and get wrongly sent off, just because Jonny Evans whacked his leg. ‘I would never have missed that chance [to go on and score]’, said Sir Alex. ‘I wouldn’t have gone down.’ Of course not.

Let’s hope things can only get better. The other day a 21-year-old Leeds fan (natch) called Aaron Crawley jumped out of the stands at Hillsborough to belt Sheffield Wednesday’s goalkeeper Chris Kirkland in the face before gambolling back to his pals.