Football

My favourite moment in the crisis engulfing football’s governing body, Fifa, came with the intervention of a man called Manuel Nascimento Lopes. Manuel is the Fifa delegate from Guinea-Bissau, an African country which occupies 130th place in the Fifa world rankings but which, far more importantly in this context, punches well above its weight when it comes to institutionalised corruption. Thirteenth in the world, according to the organisation Transparency International — not a bad showing for a smallish sub-Saharan rathole which has been almost permanently engulfed in civil war since the Portuguese got the hell out. Manuel suggested that to vote against Sepp Blatter remaining as boss of Fifa would

Can it be that the great fantasy kingdom of Fifa has finally collapsed? Is this the fall of Oz? Is it possible that this vast sporting organisation – one that has survived for so many years on sheer effrontery – is now on collision course with reality? The Swiss police’s dawn raid on the headquarters of the organisation that runs football across the world, arresting some of its most prominent citizens on charges of corruption, must surely bring revolution and destruction in its wake. That is what happens in the end to most fantasy kingdoms. It’s what happened to the International Olympic Committee, but Fifa never took the warning. Sepp

I can’t say I’m surprised by the departure of Harry Redknapp. Since I started supporting Queens Park Rangers in 2008 we’ve gone through seven managers — 13 if you count the caretakers. Indeed, it’s a miracle he’s lasted this long. The club was relegated during his first term in charge and we only returned to the Premier League thanks to a last-minute goal by Bobby Zamora in the play-off final against Derby at the end of last season. I was at that match and Derby were easily the better side. If Harry had been sensible, he would have announced his retirement after that game and gone out on a high.

Purely for the purposes of argument, it would be handy if Ched Evans had said sorry for the rape for which he was convicted. He hasn’t, for the simple and sufficient reason that he believes he is innocent and is challenging his conviction. So in this case, it’s not possible to argue for a repentant sinner to be readmitted to the fold. But it’s still possible, isn’t it, for someone to serve their time for a crime and to be readmitted into society, on the basis that justice has been served? Well no, not if it’s rape rather than, oh homicide or GBH, that they’ve done time for. It’s the

On Sunday, Hartlepool FC quashed rumours that they would be signing Ched Evans, the former Sheffield United forward and convicted rapist. In response to the Hartlepool manager Ronnie Moore’s comment that ‘if it could happen, I would want it to happen’, the club released a statement saying that they would not be signing Evans, ‘irrespective of his obvious ability as a football player’.  Following Sheffield United’s example, Hartlepool have been pressured by the public into administering vigilante justice to a man who has been deemed by our justice system to have served the appropriate amount of time for his crime. Evans’ opponents have consistently argued that footballers’ status as role-models

It could be a bleak Christmas party for Arsenal Football Club on the 22 December, as Steerpike hears their planned festive bash booked in at Brocket Hall in Berkshire may be a little austere thanks to a lack of the hall’s usual furniture. Since Lord Brocket’s spell at Her Majesty’s Pleasure, the artistic accountant has been forced to rent out the 500 acre family pile and he’s fallen out in spectacular fashion with current tenant Dieter Klostermann, the German leisure entrepreneur whose company is reportedly burdened by debt of £16.5m. The argument boiled over into the pages of the Mail in July after eight police cars intercepted an audacious attempt by Brocket to extract heirlooms

From The Spectator, 28 November 1914: Professional football is something worse than an excuse for young men who refuse to do their duty. It is actually an incentive to them to continue their lives in the ignoble ordinary way, because the very continuance of the games suggests that everything is going on as usual. In the midst of the clamour of a popular match, when nothing seems more important than that Jones should have dashed his way through the opposing backs, or that Smith should have “saved” by a miraculous feat of agility, or that one rich and powerful club should be whispered to be intriguing to buy that wonderful

Mark Steyn once wrote of the United Nations: ‘It’s a good basic axiom that if you take a quart of ice-cream and a quart of dog feces and mix ’em together the result will taste more like the latter than the former. That’s the problem with the U.N.’ It’s a maxim that works double for Fifa, world football’s governing body, which has just cleared future World Cup hosts Qatar and Russia of any wrongdoing but managed to criticise the FA. The BBC reports: ‘As for Russia, they have also been cleared, although the report noted its bid team made “only a limited amount of documents available for review”. ‘According to