Fifa president Gianni Infantino Tim Goode
Tim Goode
1.If you missed this news back when it was merely a terrible idea, and not a come-and-get-me plea to the international community, Infantino announced to the Fifa council meeting in March that he was considering £25bn worth of offers for a stake in two new competitions. These would be a global Nations League, and a revamped version of the Club World Cup. He told members that 49% stakes in these competitions would be sold to third parties – then claimed he couldn’t tell them which third parties, on account of the fact he’d signed confidentiality agreements. A bit odd – then again, we are talking about an organisation slightly less transparent than most CIA blacksites. It was left to the Financial Times to reveal that the offer was from a consortium led by Japanese conglomerate Softbank. Softbank’s largest investor is Saudi Arabia, whose sovereign wealth fund has popped $45bn into its fund.
That was then. The idea that Fifa are still tabling discussion of this financial power-grab in light of what we might euphemise as “the current news” about Saudi Arabia is certainly eye-catching. Infantino has met with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman three times in the past year alone, and once with King Salman. You’d think he might seek to underplay this cosiness at present, as many parties with significant exposure to Saudi interests have been (including, naturally, our own government).
Jose Mourinho trudges off following Manchester United's defeat to Juventus in the Champions League PA Wire / PA Images
PA Wire / PA Images / PA Images
2.It really shouldn’t be forgotten here that Mourinho’s reign at United opened with the signing of one of Juve’s best performing players and by far their most commercially lucrative in Paul Pogba, in a move that has helped consolidate the huge gap in resources between the two clubs. United bring in £285m from sponsorship and merchandising, just shy of double Juve’s £146m.
Mourinho would have a point that the Serie A champions spend their money in the most focused and ambitious way, and specifically referenced how they went for 31-year-old Leonardo Bonucci and 33-year-old Cristiano Ronaldo. One argument from the Portuguese’s camp is that United would never have gone for players of such age, but Bonucci himself has admitted that the Old Trafford hierarchy wanted him in the summer. The centre-half is obviously of the quality that executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward would have sanctioned, unlike Harry Maguire, and Woodward was interested in Ronaldo, only for Mourinho to insist it doesn’t come out of his budget.
3.Women hadn’t been allowed to compete at April’s Greatest Royal Rumble event, WWE’s first collaboration with Saudi Arabia: The Saudi royal family was paying reportedly outrageous sums of money in exchange for a mega-event in Jeddah and nonstop lip service to the country’s claims of progress. (That such so-called progress failed to make room for WWE’s female performers — and in the midst of the “Women’s Evolution,” too! — was pointedly skirted by the company’s spokespeople.) The Evolution pay-per-view felt like a gesture toward balancing those still-lopsided scales, an all-female event to match the all-male one. The women would get to work, at least and at last.
But then, in September, WWE announced its return to Saudi Arabia: The Crown Jewel pay-per-view would take place in Riyadh on November 2, just five days after Evolution. The women, needless to say, were not invited, because of the country’s laws restricting what women’s rights in the name of “community values,” and those golden scales crashed back, imbalanced again. Within the week, more matches had been announced for Crown Jewel (two) than for Evolution (one), and televised mentions of the former regularly outpaced the latter. The creeping sense that Evolution was a latent and lackluster apology, a preemptive PR stunt and act of coddling, became unavoidable. This nauseating sensation hardly abated when, in the weeks to come, the Saudi government (those folks so recently praised by WWE’s company brass and commentators alike for their forward-thinking agenda) made international headlines when Turkey accused it of sending operatives to Istanbul to brutally kill a dissident journalist.
Doon take on Na Piarsaigh in the Limerick SHC final Ryan Byrne / INPHO
Ryan Byrne / INPHO / INPHO
4.Like so many clubs nationwide, fundraising is the background noise of our activity. This week, the club’s social media is full of pictures of club volunteers from hurling and camogie preparing for that event, as much as it is about the county final itself. And rightly so.
In my professional job, I speak regularly to professional sports organisation and clubs throughout Australia.
I often hear officials and coaches speak on how to develop the right ‘culture’ in an organisation. GAA clubs do not need a PowerPoint presentation or flipchart to create a culture; it is organic, intrinsic to what they are.
On Saturday night, my club wants to celebrate like Naomh Éanna of Gorey did on winning their first title in Wexford hurling.
I want, tired and emotional, to again take to Twitter and ask Joe Brolly “what do think of that?”
Donations made by supporters of Dulwich Hamlet Football Club in 2015 for the refugees in Calais Jack Hardy
Jack Hardy
5.Stood in his traditional place, at the back of the main spectator stand, radio microphone in pocket, Liam Hickey allowed himself a private and deeply felt “Yes-s-s” before announcing the final score. His voice echoed tinnily from loudspeakers around the ground. The home team, Dulwich Hamlet, had won 3-2. A couple of months into the new football season, on a blowy afternoon in October 2017, it was enough to put them second in their league. Hickey thanked the 2,000 spectators for coming, and urged everyone to return for Dulwich’s next home fixture in a fortnight. The announcer had no clue how different the club’s fortunes would look two weeks later, nor how dramatically his role there was about to change.
Hickey had been devoted to this modest south London side, lodged forever in one of the bottom-most reaches of the English game, since he was seven, when a misstruck shot came bazooka-ing past the post to flatten him, personally, in the stands. (Love had budded by the time a team doctor revived him with smelling salts.) Now 54 and a crimson-cheeked business analyst who drove in for matches from Kent, he was still waiting to see Dulwich win their way into a higher tier of football. Hickey had some time ago formulated the sentence he would deliver should the splendid moment ever come, that “after 107 years… after 108 years… after 109 years… Dulwich Hamlet are finally out of the seventh tier!” They almost managed it a season ago, “after 110 years”. But on the final day, Dulwich were rubbish.
Tom Lamont tells the improbably tale of a tiny football club that lost its home to developers – only to win it back again.
Subscribe to our new podcast, Heineken Rugby Weekly on The42, here:
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
Close
Comments
This is YOUR comments community. Stay civil, stay constructive, stay on topic.
Please familiarise yourself with our comments policy
here
before taking part.
The tiny football club that won back its home and the rest of the week's best sportswriting
1. If you missed this news back when it was merely a terrible idea, and not a come-and-get-me plea to the international community, Infantino announced to the Fifa council meeting in March that he was considering £25bn worth of offers for a stake in two new competitions. These would be a global Nations League, and a revamped version of the Club World Cup. He told members that 49% stakes in these competitions would be sold to third parties – then claimed he couldn’t tell them which third parties, on account of the fact he’d signed confidentiality agreements. A bit odd – then again, we are talking about an organisation slightly less transparent than most CIA blacksites. It was left to the Financial Times to reveal that the offer was from a consortium led by Japanese conglomerate Softbank. Softbank’s largest investor is Saudi Arabia, whose sovereign wealth fund has popped $45bn into its fund.
That was then. The idea that Fifa are still tabling discussion of this financial power-grab in light of what we might euphemise as “the current news” about Saudi Arabia is certainly eye-catching. Infantino has met with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman three times in the past year alone, and once with King Salman. You’d think he might seek to underplay this cosiness at present, as many parties with significant exposure to Saudi interests have been (including, naturally, our own government).
Marina Hyde digs into Fifa, the world’s most expensive laundry service
2. It really shouldn’t be forgotten here that Mourinho’s reign at United opened with the signing of one of Juve’s best performing players and by far their most commercially lucrative in Paul Pogba, in a move that has helped consolidate the huge gap in resources between the two clubs. United bring in £285m from sponsorship and merchandising, just shy of double Juve’s £146m.
Mourinho would have a point that the Serie A champions spend their money in the most focused and ambitious way, and specifically referenced how they went for 31-year-old Leonardo Bonucci and 33-year-old Cristiano Ronaldo. One argument from the Portuguese’s camp is that United would never have gone for players of such age, but Bonucci himself has admitted that the Old Trafford hierarchy wanted him in the summer. The centre-half is obviously of the quality that executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward would have sanctioned, unlike Harry Maguire, and Woodward was interested in Ronaldo, only for Mourinho to insist it doesn’t come out of his budget.
Miguel Delaney explores the gulf in ambition between Manchester United and their midweek conquerors, Juventus
3. Women hadn’t been allowed to compete at April’s Greatest Royal Rumble event, WWE’s first collaboration with Saudi Arabia: The Saudi royal family was paying reportedly outrageous sums of money in exchange for a mega-event in Jeddah and nonstop lip service to the country’s claims of progress. (That such so-called progress failed to make room for WWE’s female performers — and in the midst of the “Women’s Evolution,” too! — was pointedly skirted by the company’s spokespeople.) The Evolution pay-per-view felt like a gesture toward balancing those still-lopsided scales, an all-female event to match the all-male one. The women would get to work, at least and at last.
But then, in September, WWE announced its return to Saudi Arabia: The Crown Jewel pay-per-view would take place in Riyadh on November 2, just five days after Evolution. The women, needless to say, were not invited, because of the country’s laws restricting what women’s rights in the name of “community values,” and those golden scales crashed back, imbalanced again. Within the week, more matches had been announced for Crown Jewel (two) than for Evolution (one), and televised mentions of the former regularly outpaced the latter. The creeping sense that Evolution was a latent and lackluster apology, a preemptive PR stunt and act of coddling, became unavoidable. This nauseating sensation hardly abated when, in the weeks to come, the Saudi government (those folks so recently praised by WWE’s company brass and commentators alike for their forward-thinking agenda) made international headlines when Turkey accused it of sending operatives to Istanbul to brutally kill a dissident journalist.
On The Ringer, Mairead Small Staid wonders if the WWE truly wants a women’s revolution
4. Like so many clubs nationwide, fundraising is the background noise of our activity. This week, the club’s social media is full of pictures of club volunteers from hurling and camogie preparing for that event, as much as it is about the county final itself. And rightly so.
In my professional job, I speak regularly to professional sports organisation and clubs throughout Australia.
I often hear officials and coaches speak on how to develop the right ‘culture’ in an organisation. GAA clubs do not need a PowerPoint presentation or flipchart to create a culture; it is organic, intrinsic to what they are.
On Saturday night, my club wants to celebrate like Naomh Éanna of Gorey did on winning their first title in Wexford hurling.
I want, tired and emotional, to again take to Twitter and ask Joe Brolly “what do think of that?”
There is still some glory and a lot of good to be found in club GAA, writes Jack Anderson in the Irish Examiner
5. Stood in his traditional place, at the back of the main spectator stand, radio microphone in pocket, Liam Hickey allowed himself a private and deeply felt “Yes-s-s” before announcing the final score. His voice echoed tinnily from loudspeakers around the ground. The home team, Dulwich Hamlet, had won 3-2. A couple of months into the new football season, on a blowy afternoon in October 2017, it was enough to put them second in their league. Hickey thanked the 2,000 spectators for coming, and urged everyone to return for Dulwich’s next home fixture in a fortnight. The announcer had no clue how different the club’s fortunes would look two weeks later, nor how dramatically his role there was about to change.
Hickey had been devoted to this modest south London side, lodged forever in one of the bottom-most reaches of the English game, since he was seven, when a misstruck shot came bazooka-ing past the post to flatten him, personally, in the stands. (Love had budded by the time a team doctor revived him with smelling salts.) Now 54 and a crimson-cheeked business analyst who drove in for matches from Kent, he was still waiting to see Dulwich win their way into a higher tier of football. Hickey had some time ago formulated the sentence he would deliver should the splendid moment ever come, that “after 107 years… after 108 years… after 109 years… Dulwich Hamlet are finally out of the seventh tier!” They almost managed it a season ago, “after 110 years”. But on the final day, Dulwich were rubbish.
Tom Lamont tells the improbably tale of a tiny football club that lost its home to developers – only to win it back again.
Subscribe to our new podcast, Heineken Rugby Weekly on The42, here:
‘It’s unique, small, noisy, bonkers, heart-breaking and joyous in equal measure’
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
good reads