Football

One of football’s many beauties is in encouraging us to forsake unfortunate strictures of accepted behaviour; as long as it’s at the game, we can sing, swear, cuddle strangers, and even care about stuff without fear of ridicule. And, perhaps best of all, we’re entitled to rejoice in the dastardly; it’s entirely justifiable to drool over the respective oeuvres of Roy Keane, Thierry Henry and Sergio Busquets, if they so tickle you. The game can also serve as a masking agent for off-pitch indiscretions, and remind people that personal matters are precisely that. Kenny Dalglish somehow wore links to the Clerkenwell crime syndicate, and though plenty of people dislike Wayne Rooney, it’s generally not on account of his nocturnal activities.

Praise where it’s due. This opening to Russell Brand’s Guardian column about David Moyes is very good: “(His) face has now experienced the fate for which it looks like it was designed. The deep grooves of grief in his brow, his sunken, woeful eyes and dry parched lips, a perspicacious sculpture carved in anticipation of this slap of indignity.” Very nice. I’ve written about the Moyes business this week for the magazine. I do think it is hilarious the speed with which all the football writers have moved from describing the bloke as the best young manager this country has ever seen to “disastrous” and “not up to the job” and so on. Clearly, he should have been given more time in the post, insofar as anyone cares.

Poor David Moyes, sacked before the season ends. Living up to the standards set by Sir Alex Ferguson was always an impossible task, especially since Fergie left Manchester United in a shoddy state. Moyes inherited a squad stuffed with arrogant past-its like Rio Ferdinand and Ashley Young. It's testament to Ferguson's terrifying force of personality that United managed somehow to win the league last season with such a dodgy ensemble; but he deserves criticism too for leaving a mess behind. Yes, Moyes failed to handle the big ego players — which seems to be the essential skill for a top manager these days. Yes, he never seemed to know his best starting eleven.

My brother’s three Borders are called Roxy, Ruby and Taz. My one ambition in life is to own a terrier again, or rather three terrier bitches, just so that I can call them Tray, Blanch and Sweetheart. (Lear, mad on the heath: ‘The little dogs and all, Tray, Blanch and Sweetheart, see, they bark at me.’) I ask my brother for the latest news of his dogs. He says he recently took Ruby up to Yorkshire, to be served by a well-known pedigree Border stud dog. My brother is a regular customer there. It’s a ten-hour round trip. The moment he draws up in his car, he says, the dog’s owner comes out into the yard and unrolls his ‘mating mat’ and lays it down, and his stud dog goes ballistic with joy, knowing what’s in store.

 São Paolo It was back in 2001 that my good friend Jim O’Neill of Goldman Sachs coined the acronym ‘Bric’, short for Brazil, Russia, India, China. These were the emerging markets that were going to surpass the developed economies. And so they have. Well, nearly. I, too, am partial to a good acronym and it has always seemed to me very unfortunate that there isn’t a matching one for the four biggest established economies. According to the International Monetary Fund, these are currently the United States, Japan, Germany and the United Kingdom (based on last year’s GDP figures). I therefore propose ‘Juugs’. The rise of the Brics and the fall of the Juugs has a good ring to it.

James Cook’s third voyage as an English captain ended in disaster, stabbed to death and disembowelled by a pack of angry Hawaiians in 1779. The latest Captain Cook’s third tour since taking charge of the national cricket team has been just as successful, with Alastair’s England given the Hawaiian treatment by Australia. But don’t despair: for the British sports fan there are plenty of reasons to be cheerful. Try these: 1. Our women cricketers are thumping the Aussies, and it’s the women’s Ashes that matters, right? Just remind any passing Australian of that, and last summer’s Lions tour too, if you’ve got the time.

In sport, as in life, you just don’t know where you stand any more. Look at the Premier League: no club knows where they stand except for Crystal Palace, who are being stood on by all the others. Everyone else can beat everyone else. Manchester City, who must be one of the best teams, are eighth; Southampton are good for the Europa League but currently could end up in the Champions League. But it’s all good for business. The England football team are about to find out exactly where they stand after two friendlies and the World Cup draw next month. The England rugby team are about to find out exactly where they stand too.

A successful gambler once told me: ‘Never bet on football, never bet on multipliers, and never ever bet on football multipliers.’ Multipliers, in case you don’t know, are those enticing combination wagers on bookmakers’ shopfronts: ‘Liverpool win 2-0 + Sturridge to score = 33/1.’ Mugs like me fall for them every time. My subconscious tends to add together the two probabilities — that of Sturridge scoring and that of Liverpool winning 2-0 — when really I should be multiplying them. Duh. The bookies don’t always triumph when it comes to football, however.

What a pleasure it is to bring you a good news story this morning, something uplifting. On Saturday afternoon, West Ham entertained Manchester City, but a substantial number of City’s ticket allocation was not taken up. So the West Ham board, which includes the lovely Karen Brady, decided to give the spare tickets, free of charge, to some “locals” who were not usually habituated to visiting the ground each week. The “locals” took up the offer and came along to Upton Park where they dutifully cheered for Manchester City and entertained regular supporters by dropping to their knees for prayers at half time. You can only imagine how delighted the West Ham supporters were by this show of generosity and indeed the way in which it was repaid.

It’s been a long, hot, soccerless holiday. There has been football about — the women’s European Championship, for example, and various age-group tournaments, all of which England departed with undue haste — but not the proper stuff. There hasn’t been a tournament where players can ‘put themselves in the shop window’ or prove that they have what it takes ‘at the highest level’ for any club with a fat chequebook and a friendly press. Youth football, even women’s, is all very well but it doesn’t pay the bills. Men’s professional football is, sadly, the big kid in the playground of sport.

There are many Scotlands and they're all dreadful. That at any rate seems to be the message from the Scottish government's anti-sectarianism 'taskforce'. We're all in denial about sectarianism and the shadow it casts over Scottish society. Of course it's hardly surprising that those people who spend their lives ferreting for evidence of sectarian behaviour conclude that sectarianism is both more broadly found and more deeply ingrained in Scottish society than your own experience may suggest. What do you know anyway? Conveniently, of course, such conclusions also demand that more public money be spent educating the poor, bigoted, people of Scotland to change the way they think and act. Then again, sectarianism has been defined down to farcical levels.