Philip Patrick

All good things must come to an end, and that surely now ought to include the footballing career of Cristiano Ronaldo, who disgraced himself again on Monday after being sent off for appearing to stamp on and elbow an opponent in his team Al-Nassr’s Saudi Super Cup defeat by Al-Hilal. He then seemed to come close to hitting the referee. This debacle comes hard on the heels of him making an obscene gesture to fans after a game in February. Yes, he’s still scoring goals, at a low level of football, but as a global sporting icon, he’s in danger of becoming an embarrassment.

Liverpool fans, a significant number at least, booed the national anthem at the Carabao Cup final at Wembley yesterday. It wasn’t the first time this has happened – it’s been going on since the 1980s – but it was the first time since the monarch was diagnosed with cancer. This added a certain poignancy to the ‘save’ bit of the anthem, and might have been expected to persuade the Liverpool boo-boys to take the afternoon off. But no. The usual explanation for this ongoing practice is lingering resentment at how Liverpool was affected by the Thatcher government’s monetarist policies of the 1980s (parts of the city reported 30 to 50 per cent unemployment) and how it has been treated after.

So, farewell then Jurgen Klopp. What memories you will leave us. You were exuberant, passionate and unorthodox. You ran up and down the touchline, gesticulating manically. You had a nice, albeit cosmetically enhanced, smile. You could be charming and witty. You won. seven trophies in nine years for Liverpool, most significantly the Premier League title that ended an excruciating generation long wait and a sixth Champion’s League. Your place in the Pantheon is assured and things will be duller without you. But is your leaving really a ‘disaster’? From the press reaction it would appear that your tenure at Anfield was an unbroken period of glory and joy the imminent cessation of which has precipitated something akin to mourning and existential angst.

‘They are a national disgrace.’ That was the response of a Japanese friend when I asked for her opinion on Fujitsu, the Japanese company at the heart of the recent UK Post Office IT scandal. But her answer was not in any way coloured by the company’s involvement in the affair (they supplied the dodgy software), of which she knew absolutely nothing. But then why should she? There has not been a single news item in the Japanese media. And ITVx is not yet available in Asia. The Japan Times, for example, found space yesterday for a piece on the ‘world’s oldest pyramid’ in Indonesia (which may in fact not be) and a piece on the viability of the Panama Canal.

I would like to report a murder. It took place in the evening of 27 December in millions of homes around the UK simultaneously. The victim was Dame Agatha Christie – well, one of her works, and to an extent her posthumous reputation. But unlike in the great Dame’s novels, there was no beguiling mystery about the culprit: it was the BBC, a serial offender. Yet again, in what has now entered the list of modern Christmas traditions, our national broadcaster chose to ‘reinvent’ and thus more or less kill, one of the Queen of Crime’s novels. Christie’s Murder is Easy was retrofitted to suit the BBC’s obsession with racism and colonialism. The hero Luke Fitzwilliam, in the book a retired English police detective, was recast as Nigerian.

Pity the poor Everton fans. Just as their once mighty club, now a perennial relegation battler, seemed to have a climbed a few ladders in recent weeks to low mid-table, they land on a snake. Yesterday the Premier League handed them a ten point penalty for financial irregularities, plunging them back down into the danger zone of relegation. Everton admitted the offences and pleaded mitigation: unexpectedly high interest payments on their new stadium project, the loss of a Russian sponsor due to UK government sanctions in the wake of the war in Ukraine and losses (estimated at £10 million) incurred as a result of criminal charges brought against a ‘player X’. They also stressed that they had cooperated fully with the investigation (unlike some others). But to no avail.