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/ 12 November 2004
The ”competitive balance” between the top clubs and the rest of the domestic leagues has been upset. The Champions League has created, in almost every country in Europe, an elite of rich clubs whose increasing dominance is turning their domestic title races into predictable turn-offs for fans.
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/ 12 November 2004
To widespread applause, Martin Jol thumped his chest after delivering a rousing address to Tottenham’s shareholders. He had hit the right notes. Evoking the spirit of the recently deceased Bill Nicholson was always going to go down well, even though the Dutchman once referred to the first double-winning manager of the modern era as ”Jim Nicholson”.
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/ 12 November 2004
Keeping Crystal Palace in the Premiership? It’s not rocket science, is it? Selhurst Park coach Iain Dowie (39) is perfectly placed to respond to such clichéd rhetoric. He’s got a master’s degree in aeronautical engineering, which, I guess, might enable a football manager to put something other than a football into orbit.
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/ 12 November 2004
Liverpool supporters love and cherish the anthem that reassures them that, whether there be wind or rain, they should hold their heads up high and walk on with hope in their hearts. Well, it’s been storming at Anfield for quite some time now, and unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be a golden sky in sight.
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/ 12 November 2004
It is summer, and in Cape Town the tourists are looking for 10 years of democracy. First they try Government Avenue, where they stroll among panhandling squirrels, but they can find no way in. Then they snap photographs of Louis Botha at the end of wide and windswept Roeland Street. And at last they come — hesitantly — to the parliamentary visitors’ centre. This part of Plein Street is a gloomy trench, lined with unprepossessing shops and greasy cafés.
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/ 12 November 2004
Ireland flanker Johnny O’Connor aims to use the memory of last season’s injury frustration to his advantage when he makes his long-awaited Test debut against Tri-Nations champions South Africa at Lansdowne Road in Dublin on Saturday. O’Connor (24) plays his club rugby for English and European champions Wasps.
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/ 12 November 2004
The chaos afflicting Côte d’Ivoire took a new turn on Thursday when it emerged that 4 000 prisoners in the country’s largest jail had escaped through the sewers. Many of the prisoners are thought to have headed to the capital, Abidjan, adding to the tension that has gripped the country during recent violence that has left more than 30 dead and 1 000 injured.
Côte d’Ivoire leaders in SA
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/ 12 November 2004
Australian swimming superstar Ian Thorpe has called rival Michael Phelps an idiot after the young American was arrested this week for drunk driving. Phelps (19), whose eight medals at this year’s Athens Olympics included six golds, was arrested and charged with drunk driving in Salisbury, Maryland.
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/ 12 November 2004
President George W Bush has picked Alberto Gonzales, the White House lawyer who advised him he could disregard the ”obsolete” Geneva conventions, as the United States’s new attorney general. News of Gonzales’s nomination, replacing John Ashcroft, who resigned on Tuesday, was poorly received by US human rights groups, which said he had shown scant regard for the importance of international human rights law.
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