In my view the sport that likes to think of itself as the 'beautiful game' isn't  so beautiful as it once was. The big football clubs of the world have become play things for the mega rich. The teams in the top league in England are owned by Russian billionaire oligarths, American Businessmen, and Arabian royalty. The fans no longer have a say over who runs their club and their sporting emotions are completely at the mercy of the whim of someone who can live thousands of miles away and has no historical emotional tie to the club. European players fall down at the slightest touch from an opposing tackler like they have just contracted swine flu. Average middle of the road players now earn more in one week what a teacher may see in any year of his career.

The sport which once was the game of the working class man has now become so expensive to go to a game that the working class man is being priced out of buying a season ticket for his family in favour of the corporate clients who will go else where once the team stops winning..

In the 80's though the game was a much simpler sport, it didn't have the mega tv contracts for the top European leagues distorting the uneveness of the big clubs and thhose clubs which had a smaller fanbase or who came from smaller countries. Only the very best players got the big money contracts. And the best players were spread around the world. They played against one another. They didn't play with one another in superteams like the Real Madrid's and Chealsea's of today.

In 1986 when the first football world cup that I can properly remember took place, there was one player that stood above them all in that tournament. He was short, (no he's not Gordon Strachan) and as I was the shortest in my class at the age of 8 I took a liking him to instantly. He was also a genious with a football. He could seemingly control a football like to was tied to his shoe laces.

I'm not young enough to have seen Pele play but for me Diego Maradona was a player that showed what a beautiful game football can be. It helped that he was skillful, but probably also helped that he was Argentinian and was lined up to play against England in the '86 World Cup. I am Scottish and my dad likes to consider himself English even though he's lived in Glasgow since the age of 5. I half suspect its less to do with him being a proud Englishman and more to with the fact that Scotland will never win any of the major tournaments and England have a slim chance of that. As with every year before and since my father was boasting about how well England were going to do in that tournment. Then came Argentina and with it Maradona. In that one game Maradona scored 2 of the best goals I can ever remember seeing. The first goal was outrageous. A player of 5ft 5inches, a little bit podgy in the stomach region out jumps the 6 ft 1 inch English goalkeeper and knocks the ball into the goal with his hand.

It was rediculous. It was illegal. By rights he should have been sent off. But the goal stood. If you were English on that night you were in despair. If you were Argentinian, or Scottish, you were elated. The second goal was even better than the first. England were still trying to comprehend what had happened 3 minutes before when Diego Maradona single handledy dribbled round 6 English players to score again and with it knock England out of the World Cup.

Diego then took what was an average looking Argentina squad all the way to the finals and lifted the trophy. On the football pitch he was genious but off it was flawed. He's had his moments when he has been addicted to cocaine and he's shot at journalists who have come too close to his home.

This video of Manu Chao's song La Vida Tombola highlights much of Maradona's life and doesn't just focus on just the heroic moments although his 2 goals against England are there (around the 1:40 and 2 min mark). I like the song a lot, and it is a tribute to Maradona but I think the fact that Maradona's flawed moments are shown in the video too it makes it all the better.

When Sporting Idols Were Human

Today when Real Madrid can spend 80 million pounds on a Portuguese footballer and 56 million on another Brazilian and can afford to pay them weekly wages on top that most of us can't dream of in a lifetime of working its almost hard to imagine that sport didn't always have such superstars. In sport there has always been athletes that have excelled above the rest but not all got the lifestyle that today's top athletes can expect.


I was just reading the story behind a new song written by Blair Douglas, a founding member of Runrig, the song is about a man named Giovanni "Johnny" Moscardini, who though born in Scotland in 1897 who went on to have a successful football career in Italy during the 20s and 30s. He became the top scorer for his club Pisa, before playing for the Italian national team where he was capped 9 times only to give it all up to help run his Uncle's ice cream shop back in Scotland. Somehow I just don't see Ronaldo or Kaka doing likewise. They might well send a cheque back home to a relative that needed some help but I doubt they'd be willing to give up their priviliged lifestyle to physically help the family business.

Yet sporting history is littered with interesting stories. Around the same time when Giovanni was playing football for Italy a Scottish runner was refusing to run his best event at the 1924 Olympics, the 100 meters, because it clashed with his religious beliefs. The heats were to be run on a Sunday so Eric Liddell, a devout protestant, felt that with it being the day of the Sabbath he could not compete. Instead he decided to train for the 400 meters, another event he was good at but was only expected to come 3rd in. A lot of today's 100 meter sprinters will double up on the 200 meters but it takes a special athlete to be able to compete at both 100 and 400 meters such is the differences in the discipline of the two events.

As it turned out, he not only won the race but set a new world record.


After his athletics career was over he continued his Missionary work in China, staying on to carry his work in 1941 when the British government advice was to leave due to the war between China & Japan. The Japanese later overtook the mission station with its members interned at the Weifang Internment Camp. Liddell died of a brain tumour hastened by malnourishment and overwork in 1945, months before the Japanese surrended. An unfortunate end for a man that was so admired by his peers for not only his athletic ability but for the man he was.

Its not only the athletes of the distant past that have interesting life stories, more recent athletes have done so as well. Take the story of amateur Scottish cyclist Graham Obree. When his bike shop failed with the burden of bad debts he decided that the way out of his problems was to beat the World hour velodrome record which had stood for 9 years. Unlike his English rival, Chris Boardman, who had access to the help of the UK Olympic team for coaching and sponsorship as well as custom made carbon fibre superbikes thanks to the backing of Lotus, Graham had to not only design his own training regime but build his own bike from left over stock from his shop and parts from an old washing machine.

The bike he subsequently designed had an unusual riding position, which he later became famous for, because not only was it aerodynamic but also because it allowed him to put more pressure on the pedals allowing him to get up to speed without the need for standing up. On his first attempt at the record he failed but he had booked the track for 24 hours so decided to come back early next morning to try again. In order to prevent his body from seizing up while he slept, he made himself drink pint after pint of water so that he would have to wake up every two hours for toilet trips which allowed him to stretch his muscles. With so much punishment on his body it should have been a waste of time even going back on track. The day before he had been fresh and had failed the old record by a kilometer, but this time the effort was not in vain and he beat the record by over 400 meters.


At a time when most professional cyclists seemed to be ruining the sport by competing with the aid of illegal drugs the World governing cycling body (the UCI) seemed to be more concerned that the evolution of the bicycle was making it possible for a disproportionate improvement to track records. So they banned the unusual elbows tucked in riding position that Graham had used to set his record, which meant that this necessitated the need for a new bike to be designed and built if he was to continue racing after Chris Boardman broke it a week after he had set it.

His new bike had yet another unusual riding position, later to be named the Superman position because of the way his arms were outstretched in front of him as he rode. He used this new bike to win the World Championship pursuit.

Not bad for someone who had to get over bouts of depression, which at times in his life was so severe that he had tried to kill himself not once but twice. The first time as a child when he was only saved by the luck of his father getting off of work unusually early and once as an adult after his brother died of a car crash, this time being saved by a woman who was checking out a barn.

To me its unusual stories like that can make Sport so much more interesting than impressive skills and crazy income levels and the building of expensive superteams such as Real Madrid.