BBC Sport: Matt Slater

What we can learn from Rooney, Dan Rooney

2009-11-10T00:30:57Z

Perhaps the worst row I've had in my scribbling career came when a press officer at a Premier League club accused me of racism.

We had written a story about whatever issue everybody was talking about that week and buried the launch of an anti-racism rap that had been recorded by a couple of the team's players. To give that story secondary importance was racist, the PR man claimed. I disagreed and tempers flared.

But nobody likes being called a racist. Even racists prefer to be called something else, something less nasty, less ugly. That is why I'm not going to accuse English football of racism - it would be as unreasonable as that press officer's rant.

So I'm just going to note two numbers: 23 and three. The first is the percentage of footballers in the top four divisions who are black, and the second is the number of black managers working at that level. That's three out of 92, basically 3%. Does that sound right to you? Cards on table time: it does not sound right to me.

]]> Paul Ince is currently in charge at MK Dons

It doesn't sound right to many in the black community either, as I discovered at an event at Wembley last month. The 2009 Black List Awards brought together a wide range of people from the football world to recognise African-Caribbean achievement on and off the field.

Videos were played, speeches were given and prizes dished out, the message was clear: English football is a more diverse and multi-cultural place than it once was and is all the better for it.

But there was also an almost tangible feeling that the situation is by no means perfect. The breakthrough African-Caribbean talent has made on the pitch has not been replicated in the dug-out. Why is that?

To be honest, I don't know. I suspect it is a combination of factors, with numerous caveats and lots of exceptions.

I'm also optimistic things are changing for the better, albeit slowly, and in years to come, when the percentages of black footballers and black managers are pretty comparable, articles like this will seem very old-fashioned.

But we're not there yet, are we?

The number of black players in the English game has been rising steadily for 30 years to the extent they now make up almost a quarter of all professional footballers, the group from which almost 100% of managers are recruited (give or take a Jose Mourinho).

All things being equal, the number of black managers should follow a similar upward path, no? Well, yes... and no.

Since Viv Anderson was given his chance by Barnsley in 1993, there have been 30 appointments of black managers in the top four divisions. These have involved 17 different managers.

Three of those 17 are working now: Keith Alexander at Macclesfield, Chris Hughton at Newcastle and Paul Ince at MK Dons. This is an increase on two in each of the last two seasons but a decrease on the six black managers who were in work at any one time between 2001 and 2003.

Keith Alexander has managed a number of Football League clubs

One, six, two, three... it's hardly an irresistible march towards the Promised Land, is it? Even allowing for the lag between footballers hanging up their boots and moving into management, there is a big discrepancy between the number of potential black managers and the number of actual black managers.

It is a similar story further down the coaching ladder. Statistics from 2007 revealed that less than 1% of senior coaching staff are black. This is despite an increasing number of black players taking coaching badges - the latest figures from the University of Warwick show that 12.5% of players with a "Uefa B" qualification are black.

Theories to explain what is happening - or failing to happen - can be divided into two camps: a lack of opportunity or a lack of role models.

The first is straightforward. Black candidates, for whatever reason, are being overlooked for managerial/coaching positions. Push people to suggest a reason and you will hear anything from old school prejudice to an old boys' network.

The second is more complex because it works on different levels.

Without role models to look up to fewer black footballers than white footballers consider management. This reinforces expectations, often sub-conscious, of what black and white ex-players will do next.

As a result, black footballers choose other careers. This has a vicious cycle-like logic as it reduces the chance of creating role models for future generations, particularly if those other options - the media, for example - look much rosier.

There is another element to the role-model argument to consider. The fact there are so few black managers means they are subject to a higher degree of scrutiny than their white counterparts.

Ince was not sacked by Blackburn after just 17 games because he was black, no, that would be ridiculous. But the pressure/expectation placed on him, as the first English black manager in the top flight, contributed to his downfall.

But I don't want this to be about individuals, because I know for every Ince I suggest somebody will shoot back with a John Barnes and this is about more than a few big names, just as the hundreds of average black players currently plying their trade have little in common with Batson, Cunningham and Regis.

In the video below you will see I have posed the question "does English football need a Rooney rule?" This does not, as others have already pointed out, have anything to do with Wayne. This Rooney is Dan, the veteran owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers who in 2003 introduced a remarkably successful piece of legislation into the National Football League rulebook.

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It is successful because it does not force the issue. The rule simply says an ethnic minority candidate must be interviewed for every head coach job that comes up. The number of African-Americans in those positions has increased from two to six (having been seven last season), and black head coaches have led two of the last three Super Bowl champions.

For what it's worth, I don't think English football needs to go down this route (with African-Americans making up 13% of the total US population and 65% of the NFL's players, their lack of representation in senior coaching positions was a more glaring inequality than English football's player/manager discrepancy) but we would do well to heed a few lessons.

The first is that access to opportunity is key. By giving minority candidates a shot at a job you give them exposure, hope and practice. If they don't get the first job, they will be better equipped to get the next one.

The second is that legislation like this depends on consent. President Eisenhower was a reluctant social reformer in the US because he did not believe you can "change the hearts of men with laws or decisions". He was probably right but Rooney had little trouble persuading his fellow NFL team owners of the necessity for change. They already knew the numbers didn't look right.

And the third is that once you break through a glass ceiling, people quickly forget it was ever there in the first place.

I have already said I am both troubled by the low number of black managers currently working in football and optimistic this situation will improve. I think I will leave it that and give the last word to England women's team manager Hope Powell.

"I don't know if it's about a lack of opportunities or role models, it's probably both. But as more black players come through, I'm sure things will change. Mainly because I expect people will start to wonder if we're missing a bit of a trick here."

As well as my blogs, you can follow me when I'm out and about at http://twitter.com/bbc_matt

Cycling's problematic pursuit of equality

2009-10-30T13:59:59Z

There are times when I think a seat on the sports administration gravy train might just be the very best place in the world: great food, first-class travel, the best seats for the big matches, fancy handbags and so on.

And then I remember they sometimes have to make tough decisions - 50/50 calls that will leave lots of people annoyed no matter which way you call it - and wonder if I really would like that responsibility.

World cycling's bosses are facing one of those lunch-spoiling dilemmas right now and the decision they appear to have made has certainly annoyed a lot of people, many of them British.

But before anybody accuses them of plotting to do us in now that we're good at something we should perhaps try to understand why preventing British cyclists from defending hard-won Olympic titles is not the open-and-shut case of incompetence/insensitivity/anti-British prejudice it might seem at first glance.

]]> Underlying all this - the proposed changes to the London 2012 track cycling programme, the scrapping of traditional events, the introduction of new ones, the complaints and predictions of doom - is a glaring injustice that simply must be addressed: men have more chances to win Olympic medals than women do.

Bradley Wiggins' storming ride in Beijing might be the last ever Olympic men's individual pursuit

In Beijing there were 165 men's events and only 127 for women. This meant that 58% of the 11,000 athletes at the Games were male - the inequality is even worse at the Winter Olympics.

This is more than just a bit embarrassing for a movement that considers itself liberal and meritocratic, it also falls short of the International Olympic Committee's (IOC) own charter and could even be illegal in many countries (particularly when you consider the public money involved in staging these celebrations of humanity).

Simple, you might be thinking, just introduce more events for the women, 165 gold-medal opportunities each.

If only it was that easy.

Leaving aside any debate on the attraction of women's Greco-Roman wrestling or men's synchronised swimming, there is one massive problem with adding events to the Olympic programme: cost. More events, means more athletes, more coaches, more officials, more rooms, more vehicles, more, more, more.

The price tag of an Olympics is already at the upper end of what most governments think they can reasonably expect their electorates to go for and the IOC knows it. Asking for more is out of the question. So if the federations that run the Olympic sports want new events they're going to have to give up some old ones.

Which brings us to track cycling: Beijing's Laoshan Velodrome was a fantastic venue for top sport, and the scene of many of Team GB's proudest moments, but it was hardly an equal-opportunities workplace.

Of the 10 events, only three were for female cyclists. While this meant Sir Chris Hoy was able to sprint to three golds and a knighthood, Victoria Pendleton had to make do with one and some magazine work.

This disgraceful situation left cycling's governing body, the UCI, open to considerable criticism. And it certainly came, much of it from Britain. But say what you like about the UCI, and many do, nobody can say it didn't listen.

At London 2012, it has decreed, there will be five events for men and five for women: sprint, team sprint, keirin, team pursuit and omnium. So out go the men's madison and points races, the women's points and both individual pursuits, and in comes a women's team sprint, keirin, team pursuit and two omniums.

Those changes are provisional but nobody is expecting the IOC to do anything other than rubber-stamp them at its next board meeting in December.

So, with one bureaucratic flourish, equality between the sexes has been delivered in the velodrome. But what about equality between the cyclists?

The five chosen events can be broken down into three for sprinters like Hoy and Pendleton, one for distance riders like Bradley Wiggins and Rebecca Romero, and one, the five-discipline omnium, for all-rounders. These choices represent a clear shift away from endurance events to more explosive ones, and reaction has divided along those lines (as the video below demonstrates).

Sir Chris Hoy, Victoria Pendleton, Geraint Thomas and Lizzie Armitstead on the changes to the 2012 programme

Pendleton, unsurprisingly, is delighted. Sprint king Hoy is pleased for his female counterparts but acknowledges it is hard on the distance riders. Romero and Wiggins, individual pursuit specialists, are furious. The former described the changes as "ludicrous", while the latter said the proposals would "kill off" endurance cycling on the track.

Wiggins, a three-time world and double Olympic champion, was hoping to go for an unprecedented third straight victory in his home city in 2012, and Romero will also now be deprived of the chance to defend her Olympic title. If that's not bad enough, Wiggo has also lost his ride in the madison and Romero her second medal shot in the points race.

And it's not just these two in the GB team left wondering if they have upset the cycling gods. Beijing medallists like Steven Burke, Wendy Houvenaghel and Geraint Thomas can all feel aggrieved about the UCI's "radical" tinkering.

But the link between the individual pursuit and Britain goes deeper than that. Domestic riders have won 21 world titles in the event in the last half century. The greats of British track cycling - Beryl Burton, Graeme Obree, Hugh Porter et al - have specialised in this most pure of contests.

And you could argue that Chris Boardman's individual pursuit triumph in 1992 was the catalyst for Britain's recent Olympic renaissance. The lessons learned by Boardman and his young coach Peter Keen have transformed Team GB from being nice-but-nowhere types to success-hungry medal machines.

So it is more than just another event for British cyclists and while none of them disputes the need to address the male/female medal split, they are wondering if other sports would have been given such a firm one-in/one-out ultimatum.

Athletics, the Olympics' biggest sport, has been allowed to level up its medal split without losing men's events, and swimming, the second biggest sport, has also not had to engage in much horse-trading with the IOC over the years. Are some Olympic sports more equal than others? That, no doubt, will be the topic of much conversation when the track cycling community gathers in Manchester this weekend for the World Cup Series' opening leg.

I expect there will be also be some water-cooler chat about the omnium, which isn't on the World Cup menu but has appeared at the last few world championships. Until now cycling's answer to the pentathlon has failed to tempt the sport's biggest names (Thomas refers to it as a "joke event" in the video above) but that will probably change now there is an Olympic medal to aim for. One rider who appears made for its jack-of-all-trades demands is Britain's Lizzie Armitstead. Remember the name.

It is also worth pointing out that British cycling has been here before. Hoy was devastated when the UCI took away his speciality, the kilo, to accommodate BMX in Beijing. The Scot has admitted to almost quitting but he decided to set himself new goals and emerged four years later as the world's greatest sprinter in both the power events and the more tactical ones. When I spoke to Hoy about this at the Nationals last week, his message was clear: if you want a new challenge, you'll find it.

He's right, of course, His Royal Hoyness usually is. And who knows, perhaps this is the burning injustice that will motivate Romero to a third Olympic medal in different sports/events (rowing, track cycling and road cycling) and Wiggins to Tour de France glory. The UCI would struggle to scrap that.

As well as my blogs, you can follow me when I'm out and about at http://twitter.com/bbc_matt

ps And if you want to read an interview with the man who helped Hoy get over losing his favourite event, click here. It's a great read.

Welcome to BBC iD

2009-10-29T17:04:05Z

Early next week, there will be a change to how you leave comments on this blog - we're upgrading our current registration system to a new and improved one. When you log in to the new system, you will be prompted to upgrade your existing account, and you should be able to do that with a minimum of fuss. More details on this can be found on the BBC Internet Blog.

Whiff-whaff's road home starts in Sheffield

2009-10-28T12:00:13Z

When Boris Johnson "respectfully" told the Chinese that "ping pong was invented on the dining tables of England in the 19th century - and it was called whiff-whaff", I actually felt guilty for not voting for him to be London mayor.

How could I not recognise the genius of a ping pong diplomat who could so succinctly sum up the national character with a reference to our desire to cancel the cheese course, clear the plates away and get the bats out?

But promising to bring a sport home and doing it are two different things. A bit like his "Boris Island" plan, repatriating table tennis is a nice idea but it won't come cheap and Johnson isn't paying.

That obligation falls upon Britain's Olympic bosses and they need a better reason to invest than fine rhetoric or historical sentiment - they want medal potential, which is why they will be looking to Sheffield this week for signs of whiff-whaff life.

]]> The English Open, which runs from Wednesday to Sunday at the South Yorkshire city's English Institute of Sport, is one of three major staging posts for British table tennis on the road to London 2012 (the others being another English Open in January 2011 and an Olympic test event later that year).

Watch Matt Slater's report on the funding crisis that is threatening Britain's hopes of competing in the Olympic table tennis tournament in 2012

Partially funded by UK Sport, the body that dishes out public money to elite sport in this country, the English Open's 65th edition has attracted 13 of the world's top 20 players in both the male and female rankings.

Trading shots with the very best from China, Germany and Korea will be 26 British players, including 23 in the under-21 section. Foremost among those will be the 19-year-old Paul Drinkhall, our brightest prospect since Desmond Douglas in the 1980s.

Drinkhall, an affable and modest lad from Middlesbrough, has just joined the senior tour after a stellar junior career which saw him reach three in the rankings and lose in the final of the world championships. And he has already shown signs that there is more to come, claiming a stunning victory in the under-21 competition at the Chinese Open in June.

That's the good news. The bad news is that British table tennis' current good health is pretty relative - the last decade has not been a good one for those who have followed Johnson's games-obsessed aristos.

Like most minority sports in this country, table tennis needs Olympic (or other major championship) success to initiate the virtuous cycle of sports funding - points mean prizes. Failure has the reverse effect.

With no money to spare the English Table Tennis Association has been unable to stage ping pong's "Wimbledon" for eight years. This means less exposure, which means less money, which means fewer full-time players and coaches, which means less chance of success and so on. It's a horrible downward spiral and the sport should be congratulated for pulling itself out of it.

Unfortunately, table tennis' green shoots came too late to survive the chop in the great British Olympic budget cut of last year.

A failure to raise a hoped-for £100m from the private sector left a hole in Team GB's 2012 war chest. Table tennis was one of eight Olympic sports to see its allocation slashed, going from £2.53m for Beijing to £1.21m for London.

This was a devastating blow for a sport starting to get its act together but hardly surprising when you consider the facts: no British player has qualified for the Olympics since Matthew Syed in 2000, Drinkhall, while very talented and years off his peak, is still outside the top 100 and our last significant victory came at the 1954 world championships when Rosalind Rowe and Diane Scholer-Rowe won the women's doubles.

And that is without mentioning the elephant in the dining room, China.

The hosts took gold, silver and bronze in the men's and women's singles in Beijing and might have done the same if they could have fielded second and third strings in the respective team competitions.

The Asian superpower has won 20 of the 24 available gold medals since table tennis gained Olympic status in 1988 and it has been a similar story at the worlds.

But China's domination of table tennis goes deeper than the medal count. It has been estimated that 200m of the world's 300m table tennis players are Chinese (in comparison, the latest figures claim there are 190,000 regular players in England) and a quick glance at the rankings will illustrate just how deep their talent pool goes.

One consequence of this is the high number of Chinese players now competing under flags of convenience. A British coach told me about a European competitor that had recently held trials for a batch of Chinese juniors, the winners were given new passports within the week.

What's most frustrating about this is British table tennis could have gone down this route as well, achieving better short-term results and earning more funding. The governing body took a more principled view, however, building from the bottom with a young squad of domestic talent. But they've paid for it with reduced rations.

Watch Matt Slater being thrashed by a table tennis robot ahead of the English Open

The implications of this are very serious indeed. Having set up a national table tennis centre in Sheffield, hired additional staff and embarked on a training and competition programme designed for results in 2012 and beyond, the authorities decided to take their UK Sport budget over two years, not four.

This has enabled them to continue what they've been doing for the last couple of years but means the money will run out in 2011. Hardly ideal for bringing ping pong home or helping the government achieve its ambitious 2012 legacy targets of inspiring a generation to play more sport.

Because that is the real missed opportunity here - table tennis is a remarkably accessible sport. It can be played almost anywhere (as Johnson pointed out), is easy to grasp, a lot of fun and perfect for densely populated countries with a shortage of good outdoor space. The same set of reasons that made table tennis so attractive to Chairman Mao are very quietly increasing the numbers playing the sport in this country too.

So there is a lot riding on Drinkhall, Darius Knight and the rest of our young squad in Sheffield this week. They need to be more like Andy Murray and Laura Robson at Wimbledon and less like the rest of the British contingent. An early surrender will only confirm the view that this is not a sport worth investment.

I wish them well for a few different reasons. First, they're a cracking bunch. Second, it is a great sport to play and watch, particularly live. And third, if we are to have any chance of getting a million more people playing more sport after 2012, games we can play on our dining tables are going to be crucial.

As well as my blogs, you can follow me when I'm out and about at http://twitter.com/bbc_matt

Football's trusts must keep the faith

2009-10-21T16:06:17Z

"You must never run a football club based on what somebody might shout at you from the stands."

Given the nonsense I sometimes spout about the "size" of my club (and therefore what division we should be playing in) this advice was possibly the most important message to come out of last week's slightly subdued Supporters Direct Annual Conference.

I say subdued because delegates from the 150+ supporters' trusts active in the UK assembled in Birmingham eager to trumpet how far the fan-ownership movement in football (and more recently rugby league) has come but mindful that the last year has witnessed a few bum notes.

If you'll allow me to run with the jazz metaphor a little longer, in the Kind of Blue corner you have the phoenix clubs of AFC Wimbledon and FC United, the renaissance of Exeter City and the shining example set by Barcelona; joining anything by Kenny G on the naughty step you've got the sheepish surrender at Notts County, the cash crunch at Stockport County and British football's continuing refusal to live within its means.

]]> Dave Boyle, SD's chief executive, encapsulated this mixed report card when he opened the conference with the geographically sound but comically iffy observation that the movement was at a "crossroads". But why?

Why did 93% of the Notts County Supporters' Trust vote to hand over its controlling share of the club to a shadowy group of investors who still haven't answered even the most basic questions about who they are (not publicly anyway)?

Sol Campbell in action in his only game for Notts County at Morecambe

Why was the supporter-controlled board at Stockport just as incapable of safeguarding the medium-term health of the club as the various speculators, asset-strippers and out-and-out crooks that have wrecked other football teams?

And why are Exeter City the only fans-run club left in the Football League?

I'll tell you why: it's because football fans are stupid. OK, not stupid, but irrational.

Not that I blame them. As I've already mentioned, I'm just as susceptible to the "if Burnley can reach the Premier League so can we" daydream and only rarely remember the nightmares endured by Barnsley, Bradford, Charlton, Derby etc etc.

My club - like many of yours, I imagine - is eternally short of the decent full-back, wide player and a bit more cover on the bench that will propel us towards the Promised Land. Who cares if we can't afford the transfer fees/wages for these missing pieces, let alone the pieces we've already got. Where's your ambition?!?!

And it's not just football fans; everybody is at it.

"I think we just have to recognise that both firms and consumers don't always make the best decisions. They don't always act in their best interest or indeed in the best collective interest of society."

Substitute the words "firms" and "consumers" for "clubs" and "fans" and Hector Sants, the chief executive of the Financial Services Authority, could have been talking about football this week, not self-cert mortgages and pre-approved loans.

We all want too much, too soon. Given the choice between live-the-dream excitement or long-term sustainability, well, it's just not much of a choice, really.

And that is why the Notts County Supporters' Trust gave up the thankless and possibly impossible task of balancing a League Two club's books (whilst persuading the wider fan base that promotion is still part of the plan) and accepted the very tempting but slightly suspicious offer of life-changing investment.

One former trust representative on the Notts County board turned up in Brum to face the music for selling out (not that any money actually changed hands) but he was given a sympathetic hearing, and not just because he was one of the 55 who said "no" to Munto - "there but for the grace of God go I" appeared to be the consensus view.

It was a similar story when a former director at Stockport put his head above the parapet to admit they had not been strong enough, they had not learned how to say no to the manager and they had failed to communicate their more organic growth plan to the club's support.

Again, this list of mea culpas was greeted with resigned nods by most in the room.

For every dogmatic suggestion that the trusts at Meadow Lane and Edgeley Park should have accepted what happened on the pitch with the good humour of somebody without financial worries, an experienced old head would smile and say, "Nice idea, have you tried it?"

Delegates from Brentford, Chesterfield and Rochdale all spoke passionately about their battles with debt, former owners and demands for signings from the terraces.

Even the pair from Exeter City, the movement's star pupil, admitted competing in League One was a daily grind against the odds and the club's revival would have been impossible without the support of the council, a city-centre ground, lots of volunteers and a good break in the FA Cup.

What struck me about all these stories is that the fan-ownership model has become a victim of its own success. Time and time again, trusts have come to the rescue of badly run private enterprises. This has raised expectations without changing the fundamentals.

When the government set up Supporters Direct in 1999 the aim was to get fans' representatives on the boards of clubs. That way the common supporter would be given a say in how his or her club would be run. But the extraordinary responses from ordinary fans at clubs as diverse as Bournemouth and Manchester United made it seem more was possible, much more quickly.

I think the last year, however, has reminded everybody just how hard the journey to Barcelona-style accountability, democracy and, most of all, success, will be. Refocusing on the original target - and harnessing the lessons learned over the last decade - would help SD and football. Little acorns and all that.

Barcelona players celebrate a goal in the Spanish League in front of a packed Nou Camp

Let's be honest, Barca is the city upon a hill. It didn't just acquire 170,000 members, 1,500 supporters' clubs and 200m fans worldwide because a group of fans got together to buy the club. No, the Catalonian giants are "mes que un club" for fairly unique historical reasons.

I would love to see an English Barca emerge - and I wish the trusts at Manchester United and Newcastle and the Liverpool fans' groups ShareLiverpoolFC and Spirit of Shankly all the best - but the finances of our biggest teams are now so complicated, so massive, a fans' buy-out is almost impossible to imagine. When Liverpool host United on Sunday their joint debt will be over £1bn - that's a lot of pledges on a website.

The only scenario that is going to bring about a Premier League Barca anytime soon is for a club to fail. And I mean really fail. Not just the company that owns it. A Lehman Brothers, a sacrificial lamb. That would wake up fans, the media and the governing bodies to the perils of short-termism, unregulated speculation and warped competition. Any volunteers?

In the meantime, the supporters' trust movement should just comfort itself with the knowledge that it is very probably right about most things, it's just that most people aren't ready to listen yet.

ps I haven't named my club on purpose, mainly because I don't think it really matters (the issues are universal). But I'm happy to provide details below. I'll give you a clue: we're either on the verge of administration because we owe the taxman £300K, or all is well and we'll be in our new stadium asap - depends who you believe.

* As well as my blogs, you can follow me when I'm out and about on Twitter

Cagey Contador loses nothing in translation

2009-10-15T08:40:50Z

"I have no relationship with Lance. I don't speak to him. He is working on his future and I am working on mine."

Comprende? Loud and clear, Alberto, loud and clear.

But that isn't going to stop people like me asking because Lance Armstrong versus Alberto Contador - team-mates, apparently - was this summer's sporting highlight.

Thrown together in the unlikeliest of Tour de France partnerships, the two riders fought like cats in a bag for most of the race only for Contador to settle the argument where it really mattered, on the road.

Sometimes funny, often bitchy, their sparring, on and off the bike, was never anything but engrossing. And best of all they're going to do it all over again next July and this time they don't have to pretend to be on the same side.

]]> But before I get too carried away with next year, I should probably explain the background to the opening quote.

I normally steer clear of behind-the-scenes stuff - to paraphrase Bismarck, news stories are a bit like sausages, it is better not to see them being made - but I'll make an exception this time as it might shed some light on how LA v AC became cycling's answer to Borg v McEnroe, Prost v Senna or Southend v Colchester.

A few weeks ago, a PR man phoned to offer an interview with Contador. A broadcast exclusive, he said, at London's Cycle Show, he added.

Brilliant, I thought: the chance to talk to the world's best cyclist, on camera, only 20 minutes down the road and it's an exclusive.

Can you get me 18 holes with Tiger Woods, a private tennis lesson from Maria Sharapova and a lift home with Lewis Hamilton as well?

And then I complicated things. "What's his English like?" I asked.

"Ah", the PR man said, "not great. Will that be a problem?"

Well, I suppose that depends whether you think Contador's spats with Armstrong - conducted in the heat of battle, usually in translation - were a problem, I thought but didn't say out loud.

Not that I really needed a response, the answer came soon enough.

Contador will do the interview in English, the PR man said, providing you email the questions now so he can practise them, he can have a couple of interpreters there and you don't pull any last-minute surprises with your line of inquiries (so no Qs about you know what).

Comprende? Loud and clear, Alberto, loud and clear.

I'll fast-forward now to the interview. All in all, it went OK, considering the fact Contador was clearly nervous about speaking in a foreign language and determined not to fan Tour de France flames that have just about died down.

Died down but not extinguished.

The 26-year-old was charm personified when asked about British cycling, Bradley Wiggins and Mark Cavendish, and he gave thoughtful replies to my questions about his Olympic ambitions and his place in the sport's history books, but it was Armstrong that brought the most considered responses.

Given all that has happened between them, it's hardly surprising.

From the moment the American announced his surprise return to cycling, the two (very different) men were probably guaranteed to clash.

They might have just avoided it if they had been out-and-out adversaries, but when Contador's team manager (and Lance's old pal) Johan Bruyneel signed Armstrong to join the Astana all-stars, a head-on collision was the only possible result.

How could the most famous cyclist in the world - a best-selling author, a fund-raising phenomenon, a friend of the rich and famous - accept second-class status to a rider who had finished over an hour behind him in 2005? Who could boss "The Boss"?

Contador, on the other hand, could rightly wonder what on earth had just happened. He was coming off a season that had seen him win the Giro d'Italia and the Vuelta a Espana - a feat that made him only the fifth rider in history, and the youngest, to have claimed all three of cycling's Grand Tours.

Was he now expected to return to the ranks? Wasn't this supposed to be his team?

What happened next was the mother of all turf wars - three weeks of pure playground one-upmanship.

Armstrong, back on his favourite platform, scored the early victories: getting on the right side of a split in the peloton in the third stage and then revelling in the media's appreciation of his cycling smarts.

Four days later, Contador hit back when he accelerated away from Armstrong and the other leading contenders on the climb to Andorra Arcalis. It was the kind of initiative-seizing stunt Armstrong used to pull in his pomp. It was also probably against Astana team orders.

Contador took complete control a week later on the ascent to Verbier. No amount of smarts could compensate for the younger man's legs and lungs. It was magnificent and emphatic.

As a cycling contest between the two, the rest of the Tour was slightly disappointing (the Schleck brothers had a pop at Contador but even their tag-team approach couldn't unsettle the Spaniard).

But even as you witnessed Contador's calm progress to Paris, you had to admire Armstrong's pursuit of a podium place, and you knew he was already plotting a return to the top step in 2010.

Which brings us to this week's unveiling of the battleground for Armstrong v Contador II.
They were both in Paris on Wednesday, side-by-side for the cameras but miles apart really, to help publicise next year's route - a zigzag through the Low Countries followed by a clockwise loop of France.

With four days in the Pyrenees - to mark the 100th anniversary of the Tour's inaugural visit - and two trips up the brutal Col du Tourmalet to look forward to, it appeared at first glance to be a good result for Contador.

But like a good cricket pitch, there is something in it for Armstrong too. The cobbled-stone sections in Belgium and northern France will play to his superior bike-handling skills and Contador's advantage in the mountains will be tempered by the surprisingly high number of valley-floor finishes.

Add to that the support Armstrong will gain from his hand-picked Radio Shack team (with the faithful Bruyneel at the helm) and the American, who was a little undercooked this year after injuring himself in the Giro, will be entitled to think an eighth Tour victory is possible.

Possible but not probable - far more likely is a third victory for Contador, who is resigned to racing for the always-interesting Astana for another season (Armstrong and Contador were reunited briefly in Paris to deflect the by now traditional fresh doping allegations that dog the team and the sport in general).

When I asked him in London about Armstrong coming back at him even harder next year, "El Pistolero" didn't seem unduly perturbed.

"Lance has a new team so, yes, he will be dangerous. But it's OK, I believe in me and my concentration and my team. So we will see."

Indeed we will, Alberto, indeed we will.

* As well as my blogs, you can follow me when I'm out and about on Twitter

Plenty still to ponder at Portsmouth

2009-10-06T19:12:53Z

A decade or so ago I spent a year writing about cars for a motoring website. I enjoyed it for a bit - a new car to drive most weekends and foreign trips to warm countries with photogenic roads are reasonable perks - but realised it wasn't for me when I had to update my own reviews of cars that were only "new" in the sense that they had a different stereo and metallic paint was now standard.

This came back to me on Monday when I found myself reporting on a second takeover at Portsmouth Football Club in two months - they've had as many owners as they have points this season - and like the car reviews there are plenty of similarities between the two.

]]> It is still a case of hard chimes for Pompey on and off the pitch. The new owner is a Middle Eastern businessman of whom we know little; the previous owner, Sacha Gaydamak, still has a say on matters; and the only person providing real commentary is the long-standing/suffering chief executive Peter Storrie.

Thankfully, for Pompey fans, there are also differences between the two deals. Let's explore those before returning to the far bigger pile of unanswered questions:

First, Ali Al Faraj, the new new owner of Portsmouth, is a very private person from Saudi Arabia. Sulaiman Al Fahim, the old new owner of Portsmouth, is a publicity addict from Dubai. In regard to their desire for media attention, they are as alike as Greta Garbo and Kerry Katona.

Second, Storrie, the guardian of Fratton Park's secrets for the last seven-and-a-half years, seems much happier about the prospect of working for Al Faraj than he ever was about working for Al Fahim.

And third, erm...have I mentioned the metallic paint?

I would love to be able to tell Portsmouth's supporters that Al Faraj is definitely, as Storrie has described him, the "real deal" and a man capable of taking them "to another level", but we've heard similar stuff before and the Championship is another level.

If we just stick to what we know for sure, Al Faraj is a middle-aged (Monday's reports had him at 50 but he had lost 10 years by Tuesday) tycoon who controls a British Virgin Islands-listed company called Falcondrone. It's that company which has bought 90% of Portsmouth from Al Fahim.

His British lawyer, Mark Jacob (video below), who seems like a good guy, fleshed out this meagre CV a little when I spoke to him outside his office in London on Tuesday.

He described Al Faraj as a commodity broker who heads his family's private investment trust. That trust invests in property and has a stake in Saudi petrochemicals giant Sabic (although the company and the Saudi stock exchange declined to answer my requests to confirm this).

Jacob, who will be representing his client on Portsmouth's board, also assured me Al Faraj is a football nut who has been looking to get into the English game for some time. He added they will both be attending Pompey's next match, which is at home to Spurs on 17 October.

Hold on. Tottenham? Honestly, you couldn't make this stuff up. The north London club is the greatest beneficiary of the Pompey fire sale - Fratton Park favourites Peter Crouch, Jermain Defoe and Niko Kranjcar all now reside at White Hart Lane - which is hardly surprising when you remember that Harry Redknapp, the man who led Portsmouth to FA Cup glory only 17 months ago, now manages Spurs.

In fact, you could argue it was Redknapp's policy of signing players of such quality as Crouch, Defoe, Krancjar and co - plus Gaydamak and Storrie's willingness to pay them top-whack wages - that got Portsmouth into this mess.

I've already written about the financial implications of building a dependable Premier League team capable of cup success and basing it at a ground more suited to League One, so I won't do it again. Suffice it to say the money will run out in the end.

And that is what happened in December 2007. It was then that Gaydamak told Storrie to start balancing the books. It was a nice idea but at least a year too late, particularly for a man whose own finances had been credit-crunched.

Al Fahim (remember him?) was supposed to be the solution - a major player in the Middle East with the cash and energy to drive through the redevelopment of Fratton Park, create an Arsenal-style academy/scouting network, refinance the bank loans that had been keeping the show on the road and give manager Paul Hart the money he needs to maintain Pompey's Premier League status.

Sadly, for all involved, it didn't work out like that. Just as it didn't work out for him during his brief but amusing spell as Abu Dhabi front man at Manchester City, just as it hasn't been working out for him in the Dubai property market, and just as he isn't a doctor of anything.

He's packed a lot in to his 32 years - he's also enjoyed a spell as a reality TV Sir Alan Sugar/Donald Trump - but his attempts to break into English football have been embarrassing. If he tries to make it third time lucky at my club, I will padlock myself to the stadium gates.

In happier times - Pete Storrie and Sulaiman Al Fahim

Which brings me to this remarkable saga's list of still unanswered questions.

If Al Fahim has no money (he was unable to even pay the wages at Fratton Park last week) and brings so little to the table, why does he still have a 10% stake and an honorary role at the club?

How could a recently successful club that plays in the world's richest football league get so close to administration?

Why aren't the league's officials means-testing prospective owners to make sure they can service existing debts and keep the club in business? Is the new "fit and proper person test" already unfit for purpose?

How much, if anything, did Al Fahim actually pay Gaydamak for 100% of the club in August? How much did Al Faraj pay Al Fahim for 90% in October?

Why didn't Gaydamak sell the club to the seemingly more solvent Al Faraj in August - Storrie said at the time the French-Russian-Israeli investor would rather put the club into administration than sell to Al Faraj - but then sanction the deal this week?

And why did Gaydamak, a man who has been looking for a way out for months but remains a creditor at the club, retain veto status after his sale to Al Fahim? What was the rationale for holding on to vital redevelopment land around the ground if he intended to sell it eventually to the next Pompey owner, whoever he may be, for £1?

I could go on but I won't. We've all had enough and it is only fair to give Al Faraj, Hart, Storrie, the squad and fans (especially them) a fair crack at a fresh start. Now that somebody has finally paid up, it is time for Pompey to play up.

* As well as my blogs, you can follow me when I'm out and about on Twitter

Medal hopes in credit thanks to team effort

2009-09-30T12:51:16Z

You can usually tell something is a good idea when lots of people tap you on the shoulder to point out that it was their idea first.

It was a bit like that in Stratford on Tuesday when yours truly, a healthy smattering of fellow hacks, assorted top brass and 47 Olympic and Paralympic hopefuls assembled to mark the launch of "Team 2012", a joint venture to raise funds for Team GB's London war chest.

That £304m chest, you may recall, was about £50m light after government attempts to raise money from the private sector - the "third stream" - raised precisely zilch. Not only was this a bit embarrassing, it also left lots of London 2012 dreams in limbo.

Eight Olympic and four Paralympic sports, all initially told to ramp up their efforts in preparation for London, saw their budgets slashed: training plans were shelved, support staff let go and athletes, desperate to continue, were forced to take out extra loans.

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The good news now, however, is the sacrifices made to keep those programmes up and running may not have been in vain. Britain's best handball, table tennis and volleyball players probably shouldn't get their Olympic rings tattoos inked in just yet but they can at least start to think where they'd like them.

Tuesday's announcement that Visa is willing to lend its plastic to the 1,200 would-be Olympians/ Paralympians currently receiving public funding is the first taste they've had of that mythical third stream.

The credit card giant has stumped up the best part of £10m to become Team 2012's "presenting partner" (that's first sponsor in normal speak), a significant investment in these straitened times.

What Visa - one of the International Olympic Committee's global sponsors since 1986 - is getting in return is the right to associate itself with the UK's Olympic and Paralympic collective, as opposed to any closer connection with a particular sport or group of stars.

This distinction might seem a bit semantic but the debate about it has exercised some of the finest minds in British sport. Putting together a sponsorship proposition that won't dilute the existing deals of individual athletes, the respective sports or the London Games themselves has been a feat worthy of an Olympic medal.

Not everybody is convinced by the clauses put in place to safeguard these deals (or the possibility of future ones) but nobody, not even the most sceptical agent, can say Team 2012's architects haven't tried to come up with a solution.

Whether a commitment to use no fewer than four athletes, from a minimum of three sports, with no prominence given to any individual, in any image/event to promote Team 2012 is a good enough solution is a moot point.

What is clear is that Team 2012 has been proved to work - it has actually brought some money to the table.

It has also, finally, received 100% backing from the sports (if not quite yet 100% backing from all the athletes). They know that Team 2012, or something like it, has to work if elite sport is to continue to enjoy its current levels of financial support after the bunting is packed away in three years' time. The political commitment to self-finance should not be underestimated.

What is also certain is that this is a timely boost for the 12 "below the line" sports as they have taken their reduced rations in one go: frontloading their funding has enabled the likes of water polo and weightlifting to maintain progress but has left them sweating on what happens when the money runs out.

UK Sport, the body that allocates funding to elite sport, is not making any promises about how it will spend Team 2012 revenue but it has noticed how fencing and shooting, for example, have started to show genuine "medal potential".

A decision on which sport gets what will not be made until the next review in December, and UK Sport is sticking to its meritocracy mantra, but I think those that missed out last time will get a slice.

Former England rugby union coach Sir Clive Woodward, the British Olympic Association's slightly controversial elite performance guru, will also be delighted as his employer's share of the cash will be spent on his coaching academy. This should at last give him an opportunity to show what he can bring to the Team GB party.

Brilliant, you might be thinking, but why hasn't this happened before? After all, we won the right to stage the Games more than four years ago. Couldn't we have set up a vehicle to raise private cash for our team a little bit earlier?

Erm...yes, is the simple answer, but the Olympic landscape is a complicated place. Making the roadmap to 2012 a little less complicated has, in many ways, been the real story of Team 2012.

Getting the BOA (Team GB's governing body), the British Paralympic Association (the BOA's Paralympic equivalent), UK Sport (Team GB's bank) and Locog (London 2012's organisers) to work together is the reason a blue-chip company like Visa decided to bite on Team 2012 when nobody wanted to touch the ill-conceived "opportunities" that were punted around before.

This cooperation/declaration of peace is the real "good idea" on display here.

And it is a good, and long overdue, idea - BOA boss Andy Hunt is confident that corporate backers like Visa (they can only come from the group of companies already associated with either the IOC or London 2012 to avoid any threat of ambush marketing) can fill almost half of that £50m hole.

Another tactic will be to tap up "high net worth individuals" - 140 of them were invited to a posh dinner in London on Tuesday night - and a nationwide appeal to those of us with more limited scope for philanthropy should follow in 2011.

The exact nature of that tin-rattling exercise has not been decided but my bet is it will involve getting something, a brick perhaps, for £20.12p (and if it is that I'll want a cut of the profits). A similar scheme worked well for Sydney 2000 and Vancouver 2010 has an "Own the Podium" initiative that is proving popular with punters.

So there are grounds for optimism on the fund-raising front. The overall economic picture might be a bit gloomy, and marketing budgets may be a lot tighter, but as Locog continues to prove (its latest coup is signing up delivery firm UPS as its 22nd sponsor) there is an appetite for Olympic-related business.

This can only be good for Team GB's prospects of emulating - and they really should be surpassing - the glories of Beijing.

* As well as my blogs, you can follow me when I'm out and about on Twitter

Wrightie's rant gets ministerial approval

2009-09-28T15:31:24Z

In the spirit of reconciliation between the BBC and News Corp (and to show James Murdoch not everything we do online is "chilling") I would like to draw your attention to a recent advertisement for The Sun's soaraway salon of soccer scribes, Harry Redknapp, Terry Venables and Ian Wright.

The billboard in question was for Wrightie and it was situated near West Ham's training ground in Chadwell Heath.

Above a toothy shot of the former Arsenal and England centre forward, a caption in quote marks said something about too many mediocre foreigners in the Premier League holding back young domestic talent: good, knock-about, back-of-cab stuff.

You might have missed it but Carlton Cole didn't and it got him thinking. "I can relate to that," the Hammers striker told me, which is hardly surprising given his stop-start progress to Premier League stardom and Fabio Capello's England squad.

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Starved of first-team opportunities at Chelsea, the club that nurtured his talent, and unable to settle at any of the clubs he was loaned to, a stalled Cole (pictured right) moved to Upton Park in 2006.

He didn't pull up any trees there at first either but in the last 18 months the south Londoner, now 25, has started to deliver on the potential the ex-Chelsea boss Claudio Ranieri described when he said: "I've never coached a young player like Carlton - he's fantastic and has a very big future at Chelsea."

He was half right.

But having tried to patch up one row with a major player in British football, I should avoid starting a new one with another: Cole was not suggesting Roman Abramovich's millions were being wasted on mediocre foreigners at Chelsea.

"I'm thinking more about some of my mates who didn't make it at other clubs, they did have average foreign players ahead of them," he clarified.

"I think Ian Wright is making a big statement there and I hope clubs realise that sometimes it's cheaper not to bring in a player from abroad - a quick fix - but to develop one of your own instead."

He's right, of course, but it's easier said than done when Premier League survival is guaranteed millions, the continued employment of hundreds of staff and the feel-good exposure of playing in the world's most popular football league.

Relegation, on the other hand, is, well, rubbish.

But that doesn't make Wright's (hardly original) observation and Cole's shining example any less compelling, particularly in the wake of last week's Her Majesty's Government v Football Association ding-dong.

Media attention has focused on the government's frustration with football's governing body for failing to implement the recommendations made by leading civil servant Lord Burns in 2005.

The fact those recommendations were aimed at improving the FA's executive structure probably explains why Cole and the two other Premier League stars I spoke to at a Prince's Trust youth forum in London last week, Spurs striker Jermain Defoe and West Ham midfielder Mark Noble, knew nothing about them.

Having read Burns' review, I can't blame them.

But they had plenty to say about another issue Sports Minister Gerry Sutcliffe flagged up in his letter to FA boss Lord Triesman (pictured right) and his counterparts at the Football League and Premier League, English football's patchy record on youth development - the same point Wright was making.

For Noble, the epitome of a local boy done good, it is all about opportunity: he got it at West Ham, while counterparts at more successful clubs haven't. That is why he is pleased with recent moves to introduce quotas for home-grown players in the English leagues.

Sutcliffe also praised these initiatives but wondered if more could be done.

Among the measures he proposed for discussion are a transfer ban for under-18s (a move being talked about by the governing bodies of European and world football, and grumbled about by every leading English club), bonus payments to clubs for fielding English-qualified players and relaxing restrictions on player loans.

It is a shame most attention has centred on whether the government really would withhold its investment in grassroots football just to get two non-executive directors on the FA board or not, when Sutcliffe had reasonable questions to ask about another forgotten football review, Rugby Football League boss Richard Lewis's look at youth development.

It is two years since his recommendations were announced - harmonising standards across the leagues, more emphasis on coaching, more age-specific work and so on - but evidence of actual change is hard to identify.

In the meantime the trends that prompted the review have continued: English clubs are using more and more foreign players, the leading clubs in particular, and the number of fully-fledged footballers to emerge from their youth set-up's remains disappointing (which partly explains why the likes of Chelsea have got themselves in trouble for their global trawl for young talent).

Properly implementing the Burns review on governance would be a welcome step for the FA. Properly implementing the Lewis review is essential for the future health of English football - it probably would not hurt the prospects of the other Home Nations and Ireland either.

There is another pressing piece of business Sutcliffe attempted to remind everybody of and that is the National Football Centre at Burton (pictured above). Remember that?

The FA gave England's answer to Clairefontaine/Coverciano the green light 15 months ago (for at least the third time in eight years) but it would take the intervention of Bagpuss's mice, the Ground Force crew and the pharaohs' foremen to get the project up and running by 2010, what with there being little more than 350 acres of Staffordshire countryside behind that expensive fence.

The sheer waste of this farcical situation is particularly galling when I recall what Defoe said was the moment he knew he would make it as a footballer, the day he found out he had won a place at the FA's School of Excellence at Lilleshall. If Burton helps to produce half the number of players Lilleshall did before it was shut down in 1999 it will be cheap at £80m.

Now it is unlikely that a Premier League footballer will ever credit a sports minister with making a "big statement" about the game - Sutcliffe has no medals or billboards - but he is asking the right questions. Football's guardians would do well to address them or the prospect of finding three young English Premier League footballers to talk to a group of young Londoners about career development could become considerably more difficult.

* As well as my blogs, you can follow me when I'm out and about on Twitter

Chicago calling or roll on Rio?

2009-08-28T16:00:03Z

Deciding the host city for an Olympics used to be a far simpler affair. The International Olympic Committee would gather, discuss some locations, reject Detroit (seven times!) and choose a capital/leading city from one of the usual suspects, often unanimously.

Sometimes these decisions were motivated by generosity (Antwerp got the 1920 Games in recognition of Belgium's WWI treatment), sometimes it was a case of being the next cab off the rank (Amsterdam lost to Paris in 1924 so got it in 1928) and every now and then they would give the Games to Los Angeles because nobody else wanted them (1932 and 1984).

You would occasionally get a nail-biter (Melbourne beat Buenos Aires 21-20 to get the nod for 1956) and sometimes there would be a slight hint of national prestige involved (LA v Moscow in 1976 and 1980), but generally these votes did not bring nations to a halt, signify historic shifts in global influence or upset anybody, apart from perhaps Detroiters.

That has all changed now, though.

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Whichever of Chicago, Madrid, Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo gets the 2016 Games will have come through perhaps the closest bidding race in IOC history.

For the winners there will be initial euphoria, the gradual realisation of the hard slog ahead and the carrot of throwing the world's greatest party. For the losers there will be instant dismay, drawn-out recriminations and the gloomy prospect of P45s.

So who's going to win then?

Let's get this out of the way early on: I don't know.

And neither do any of the journalists, bid insiders and assorted IOC watchers I have spoken to in the last few months. It's a hoary old cliché but that doesn't make it any less true, this race is too close to call.

The last ranking we've had from the IOC came in March 2008 when it released its evaluation reports on all seven candidate cities (the shortlisted four plus Baku, Doha and Prague). This was a technical assessment of how each bid measured up on things like government backing, transport and security.

On this more black and white judgement, Tokyo scored marginally higher than Madrid. Then there was a gap to Chicago, with Rio back in fifth, behind Doha.

The IOC's decision to shortlist Rio over Qatar's capital brought considerable criticism from the Arab world but Doha's proposition fell down in a couple of areas (the most significant being an autumn scheduling to avoid the summer heat and Doha's relatively small population...not good for ticket sales), while Rio offered a tantalising opportunity to tick off another continent and the potential for the mother of all carnivals.

Those two factors remain Rio's strongest cards and many pundits are starting to wonder if they could be enough for a winning hand.

That would be some comeback but deciding which city gets the Games has always been about more than who has the best transport plan - geopolitics, wow factor, commercial interests, what the big broadcasters want (and for "big" read American) and the private whims of the IOC's cosmopolitan membership all play their parts.

Which is why the latest odds from British bookmakers fly in the face of those early IOC reports: Chicago are odds-on favourites, with Rio second, Tokyo not far behind and Madrid adrift but not out of it. That order hasn't changed over the last six months but the Windy City's odds have stiffened, while the others' have drifted.

Chicago's frontrunner status is supported by the findings of Around the Rings, a respected newsletter and website that has been covering Olympic news for 20 years.

The most recent "ATR 2016 Olympic Bid Power Index" has America's third largest city on 80 points out of 110 (ATR looks at the IOC's 11 key criteria but incorporates more subjective elements too), Madrid second on 78 and Rio and Tokyo joint third on 77.

So when the IOC's 106 members gather in Copenhagen to vote on 2 October, Chicago has a good chance of becoming the fourth US city to stage a summer Games - 112 years after it won the right to host one only to have St Louis pinch it - but that is all it is.

If we compare this race with the one that came to such a thrilling conclusion in Singapore four years ago, this year's London and Paris appear to be Chicago and Rio. But unlike 2005, the 2009 race has no rank outsiders.

While there are only three points separating first and last in ATR's latest rankings, there was a 20-point spread in 2005. New York and Moscow were perceived to have fought lacklustre campaigns and that was soon borne out by the voting.

Ed Hula, ATR's editor and founder, believes this year's race is so close it's "scary".

He believes there could be just a few votes between all four cities in the first round of voting and whoever loses will do so knowing they have put together a plan that would measure up against plenty of previous hosts.

Who their first-round backers transfer their votes to in the subsequent rounds will settle who gets the 2016 Games and that is when you get really lost in the possible permutations.

"I go back and forth between Chicago and Rio - Chicago's got the hotel rooms but Rio has that emotional pull," said Hula.

If that assessment leaves Madrid and Tokyo feeling a little bit glum, they shouldn't throw in the towel just yet.

The Spanish capital, an unlucky loser in 2005, has plenty going for it this time too: a sound plan, most of its venues built, the behind-the-scenes support of former IOC president and current honorary president Juan Antonio Samaranch and credit in the bank from previous bids.

On the debit side, however, is its location, which is something it can do nothing about. A win for Madrid in Copenhagen would make it three Olympics in a row in Europe (London 2012 and Sochi 2014).

It is a similar story for Tokyo. A compelling case on paper (a compact Games with superb green and redevelopment credentials), the world's largest metropolitan area might be marked down for being too like and too close to Beijing, last year's host.

But the Japanese can take heart from another important indicator of bid success - GamesBids.com's BidIndex. This mathematical model takes the kind of things the ATR index measures and combines them with a statistical analysis of historic voting patterns.

It's all totally beyond my limited maths but it comes up with a journalist-friendly number: Tokyo currently leads with 61.41, Rio is second with 59.95, Madrid third on 58.73 and Chicago last on 58.37. The first three all saw their scores rise slightly over the previous six months, while Chicago's fell.

But again, the closeness of this race is readily apparent, just three points between the four cities. There were 17 points between top-ranked Paris and bottom-ranked Moscow going into Singapore.

"Nobody can be written off and I don't think that's happened for a Summer Games for a long time - it's a real puzzle," said GamesBids.com's Robert Livingstone.

We might get a few more clues to the puzzle on Wednesday, when the IOC's evaluation commission (a 13-strong team set up in the wake of the Salt Lake Games bribes-for-votes scandal) publishes its final report, but my guess is that we'll be left with the same equation: the IOC's heart calling for Copacabana but its head worrying about crime and passing up the riches on offer in Chicago, a confusion that might just let in Madrid or Tokyo.

Could that decision be made a little bit easier by the presence in Copenhagen of the world's most powerful man? Can Barack Obama, Chicago's top trump, risk so much political capital on anything other than a slam dunk? Can he risk not going? Is it fair the US gets a Summer Games every 20 years when there are continents still waiting for their first? Will Detroit ever bid again?

Like I said, I don't know...but I'm looking forward to finding out. And if there are any fresh pointers in those final reports I'll post a comment below.

* As well as my blogs, you can follow me when I'm out and about on Twitter

End in sight for Pompey's blues?

2009-08-21T00:30:45Z

When Sulley Muntari slotted a penalty past Manchester United's stand-in goalkeeper Rio Ferdinand in a FA Cup quarter-final on 8 March, 2008, he was taking Portsmouth supporters to heights they had not experienced for half a century.

OK, there had been cup runs in the '90s but Harry Redknapp's talented side was also chasing a top-six finish in the league. These were the best of chimes for Pompey fans.

They could be forgiven, then, for missing the muffled ringing of alarm bells. Because that team, which two months later beat Cardiff in the FA Cup final, was living way beyond its means.

The fans didn't know it at the time (how could they?) but those months in the spring of 2008 were as good it gets. The question now is will they be as good as it's going to get for a very long time?

]]> Until the last 48 hours the sensible answer to that question would have been yes.

But Wednesday's announcement that a consortium led by current chief executive Peter Storrie is in talks with owner Alexandre "Sacha" Gaydamak about buying the club was perhaps the first ray of sunshine in a miserable summer for the Hampshire club.

I say perhaps because while the talks are said to be "progressing" they are also perplexing - details are as thin on the ground as reinforcements for manager Paul Hart's threadbare side.

What we do know is that Storrie, who has been a popular presence at Fratton Park since 2002, has lost faith in proposed new owner Sulaiman Al Fahim's ability to close a deal fast enough to give the team a fighting chance of Premier League survival (which they still have).

Given the numerous conversations I have had with the Dubai-based property developer's camp, I would say this is a reasonable conclusion for him to have reached. As the de facto boss at Portsmouth, Storrie is understandably more focused on the here and now than his would-be employer (whose constant refrain is of a "long-term vision").

Storrie, a former director at West Ham, Southend and Notts County, will have known any chance of Al Fahim's takeover being completed in time to release funds for this transfer window has passed. He was probably starting to worry about the next transfer window, too.

Al Fahim has been Pompey's sugar daddy-in-waiting since May, when he first announced his intention to buy the club from Gaydamak (who has spent most of 2009 vying with Newcastle's Mike Ashley for the 'I'm a club owner...get me out of here' prize) for a fee believed to be in the region of £60m.

His status got a little sweeter in July when his accountants finished their forensic exploration of Portsmouth's finances, which must have been grisly work, and he became the club's non-executive chairman. He also passed the Premier League's new and improved "fit and proper person test".

And then, well...nothing. The last three weeks have seen only claim and counter-claim about his readiness to proceed, further speculation about Pompey's finances and more talk of player sales. They also witnessed the team lose its first two games of the Premier League season.

Only last week Storrie told fans "there's been enough talk...if (Al Fahim) is going to take over the club it is about time he do so".

So how on earth, to echo goalkeeper David James's weekend newspaper column, did Portsmouth get into this mess?

It is actually very simple and the clues were there that spring day at Old Trafford.

As friendly neighbours Southampton know, teams that live the dream often don't wake up until League One. And Pompey's current plight was more predictable than most as it is a Premier League outfit already playing in a League One stadium.

Harry's expensively assembled heroes might have delivered European football but they were gobbling up 78% of Portsmouth's annual revenue. The good news was that this was down from 92% the year before; the bad news was that Pompey was still losing nearly £1.5m a month.

The only real surprise here, however, is that this should be a surprise. A stadium with only 20,000 seats - none of them the warm and comfy types free-spending corporate customers like - cannot pay for players as good as Muntari, Lassana Diarra, Glen Johnson, Pedro Mendes and Jermain Defoe, who was cup-tied during Pompey's Wembley run.

What was actually paying for these guys (and many more) were IOUs to two banks and Gaydamak himself. The French-Israeli businessman first pitched up on the south coast in January 2006 with a £20m loan to prop up the previous owner Milan Mandaric's regime.

Six months and some Redknapp-inspired escapology later, Gaydamak bought out Mandaric for a reported £32m. Determined to consolidate his team's top-flight position, the 33-year-old then borrowed £44m from South African bank Standard and British institution Barclays and handed most of it over to his manager for players.

These loans were secured against Portsmouth's future TV revenues and scheduled for repayment this summer. Any takeover at Pompey now, be it Al Fahim's or Storrie's, will need the banks' approval.

The plan, of course, was to make all this red ink disappear with revenue from a shiny new stadium. Unfortunately, various Pompey owners have been trying this ever since the city's old airfield was suggested as a site for a new ground in the 1960s. Since then there have been numerous schemes that have run into problems ranging from protected birds to dodgy transport links.

The last five years alone have witnessed four different ideas, my favourite being the one to build a 36,000-capacity ground on reclaimed land in Portsmouth Harbour. It took a while but somebody finally pointed out the lunacy of doing this in a city that is already an incredibly cramped island. The Royal Navy also said the new island might get in the way of its aircraft carriers.

The club has now committed to redeveloping Fratton Park, which was built in 1898, by turning the pitch 90 degrees and building bigger stands. This is supposed to add 5,000 seats by next season and another 5,000 the season after.

The banks, particularly Standard, want their money back before that, hence the fire sale that started last summer with the departures of Muntari and Mendes, gathered pace this January with the exits of Defoe and Diarra, and continued this summer with Johnson and Peter Crouch also leaving.

That little lot brought in nearly £80m. Sadly, it has gone straight out the door again to service those debts, as has the first tranche of Portsmouth's TV money this season.

But not only have stars been sold to balance the books, squad players have been released to get the wage bill down. And with the veteran Antti Niemi recently becoming the fourth goalkeeper in a tiny first-team squad rumours abound that England's James might be on his way, too.

It goes almost without saying that Redknapp has moved on as well.

Predicting what happens next is guesswork. Storrie and Gaydamak are saying nothing until next week.

Al Fahim's spokesman Ivo Ilic Gabara has issued a face-saving statement on his boss's behalf about the move "to forego full ownership" being "a step in the right direction" whilst pledging his commitment to the "takeover, club and supporters".

It's brave stuff from a natural showman but having been removed from the Manchester City limelight by his Abu Dhabi-based bosses last year, a second failure to see a deal through to its conclusion would seriously damage the 32-year-old Al Fahim's chances of ever owning a Premier League club.

Hart, who has to get his players ready for a daunting trip to Arsenal on Saturday, told reporters on Wednesday: "We're all keeping our fingers crossed - I think it is imminent."

Let's hope so, because one thing is certain in all this, Pompey's fans deserve better fare than the farcical scenes they've been served up of late.

* As well as my blogs, you can follow me when I'm out and about on Twitter

Why Kraft's salary cap cure cannot compete

2009-08-14T17:04:54Z

Herschel Walker has been called the best running back to emerge from the US college system. A remarkable athlete with a prodigious work ethic, Walker was an international-class sprinter, a taekwondo black belt and an Olympic bobsledder. Oh, and he was also an American football star in the professional leagues for 15 years.

But when he is remembered today it is usually for his part in the biggest, most audacious, most unequal trade in National Football League history, a deal so stupendous it is known simply as "The Trade".

Because when the fallen-on-hard-times Dallas Cowboys offloaded their best player to the Super Bowl-chasing Minnesota Vikings they struck a deal so cunning, so elaborate, the star-struck Vikings had no idea they were consigning their hopes to the dustbin and laying the foundations for a new dynasty in Dallas.

Mega-deals like this are one of my favourite things about US sports - teams pitting their wits against each other on a level playing-field. It is one of New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft's favourite things too, and he would like to see something similar in the English Premier League. In fact, if the Premier League was a bit more like the NFL he would have bought Liverpool already.

]]> The 58-year-old American was strongly linked with the Anfield club in late 2005 - and looked at the books of other clubs - but takeover talks came to nothing. Fourteen months later his fellow US sports franchise-owners George Gillett and Tom Hicks paid £218.9m for Liverpool. Regrets have been expressed ever since.

"I love the Liverpool franchise - it reminds me of the Patriots. If they think you're with them, the fan base will live and die with you," Kraft told me earlier this summer.

"My heart came very close to closing the deal but my head told me I'd get very frustrated because I'd want to win.

"I wanted to make sure we'd be able to compete financially over the next 10, 20 years and be able to attract the right players, which meant we'd need a new stadium. But that's hard without a salary structure."

Later on in the interview I pressed him on what it would take for him to invest in English football.

"I come back to the same point: I want to win every year. I'm very confident of our organisation's ability to run a competitive EPL franchise. If we had a salary cap I would love to do that.

"We understand scouting, training, development, nutrition and so on, but we also want to be fiscally responsible because that's what the fans want and in the end it's the fans that pay for it.

"If you can make every game competitive the television product helps pay for all of it - you get a balance which makes the whole league better. That is the story of the NFL.

"We're happy to compete with any group as long as the playing-field is level. But when you skew things I don't think it's good for the business, I don't think it's good for the development of players, I don't think it's good for those passionate fans.

"It's not about money for them, they care and deserve a chance (of success). I believe a salary structure is the way to do that. Then you've got a competitive league. Then you'll see how good a manager people really are."

He makes some good points, which is hardly surprising when you read his CV. Kraft is the most successful NFL team owner in the business. He has also helped to shape the league's egalitarian structure and has played a key role in numerous lucrative television deals.

The key to the latter is the NFL's competitive balance. In any given season, on any given Sunday, half the league's 32 teams will fancy their chances of a trip to the Super Bowl. This means almost every game counts and that guarantees interest. That is why the NFL is the only way for advertisers to reach nearly half of all American homes during the autumn and early winter months.

Since the Premier League was formed in 1992 there have been only four different champions in 17 seasons. The number for the NFL over the same period is 11.

It is a similar tale when you look at the number of different clubs that finish in the top four /reach the conference championships: it is 10 in 17 seasons for the Premier League and 26 in the NFL.

And the status quo is becoming more entrenched in English football's top flight. There have been only two winners in the last five seasons and five different top-four teams, with the fifth of those, Everton, managing it once, five seasons ago. In contrast, the NFL has had four different champions and 15 teams have reached the sport's semi-final stage.

The reasons for this are simple: the NFL's structure discriminates against dynasty-building. TV revenues are shared out evenly, the teams work within a strict salary cap, unsuccessful teams are given first dibs on the best new players and successful teams are handed tougher playing schedules.

And to think this happens in the country that thinks our National Health Service is "Orwellian" and "evil".

The very best operators can buck these levelling influences for a while - and the Walker-less Cowboys managed it for most of the 90s with the young talent they gained in the trade - but the NFL's socialist ways normally get them in the end.

With these constraints in place it is no surprise Kraft, who has seen his team post the best win-loss record in the league over the last 15 years and claim three Super Bowls, thinks he can "out-manage" the Premier League's finest.

But will the confessed anglophile (he is best mates with Elton John) get the chance to put his money where his mouth is?

No, not unless he crosses his fingers and takes his chances with the financial free-for-all that is European football.

An NFL-style salary cap simply cannot work in the Premier League for at least half a dozen reasons, no matter how much you might like its long-term benefits.

First, our football is a global game with long-established and well-rewarded supra-national competitions. As a result, the Premier League's best clubs compete on and off the field with the best clubs in Spain, Italy and elsewhere.

This brings in the complexity of legislating for different tax systems and currency fluctuations. It also introduces the wage control-busting implications of European Union employment law.

But even if these technical issues could be resolved, there would still be the more fundamental problem of making a salary cap work in a system based on the ebbs and flows of promotion and relegation.

Kraft is correct when he says more NFL teams than Premier League sides can dream of glory but none of them need to worry about the trapdoor, and that is an integral part of European sport's charm. Impose salary caps based on league revenues and you consign half a dozen clubs to permanent yo-yo status.

We also have no equivalent of the college draft: English clubs don't get to take turns picking the best ready-made replacements for their squads. They either have to develop them themselves or buy them in.

And you can say what you like about the Premier League's "skewed" competitive balance but you have to sit back and applaud its ability to sell its wares around the world. That is, after all, what attracted Kraft in the first place.

So while I can see where Kraft, who also owns Major League Soccer's New England Revolution, is coming from, I fear he will never reach his destination, at least in terms of English football.

You're probably never going to see era-defining trades between football teams (although you could argue the Ibrahimovic deal might prove to be one) and you're not going to get 15 different teams in the Premier League's top four in five seasons. But you will still get a product good enough to reach 575 million homes around the world and that can't be bad.

* As well as my blogs, you can follow me when I'm out and about on Twitter

Seconds out as golf and sevens go Olympic

2009-08-13T21:09:10Z

Well, I was two-thirds right when I wrote on this blog that I thought rugby sevens, squash and women's boxing would gain Olympic status at Thursday's International Olympic Committee meeting in Berlin.

Poor old squash, its dreams of joining the party in 2016 have been squished - it was the second of the seven candidates to be voted out - and having fallen at this hurdle a couple of times now it's difficult to see what more it can do to get past the bouncers.

What will really concern the sport is that it fought a great fight but was still seriously out-clubbed by golf. The slacks-and-visors brigade might not be everybody's idea of Olympic endeavour but it does bring big names, pretty pictures and marketing millions. And the prospect of seeing a 40-year-old Tiger Woods with a gold medal around his neck was too much for the IOC's executive board to resist.

The 15 members of the Olympic family's elite guard will have to wait a bit for that HD moment - and their recommendation of golf and rugby sevens must still be ratifed by the full membership in October - but there is no seven-year itch for the world's top female pugilists as they are the headline change to London 2012's programme.

]]> About time too, I say, and don't listen to Amir Khan, we've always known he has maturity beyond his years, I just didn't realise he was about 100 years older than he looked. OK, there will be a few people out there who don't like the idea of women punching each other but that has to be balanced with a few facts.

One, women already fight in the Olympics' three other combat sports - judo, taekwondo and wrestling. Is boxing really more dangerous than taekwondo? Is it more dangerous than equestrian?

Two, it's 2009. Women are allowed to put themselves in harm's way in exactly the same ways men are. It's called progress.

Three, Olympic/amateur boxing is a very different sport to Million Dollar Baby-style pro boxing. The extra protection the fighters wear is only the most obvious indication of this. Points mean prizes in Olympic circles: big swings usually bring only big misses and it's not called "fencing with gloves" for nothing.

And four, the women's fight game has come a long way since it was last seen at the Games back in 1904. It was only a demonstration sport then - which is hardly surprising as IOC founder Baron de Coubertin believed the only role fit for women was dishing out the garlands - but is now a flourishing sport.

Amateur boxing's governing body has staged five world championships with the quantity and quality of fighters rising with each edition. The same can be said at national level and British boxers will definitely be in the mix for medals on home canvas.

The slight shame of it, however, is there will only be three golds on offer as the IOC's warm words - Olympic ringmaster and former boxing doctor Jacques Rogge said he "rejoiced" at the "positive addition" of women's boxing - were only partially matched in deed. Boxing wanted five women's events to make a total of 40 athletes. They were granted three events and 36 athletes.

But that really is only a slight shame and nobody involved in women's boxing will be moaning too loudly on such a momentous day for their sport. No, they will be too busy patting themselves on the back for identifying the need to meet the IOC halfway.

Boxing's proposal hinged on its willingness to keep overall athlete numbers neutral: the quid pro quo was to give up one of the 11 men's divisions contested in Beijing. That's a little bit tough on the light flyweights but as they weigh only 48kgs Rogge possibly decided he could take them.

But what of the other glaring inequalities between the sexes in the Olympic programme?

The news is less good here and it is almost entirely to do with the other sports failing to heed boxing's example. The IOC has made its concerns about the cost and size of the Games clear. The line in the sand is 10,500 athletes. That's already some village.

So the other 16 core sports that asked for changes in 2012 (for which you should read "more events, please") all wanted something for nothing.

There were 41 more gold-medal opportunities for men than women in 2008, with canoeing, shooting, track cycling and wrestling being the worst offenders (outside of boxing). These sports, and a few others, wanted the IOC to get them off the hook by adding women's events without removing men's.

Rogge's response to this was devilishly diplomatic: you can have your new events if you lose old ones. The net result of the proposed changes would have been 720 extra athletes looking for beds in Stratford.

So no new medal shots for Victoria Pendleton and no changes to the medal split in rowing, shooting, wrestling et al. Poor show.

The only other changes approved were a rubber-stamping of modern pentathlon's move to become a modern quadrathlon, tennis getting the nod to come up with a mixed doubles plan, the scrapping of handball ranking deciders and minor changes to the flatwater canoeing format.

The much hinted-at revisions to the swimming schedule were "politely declined" which is bad news for Britain's 50m backstroke world record-holder Liam Tancock and probably good news for our defending 800m champion Rebecca Adlington (although she won't be breathing entirely easy until October's big IOC get-together in Copenhagen comes and goes).

But while the likes of Liam T and Vicky P will be disappointed this evening they will still be feeling a lot better than the five 2016 hopefuls left licking their wounds.

I never really rated karate's chances (although it did well in the executive board's secret ballot), baseball didn't look bothered enough and roller sports failed to put up an adequate defence to the "Olympic roller-skating! Are you kidding me?" questions it faced from the outset.

Softball, knocked out of the park with baseball in 2005, and squash, always the bridesmaid, waged well-coordinated campaigns. They probably cost a bit too. They'll have to wait for a sport to be dropped from the schedule now and the earliest possible slot isn't until 2020.

Rugby sevens got its nose in front early on and stayed there. A natural fit in a multi-sport event (as the Commonwealths have shown), and growing fast in all corners of the globe, rugby's little brother might just be about to come of age.

There were rumblings that recent scandals on and off the rugby field had perhaps jeopardised sevens' chances but these came to nothing.

In truth, the International Rugby Board's promise to scrap its Sevens World Cup in order to make the Games the sport's pinnacle event, alongside its box-office appeal, were more than enough for the IOC. It might also have helped that Rogge played rugger for Belgium.

I'm less convinced of golf's suitability for the Olympics but I love the sport and appreciate the allure of its undoubted star quality. Rogge referred to Rafael Nadal, the NHL's ice hockey stars and basketball's Dream Team in his press conference and he is clearly hoping for similar whole-hearted efforts from Tiger, Padraig and Lorena come 2016.

But will Tiger be remembered for his medals or his majors? Exactly.

And that makes me and the IOC only two-thirds right.

* As well as my blogs, you can follow me when I'm out and about on Twitter

Mutu's misery is football's folly

2009-08-07T18:36:59Z

Have you ever read anything that has actually made your head hurt? Not stuff that blurs your eyes a bit or causes your mind to wander, I mean reading material that inflicts real pain a few inches behind your nose.

I have, just now, and it has taken two paracetamol and a Coke to shift, which is ironic as the culprit was the text of the Court of Arbitration for Sport's (CAS) judgment in the Chelsea v Adrian Mutu case.

I suppose I got off lightly, after last month's decision Mutu owes his former club nearly £15m in compensation and legal costs, a sum that will start growing by 5% every year from 12 September.

The Romanian, who now plays for Fiorentina, has described this as "profoundly unjust", Chelsea have called it "a very significant decision for football" and one sports lawyer I consulted dismissed it as "monkey's logic".

]]> I'm not sure what to think but I am certain this story deserves retelling. So let's take it back to the start to see if we can find out how three lawyers - from France, German and Italy - made a ruling on English contract law in a Swiss court that says an Italian-based Romanian must pay a Russian-owned English club 17,173,990 euros.

Six summers ago, Mutu's prospects looked very different. He had progressed from a small provincial team to Italy's Serie A, via a brief but eye-catching spell at Dinamo Bucharest.

His performances for Parma, the third of his Italian teams, led some to dub him "the new Zola" (Gianfranco, not Emile). He had also become Romania's main man - filling the hole left by Gheorghe Hagi - and he was married to a beautiful TV presenter. It was hardly surprising his nickname was "Brilliant".

It also explains why the British tabloids would christen him "Romania's David Beckham" as soon as Chelsea decided to pay Parma £15.8m (which was 29.4m euros at the time) for his services.

In the first six games of the 2003/04 season - three for Chelsea, three for Romania - he scored eight times. It seemed Mutu really was the new Zola and he was well worth the £2.35m a year (plus £330,000 signing-on fee and goal bonuses) he was being paid.

And then... erm... it turned out he wasn't. OK, there were a few more goals - a winner against Lazio sticks out - but not many.

It seemed Mutu was reserving his scoring for the nightclubs of London, Bucharest and all points in between. This put an end to his "Posh n' Becks" marriage and saw him briefly involved with a Romanian porn star. On top of this there was a scrape with the law at home and an unseemly club v country row with new Chelsea boss Jose Mourinho.

So when it emerged he had tested positive for cocaine after a random check in September 2004 few were hugely surprised. But from this moment on it is pretty much surprises all the way.

First, we learned the test was not so random. Concerned about their asset's form, Chelsea administered their own unsanctioned drug test in July. This turned out to be negative (and the FA would later fine Chelsea for performing this test) but the club notified the anti-doping authorities and it was their test which would catch Mutu two months later.

What happened next depends on your view of Chelsea's motives/human nature.

Mutu was either sacked because the club wanted him out and viewed his positive test as an opportunity to extract more money in compensation from the courts than they could ever gain from the transfer market; or it was a principled stance against behaviour detrimental to football and a reasonable response to an employee's wilful sabotage of their best-laid plans.

A week after his sacking Mutu was handed a seven-month ban by the FA. It could have been worse but the governing body was impressed by his speedy admission of guilt and decision to ask Sporting Chance Clinic for help.

Mutu served his ban and was picked up by Juventus (although nothing in this tale is straightforward so he was actually signed by Livorno and sold to Juve, who wanted him all along but had already bought their annual allocation of non-EU players from abroad). His form was OK but in 2006 he was on the move again, this time in a £5.5m transfer to Fiorentina, where he has scored 46 goals in 76 league games, twice helping La Viola to Champions League football.

But while he and Fiorentina have flourished his legal team has floundered.

Mutu first appealed against his sacking to the Premier League but in April 2005 it ruled he had breached his contract. He then lodged an appeal with CAS to have this overturned but was knocked back.

In May 2006 Chelsea went to Fifa to ask for compensation. World football's governing body initially decided it didn't have the jurisdiction to rule on this. Chelsea went back to CAS and got it to agree that Fifa did. Still with me?

In August 2007 the Premier League side put in a compensation request for "at least equivalent to the replacement cost of £22,661,641", which was 33.6m euros at the time.

This was based on the costs of acquiring and replacing him (Shaun Wright-Phillips was held up, not literally, as his replacement), as well as damages for hurting Chelsea's brand and the reimbursement of legal costs.

In May 2008, after eight months of deliberation, Fifa partially accepted Chelsea's claim and came up with a figure of 17,173,990 euros, or £13.5m. I could try to explain how they reached this sum but as it is based on terms like amortisation, foreseeability and remoteness, I'll spare you. And myself.

But in simple terms it is his transfer fee spread over the five years of his contract minus the 15 months he actually played. Added to this were the unpaid part of his signing-on fee and a similar portion of the fee paid to his agent.

The fact an under-performing Mutu was no longer "worth" this amount on the open market was deemed not relevant, as was the fact he could not be held responsible for the figure Chelsea chose to pay for him. Under English law his worth was the value of that contract, which he broke; and he was aware of how much his employer thought him to be worth, so tough!

Mutu appealed this judgement and it all went back - along with two QCs and nine top solicitors - to CAS for a third time.

It was not third time lucky, though. CAS upheld Fifa's decision and vindicated Chelsea's decision to terminate the contract and pursue mitigation through the courts. Also ignored were Mutu's arguments on Chelsea's failure to pursue correct disciplinary procedures, and other complaints.

It was, in short, a big win for the Blues. But will they see their money?

Hmm, it depends on which lawyer you talk to. I spoke to three and got three different answers - "no", "hard to say" and "maybe".

The first, an experienced CAS warrior, was astounded by the ruling, could not think of a single case where an employer got anything other than nominal damages from an employee it had sacked and said this ruling would be impossible to enforce. He also thought it was motivated by revenge.

The second, a Dutch lawyer who defends players' rights, was surprised Mutu's team did not challenge the application of English law earlier, worried about the precedent it set for players' freedom of movement and said bankruptcy was Mutu's only option if he could not bring Juve, Livorno and Fiorentina into the equation.

And the third acknowledged the "unique nature" of both this ruling and how it applied to football, and said this was a "huge wake-up call" to players who might be tempted to break a contract ahead of time or pursue a playboy lifestyle.

The truth of it, as I see it, is they're all probably a little bit right, as are Fifa and Chelsea, which makes me think of Oscar Wilde's observation about fox-hunting being "the unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable".

On the one hand, Mutu clearly behaved like an idiot. But he owned up, sorted himself out - on and off the field - and is back doing what he does best, scoring and creating goals. Given that, does this judgment sound fair to you?

On the other hand, his behaviour cost Chelsea a lot of money. Busted flushes and bad punts are part and parcel of the transfer game but Mutu's failure at Stamford Bridge was a result of his unprofessional (and illegal) shenanigans. I think I would be annoyed about this too, no matter how many super-yachts I had moored in the Med.

So what we're left with is compromised justice that satisfies nobody and spawns more questions than answers. How very football.

The postscript to this is that news of Mutu's latest legal setback came on the same day the football world heard of Sir Bobby Robson's death. I can't think of a better illustration of why Robson's passing seemed so significant. He was a link to a time when the very idea of any of this happening would have been unthinkable.

* As well as my blogs, you can follow me when I'm out and about on Twitter

London 2012's 10 commandments

2009-07-31T17:30:02Z

"Seriously, how do you think we're doing?"

Tough question to dodge that, particularly over a meal you haven't paid for. And I've been asked it twice in the last fortnight by senior London 2012 staff. Luckily, for all concerned, it's not one I had to swerve as they are doing really rather well.

For evidence of this cast your mind back to Monday and the coverage they got for reaching the three-years-to-go mark without major mishap and getting a train to travel five miles in under seven minutes. Robert Stephenson's Rocket didn't get as much praise as Seb Coe's Javelin.

So well done, Locog/ODA, you've done a blinding job...so far. There are plenty more fences to clear before you're home and hosed. Here are 10 of the biggest - feel free to scribble them down on post-it notes and scatter around the office.

]]> Park strife

Four years into the project of converting a WWII bombsite into a venue for the world's greatest sports event/desirable place to live and work, nobody can fault what has been achieved. You started ahead of schedule and you've stayed ahead. The stadium is a familiar face on the skyline, the pool's signature roof is already legible and there are reassuring shapes been thrown all over the park.

But it still looks like Glastonbury after the crowds have left and you are still attempting to build at least half a dozen large structures on what was (for the most part) a contaminated, neglected and ignored 500-acre parcel of watery real estate. And if that's not hard enough, you're using umpteen different firms whilst observing the very greenest building standards. So let's have no resting on our spirit levels just yet.

Wembley no way

One of the reasons things have gone so swimmingly is that you've stuck to the script. By all means trim where possible but remember Wembley. Mess with the master plan at your peril. Unlike the Football Association, you can't stage the Games in Wales while you finish the plumbing.

Which brings me on to Wembley Arena and perhaps the most imminent of your headaches. Boxing isn't biting on the heritage hook and shows no inclination to swap its cosy corner of the ExCel Centre for the hard shoulder of the North Circular. You might have to build that £40m temporary venue in North Greenwich after all.

On the flipside, the original plan also called for equestrian in Greenwich Park and shooting at Woolwich Barracks. My advice would be to hold your horses and stick to your guns. These venues still make more sense than the alternatives (but only just in shooting's case) and should be left alone.

It's the economy, stupid

The general mood might be positive towards you at present but there are many who have not forgotten how the "public" budget went from a £2.4bn guesstimate to a £9.3bn line in the sand in less than the two years. Add to that the fact the economy fell off a cliff last year and you're looking at "the toughest time - short of wartime - to get the project to 2012".

To your credit, the budget is still £9.3bn, which is good as you aren't getting any more, and you secured most of your sponsorship cash before the market went belly up. But as your City-schooled chief exec Paul Deighton will know GB plc isn't out of the woods yet and deals can be broken. In fact, you've already had to rip up one yourselves, swapping Nortel for Cisco. That bit of peace of mind cost £15m but will prove cheap at half the price if the intraweb works in 2012.

So be prepared for more contractual wrangling particularly as you add the less lucrative but vital value-in-kind partners who provide all the free hotel rooms, bottled water and leisurewear that make any global event possible.

Strange bedfellows

Here's something your predecessors in Beijing didn't have to worry about: elections.

The team has already lost two of its star players, with Tony Blair leaving Number 10 and Ken Livingstone losing City Hall, but the Olympic project remained on track thanks to the continuity supplied by those who remained and those who replaced them. Gordon Brown swapped his Treasury scepticism for Blair-like enthusiasm when he took the top job, and Boris Johnson brought a showman's grasp of the big occasion to compensate for losing Livingstone's eye for redevelopment detail.

Brown, of course, is now vulnerable himself, as is his underrated Olympic Minister Tessa Jowell. Their likely replacements are unlikely to tear up the cross-bench consensus that has prevailed but a hung parliament could make things interesting.

Managing all this will be a big job for your Fab Four of John Armitt, Coe, Deighton and David Higgins, but it is not a new or necessarily disastrous predicament, as Sydney 2000 demonstrated.

Party politics

Assuming all goes smoothly on the domestic front, you will still need to keep a close eye on foreign affairs and the key relationship is with the court of Jacques Rogge. Never forget that when push comes to shove this is the International Olympic Committee's party - they pick the guest list, music and parlour games.

But the IOC is well aware of the financial constraints you're working under and wants you to succeed (they know London 2012 is a better model for the future of the Games than Beijing 2008). Use this to your advantage, particularly when dealing with the 26 international federations that represent the Olympic sports.

At the moment, Rogge is loving your work. Keep it this way and everything gets much easier.

Build the field and they will come

You may have three years until the opening ceremony but you've only got two years to finish the buildings if you're going to give yourselves time to test the bars, loos and press facilities (particularly important, that last one). Previous hosts have failed to do this and taken years off lives as a result.

And there is another reason to push on with the building work. Just think how much easier it will be to sell tickets in 2011 if the venues are open for business. Hit the ground running on tickets and you can concentrate on how to keep the venues full during the Games themselves - something Beijing failed to do - and create a festival atmosphere around the country.

A good time is a safe time

If there is one thing guaranteed to ruin all your hard work it is a terrorist attack. Previous Games have been scarred by violence, most notably Munich in 1972, and the positive vibes associated with London's bid victory in 2005 were only 24 hours old before the 7/7 bombings brought everybody crashing down again.

This is a massive challenge, and not your sole responsibility, but as the public face of the Games the onus is on you to make sure everything that can be done is being done.

By jingo, we've won it!

Another truism of Olympic history is that a successful Games for the host nation is usually a successful Games, full stop. Nothing packs them in and keeps them cheering better than a parade of home-grown heroes. The TV pictures look better too.

Now it's not your job to gerrymander this but nobody will thank you if we stage the best Olympics of all time but come 36th in the medal table. We could have gone back to Atlanta for that. So push on with your preparations but keep Team GB's main stakeholders in the loop.

Bricks and mortar

While 9 September 2012 will see the end of the Paralympics and seven years of hard work, it will not close the book on London 2012. That will only happen when every building you leave behind has become somebody's home, be it a regular Londoner, an aspiring athlete or a thriving industry.

We know we would not have even bid for the Games - let alone win them - if we had not hitched a long overdue redevelopment project to the Olympic wagon, but that will look like a Faustian pact if the Olympic Stadium is padlocked and peeling a year down the line. Get this right and you should be able to relax...in about 2032.

Sport for all

If you can stage a great Games and leave London a little better off then you all deserve long holidays on islands in the sun. If you can stage a great Games, leave London a little better off AND persuade people to get off the sofa and back into sport, you deserve the islands in the sun.

A cynic will point out that no Olympic host has ever managed this before. A believer will counter that few have really tried. Some things are certain, you will not pull this off on your own and you will have to share credit if it works and take sole responsibility if it fails. Them's the breaks.

But a fitter, happier, healthier Britain would be a legacy of genuinely Olympic proportions. Good luck.

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