So much for the spirit of the game

Earlier this month the FA announced that it was clamping down on bad behaviour and ushering in a new era of everyone behaving in a mature fashion and respecting officials and each other. The clubs, players and managers all nodded and expressed their wholehearted support for the initiative. It seemed too good to be true. It was.

Expecting overpaid, pampered stars who have lost all touch with reality – look at the homes they built if you want proof – to act like adults was asking way too much.

Listening to Radio Five’s post-match hour between 5pm and 6pm was to evesdrop on a series of interviews with managers and players bleating that they had been robbed by incompetent officials.

The exception was the unctuous Carlos Queiroz, Manchester United’s assistant manager, who sprayed excuses and blame following the 2-1 loss at Chelsea.

“How can the referee not see that Ballack has jumped on Ronaldo?” he said. “It must be necessary for a player to bring a gun and shoot one of our men in the box for us to get a penalty.” Generations of sides who have visited Old Trafford might compare Queiroz’s whinge with Robert Mugabe’s complaint about electorial fraud robbing him of victory.

Queiroz was not alone. Almost no defeated manager was willing to take the blame himself or, perish the thought, have a pop at his own pampered darlings. Nope, it was all the referees and their assistants.

Tomorrow, hundreds of thousands of people will take part in Sunday football. On many of the pitches the behaviour of participants and supporters will leave a lot to be desired. We know where much of the blame lies.

We were wrong … the ICC can sink lower

Cricket’s governing body, the ICC, often gets criticism that is harsh. But the quit spineless way they summarily dismissed Malcolm Speed, the CEO, with two months of his contract remaining bordered on the disgraceful.

Speed’s crime was to have challenged the president, the hopelessly limited Ray Mali, and a few of the faceless individuals who are the ICC’s driving force over the issue of Zimbabwe. They give unquestioning support regardless of a mountain of evidence that the game is going to hell under the stewardship of Peter Chingoka. A slick operator, Chingoka can be a bully and has grown rich through his tenure. But he supports those he knows he needs to and in return they back him slavishly.

So a discredited group who have brought shame on the game have had their day. They should be ashamed. Cricket deserves much better leadership and morality.

The ICC and Zimbabwe: The darkest hour

Rarely do journalists really let rip in print, so it was a delight to read Peter Roebuck’s broadside against the ICC for its lame tackling of the mess that is Zimbabwe cricket on the Cricinfo website.

Its new leadership has shown itself to be spineless, amoral, unprincipled, shallow, self-centred, ill-informed and contemptible. No game that hopes to retain even a modicum of a standing in the wider community can so abjectly bow to despotism.

Of course there never was any point expecting anything except pathetic kowtowing from Ray Mali, a compromised and unworthy president of the ICC. His emptiness was exposed long ago, in the Transkei, before the fall of a system he was supposed to despise. It was documented at the Truth and Reconciliation Hearings. Nor is there anything to be gained from dwelling upon Norman Arendse, chairman of CSA, a third-rate occupant of an important position. His rise has been due not to courage or character but to an ability to sniff the wind.

And then Roebuck turned his sights on Peter Chingoka and Ozias Bvute, the bosses of Zimbabwe Cricket who have enriched themselves with the cash paid to Zimbabwe by the ICC.

These men reflect their times. Make no mistake, they are Zanu-PF loyalists in sheep’s clothing. Chingoka is a particularly nasty but of work. He has friends in very high places, enjoys the protection of the vice-president and her militarist husband. He has grown fat as others starve. As pitches go unprepared and grass grows high, he has bought property in London, built a house in Cape Town, invested heavily in companies, and generally made a fortune in a bankrupt land. Although charming when he chooses to be, his bitter, rampant racism has shocked even Zimbabwean politicians, not to mention ICC officials. Of course, that has not stopped his inexorable rise at the ICC.

Cunning to the core, Chingoka has done deals with the BCCI, and votes for it at every opportunity. India owes him “big time”. Like his mentor and master Robert Mugabe, he knows how to play his cards, talking about colonialism and intransigent whites, spreading rumours when it suits him. He is a pitiful figure who will not survive the return of democracy and the rule of law to his country, should that happy day ever dawn.

Contrastingly, Bvute is the type that appears when there is easy money to be made, the sort that also knows when to jump ship. Nowadays his family lives in New York. Not so long ago, in a brief period under a cloud, Bvute was able to transfer a large sum of money to them. He has also bought a mansion in Harare, a purchase assisted by cricketing forces. Mostly, he throws his weight around in an attempt to cower the dispirited youth team representing the nation (which team managed to finish as high as second last in a recent domestic competition in South Africa). He also seeks to control the media.

The IOC’s own dictator

The Beijing Games are the legacy of the odious Juan Antonio Samaranch, a man who pushed China’s cause relentlessly. Samaranch, a man who as late as 1974 was happy to give fascist salutes under the Franco regime in Spain, held a photoshoot in Tiananmen Square in 1993, glibly riding a bike where four years earlier tanks had run over students.

The New Statesman brought attention to his chequered past in 1993.

Samaranch deserted from the army of the Spanish Republic during the civil war and hid in Barcelona until Franco had won. He spent the next thirty-five years climbing the ladder of fascist politics, ending up as the head of Franco’s rubber stamp Catalan ‘parliament’. Ten years after the Allies discovered Auschwitz, he volunteered for the elite fascist Falange, wore its uniform and gave the fascist salute. This he did until Franco died in 1975.

And this is a man who we laughably are supposed to refer to as “his excellency” and who is a life vice-president of the IOC.

Zimbabwe’s corrupt cricket administrators

While the world looks at Zimbabwe and waits for the elections results to be announced, inside the country the men who have run cricket in the country in recent years – Ozias Bvute and Peter Chingoka – sweat it out hoping that Robert Mugabe, who has rewarded their slavish faithfulness handsomely, holds on. If he remains, so do they.

The international community allow them to retain their place at cricket’s top table because India are in receipt of their unquestioning votes when it matters and South Africa … well, we all know about South Africa’s stance on Zimbabwe.

Bvute’s overt racism and bullying is well documented and few, even within the ICC, are fooled by him. Chingoka is a smoother operator and one who has been at cricket’s top table, more often than not downing industrial quantities of Johnnie Walker, for close on two decades.

Both men are paid modest salaries by Zimbabwe Cricket, but enough to live very well by the country’s standards. And yet both have accumulated fortunes which enable them to maintain lavish lifestyles both in and outside the country. They stand to lose more than their positions if Mugabe tumbles.

Mosley will pay for peccadilloes

Anyone who has crossed Max Mosley will be unsurprised that he refuses to be hounded out of office by lurid News of the World headlines regarding his sexual peccadilloes.

Mosley will battle on, but his promise to pay damages he wins from suing the newspaper to an FIA charity smack of bravado, nay bullshit. He does not – cannot – deny that he was in the company of five prostitutes but, given his father’s political history, it’s the claims of Nazi sex games that really rankles.

But Mosley’s dictatorial approach to F1 has made him many enemies and now they sense he is wounded they are circulating and calling for his resignation. A motion of no confidence has been tabled for June 1, but the feeling is that he might find his position untenable before then.

Mosley has until now been backed by his old friend Bernie Ecclestone, but the diminutive one is a businessman, and he is reportedly realizing that Mosley is tarnishing the image of the sport. That Bernie won’t allow … and that could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.

Birmingham bosses arrested by police

Birmingham City co-owner David Sullivan and managing director Karren Brady have been arrested and questioned by police. City of London Police investigating alleged corruption in English football said they arrested a man, 59, and a woman 39.

The pair were questioned in connection with allegations of false accounting and conspiracy to defraud.
A club statement said it was “fully committed to helping police with their inquiries”. Both were bailed.
The statement said: “David Sullivan and Karren Brady on behalf of Birmingham City Football Club were invited to co-operate with a City of London Police investigation and have happily done so. By longstanding appointment, they have willingly attended interviews today.”

Last month police raided Birmingham City FC in an “ongoing investigation into football corruption”.