Sweet Nothings

Last night was a tale of two thoroughly disagreeable men getting their just desserts. The Chelsea-Barcelona game was dominated by several borderline penalty shouts, none of which the ref gave Chelsea's way. Statistically the billionaire's boys can count themselves unlucky, but the ref's biggest mistake was sending Eric Abidal off after Monsieur Anelka had quite blatantly tripped himself up. Chelsea were unable to put the 10-man opponents away and paid the ultimate price in the best - and funniest - possible finish. If anyone had any doubts as to why the West Londonders are so roundly despised, they only had to witness the disgraceful petulance of Ballack, Terry and especially Drogba, who could have put the tie to bed if he'd actually finished a chance or not gone down like a sack of shite at the slightest touch. He looked utterly demented after the final whistle with his charging around and hurling abuse at the officials, not to mention the delightful "fucking disg...

There is a fine line between good-natured, sporting patriotism and aggressive, mean-spirited nationalism and at the Andorra-England match in Barcelona on Saturday (my first England away fixture) that line was crossed a bit too often for my liking. It would be ludicrious to tar all England fans with the same brush, but there were enough boozy hard-man types in that crowd who seemed to be itching for a ruck to make me feel very intimidated at times. The crapness of the match didn't help matters either. The "plucky" Andorrans played an unbelievably cynical brand of anti-football and too many of the English players either weren't good enough or totally uninterested (I'm honestly not trying to be controversial when I implore Frank Lampard never to play for England again.) Plus, the standard of Olympic stadia has clearly increased dramatically since the early 90s. It was amusing to witness the outrage of some fans who were not only forking out 10 whole Euros for a larg...