Football Diary
by Patrick O’Connor

THE BBC football website regularly includes a very funny satirical spoof TV programme called Special 1 TV featuring puppet caricatures of top football personalities.  It is ‘hosted’ by the Special One himself, the Real Madrid manager Jose Mourinho. Apparently it was Mourinho who came up with the nickname Special One  but the British media adopted it with relish during his trophy-winning spell with Chelsea.

THE sacking of Liverpool manager Roy Hodgson  on Saturday morning was preceded a couple of days before by comments from the chief executive of the League Managers Association warning that clubs should not be “treated as the playthings of the super rich”.

Hodgson was one of four managers reportedly at risk from the axe along with Gerard Houllier at Aston Villa, Carlo Ancelotti at Chelsea and Avram Grant at West Ham.

THERE was much  hype surrounding the draw for the last 16 stage of the Champions League with pundits wetting themselves with excitement at the prospect of Arsenal re-staging their epic clashes against Barcelona last season.

True, both matches were real treats, a feast for football purists and it does seem that Arsenal face the toughest challenge of all the English teams still left in the competition.

AFTER the dust settled on the England World Cup bid fiasco, the overriding thought was why on earth were the Prime Minister, the future King of England and a supposed football superstar fawning over these people?  The BBC TV Panorama programme and the Sunday Times newspaper are media institutions with a fearsome reputation for uncovering corruption at all levels of society.  The fact that both these bodies have made serious allegations against some members of FIFA should surely have sent a message out to our Fab Three – ‘don’t touch the organisation with a barge pole.’