The Home Secretary Briefs The Forces Of Law And Order

Not Man Utd related (except in the broadest sense - it's about football) but a great piece nonetheless. Simon Barnes on footballers and their "obscene wages":

I think we can all agree that footballers really do get an awful lot of money. But why is this obscene? There are other classes of people that get lots of money — bankers, pop singers, television presenters, film stars — but it’s only footballers whose rewards are routinely classed as obscene.

My splendid ping-ponging colleague, Matthew Syed, asked in these pages yesterday why footballers’ wages are calculated by the week, while everybody else is paid by the year. I can tell him: it’s to maximise the obscenity potential. The first thought on hearing a player’s weekly earnings is to measure it against your annual salary: why, that little bastard makes more in a week than I do in a year.

The second reason is snobbery. Wherever there is an anomaly in British life, check out snobbery before anything else. The wages of working men — rough types from the working class, you must have heard of them — have always been calculated in weeks.

Everyone knows that footballers are rough, uneducated men, members of the working class. So it is only right that their utterly fantastical wages should also be measured in the same short-term, contemptuous fashion.

And his defence of what we get for the money is also superb:

And what do we get from all this money? Not much. Only beauty. Only incomparable skill. Only great bravura performances of mental and physical strife. Only individual and corporate levels of brilliance and defiance. Only the chance to identify with such people, to revel in the fact that they belong to us, that we are part of them and they are part of us.

Only the opportunity to watch as the myths and legends of our times are forged before us. Only the chance to participate in great dramas of will against will, skill against skill. Only anguish, only elation, only inconceivable joy, only the chance to taste despair without any actual suffering. Only the chance to drink down Life in great big gulps. And if that’s obscene, then beautiful women are obscene.

An awesome quote from Real Madrid's vice-president Fernando Tapias, Ronaldo's going to be expensive? Let's get FIFA in:

“That the price is exorbitant is also true. Maybe it is down to FIFA to put a 50m Euros cap on transfer fees. ”

How much cheek, "We don't want to pay that much so there should be a law against it"?
There's a lot of stuff on Ronaldo and this £26 million he'll supposedly get if Real fail to sign him. First off, if I was Ronaldo I'd be hoping they don't come in for me and I could pocket £26 million for doing nothing. But secondly, if, as has been suggested, the alleged pre-contract agreement isn't even legally binding, then why would Real pay it? And how would Ronaldo go about claiming it? That'd go down well should he stay at the club - fighting Real for £26 million because he's been forced to stay with us...
Anyway, The Mirror report, without attribution, that Ronaldo will be allowed to leave should Real stump up £75 million.
The only other thing around is some comments from Wayne Rooney on playing through the middle for England:

“The position I play for England is, as I’ve said, the one I like playing most,” Rooney said. “Obviously I haven’t played that position for a while for United. Of course, it’s the manager’s choice, but I’ve always said my best position is playing up front, so I’m enjoying that.”
“When you’re playing out on the left, you have responsibilities to get back and defend a bit more down the left and sometimes that does take away a bit of energy from your attacking,” Rooney said. “But with England, you can get your rest at times by swapping with Steven. That allows you to get forward as well. But I’m happy to play where I’m playing.”

Which in some quarters is taken, with an air of relish, as a dig at Sir Alex.
One more thing, a brief look at Eric Cantona in Looking For Eric:

he is in no more than half a dozen scenes, usually to be found in the bedroom of the film's postman hero Eric Bishop, sitting on the bed, sharing a spliff.

But even though he doesn't say much and moves even less, even though he does little more than mumble through his beard impenetrable aphorisms about thistles and prickles, on the few occasions he is up there on screen you cannot keep your eyes off him. In his stillness, there is something compelling about his performance; he simply demands attention.

And it was the same when he was a footballer. From the moment he strolled on to the pitch, collar up, chest out, to the moment he left (sometimes long before the 90 minutes were up) not to look at him was to miss the centre of the drama.

Indeed, watching the clips of him playing in his prime that punctuate the film, it is possible to conclude that he was auditioning to become a movie star even as he was scoring goals for Manchester United.