Heart Of The Matter
‘ARHYTHMIA is very definitely this years heart condition after Sir Alex Ferguson yesterday followed Tony Blairs lead and took himself off to hospital for a spot of shock treatment.
| This year’s metatarsal |
However, like our beloved Prime Minister, Sir Alex was soon back at work with Manchester United doing a Downing Street and playing down the story.
The procedure went well, the club tells the Telegraph, and Sir Alex is resting at home and is due in work tomorrow. The treatment revealed he has no underlying heart problem.
But while Sir Alex is fine, the same cannot be said for the rest of us.
Unmindful to the age and sensitivity of its audience, the Telegraph paints a truly disturbing image, telling us how the procedure involves the patient being stripped to the waist and sedated.
We apologise to our readers for the distress that any thought of Fergusons naked torso no doubt caused and move quickly on to the no more attractive figure of Sepp Blatter.
And we read in the Times that the Fifa executive has voted to reintroduce that most reviled of tournaments, the World Club Championship, for 2005.
To make matters worse it will almost certainly be held in the United States, where as we know – soccer is about as big as George Bushs brain.
And it will just add to the workload of the top players, which only a couple of days ago Blatter himself said should be reduced.
One man who is likely to feel the heat as Fifa flexes its muscles (or, in the case of Blatter, wobbles his well-fed stomach) is Rio Ferdinand.
The Fifa president is threatening to intervene in the case to increase any sentence the FA might impose on Ferdinand for missing a mandatory drugs test.
And he accused the Manchester United chief executive David Gill of not having a clean conscience in the whole affair.
However, the Guardian says Blatters real target is the FA and its dilatory procedures.
Chelsea midfielder Joe Cole, for instance, has just received a two-game ban for offences committed seven months ago when he was a West Ham player.
One thing we can do quickly in this country is a middle-order collapse and the Guardian watches our cricketers fold like a house of cards against Sri Lankan spin legend Muttiah Muralitharan.
With England now left needing more than 300 in the fourth innings to win the match, one imagines it will be a case of more of the same tomorrow.’
Posted: 5th, December 2003 | In: Back pages Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
