In the last five years most parts of the world have felt the effect of a recession, the word has been repeated so many times that you could be forgiven for feeling indifferent to it by now. However, football is one industry where financial difficulties have hardly registered, instead another r word has reared it's ugly head- racism.
We’ve done it! England have now officially qualified for the World Cup finals next summer. There were bound to be a few nerves wracked and a few nails bitten but if there’s one thing that England tend to do well it’s qualify, and a fairly routine night at Wembley on Tuesday was capped nicely by Wayne Rooney and Steven Gerrard goals.
The results from their final world cup qualifiers may have been the same, but for England and Scotland, the 2-0 victories will have left a very different set of emotions. While England, having seen off the challenge of Poland, can bask in the euphoria of a confirmed place among the protagonists in next summer’s extravaganza in Brazil, Scotland can only dwell once more on what might have been.
Ronaldo left United way back in 2009, but does his achievements at Real Madrid merit his spectacular talent?
When I was a little boy there was one thing that seemed really simple to me. If you were good enough, and if you were English, you could one day play for England. How naïve I was. Apparently it’s a lot less straightforward than that.