Convincing and classy. The Spanish lead the way

After thirty three minutes of the European Championship final in Vienna, the Spanish midfielder Xabi cut an appealing ball through the German defence; Fernando Torres skipped in behind the retreating Phillipp Lahm and subtly nipped the ball delicately over the arms of the advancing German goalkeeper.

It was the decisive moment in a football match defined by the fluid passing of a Spanish team that was smouldering with talent. In contrast Germany were wretched. They huffed and puffed but failed to ignite the faintest of sparks. A bit like a toothless dog trying to chew on a bone.

Somehow Spain managed not to score again and the score remain 1-0. It hardly mattered. As the referee, Roberto Rosetti, signalled the end of the match with a sharp blow on his whistle after ninety three minutes, Plaza de Colón in Madrid burst into scenes excited celebration and King Juan Carlos shook his fist defiantly in the air.

It was Spain’s first major title for 44 years and the unfortunate fact that it was a Sunday night was not going to dampen hopes of an impending party. The situation was personified by the frantic banging of Spain’s most celebrated fan, Manolo el del Bombo, who appeared on television screens beating his ‘drum of Spain’ and wearing his familiar wide-brimmed Basque beret.

In a scene laced with irony, Trafalgar Square became the epicentre of the celebrations of the Spanish community in London. Obviously the authorities hadn’t been informed of the Spanish celebratory predisposition for jumping into fountains and within two hours of the victory, a spontaneous botellón was raging amongst the dancing, the singing and the occasional water fight.

For Spain and its citizens it was a glorious end to a tournament that was infused with excitement, drama and surprise. On a personal note, I’d like to nominate Marcos Senna as my player of the tournament – and I wonder that if it is possible for Spain to win something after 44 years, then England can galvanise themselves to do something productive after 42.

We’ll have to wait and see. In the meantime, it’s ‘A por ellos’ and ‘¡Viva España!’

To keep up to date with the latest football news check out the latest offers on digital television packages- which allow you to stay in touch with the news 24 hours a day, seven days a week. You can view Spain’s thrilling victory on penalties against the Italians by watching the embedded video. Congratulations once again!

Tags: Digital TV, Sky, Sport by Peter Moore
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An important forward step

The appointment of Paul Ince as the manager of Blackburn Rovers is being heralded as an important evolutionary step in the game of football. Ince, who previously achieved the feat of becoming the first black captain of the English football team, stated upon his appointment that, ‘I’m delighted to have been given this chance.’

Following a successful period managing both Macclesfield Town and Milton Keynes Dons in the lower divisions of English football, Ince’s progression to the glitz of the Premier League can only be considered as a logical progression. His appointment, however, has given other black managers the opportunity to stress the lack of opportunities that exist for them within the game.

John Barnes, who has been dubbed by the BBC, ‘England’s finest black player’, has found making a career in football management difficult.

‘I’ve applied for numerous jobs and sometimes I haven’t even had the courtesy of a reply to my application letter,’ Barnes said. ‘Perhaps I could understand it is I was applying for jobs at the top level, but these were clubs in League One.’

The facts support Barnes’ claims. Upon his appointment Ince became the only black manager currently working in the Premier League and the only other one to be found in the entire English football league is Keith Alexander, Ince’s replacement at Macclesfield. It all leaves the hierarchy of English football management looking a whiter shade of pale.

‘I believe the situation for black managers is like it was for black players back in the 1970s. They were put out on the wing because it was deemed that they could run fast but not think too well,’ Barnes said.

Barnes’ comments are strong, but some consider them justified and necessary.

Aside from this, the question lingers of how Paul Ince’s career as a top flight manager itself will develop. Nestled snugly in the clutter of teams following the ‘Big Four’, opportunities abound at Blackburn and there is scope for him to impress.

Ince has already stated that his first challenge as manager is to secure the services of key players such as Roque Santa Cruz and David Bentley. After a career tingling with silverware and an auspicious start to his managerial career, who’d bet against Paul Ince becoming a success once again?

Follow the latest developments at Sky Sports News

Tags: Digital TV, Sport by Peter Moore
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Senior MP in shock resignation

Former Conservative Party leadership hopeful and Shadow Home Secretary David Davis has resigned his position in the House of Commons, sparking a surprise and dangerous by-election. He resigned in protest at the government’s introduction of a new bill that now allows police to hold terrorist suspects for up to 42 days without charge.

He said his actions were taken so that, ‘this monstrosity of a law that we passed yesterday will not stand,’ in a speech made to the press at 13oo GMT today. ‘I will fight it, I will argue against the slow strangulation of fundamental freedoms,’ he said.

His resignation will now cause a by-election to be held in his constituency of Halftemprice and Howden. He said that he realised that he ‘might have made his last speech to the house,’ but felt that ‘the time was right to take a stand.’

Mr Davis is one of the most prominent members of the Conservative Party and this dramatic move will be seen as a full frontal assault on the Labour government. Mr Davis indicated that he felt the passing of yesterday’s act breached fundamental liberties which in this country had stretched back to the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215.

He also spoke of his concern that if the government was defeated in a subsequent debate in the House of Lords, that they may enact the Parliament Act to push the legislation through. ‘I felt it incumbent upon me to take a stand,’ he said.

Keep up with the latest developments on Sky or BBC News

Tags: Digital TV, Politics by Peter Moore
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Angry Sir Alex

If Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg and Ridley Scott wanted to get together to discuss what is one of the greatest un-shot scenes of our modern world, what would they come out with? Some distant sea creature gobbling away its victim in the deep? Bin Laden hiding in a mountain somewhere? George W Bush chairing an executive meeting of US politicians?

Well, I’d like to suggest another one. What about filming Sir Alex Ferguson last week as Real Madrid kept peddling away their interest in the superstar winger, Christiano Ronaldo. The short-tempered Scot was said to be seething – and testament to his state of mind he started blabbering about the evils of Francoism in Spain, in a rather poor attempt to wind up the Spaniards in return.

Tapping up is a new concept in football, and as Real Madrid are showing, a rather elegant art. You state your interest in a player by dropping hints and mentioning how unpredictable the weather is in Manchester and how wonderful the girls look in Madrid when the sun pops out. Then you get a newspaper (in this case Marca) to roll out some of the best propaganda since Joseph Goebbels and his wife went up in flames.

The wonderfully skilful Ronaldo’s head seems to be swinging around in all directions and he’s obviously musing heavily on wandering evenings around the Castellana and how exactly he would be able to spend half a million euros each week. Meanwhile back in Cheshire, Ferguson is spitting flames and dreaming of ringing Real’s President Ramon Calderon by the neck.

In fact it seems that the Spanish seem quite adept at this game of ‘tapping up’. Down on the Mersey, Rafa Benitez has spent the past month muttering about the captain of Aston Villa, Gareth Barry. Needless to say, Villain’s boss Martin O’Neill reacted as if an elephant had stood on his toe – and vented his fury in public.

‘Rafa said he was going to respect my wishes. I am not sure he respects anything,’ O’Neill lamented angrily.

Barry, Villa’s best player and recently the wearer of the England captain’s armband looks to have been swung by the prospect of playing with mate Steven Gerrard and in all likelihood will be joining Liverpool within the next few days. But was he tapped up? What should the repercussions be?

These questions linger, but is it fair for bigger clubs to bully others? You’ve got to feel sorry for Aston Villa who look like they are going to going to lose a fine player, but do you feel sorry for United? I’m not quite so sure that many people will do.

Tags: Digital TV by Peter Moore
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Back in the good ol’ days

Clobbering the television with a fist and skirting about the living room with an aerial, attempting to plot its electromagnetic potential are vivid recollections that I have of my time as a student.

As best the picture displayed on our fifteen year old wooden box was a fuzzy blur, with weathermen and news announcers flickering in and out of focus; coloured with a similar green hue to the animated character Shrek. At worst the picture would disappear completely into a black and white snowstorm as my housemates and I growled angrily away on the sofa.

Fast forward a decade and I have no idea as to whether or not that television is still chugging away – although I am rather sceptical. What I do know, is that with the advent of high-definition or HD television, even tightly hinged students’ wallets s should be tempted to cast their television punching days to history.

Sky announced at the end of last week that they are planning to increase their HD content and cut subscription prices to their flagship service. It all sounds a little convoluted, so in layman’s terms it means that you can snatch a cheaper digital deal for unparalleled crystal clear broadcasting quality. Sweet.

‘There’s a lot of changes coming,’ Sky announced expectantly, stating their hope to launch ITVHD in the near future. The prices are dropping too – with a £10 per month HD subscription fee being banded about a number of websites with a certain amount of alacrity.

Currently amongst the clump of high-definition channels, you can find Sky Sports HD, Sky One HD, Sky Movies HD, BBC HD, Sky Arts HD and the History Channel HD. The picture quality on HD is as sharp as a tiger’s tooth and the array of vivid colours and clear definition of animate objects is four times better than you’ll receive from the standard television signal.

Sky have already forged a reputation as the leading provider of high definition television and a spokesman mused recently that a re-launch of the HD programming guide (EPG) was a subtle augury of what was to come. ‘The EPG re-launch is just the first phase of a really good push on HD.’

Tags: BBC, Digital TV, High Definition TV, Sky by Peter Moore
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England on the bounceback

Midway through yesterday afternoon, Kevin Pietersen hopped, skipped and jumped his way down the Trent Bridge wicket in celebration of his twelfth test match hundred. And as he whipped the navy blue helmet from his head and thrust a clenched fist into the air, I began to ponder upon just have evocative the British sporting summer can be.

For a magical three months, nestled between the frantic end of a football season and the expectant beginning of a new one, cricket and tennis rush into the fill the hole in the sporting timetable.
It became a national pastime for more than a decade speculating as to whether ‘this would be Tim Henman’s year at Wimbledon?’ The critics were optimistic, the newspapers wrote of Churchill and the ‘British spirit’ and the population camped out on ‘Henman Hill’ in a state of twittering excitement.

Unfortunately they all transpired to be a little deluded and it never quite happened for Tim. Following his retirement in August of last year, this will be the first Henman-free Wimbledon in quite some time – leaving him happily removed from the glare of the press and free to lament the rainstorm which proved a fatal interruption to his semi final with Goran Ivanišević in 2001.

Happily for all parties with a vested interest, Andy Murray promises to provide the nation with a little more stimulation this June when the tournament starts in just over a fortnight’s time.

Meanwhile, following their wonderful performance three summers’ ago against the Australians, the English cricket team still appear to be wedged in a lugubrious rebuilding period. Andrew Flintoff, who remains arguably England’s best player and tub-thumping all-rounder, has been perennially injured and just like Humpty Dumpty is taking a good deal of being put back together again.

Of the other members of the victorious Ashes team, many of them are performing in fits and starts. Marcus Trescothick has disappeared into the mist completely, the ‘King of Spain’, Ashley Giles retired with a bad hip and Simon Jones the dynamic reverse-swing specialist was last spotted trundling around the outfield of Worcester’s New Road pitch.

Thank the lord then for the presence of Kevin Pietersen, who has not tired of clubbing the opposition bowlers to all points of the outfield. As he rules the back pages of the newspapers today, his face contorted into a Gladiatorial-growl, we can be assured that the British sporting summer of 2008 has begun.

Tags: Sky, Sport by Peter Moore
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Is it time to go home?

After months of tweaking hairstyles, kissing babies, delivering ‘God Bless America’s’ and edging away from embarrassing connections, speculation suggests that the curtain is about to fall on the Obama - Clinton showdown.

There is something about US elections that brings out the very best in its citizens. The pomp, the patriotism, the branding and the exaggerated euphoria – all things that they are very good at fuse together and provide much more excitement than the events Nantwich and Crewe by-election will ever be able to conjure up.

Fast and furious

‘Things move faster in America; people don’t stand for election, they run for office,’ mused Jessica Mitford in her wonderful memoir Hons and Rebels, and everything that has happened in the Democrat nomination process has remained true to form.

Both Obama and Clinton have enjoyed their successes. At one point it seemed as if Barak Obama, the Junior Senator for Illinois, was running away with the campaign, but in January Clinton recovered with victories in vital primaries. Obama then pulled away again, buoyed by support across most of the North American continent.

In total Obama holds a sum of 2,076 delegates and is hoping to reach the magical figure of 2,118 in the next few days. Clinton is barely a gnat’s crotchet behind with a total of 1,917, but it looks to be a significant enough gap. Just.

It now seems likely that Hillary Clinton will acknowledge that Obama has won, and will contest the election for the presidency of the United States with Republican John McCain in November. However, as recently as Sunday night Clinton was still promising supporters ‘twists and turns,’ after a strong victory in Puerto Rico, but it seems to be a little too late to make any lasting impression.

So, the US electoral bandwagon rolls onwards. Sharply dressed, persuasive Obama will meet up with the gregarious Republican ‘Quick Draw’ John McCain at the business end of the wedge later in the year; a contest that has got both parties rubbing their hands together in anticipation for already.

Misguided, dangerous and fuelled by a dangerous narcissism, you can level a number of attacks at US politics, but it is certainly never boring.

Sky News, BBC News and a number of other digital news providers are constantly streaming up to date information regarding the American Presidential elections. To find out more click here.

Tags: News by Peter Moore
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