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March 22 2008
SPORTING wise, there are a couple of things for the year that you can be sure about. For one, the Olympic opening ceremonies will be the most amazing spectacle in sports history ever.
Make sure you are either in front of your television, or in Beijing, on August 8 because China’s coming out party will be unlike anything you have ever seen before. Not often do you get to see a few million in hard currency being spent before your eyes. If you have enough money, get inside the Bird’s Nest for the greatest audio-visual spectacle man has ever seen.
Living in this part of the part the word ‘greatest’ has been stretched quite a bit. But trust us (the missus says never trust a man who says trust me), the Chinese know a thing or to about visual inspiration. Just go back in time and recollect the closing ceremony of the Athens Olympics; The Chinese then gave us a sneak preview of what we can expect come August in the ancient imperial, and once-forbidden, city. The missus and the two girls have even bought a Chinese-to-English dictionary and have been pouring over it for a while now.
That has this hack in some palpitation. The little ticker inside has been thumping a bit too much since dictionary came home. Is the wifey going to clean out the bank to go to Beijing for the opening ceremony?
Don’t be silly said the mother of two. We just want to know what they will be saying. But there will be translators there and the ceremony will broadcast to different countries in the language they speak. Her argument is that she just wants to make sure the translators are getting their act right. At the same time they are also hoping there will no boycott of the summer games over Tibet and other assorted human right issues. Politics and sports make strange bedfellows and should rightly be kept far apart, says the lady.
The glory days
The other thing is Liverpool. The Missus clearly remembers the glory days of Liverpool FC in the late 70s and early 80s when they had the likes of Kenny Dalglish and Ian Rush under contract. Those guys were just simply fantastic, she says. Liverpool ruled England, and Europe, till the Heysel stadium disaster. Twenty three years on Liverpool are showing the stuff that folklores are made of.
Those who have lived here long enough know that if Dubai sets its mind on something, Dubai gets it. The fans in the Kop at Anfield have been holding banners with ‘Yankees go home’ written on them. There are also placards displayed there that state: ‘We want Dubai’. No matter what you hear or read there is every possibility that before the year is out, the English club could have its boardroom in Dubai. And then there’s every possibility that Liverpool will play one of its ‘home’ games in Dubai; specially if the Dubai Investment Capital also get their hands Newcastle United.
Also do remember that the guys who run the Premier League in England are keen to play premiership matches around the world. They couldn’t find a better place to start that than Dubai, can they! Within a few years of the documents being signed, sealed and delivered, Liverpool will become the greatest (there that word again) football club of this century.
Web of intrigue
England have four clubs in the last eight of the Champions League. Yet the nation,that introduced football to the world, failed to qualify for this year’s Euro 2008 championship. Is it a case of not enough Englishmen playing the game in England?
But what’s more intriguing is that European football’s governing body, UEFA, are vehemently denying that the draw for the last-eight phase of the Champions League were fixed despite the fact that the quarter-final line-up appeared on the internet 90 minutes before the official ceremony had taken place.
The fixtures were posted anonymously. According to UEFA spokesman William Gaillard the person who posted the fixtures on the net “must have supernatural powers. I know the people who did the draw and I’m 150 per cent certain it’s completely honest”. We’ve heard of match-fixing. But draw-fixing!
Cherian Thomas is Sports In-Charge of Khaleej Times.
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