Mihir Bose's Blog, page 44

Michel Platini needs help not abuse

Now you may think Michel Platini can look after himself and does not need the help of others, certainly not journalists like me, who in terms of footballing skills, would not be entitled to carry his boots let alone lace them. But he might do well to consider that he needs to learn how to present his ideas better and, what is more, make sure his announcements have been preceded by proper debate so that the thinking football public, that is the only one he can influence, does not instinctively rubbish his proposals. If Platini is to be a politician he needs to learn the art of politics where politicians, or at least the experienced ones, prepare their audience for their grand ideas so well that when a new policy decision is announced the public react as if they knew this was always on the cards.

Jose Mourinho won the Champions League at Inter because I had built a team with a strong mentality – Roberto Mancini

Roberto Mancini could not be more relaxed. We have just finished talking about Galatasaray’s Champions League meeting with Chelsea and he invites me to stay and watch him take training.

As we wander over, Didier Drogba, who will face his former side tomorrow for the first time since helping them become champions of Europe, is entrancing his colleagues with the skills that made him a Chelsea legend.

Summer stars set template for banishing Britain’s winter blues

These Sochi Games are the first in which our winter athletes have emulated our summer Olympians by targeting success in certain disciplines.

Team GB’s summer athletes have done that so well in sports such as cycling and rowing they have often left the rest of the world gasping.

Drug cheats are the only winners if everyone plays numbers game

Ever since Ben Johnson’s fall, every Olympics has seen officials try to convince us that, this time, no cheat will get away with it. And, for the Russians, a clean Sochi is crucial if only to lay the ghosts of their doping past.

The 1980 Olympics, the last time the Games were in Russia, is widely seen as a dopers’ paradise. Even two decades later, the Russians were in such a state of denial they threatened to walk out of the 2002 Salt Lake Games after cross country skiers Larisa Lazutina and Olga Danilova failed drugs tests.

Review of Gandhi before India by Ramachandra Guha

Sochi and the lessons Brazil can learn

On the face of it a winter Games should hold no lessons for a summer football World cup. Yet Sochi 2014 does have lessons for Brazil 2014 and it would be unwise of the Brazilians to ignore what is taking place along the Black Sea.

Brazil it must be said starts with an advantage that Sochi could never have had. For anyone interested in football Brazil is the home of football. England may have invented the game and framed the rules but Brazil, at least since the 1950 World Cup which as it happens was held in Brazil, has defined all that is good and glorious in the round ball game. Even those devoted to their national team feel somewhat comforted that their team has lost to Brazil and not some other nation. No team generates such a feeling in any sport with the possible exception of the All Blacks in rugby. And in Pele, Brazilians have a name that dwarfs everyone else in football. Even those who know little about Brazil, let alone football, know who Pele is. Pele is not just a name but a symbol and, in the sporting world, probably more powerful than even the Samba in defining the international image of Brazil.

Sochi has a Hollywood story but it goes against the Olympic idea

The most remarkable thing about Sochi is not its horrendous cost, or that it has brought back a touch of the cold war of Russia v the West, but that it has stood the whole idea of the Olympics on its head.

This very special idea is that a city, not a country, hosts the Games. The city may prove an inadequate host, as some have done, but what is taken for granted is that the city existed before it launched a bid. However, Sochi 2014 is the first time a city was created to host the Olympics after the bid was won.

IOC turns attack on America

Just hours before the Sochi 2014 Games open the IOC President , Thomas Bach, launched a surprising attack on the US and, in particular, former President George Bush junior for using the Olympics for political purposes. Although he did not name Bush the reference to the former US President was clear and this follows Bach's remarks three days ago when he attacked western leaders, including Barrack Obama and David Cameron, for not coming to the Olympics as an "ostentatious gesture" serving their own agendas.

Does this point to the kind of geo-politicking (sniping) that we might expect from a football World Cup in 2018? Will the World's leaders really be able to contain their love of football and a global press opportunity and stay away? We will have to wait and see what kind of "ostentatious gesture" they have for that moment.

Seb Coe: You have to be very careful. Boycotts never really resolve what they set out to achieve

Sochi is setting all the wrong records with it being the costliest Olympics and having the worst pre-Games publicity but since Sebastian Coe arrived in this Black Sea resort a week ago he has seen nothing here to feel that the Russian spend of £30billion was unwise or, in the long term, pointless.

As I ask him about Sochi’s wretched public image there is a long sigh and he says: “I am inured to this. In all Games there is always a tendency, particularly in the lead up to the Games, when there isn’t much sport to talk about, to write about things that are not sport.”

Why FIFA cannot learn from the Olympics

The idea that football can learn from the Olympics has often been articulated not least after the London Games. Then the idea was even endorsed by Sepp Blatter. However, the question that was being talked about during London 2012, at least as far as Blatter was concerned, was how could football deal with what Blatter and others in the game call simulation but what most of us term as cheating. In other words the question of a player who dives in the hope he will get a free kick or a penalty, or falls down and pretends to be injured when he is not just to make sure an opponent gets a red or yellow card. The contrast was drawn with the Olympics and how Olympians during 2012 behaved in an exemplary, honourable and sporting fashion in contrast to most football players.