Category Archives: Blog
Pele & Maradona: Contrasting Greatness
by Jimmy Burns Among the claims to football greatness, those of Pele and Maradona, who died within just over two years of each other, will endure as a contrast in character and iconography, defining between them the developing story of modern football. Pele’s emerged on the international scene as a skinny seventeen-year-old in the 1958 World Cup in Sweden. He went on to straddle the transition of football from a game to a serious business venture, breaking cultural and racial boundaries , his true potential barely registered by the grey …
Messi is the greatest, so was Maradona
For fear or being accused of being a party popper, and in deference to my many Argentine friends who , as I write , are having the most joyous and extended party of their lives, let me first offer my heart-felt ‘felicidades’. Argentina has not only won two world cups as a democratic country, but each have been achieved thanks by the best player of his time, with a distinct personality and unique set of skills. No need to relegate the memory of the late Maradona to make way for …
Maradona’s World Cup
Maradona’s World Cup Story By Jimmy Burns With the World Cup in Qatar fast approaching this winter in the Northern hemisphere, one football legend will be missed, and notable by his absence , even for ever remembered, Diego Maradona who died two years ago on the 25th of November 2020. During his tempestuous life and career, Maradona played for top clubs in South America and Europe-including Boca Juniors, FC Barcelona and most notably Napoli where he became an adored hero and adopted son. He was the Player of the …
Lies Damn Lies:The Falklands War
If in war the first casualty is truth, then the Falklands conflict, fourty years ago, provides an interesting case study. This paper examines the extent to which a regimented society in Argentina was exploited by the military junta to provide a manipulated and distorted narrative of the Falklands War. The aim was to give the impression that the war was not only justified in sovereignty terms but had God on its side. In the process a nation rallied behind a Project which in diplomatic and military terms was doomed to …
David Gardner Remembered
In memory of David Gardner, friend and colleague David and I were not just colleagues but enduring friends over more than five decades from when we first started at Stonyhurst College aged thirteen. Those were formative years educationally with the Jesuits giving as a sense of human solidarity and openness to the world and the need to be active participants. He was always ahead of me intellectually and I followed his early teenage recommendation for expanding my learning. He was reading Orwell as an example of English essay writing and …
Kabul remembered
With the Taliban taking power in Kabul, I share this memory of a visit to the presidential palace with other British journalists and Tony Blair in November 2006. We were visiting the region on the fifth anniversary of the liberation of Kabul from Taliban control. The visit had begun with an abrupt descent to Kabul airport in a Hercules transport to diminish the risk of being hit by hostile ground to air fire. On landing, the rear access to the military aircraft opened like the mouth of a whale and …
Humo Blanco en Belgravia?
SE APROXIMA NOMBRAMIENTO EN LA EMBAJADA EN LONDRES Se espera que el traspaso de carteras en el gobierno de Pedro Sánchez refuerce la coherencia y la efectividad de una administración que en algunas áreas a mostrado una cierta debilidad para no hablar de falta de coherencia. Según el excelente corresponsal en Madrid de La Vanguardia Enric Juliana la cabeza de Arancha González Laya ‘llego ayer por la tarde a Rabat, empaquetada en un servicio exprés de Amazon.’ Pues bien, esperemos que el mismo crudo ejercicio de realismo político lleve a …
Hans Küng RIP
Swiss theologian Hans Küng died on Tuesday at the age of 93 in his home in Tübingen, Germany It was a real godsend to be able to see him and talk to him seven years ago when I was researching Pope of Good Promise and when his mind and body was still with him. It was the first and last time I met him and what a privilege it was to be with him. He was a prophet for the Church in our time ! This was my account of …
Remembering Lorenzo Sanz
On the first anniversary of Lorenzo Sanz’s death from coronavirus, my friend the author Ignacio Peyro pays tribute as a football fan and a gourmet, to the man who served as president of Real Madrid from 1995 until 2000. As Peyro posts with his characteristic humorous lyricism on his Instagram account, Sanz in his heathy days always had the physical exuberance of someone had just emerged from an extremely good meal of Spanish sea food. My own memories of Sanz, which I describe in my book When Beckham went …
