Category Archives: Football Writing

Messi Money

Posted on August 11, 2021 in the Blog, Football Writing category

  The Tokyo Olympics and the move by Messi from FC Barcelona to Paris Saint-Germain provide examples to be followed and cautionary tales, writes Jimmy Burns.   Even for those of who have managed only a cursory armchair TV look-in during the Tokyo Olympics between navigating our August break through competing and disruptive terrain of Test cricket, the Lions tour of South Africa , and Covid protocols, the event has served as a reminder of the sheer joy of sport played in its essence along with much else. Mostly very …

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Warsaw Diary

Posted on March 3, 2017 in the Blog, Football, Football Writing category

      There was a long queue at passport control at Warsaw’s Chopin airport  on arrival from London. ‘Never happened before’ said a young polish lady. I and another British national   looked at each other with the thought passing through our minds- is Brexit already with us? It turned out there were a couple of police officers who had turned up late for their shift and in the end we all swept through the EU lane relatively smoothly- but for a few minutes it  did make one think, how …

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Argentina coach Diego Maradona writes another chapter in a turbulent life

Posted on February 18, 2009 in the Football Writing category

By Jimmy Burns Published: 15 November 2008 Late one evening in September 1996, I sat sharing a table with former Argentine football star Diego Maradona in San Lorenzo’s in Knightsbridge, wondering if I was about to have my nose broken. I had just handed the world’s greatest football player a signed copy of the first edition of the unauthorised biography I had written of him, instinctively knowing that he might not like it, but feeling nonetheless that this was a necessary defining moment by which I could measure his willingness …

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