The main task of North Korea’s junior minister for re-information is to refute everything ever said by French intellectuals. One year he did a special on Jean-Paul Sartre and began with Sartre’s assertion that “Three o’clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do”.
As it was a drowsy Friday afternoon, the junior minister simply made a quick call and renamed his local football team 4.25 Sports Club.
Matthew Barker on how one player’s story has offered some respite amid the depressing Last Bet match-fixing scandalSimone Farina looked a little lost at the Ballon d’Or presentation last month. But the 29-year-old defender, caught blinking under the bright lights of the Zürich Kongresshaus and nervously glancing over at Marco van Basten, sat in the same row, had as much a right to be there as any of the shortlisted superstars.
Paul Kelly looks at how the award for the world’s best player has evolved since 1956In Paris three years ago, after Cristiano Ronaldo became the fourth Manchester United player to win the Ballon d’Or presented by France Football magazine, Alex Ferguson was asked which Old Trafford legends he considered unlucky not to have lifted the prize. “Paul Scholes and Ryan Giggs,” he replied. No Roy Keane? No David Beckham? Ferguson’s wrong side is a lonely place to be.