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.
Winning hearts, minds and matches
by Carlo Ancelotti, with Chris Brady and Mike Forde
Portfolio Penguin, £16.99
Reviewed by Ed Wilson
From WSC 356 October 2016
The authors of this book – Carlo Ancelotti, Chris Brady and Mike Forde – aspire to something more profound than the score-settling, indiscretions and self-justifications of the typical sports memoir. Instead, they hope to offer the general reader an insight into how “an expert practitioner” in “one of the most competitive markets imaginable” can be “instructive for anyone in modern business”. What results is an awkward hybrid that is unlikely to satisfy readers hoping to move up the management chain, or those who are simply interested in the game of football (frequently referred to in this text as “the product”).
6 July ~ Portugal are already champions of sorts: they seem to be the most reviled team of Euro 2016, for whatever reason – and there are a number to choose from, including Cristiano Ronaldo’s narcissism, Pepe’s borderline psychopathy and the perceived injustice of the team’s dogged progress, which has come despite the generally poor quality of their play.