I vent to be alone

I may be inadvertently paraphrasing, but I am pretty sure that the great Zlatan Ibrahimović once said something along the lines of:

My father is a Muslim and my mother is a Catholic; none of that has got anything to do with football.

Wise words. 

Here are some unwise words. Holding a press conference in Brussels following meetings with the G7 and NATO, our dear leader was asked whether he would support the idea of Ukraine being given a bye into the World Cup Finals, due to be held in November and December. "Sounds like a good idea to me," he said, seemingly unaware that a free pass for Ukraine would eliminate two of Great Britain's constituent countries.

"Let me put it this way, given what Ukraine has been going through, given the privations that Ukrainian footballers have had to endure, I'm sure that every possible sympathy and allowances should be made for them."

Bell end. Why not just award Ukraine the Jules Rimet Trophy now and have done with it? This kind of platitudinous cobblers makes my blood boil. Everything we have seen over the last month or so suggests that Ukranians have balls so big they have to carry them around in wheel barrows. These are men who would be insulted by the patronising insinuation they needed help unavailable to others to achieve anything.

This distaff side of this lazy sloganeering is equally reprehensible. Last week, the British sports minister Nigel Huddleston increased the pressure around Russian involvement in tennis by suggesting that their players might have to make some kind of political declaration in order to participate in Wimbledon. Why the feck should Daniil Medvedev have to abase himself with a McCarthyist loyalty oath to a man who looks like he would have been bullied out of his lunch money at school by any red-blooded contemporary?

My father is a Ukrainian and my mother is a Russian; none of that has got anything to do with

• soccer
• basketball
• tennis
• baseball
• golf
• running
• volleyball
• badminton
• swimming
• boxing
• table tennis
• skiing
• ice skating
• roller skating
• cricket
• rugby
• pool
• darts
• football
• bowling
• ice hockey
• surfing
• karate
• horse racing
• snowboarding
• skateboarding
• cycling
• archery
• fishing
• gymnastics
• figure skating
• rock climbing
• sumo wrestling
• taekwondo
• fencing
• water skiing
• jet skiing
• weight lifting
• scuba diving
• judo
• wind surfing
• kickboxing
• sky diving
• hang gliding
• bungee jumping

Update: I bashed out the rant above this morning before I looked at the news. 

DUBLIN, March 25 (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin on Friday accused the West of trying to cancel Russia's rich musical and literary culture, including composers Pyotr Tchaikovsky and Sergei Rachmaninov, in the same way he said it had cancelled "Harry Potter" author J.K. Rowling.

I don't know if Putin channeling me or I am channeling him. Anyway it is not a good look for either of us, but then again quod scripsi, scripsi as Pontius Pilate said.

Further, what would we do without Daily Mail exclusives? Free speech to get legal supremacy, says Dominic Raab as he unveils plan to stop democratic debate being 'whittled away by wokery' in major victory over cancel culture. 

How on earth is that to be squared with  Sports Minister Nigel Huddleston's comments that Russian players "need some potential assurances that they are not supporters of Putin" if they want to play at Wimbledon this summer? Next thing you know they will be allowing people whose views on climate change haven't been formally approved by Greta Thunberg to play.