The Game That Never Stops

Danny Baker once made the comment that the problem with football on television wasn't that there was too much of it but there was too much poor quality. I thought of that comment this week as the pre-season friendlies began. If you are lucky(?) enough to own a dish you could have enjoyed Liverpool on tour in Switzerland and Poland, Linfield losing in the early rounds of the Champions League, Arsenal playing Barnet, Aston Villa playing in the Inter-Toto Cup, Manchester United playing in South Africa and the most surreal of all, and I admit I was stunned into watching five minutes of this, AFC Liverpool (the fans club) playing their first ever match on a recreation ground in Liverpool.

If you are an Arsenal fan you could have watched their Academy side playing against Bristol City and enjoyed an hour in the company of (at number one etc, it's) Perry Groves and Stewart Robson.

On the radio it's not much better, 5Live have the Open Golf to concentrate on but over at Talksport they had a summariser at the MK Dons v Reading match where apparently the referee made such a bad call he should be banned for life - it's the first friendly of the season! Newcastle played at Hartlepool and Keggie Keegle would only talk to 'journalists' from Newcastle TV - which was a daft idea because Newcastle TV promptly sold their coverage to both Sky and Setanta.

On top of this the Masters competition is in full swing on SKY, ESPN are re-running title deciding matches of the Premiership era and both Celtic TV and Rangers TV are showing matches of Celtic beating Rangers and Rangers beating Celtic - depending on which channel you watch.

As an aside the following clubs all have their own television channels currently available on the SKY platform: Arsenal, Celtic, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester United, Rangers and Real Madrid - guess which is the only one to ask you for a subscription during the summer?

Berbatov to leave Spuds? Well I suggested that back in April 2007, here

And finally.....

Football exists in a parallel universe when it comes to money and sound economics, although strangely a similar universe to a certain Mr Brown! Trying to rationalise the amounts paid in wages and transfer fees with a 'non-sporty' is a bit like arguing over which leg you should put in your trousers first in the morning.

Anyway in a week that has seen Milan tell Chelsea that they can't have Kaka for £30 million, Spuds tell Manchester United that they can't have Berbatov for £23 million and Pablo Aimar bizarrely choose the sunnier climes of Portugal to the windswept over aspirational North East, two statements grabbed my accountants brain and shook it. Cristiano Ronaldo's agent apparently/allegedly has a contract/agreement with Real Madrid that states the player will receive a percentage of shirt sales income (nothing unusual there, the great Dennis Bergkamp started the old image rights contract years ago) plus a guaranteed net salary of £300,000 a week. Now when you've picked your chin up off your lap also consider this, Ian Botham received £15,000 for a 45 minute after dinner talk at a golf club this week - so if you want to spend £300,000 a week the choice is yours, two games from Ronnie or twenty hours of Beefy.