That Bloke In The Big Smoke

Forget about English football for just a moment if you will. An awesome duel is entering dizzying heights in Spain's La Liga between two of the world's best players: Barcelona's Lionel Messi and Real Madrid's Cristiano Ronaldo. Each has scored 24 goals in the league this season with Messi cracking a hat trick against Atletico Madrid this weekend while Ronaldo's brace secured a victory against Real Sociedad. The Argentine has now scored 40 goals in 33 matches in all competitions this season, while the Portuguese striker has 34 goals in 35 matches. And to think February is but a week old. Stretch the stats further and it's 83 goals in 82 games by Messi for Barca in all competitions and 50 goals in 51 games by Ronaldo for Real. Factor in all the requisite club rivalries and you're left with Atletico's manager praising Messi after their game this weekend by declaring him to be a 21st century Alfredo di Stefano - only the most famous player in Real Madrid's history.

Cue Marca, Spain's most widely read paper and the unofficial mouthpiece for Real Madrid, to respond this morning with the front page splash seen above. They think someone else is the 21st century di Stefano and it's not Lionel Messi. And according to their charts, Ronaldo has 25 league goals for the season even though the Spanish football federation and every other newspaper in the country credited Sociedad's Pepe with an own-goal during their previous league encounter in September, when a Ronaldo free-kick was deflected into the net. The whole thing stinks of "my daddy strongest" but it doesn't do any harm to boost the profile of a timely friendly between Argentina and Portugal this Wednesday. It probably won't settle the debate but it will certainly add spice to an already exciting two-horse race between the two clubs in the league. Despite Real having a great season, they've been outpaced by a Barcelona team lording all that they survey and who are now 7 points clear with just 16 games left. The Catalan giants are odds-on to retain their title but don't count Los Blancos out yet.

If he leaves Liverpool FC as I suspect he will do so within forty-eight hours, I will be a very broken football fan. That is all, good night. :(

I think the only way Torres, Reina and Gerrard will stay at the end of the season is if John Henry fires Roy Hodgson before Christmas and brings in a big name like Hiddink. The new owners will also probably have to demonstrate their ambition by splashing the dough in January on at least one major signing. Otherwise we're toast. It's probably too late already. What a disaster the last eighteen months have been. YNWA

WORLD:
The death of climate legislation [5 Oct]
US midterms set to be most expensive [4 Oct]
Commonwealth Games: are opening ceremonies worth it? [4 Oct]
Park51 drawings prove how far 'Ground Zero mosque' claims are from truth [3 Oct]
Over 100,000 Irish workers expected to leave country before 2012 [30 Sep]

TEA PARTY:
How the Tea Party movement began [5 Oct]
Tea Party activists invoke spirit of 1773 [5 Oct]
Profile: the main Tea Party groups [4 Oct]
The Tea Party: five to watch [4 Oct]

UK:
Liverpool board agree sale to Boston Red Sox owners [6 Oct]
Ken Clarke to unveil plans for prisoners to work 40-hour week [5 Oct]
How benefit cuts could affect you [5 Oct]
Can Britain ever be a fair society? [3 Oct]
Britons robbed of £1.7bn in last five years while on holidays abroad [3 Oct]
Could Dundee be the new Bilbao? [3 Oct]
Ed Miliband gets lukewarm welcome from north of England Jews [30 Sep]

MISC:
Are guidebooks facing extinction? [3 Oct]
Are the best pictures on Facebook or Flickr? [3 Oct]
Twitter and Facebook cannot change the real world, says Malcolm Gladwell [3 Oct]

IRONY:
Martin McGuinness condemns Real IRA's Derry bomb [5 Oct]

Fantastic news for Premier League fans. MOTD2 will be available for a week, on the Tuesday following its Sunday evening broadcast.

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It'll take a while to get used to Colin Murray, who replaces the man you love to hate but love and miss terribly, Adrian Chiles. A cursory search on Twitter suggests I'm not the only one who misses his under appreciated sense of humour and Brummie accent. It is a Brummie accent, right? Any ways, today's show was nice with its cutbacks to old footage, 80s music and titles. Don't you just miss the 80s? I do.

And what happened to, 2Good 2Bad? I really miss it and I hope they bring it back next week. Again, Twitter suggests I'm not alone.

Thought the Spanish seniors were good? Check out Ezequiel Calvente's audacious penalty scored during an U19 Euro game on Friday!

1. Brazil
2. Spain
3. Portugal
4. Netherlands
5. Italy
6. Germany
7. Argentina
8. England
9. France
13. Greece
14. USA
15. Serbia
16. Uruguay
17. Mexico
18. Chile
19. Cameroon
20. Australia
21. Nigeria
24. Switzerland
25. Slovenia
27. Côte d'Ivoire
30. Algeria
31. Paraguay
32. Ghana
34. Slovakia
36. Denmark
38. Honduras
45. Japan
47. Korea Republic
78. New Zealand
83. South Africa
105. Korea DPR

A major study by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (Hefce) has found that black students are more than 3-times less likely to be awarded a 1st-class university degree than white students. Can somebody please hide its contents from Nick Griffin and his ilk!

Britain's oldest cinema, the 100-year-old Phoenix in North London is getting a £1 million makeover and will reopen in September.

Sticking with London, the UK-based chain Selfridges has been named the world's best department store, fighting off competition from NYC's Bloomingdales and Hong Kong's Lane Crawford, by the International Group of Department Stores and the International Association of Department Stores. Less known is that it was founded by a Wisconsin-born American-magnate unimpressed with British stores in 1909!

Sources close to Inayat Bunglawala, the founder and chair of Muslims4UK (a group to celebrate the UK's democratic traditions and promote active Muslim engagement), tell him that the Home Office is considering issuing two exclusion orders; one against Jamaican-born Muslim preacher Abu Ameenah Bilal Philips and the other against Mumbai-based Zakir Naik. Bunglawala argues that if we really care about freedom of speech, we should let these Muslim speakers in and let the law take its course. He includes a good quote from a spokesman for Nick Clegg from a couple years ago over the controversial proposed visit of Qatar-based Islamic scholar Yusuf al-Qaradawi:

"Many of Yusuf al-Qaradawi's views are repugnant; the job of a truly liberal society is to defeat such abhorrent ideas by arguing forcefully and persuasively against them. Giving al-Qaradawi the publicity that a ban would create would ultimately serve only to legitimise his views in the eyes of extremists. If he is allowed into this country he is of course subject to our laws; and if he were to break the law in any way including inciting or glorifying terrorism he should obviously be prosecuted."

I couldn't have put it better myself. I hope the Lib Dems put their foot down on this issue and ensure the two men are not excluded.

Meanwhile viewing figures from both sides of the Atlantic during last weekend's World Cup fixture between England and USA appear fairly similar. 17 million people watched the game in American homes, more than the number who watched the first four games of the NBA Finals! It's all the more impressive given that the NBA viewing figures itself were up on previous years. Game 5 of the NBA Finals drew in an audience of 18.2 million. And though we don't know what the total viewing figures were because of those who watched it in pubs and bars, it's worth pointing out that over 100 million Americans watched this year's Super Bowl. Closer to home, it appears a similar number of people watched it on the telly. There was a maximum of nearly 20 million as full-time approached, but the real talking point was felt by the 1.5 million watching it on HD, who missed Gerrard's goal as ITV broke into an ad-break. Plebs like myself who were watching it on Freeview were not affected. ITVs coverage of the World Cup has generally been poor and this major blunder has not won them any friends. And from what I gather about their coverage of Formula One events in the past, this isn't entirely surprising either! Thank goodness for the BBC!!

Finally, Jeffrey Archer has been approached by Bollywood producers intent on making blockbusters of his short stories. Not a rupee more...