ECB governing council member convicted of bribery
Peter Kažimír, governor of the National Bank of Slovakia and a member of the European Central Bank's governing council, was convicted of bribery on Thursday and fined €200,000, just days before his term is due to expire.
Despite the ruling, Mr Kažimír, an old political ally of Slovakia's prime minister Robert Fico, is expected to remain as the country's central bank governor beyond the scheduled end of his six-year term at the start of June.
The verdict can be appealed and does not force him from office. Before Thursday, Slovak lawmakers were deadlocked over whether to reappoint him. Mr Kažimír will continue to take part in ECB rate-setting meetings, with the next decision on June 5th.
Mr Kažimír, who served as finance minister under a previous Fico administration, did not attend the court hearing. In a pre-recorded statement, he denied wrongdoing and pledged to appeal against any conviction.
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Presiding judge Milan Cisarik ruled that Mr Kažimír would face a one-year prison sentence should he fail to pay the fine. Prosecutors had sought prison, accusing Mr Kažimír of acting as an intermediary in the payment of a bribe to a former senior tax official while serving as finance minister.
The National Bank of Slovakia said on Thursday that it took note of the verdict against its governor, who is currently on a work trip to Hong Kong. 'The bank continues to operate without restrictions and carries out its functions in full,' it added.
The case against Kažimír almost collapsed last year after Fico's government pushed through contentious amendments to the criminal code, including a shortened statute of limitations. However, it was revived when the prosecution argued that the alleged bribery offence harmed the financial interests of the EU, placing it outside the reach of the domestic legislation. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited
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Irish Times
7 hours ago
- Irish Times
The Macron shove is not a sign of a very French love story, but something more disturbing
The moment last Monday evening when aeroplane doors opened at Hanoi airport to reveal the French president being shoved in the face by his wife was not the first red flag in their relationship. The first red flag was the fact that, when they met, Emmanuel Macron was a 15-year-old schoolboy, and Brigitte a 39-year-old drama teacher directing a school production. For all they have waxed lyrical in interviews since about the special nature of their love ('when you're in love, you don't choose,' he says; 'little by little, I became completely subjugated by the intelligence of this young man,' she gushes); for all the media obligingly dance around their troubling origin story (note how often reports of this period in their lives refer to him not as a child but as 'the future president' and to her as his 'childhood sweetheart'); this was no mere age gap relationship, and only one of them was a child. Now he is 47 and she is 72, the appropriate response may well be to shrug and say good on them both. But back when they met in 1993, she was an adult woman, and he was a boy. If a 15-year-old girl enters a sexual relationship with a teacher 25 years her senior, the usual and correct response is outrage. When the genders are reversed, it's a very French love story. READ MORE But the story of how the Macrons met has always seemed to inspire an uncharacteristic reticence in the media – particularly the kind of outlets that usually relish nothing more than deconstructing every aspect of a first lady's existence. This conspiracy of coyness may be why the incident on the tarmac in Vietnam earlier this week was met with such an odd response. Sure, the split second of slightly blurred footage immediately went around the world and was thoroughly dissected: the force with which she shoved him in the face, using both of her hands. The way his head jerks back. His look of shock. The speed at which he recovered his composure and waved to the cameras. Her refusal to take his arm going down the aeroplane steps. Yet, for all the coverage, the reaction was weirdly muted. Much commentary opted for the strained, bemused tone you might use should you find yourself trapped at an uncomfortable dinner with a warring couple. The moment when aeroplane doors opened at Hanoi airport to reveal the French president being shoved in the face by his wife was not the first red flag in their relationship. The Elysée Palace responded at first by suggesting the video was a Russian deepfake, and then spun it as a 'moment of closeness', the couple 'decompressing'. Macron himself said they were 'bickering, or rather joking': 'The video becomes a sort of geoplanetary catastrophe. In the world we live in, we don't have a lot of time to lose. This is all a bit of nonsense,' he said, demonstrating himself to be not averse to spouting geoplanetary nonsense of his own. Those who thought otherwise were 'crazies', 'nuts' and clearly had 'sugar rushing to their heads'. So that's settled. Nothing to see here. Except, of course, anyone with a smartphone and a social media account did see it. And yet, just as they have always done where the Macrons are concerned, the media seemed to largely acquiesce to being told that they did not see what they saw. Politico characterised it a 'spat'. The New York Times led with Macron's dismissal of it as 'nonsense'. USA Today went with a translation of his words as 'horsing around'. The Sun called it 'embarrassing'. One commentator decided that it was not 'just a shove [but] a symbol, a barometer of a world out of sorts, reflexively violent, perpetually on edge'. Macron is, of course, entitled to his privacy and to our compassion – I can't imagine anyone looking at footage and not being struck, above all, by his humanity. But he is also a public figure, and his willingness to brush off a moment of aggressive physical contact from an intimate partner is, at best, a missed opportunity to address the stigma surrounding domestic abuse. [ Emmanuel Macron plays down video of shove from wife: 'It's nonsense' Opens in new window ] At worst, it sends a harmful message about what men are supposed to quietly put up with. The obvious question – and yet only a handful asked it – was whether we would be so willing to chalk this up as a moment of mild embarrassment if he was a woman and she was a man. Of course we wouldn't. When advertising mogul Charles Saatchi was photographed grabbing his then wife Nigella Lawson by the throat in a London restaurant in 2013, the reaction was swift and unequivocal. It amounted to (with a handful of notable exceptions, mostly involving older men in the media with social connections to Saatchi) horror and revulsion. The images were more graphic and left little room for ambiguity, but the context was similar: an unguarded moment that hinted at something disturbing beneath the glossy surface of the lives of an apparently happy power couple. Saatchi's first reaction was that it was a 'playful tiff' ; Lawson's was to pack up and leave with her children. The editor of the Sunday People, which first published the images, later explained the rationale for it: 'Our debate kept coming back to what was going on behind closed doors if Saatchi was able to behave like this in public. We concluded that there was a genuine public interest ... We couldn't think of any circumstances in which his behaviour could be justified.' [ The pictures of Charles Saatchi and Nigella Lawson were disturbing. But so too was the public rush to judgment Opens in new window ] Those same considerations ought to apply here – yet many commentators seem to have no trouble coming up with circumstances to justify Brigitte Macron's behaviour. Perhaps it's just that many of us are incapable of reconciling the idea that a man in a position of power can also be someone vulnerable to the possibility of domestic abuse. There are well-known reasons men underreport domestic violence – among them is the fear they won't be taken seriously. Based on events this week, they're probably right.
Irish Times
8 hours ago
- Irish Times
Ruby Eastwood: Why would anyone choose to live in a city as ridiculous as Dublin?
You hear stories about how people survive in this impossibly expensive city. Couples who stay in loveless relationships because they can't afford to separate. Strangers from Facebook groups sleeping in the same room. A bed rented by one person in the day and a different person at night. Tenants paying their landlords with sex . Artists squatting illegally in their studios. People sleeping in storage units. These stories are full of human ingenuity and degradation. They're really quite strange when you think about them properly. The strangest part is how common they've become. [ Ireland's rising rents: 'Our budget would have been €1,300 a month, there isn't even anything listed for that' Opens in new window ] About a year ago, my best friend in Dublin moved to Berlin , where he says it's still possible to be broke and live well. When he left his damp, windowless room near Connolly Station – which cost just under a thousand euros a month – there were people queuing for the privilege of being next. Now he lives in a sunlit attic for a fraction of the price, and drinks Fritz Colas and Berliner Pilsners on the rooftop. Every so often, during our calls, he tries to convince me to join him. His logic is hard to fault: Dublin is untenable. Unless you have private wealth or can stomach a corporate job, you resign yourself to chronic financial dread – the kind that squats over your life like Fuseli's goblin in the painting. At least in other expensive cities, such as New York or London, you can escape your overpriced room into a pulsing metropolis, with endless distractions and some of them free. In Dublin, all you can really do is go to the pub, and even that costs too much. The city is very small, and it seems to constrict as the years pass. You can't leave the house without seeing a face you know. In fact, there are no faces you don't know. They approach from all sides. And the rain. The constant rain. I recognise the truth in this, and it's hard to argue with. Why would anyone choose to live in such a ridiculous city? I don't know if I really understand my own reasons for staying. I suspect they're quite shameful: they have more to do with a romantic or aesthetic impulse than with anything practical. READ MORE I just like Dublin. I like the harsh beaches and the Martello towers. The silvery, rinsed-out light. I like walking through the sprawling industrial wastelands on the city's fringes. I like the canals in spring, all fragrant with weeds and strewn with sunk bicycles. Strangers here seem to want to tell you things – like the old lady who, for no discernible reason, wanted to talk about the time she heard Bob Marley singing Redemption Song at Dalymount Park. You witness things. Once, on Talbot Street, I saw a man with an arm in a cast get into a physical fight with a man on crutches. I like Dublin on the rare occasions when it snows. I like the hot, malty smell from the Guinness factory. I like the Liberties, where you can hear the quiet rush of subterranean rivers, and church bells, and horses' hooves. I like that ugly statue of Oscar Wilde with the pervert's smile. I even like the loud, sentimental music on Grafton Street, and the whiskey-soaked ballads streaming from the pubs in Temple Bar. The idea of leaving Dublin becomes more, not less, appealing as I become more entrenched here ... we can weather all sorts of adversity, but banal contentment is the real deadener Mainly, though, I like Dublin because I chose it. The first time I visited, I was 21. I had some half-baked but very attractive notion of what Ireland represented: something to do with resistance, with migration and nostalgia and alcoholism. I had a copy of Finnegans Wake and I think I got about three pages in on the bus ride into town before falling asleep. When I woke up, I scrambled off and left the book behind. I had oysters for lunch that day and pictured my whole life in the city. It felt just the right size to make mine. I've lived in bigger cities: Barcelona, where I grew up, and London, where I lived before coming here; and smaller, random places: Brighton, Siena. I've spoken to quite a few Dubliners who are desperate to move to other European cities and can't understand my decision to stay. There's a kind of faith involved in choosing a city. You respond to its atmosphere, its pace and texture, the way it opens up to you – or doesn't. Dublin, for all its flaws, felt like it might yield something if I stayed long enough. The beginning in a new place is always the hardest part: slow, bitty, full of doubts. I didn't know anyone. I'd been accepted into a master's programme but couldn't fund it and had to defer my place by a year. When my sublet ended, I had to return to London for a while because I couldn't find another room. I worked in bars and signed up with a temp agency that sent me on scattershot catering shifts around the city. The jobs were mostly tedious, but they offered a kind of education. I learned how the different bits of the city fit together, like a giant jigsaw. The glassy conference rooms down by the Quays. The Leopardstown racecourse, where West End men come on weekends to get extravagantly drunk. The grand Georgian hotels and restaurants, where they throw out so much good food it makes you want to cry. The methadone clinic at the end of the bus line where you hear the wildest conversations and sometimes get drawn in. [ Dublin: The 13th best city in the world ... supposedly Opens in new window ] It occurs to me that the difficulty of establishing yourself in a city confers a special kind of meaning on your relationship to it. Like in a toxic romance, if you can weather the lows, the highs are incredible. Who knows – maybe the expensiveness and impossibility of a place like Dublin, far from being deterrents, actually deepen its appeal, the way we fetishise designer handbags but never their identical fakes. I've always had this wrong-headed idea that the value of something is revealed by the sting of its attendant sacrifice. Gradually, my life in Dublin took on more solidity. I was lucky enough to receive a university grant. I met people. I signed a lease. I moved in with a friend and we painted all the walls fresh white. She bought velvet floral curtains in pastel colours and hung them in the livingroom. I found a few prints in charity shops. I got a Persian carpet from a lady in Blackrock Market. A friend gave me a desk she no longer needed. Sometimes the city sends you little signs of progress. The quiet, stoical man in the corner shop at the end of my road has started calling me 'honey', and occasionally smiles. I have a friend's spare keys on my keyring. I know the name of my neighbour's dog. I know which cobbler to go to for the best deal. Ruby Eastwood Still, there are days when I fantasise about leaving. It would be nice to buy lunch in a cafe without feeling frivolous. It would be wonderful not to feel like I'm stuck in a recurring nightmare every time rent comes around. Oddly, the idea of leaving Dublin becomes more, not less, appealing as I become more entrenched here. Maybe that's no coincidence. To return to the toxic romance analogy: we can weather all sorts of adversity, but banal contentment is the real deadener. Recently, I spoke to a friend in London who's moving to Iowa City for a master of fine arts degree. He told me he's spent hours on Google Maps, exploring the place through Street View. The images all seem to have been captured on sunny days – it looks green and beautiful, full of classic American wood-frame houses. He's begun to associate the town with Iowa Dream by Arthur Russell, all melodic guitar lines and soft lyrics. The self he pictured living there was different from the one he knows in London: less anxious, more social, content to spend long afternoons drifting around and hanging out with friends. [ Trevor White: I love Dublin. But there's no point in pretending it's a great small city Opens in new window ] I also indulge in this kind of cartographic dreaming. I explore prospective cities on Street View: Beirut, Paris, Berlin. It's a surreal activity. You pick a spot on the map and drag yourself along, imagining a parallel life. Sometimes, from one click to the next, the sun disappears and rain slicks the tarmac. Figures with blurred faces vanish or are replaced by others in different clothes further down the road. You realise the map is stitched together from footage taken on different days, in different moods. Another thing my friend hinted at stayed with me: that emigration can be indistinguishable from escapism. When I imagine myself in another city, I don't picture myself as I am now, but a physically and intellectually tweaked version. In Paris, I'm gaunt with a perfect bob; I smoke straights and read Lacan for pleasure. In Beirut, I am somehow fluent in Arabic; I drink less; I am sharper and more spiritual. I study ancient manuscripts. In Berlin, I am reunited with my best friend and we live together like Robert Mapplethorpe and Patti Smith before it all fell apart, looking cool and making great art. The fantasy isn't really about the new city. It's about becoming a new person. [ Emer McLysaght: Five lessons Dublin can learn from Zurich Opens in new window ] There's a way of reading this that feels a little bleak. You could say it reflects a kind of ambient self-disgust, or an inability to accept life as it is. A symptom of being stuck in the wheel of samsara: trapped in a cycle of craving and disappointment, forever projecting some improved self just over the horizon, never quite admitting that the old self follows you everywhere. There's truth in that, but it's not the whole story. There's another, more generous way to see it. Maybe it isn't escapism, but a kind of unconscious recognition that we are always in the process of becoming. Cities aren't just stages on which our lives play out. They are the biggest collaborators. They shape how we speak, how we move, how we think. They alter our trajectories. When you choose to stay in a place, you're submitting to its influence. To live in a city is to enter into a kind of contract. You agree to spend your time, your energy, and your labour in its service. In return, it promises transformation, but on its own terms. Like the enchanted gift in a fairy tale, the city will change you in ways you can't predict, and not all of them will be kind. The point is you don't get to choose. It's a gamble. Is it one worth taking? Ruby Eastwood is a writer living in Dublin
Irish Times
8 hours ago
- Irish Times
PSG and Inter could thrill us in the Champions League final, but something has already been lost
Before this season's League Cup final between Newcastle United and Liverpool , the Times (London) interviewed Malcolm Macdonald, the former buccaneering Newcastle centre forward. Macdonald played for Newcastle in the 1974 FA Cup final and brought up the name of Keith Burkinshaw, who was a coach at St James' Park at the time. Burkinshaw moved to Tottenham Hotspur , where he became manager and won the 1984 Uefa Cup – Tottenham's last European trophy until 10 days ago. Burkinshaw walked out soon after a boardroom disagreement. In a famous exchange with the reporter Ken Jones, a former player and cousin of Spurs legend Cliff Jones, both looked back at old White Hart Lane and agreed: 'There used to be a football club over there.' It was actually Jones referencing a Frank Sinatra song, but the point was made. A year earlier Tottenham Hotspur had been repackaged into Tottenham Hotspur plc, which was subsequently floated on the London stock exchange. Others followed. Now shares in clubs, and clubs themselves, could be bought and sold in a way Football Association rules had previously forbidden. It was a historic moment of change; it continues to shape the present. As season 2024-25 reaches its European climax with the Champions League final in Munich between Internazionale and Paris Saint-Germain , the Burkinshaw remark feels as pertinent as ever – not just about Tottenham, but Newcastle, Manchester City and both of these finalists, among others. READ MORE Formed in 1908 via a schism inside AC Milan, Inter remained in Italian ownership until 2013 when a trio of Indonesian businessmen bought 70 per cent of its shares. In 2016 those were sold to Chinese group Suning, who then defaulted on a loan. It means US investors Oaktree today own a sporting institution 117 years old. United States ownership of Serie A clubs is up to eight. PSG were not formed until 1970, via a merger. The French capital did not have an elite football club and the newly renovated Parc des Princes required tenants. Originally fan-owned – annual subscription: six francs – the club moved, some would say stumbled, through various ownerships until 2011 when Qatari Sports Investment acquired them. Whether six-francs fans wanted it or not, PSG were now part of the Qatari regime's 'National Vision 2030″, a policy aimed at turning the Gulf city-state of Doha into an 'advanced, sustainable society'. Apparently European football was deemed essential to this vision. PSG had been champions of France twice until 2013. Between 2000 and 2012 seven different clubs had won Ligue 1. Now so much money has been ploughed in that PSG have been French champions 11 times in the past 13 seasons. Qatari-PSG eliminated variety. At Uefa they were worried quickly. Having seen the inflationary effect of Roman Abramovich at Chelsea , then Abu Dhabi's purchase of City in 2008, Uefa began to formulate new financial regulations to prevent the 'financial doping' concern Arsène Wenger raised in 2009. That remark was about the new Chelsea, with the whiff of Lance Armstrong still in the air of sport. As Miguel Delaney notes in his valuable book on the subject of modern football, States of Play, PSG had an income of €398 million in 2012-13, but an estimated €200 million came from the Qatar Tourism Authority, which was convenient. Delaney quotes a then senior Uefa spokesman saying of PSG: 'They know the rules are that they have to generate revenues to cover their costs without cheating.' His name was Gianni Infantino . As president of Fifa, Gianni Infantino announced Saudi Arabia will host the World Cup in 2034, 12 years after it was hosted by Qatar. Photograph: Nick Potts/PA Wire Doping, cheating: those are quite the words. In May 2014 PSG's Qatari owners and Uefa reached a 'settlement'. There was a headline €60 million fine and a reduction in Champions League squad-size from 25 to 21 players. Later the same month Man City received the same sanction. [ Ken Early: Fifa president Gianni Infantino has relentlessly sucked up to Trump since 2017 Opens in new window ] The new men from the Gulf who ran both clubs were incensed by Uefa's language, but then these are men who are rarely challenged. The Qatari hierarchy in Doha had schemed to get the 2022 World Cup and in doing so had become close to French president Nicolas Sarkozy and Uefa's Michel Platini. They were good at manoeuvring. Even in their anger at Uefa, Delaney writes the situation can be seen as 'two clubs owned by autocracies pressurising a governing body into a secret deal'. As with Spurs in 1983, Delaney traces this compromise as a turning point. With €50 million raised in finger-clicks, the likes of David Luiz, Angel Di Maria and Julian Draxler were added to PSG in the next transfer windows. Then in the summer of 2017 the world record transfer fee was obliterated as Neymar joined from Barcelona for €222 million. Not content with that PSG signed Kylian Mbappé on loan from AS Monaco. 'Loan' is a gentle way of putting it: Mbappé cost €180 million the following summer. Qatar splashed this €400 million, plus €1 million a week for Neymar and all the rest, shortly after they had been geographically isolated by Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt and others, who cut diplomatic ties. The projection of Vision 2030 was still working for Qatar, but it was alienating neighbours as well as having a numbing side effect on domestic French football's competitiveness. Having arranged to parade David Beckham for the last five months of his career in 2013, in August 2021 Qatar brought Lionel Messi from Barcelona to join Neymar. Qatar had already, controversially and undeservedly, been given the 2022 World Cup. The tournament climaxed with Argentina beating France in an unforgettable final; Messi was draped in a bisht over his Argentina colours as he lifted the trophy. Qatar, make no mistake, thought they owned football. Lionel Messi, then of PSG, gets his hand and lips on the World Cup after victory in Qatar in 2022. Photograph:Who could argue with them? Their ownership of PSG is 13 years old, indisputable, normalised. 'Ici c'est Paris' is PSG branding, a statement of geographical pride; yet when the club played the French Super Cup against Monaco in January, the game was staged in Doha, not France. As reported by Doha News, PSG head coach Luis Enrique said before the game: 'We're going to play this match as if it were at home, because we are at home.' Ici c'est Doha. Doha News, though, was focused on why so few locals stayed around to watch the trophy presentation. 'Why has Qatar's ownership of PSG not translated to fandom at home?' it asked. Maybe, we thought, because it's a manufactured enterprise in a city-state of 1.5 million people with no serious football culture? The bigger issue, of ownership, was not in debate. Burkinshaw had thoughts on all this 40 years ago. Now Tottenham Hotspur send out advisory notes to broadcasters to call them 'Spurs' or 'Tottenham Hotspur' but never simply 'Tottenham'. Even if it's to protect copyright, it's crass and a denial of origin. Such 'brand' policies help explain why six weeks before Tottenham won the Europa League, their fans were on the street protesting about the running of the club and what it has become, a sports company mes que un club. 'Built a business, killed a football club' read a banner. James Montague, in another recent book – Engulfed: how Saudi Arabia bought sport, and the world – notes that sports reporting in the Gulf can be curiously strong, given other criticism is not tolerated. Saudi Arabia came to sport's non-sport potential later than its much smaller competitors, Qatar and the UAE, but the Saudis have rushed to make up for that. They brought out their own Vision 2030 and it now directs much of global golf, e-sports and boxing – Saudi minister Turki Alalshikh bought The Ring magazine; plus football, via its Cristiano Ronaldo-led Saudi Pro League and the acquisition of Newcastle United. Saudi Arabia's Mohammed Al-Owais saves a shot from South Korea's Jae-Sung Lee during a friendly match at St James' Park, Newcastle in 2023. Photograph: Will Matthews/PA Wire Saudi Arabia has a long-standing football culture and connections – Saudi Telecom has sponsored Manchester United for years. Saudi Investment Bank SAIB started sponsoring Real Madrid two years ago. The country's right to hold a World Cup, which they will do in 2034, is more convincing than Qatar's. But how they got it – via the tricky chameleon Infantino – is less so, and Burkinshaw might question the Saudi Public Investment Fund's motivation in taking over at St James'. It was about influence and the hardening of soft power. It involved, as the Daily Mail reported in June 2020, direct contact between then UK prime minister Boris Johnson and Saudi's ultimate leader Mohammed Bin Salman. A purchase stalled suddenly changed gear. Public delight at St James' baffled and disturbed. But northeast England had long felt a geographic distance from political power, which fed Brexit sentiment. At Newcastle United the feeling was doubled by the deliberately hollow running of the club by previous owner Mike Ashley, for whom it became a commercial billboard. A club's identity is precious, but not impregnable. Those who disdain Newcastle since the Saudi takeover may be fed up hearing these explanations as to why there is almost no protest in the city – Montague did not find many dissenters; instead a big river of more than 200,000 people flowed through the streets in celebration at winning this season's League Cup. Equally, Newcastle fans are fed up with hearing about Saudi Arabia's human rights record, or having it pointed out that the League Cup could not have been won without Saudi money, or that the reserve team kit is Saudi green, training camps are held in Riyadh and in September 2023 Saudi Arabia staged two friendlies at St James'. Those of us there for the South Korea game heard the tannoy announce: 'It's been a pleasure to host Saudi Arabia here at St James' Park.' Everyone got the message. And as each match, each season passes, it all puts the norm in normalisation. Flowers of variety There never used to be a football club over there: so in Paris they created PSG. It was not for the same reason Viktor Orban, for example, has built his club, Puskas Akademia, in Hungary but like the former Felcsut FC, Qatari-PSG has been transformed into a different entity. PSG's identity has become increasingly blurred under in recent years. Photograph: David Davies/PA Wire And here they are in the last game of the season. We all admire this version of PSG, however – how could you not with talents such asKhvicha Kvaratskhelia and Désiré Doué? [ In Orban's Hungary, football clubs like Robbie Keane's Ferencváros are no longer just teams Opens in new window ] It makes for a strange end to a curious season, which was somehow simultaneously dull and dazzling. The new Champions League format worked, mainly, and there were great nights for Celtic and Aston Villa. The incredible Inter-Barcelona semi-final made you smile out loud. In England Liverpool may have walked alone to the Premier League title, yet there were amazing scenes of jubilation at Crystal Palace, in Leeds, Newcastle and at 'Tottenham', in Tottenham. In Scotland 40 years of Old Firm league domination was offset by Aberdeen's Scottish Cup win. Flowers of variety have bloomed. On Saturday night we have an enticing climax. Qatar has its name literally written all over it – Qatar Airways' press release on Thursday revelled in their sponsorship of both finalists and the tournament itself. And it's not over. Six years after Jürgen Klopp sat in an Edinburgh hotel preseason and warned of player burnout, bureaucratic ego and sports politics – Infantino – bring us the needless, money-soaked Club World Cup, starting in Miami in a fortnight. Football in 2025. It never ends. Laugh and sigh.
