The Malaysian Insider

NOV 1 — When I wrote about the funnelling of petrodollars into European football, a commenter queried the level of knowledge I had on the state of the beautiful game in Malaysia. Knowledge, good sir, I have little of; the Malaysian football business – for in this day and age, it is a business — is fairly opaque and I am struggling to uncover any investigative journalism on the matter bar the works of one Rizal Hashim. Opinions on the local game, though, I have a few.

OCT 16 — What’s in a rank? Every Monday I pick up the copy of the Times and I glance over two particular football league rankings: the English Premiership, and the Coca Cola League One. My favourite team is doing quite well in the former, and my local team are third in the latter. The tables tell me how good my teams are at winning matches, and this generally serves as a proxy for how well things are going at the club in various respects. Or so, I would like to think. Because it is a rather simplistic view, and yet league tables and rankings are not something you can simplify. They are there as a tool, but total reliance on them without considering various external factors may cause it to be more sinister that one would initially warrant. Paraphrasing the old Transformers slogan, there’s more than what meets the eyes.

OCT 3 — I came home from a brief work-related sojourn in the South of France to the news of a possible takeover of Liverpool Football Club by a Saudi millionaire. Ah, petrodollars to boost that tiger in your club's engine. Very vogue and hip these days, apparently. While the Gulf presence amongst Premiership team owners is a relatively recent phenomenon, overseas ownership of clubs is not.

With the amount of money literally being poured into arguably previously mediocre footballing sides, there is a legitimate concern that the beautiful game may be sullied by teams putting more focus on the bottom line than getting the ball across the goal line. So, just how much is money influencing the world's most popular sport? And is this really a bad thing?

SEPT 18 — What a weekend at the tennis courts, eh? Okay, so it stretched to Monday (and for most of us, well into Tuesday as well) but both US Open finals were moments to savour for every sports fan on either side of the tennis net.

First, Kim Clijsters romped her way to a convincing win over 9th seed Caroline Wozniacki in the women’s final, becoming the first woman to win a major tennis title on a wildcard entry – and this, only 18 months after giving birth. She joins an elite list of female athletes who have returned from maternity even stronger than before.

SEPT 3 — “So now that you’ve announced to all and sundry that your articles are to be about sports, what’s next on the cards?” my friend, N, ventured, fishing perhaps.

“It will revolve around ... errr... cricket,” I replied, one eye on Lewis Hamilton walking away from his McLaren-Mercedes carnage at the Belgian F1.

“Cricket? But why?” She looked perplexed. “It’s the world’s most boring game. Ever, ever!”