“Elegance personified” - Gianluigi Buffon drowns out booing fans at Italy-France friendly

Many might (rightly) maintain that the so-called “beautiful game” ain’t exactly what it used to be.

Big bucks and “state of the art” hairdos (or “hairdon'ts) seem to count as much as on-the-pitch skills for the elite that make it to the top of the game.

And let’s not take a nightmare trip down memory lane to the “Knysna affair” at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa when the French national side threw a collective tantrum and refused to train.

It surely marked an all-time low in (French) football.

But there are exceptions of course. And perhaps it should come as no surprise that the man who recently showed such outstanding behaviour should be an Italian.

After all, it’s a country in which football is revered - even among those who don’t really follow the game.

Look at the recent Euro 2016 (held in France) when every Italian man, woman and child (enough hyperbole?) seemed to follow the fortunes of Gli Azzuri until they were knocked out at the quarterfinal stage.

Anyway, back to that man, Italy’s goalkeeper and captain and (more hyperbole perhaps - but just ask an Italian) legend, 38-year-old Gianluigi Buffon.

Gianluigi Buffon (screenshot from Rahim Abdullaev’s YouTube video)

“An example to what we should be seeing on the pitch”, said Fifa president Gianni Infantino after a friendly played on September 1 in the Italian city of Bari between the hosts and France (a game which Italy were to lose 1-3)

But what exactly had Buffon done to earn such plaudits - not only from Infantino but much of a soccer mad world.

Quite simply he had single-handedly led the response to counter booing that occurred from a small section of the crowd at the Stadio San Nicola while the French national anthem was being played before the match began.

Buffon reacted immediately, applauding La Marseillaise throughout, followed by his teammates and, it has to be said - a vast majority of those in the stadium.

Such class Monsieu Buffon!

Luzenac Ariège Pyrénées keep the footballing dream alive - just

In April, the football team of Luzenac Ariège Pyrénées (LAP) originally from a village of fewer than 700 inhabitants, did the unthinkable.

It won promotion from the amateur league to join the French second division and, in so doing, became the smallest club ever to qualify to compete at such a level.

It was a football fairy tale come true

The players, management and supporters were on a high, looking forward to the big time - well, relatively speaking.

LAP celebrate after securing promotion to Ligue 2 in April (screenshot i>Télé report)

But as we all know - and as British comedian and political satirist John Oliver so sardonically reminded us in his excellent piece on HBO about the World Cup and Fifa - the so-called "beautiful game" is as much about business as it is about sport.

In fact, some might go as far as to say that, in terms of importance, the financial side has far outstripped the sporting one both on and off the pitch.

And so it has proven for LAP, whose chances of playing this coming season in Ligue 2 remain in the balance even though a tribunal has just ruled in its favour, hours before the August 1 kick off.

Finances - or apparent lack of them - have been at the centre of the club's problems.

Both the professional Football league (Ligue de Football Professionnel, LFP), through its Direction nationale du contrôle de gestion (DNCG) - the body which oversees clubs' finances, and the Le Comité National Olympique et Sportif Français Olympic committee dismissed LAP's right to promotion.

They claimed - through their lawyers of course - that during the 2013-14 seaso, the club's management took a DIY approach to its finances and failed to produce balanced books by the June 30 deadline.

Meanwhile LAP's management maintained, on its official website, that it was very much in the black, had had its books audited properly and had met all the regulatory requirements imposed by the LFP.

A tribunal in Toulouse heard arguments from both sides on Wednesday July 30, finally ruling in the club's favour on Friday August 1 - the very day the new season kicked off for Ligue 2.

But that is far from being the end of the story  - of course.

Because LAP still has yet another hurdle to overcome before it can be allowed to play a match.

The club will have to appear before the DNCG once again, within the next eight days, when a final decision will be taken.

So for the moment, its players and staff will have to wait and watch from the sidelines as the division's other 20 teams begin their campaigns.

Football : l’inquiétude des 650 habitants de Luzenac sur WAT.tv 

World Cup fever - let's get a grip

What is it with football?

Yes the World Cup - warts (Fifa) and all - is a major sporting event.

There's no doubting that.

But really, does it mean our elected leaders can afford to forget the really important things happening in the world to ride - albeit briefly - the crest of the feelgood wave they hope might somehow benefit them?

Russia reduces its gas supply to Ukraine "raising the possibility of disrupted transit of gas to Europe" and a difficult winter ahead if things aren't sorted.

And what are our illustrious leaders up to?

Well, the German chancellor Angela Merkel hot-footed it over to Brazil to watch "die Mannshaft" make clinical mincemeat of Portugal (with a little help from an imploding Pepe early into the game)

Back in France as the country limps through its economic muddle, now complete with the inevitable industrial ("non") action from SNCF employees and les intermittents du spectacle, how did the president François Hollande spend his time during Les Bleus' opening game?

He ostentatiously invited 200 people (and the cameras) to la salle des fêtes at the Elysée palace to gawp ("with collective passion") at a giant screen as France ran out victorious over mighty Honduras in their first match.

Giant screen at the Elysée palace (screenshot BFM TV)

Oh well. Winter is months away, so why should politicians care about gas supplies right now?

Perhaps the football commentators will help jog their memories by broaching the subject during Russia's first game against South Korea on Tuesday!

Nigeria kicked off its tournament on Monday with a thrilling 0-0 draw against Iran, and in the meantime the 200 or so missing schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram in April are still being held hostage. They've been located apparently, but still haven't been freed.

Never mind. Who gives a damn anyway?

French TV news reports spend an inordinate amount of time analysing and speculating on the Les Bleus' chances, interviewing individual French players and managers - past and present - wheeling in the "experts" to give their opinions and asking the man and the woman in the street what they think.

And at the same time Sunni Islamist militants have taken control of Iraq's second city Mosul and are now approaching Baghdad.

The world watches - says little and does nothing as the focus of media attention seems to be elsewhere.

And that "elsewhere" of course is Brazil - the host country, profiting from the glory and the money it's not going to make and the prestige the whole tournament will bring as an answer to its social problems.

Just ask South Africa, the host of the 2010 tournament.

Don't get me wrong. I love the so-called beautiful game. But I also care about other things.

And a World Cup which is as much about business and displays of exaggerated patriotism (whatever that might be) as it is sport, surely simply deflects attention away from those other things that really matter.