Franck Ribéry faces financial ruin? Hardly

If the rumours currently circulating the Net and some European newspapers are to be believed, then the French international midfielder, Franck Ribéry, has a hard choice to make.

He's reported to be considering offers from two of Europe's top teams as they try to woo him away from his present club, Germany's Bayern Munich.

Ready for some silly spondoolicks?

First out of the stall - to use a well-worn sporting term, albeit borrowed from horse racing, are Barcelona.

The reigning Spanish title holders and Champions League semi-finalists have apparently offered a cool €25 million (plus another player) to entice Ribéry away from Bayern, where the poor guy is only pocketing €8 million annually.

Up to the plate, to use another non-football sporting term, steps that other giant of European club soccer, the defending Champions League holders and English premier league side, Manchester United with...wait for it...a bid that amounts to a whopping €70 million.

Ahem.

Yes, welcome to the world of the footballing élite. At a time when much of the planet is having a tough time handling the credit crunch, the crème de la crème of club football - or soccer if you will - would appear to be a law unto itself.

Ribéry moved to Bayern in 2007 from the French side Marseille for around €25 million, and although his contract is due to run until 2011, he's thought to be looking for another club.

While Bayern's management has repeatedly ruled out a transfer and denied rumours that circulated earlier in the year in the Spanish press that Ribéry was about to sign for Barcelona, the immediate future of the French midfielder could well see him move to pastures new.

Ribéry has made no secret of his willingness to leave Bayern, especially if the team fails to qualify for next seasons Champions League.

The side was on the wrong end of a 5-1 aggregate drubbing by Barcelona in the quarterfinal stage of this year's competition and Ribéry said in a recent interview with the French sports daily l'Equipe that failure to qualify next year would be a bitter pill to swallow.

"It would really be very difficult to remain with the club under those conditions," he said. "That's why the side has to finish at least in the top two at the end of the season."

A lot will hinge of course on whether Bayern manage to finish in the top two of the German Bundeliga. They currently lie second, just three points adrift of leaders Wolfsburg.

Should he decide it's time to go though, Ribéry will have to weigh up which of the reported bids on the table is in his best interests.

€25 million or €70 million.

Life can be full of difficult decisions!

François Bayrou - the return of the "third man" of French politics

The leader of the centre party Mouvement démocrate (MoDem), François Bayrou, is back in the headlines with the timely publication of a new book, "Abus de pouvoir" in which he takes aim at the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy.

Its release comes just five weeks before the European parliamentary elections in June and has given rise within the French media as to possible political alliances in the run-up to that vote and the potential consequences afterwards.

Although Bayrou is keen to point out that the book is not a personal attack on Sarkozy, it's still being interpreted as a reflection on how he considers the office of president to have been diminished under its present incumbent.

The two men have never been particularly close and the leader of MoDem still clearly fancies his chances at a run for the French presidency in 2012.

"The values Sarkozy has chosen to represent don't match the function of the office," Bayrou said on national radio.

"The president (of France) has to be someone who sees 'success' as something other than the pursuit of money."

Not surprisingly perhaps there are some very different political interpretations being made about the contents of Bayrou's book and his possible influence on the French political landscape.

It very much depends on where your political affiliations lie and which national daily newspaper you read.

In an editorial the centre-right Le Figaro goes as far as to suggest that the opposition Socialist party, so long riven by internal bickering and disagreement over its future direction, has finally found its potential leader - in the form of Bayrou.

The paper describes the Socialist party's attitude towards Bayrou as "bees around honey" and it cites the former party leader, François Hollande, in an interview last month with the weekly news magazine L'Express as evidence in the change of approach.

In the interview Hollande is quoted as saying the party needs to "clarify convergences and divergences" with MoDem - a rather different line from just two years ago when, as leader, he was vehemently opposed to any suggestion of an alliance.

For a completely different interpretation of what's happening though, readers need look no further than the pages of the left-of-centre daily Libération.

The paper carries an editorial in which it suggests that those who should be most unsettled by the current flow within French politics are above all the ruling centre-right Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (Union for a Popular Movement, UMP) and Sarkozy's supporters.

There are signs emerging, suggests the paper, not so much of an "alliance of the centre" but rather the possibility of a grand coalition "post-Sarkozy"; one that will take into account a number of dissatisfied elements. The proof is that even the Socialist party has begun openly to discuss such a possibility of looking for common ground.

Whatever the case may be, Bayrou certainly seems determined to overcome the role of the "third man", a term used to describe him during the last presidential election in 2007, especially after his solid showing in the first round of voting.

Bayrou notched up 18 per cent of the popular vote, and although that wasn't sufficient to make it through to a second-round run-off, it was enough to make Ségolène Royal sit up and take notice.

History of course has since shown us that Royal's overtures to Bayrou for him to endorse her were unsuccessful and instead he found himself rather isolated politically-speaking.

Much of the rest of his party the centre/centre-right Union pour la démocratie française (Union for French Democracy, UDF) upped sticks and changed camps to join forces with Sarkozy's UMP.

Bayrou retaliated and created MoDem for the parliamentary elections in June 2007, with himself at the helm of course.

It won just four seats in the 577-strong National Assembly, hardly the most auspicious of beginnings.

But Bayrou never really went away and surely while there might be disagreement as to his impact on French politics, there seems to be a general consensus that he is likely to remain a thorn in someone's side.

It's just not clear whose.

Not all the news from France is "grave"

This week saw the rolling out of a website dedicated to "news" - both French and international. Inverted commas of course because "Les Graves Infos" doesn't exactly tell the stories as they happen.

Instead, it's full of totally fictitious stories, concocted by those who are contributing to the site.

"Les Graves Infos" is all the brainchild of Dominique Farrugia, who comes with a rather long pedigree in terms of comedy in France. He is, in the mould of many French celebrities, something of a multi-talent, having acted, produced and directed for both television and film.

And he was also behind the launch of the television channel, Comédie! - the French version of the US concept Comedy Central.

His latest venture then, would seem to fit perfectly with his general philosophy of setting out to make people laugh.

"The idea is to make (people) laugh and nothing else," he says. "If it's culture you're looking for then this is not the place you'll come to."

The site, take a look here (apologies, but it's obviously in French) mixes a daily news journal which follows the format familiar to most French, complete with "news" and a breaking line update running across the bottom of the screen, that is obviously completely untrue.

There's also a separate section, "gravepubs", devoted entirely to television commercials - once again, completely fabricated, and there's perhaps a less amusing section but one that could catch the eye of many male viewer, the weather, presented by a topless (female) forecaster.

Perhaps there'll be a rethink as to whether the weather presented in such a way, or really has its place on the site.

It's not especially amusing and if it's really looking for a role model in terms of making the weather appear funny, then it need perhaps look no further than the excellent Pauline Lefevre on Canal + Le Grand Journal.

Most importantly perhaps, Les Graves Infos is also an interactive site with "Internauts" of all levels being encouraged to participate in forming the "news" schedule by becoming "gravereporters" themselves.

Apart from maybe the weather, the whole concept is rather a welcome break from the seriousness or gravity of much of what is making the headlines in France and elsewhere.