Tuesday, June 20, 2006

The great game

Speaking of football, I'm on a flying visit to Israel and the Palestinian Authority at the moment and as we stopped at the Israeli checkpoint before crossing over into Jericho the soldier saw my girlfriend's Italian passport and said: "Ah, see the match? Forza Italia!".

When we arrived in Jericho, one of the first people to greet us (tourists being rare birds in these parts) was a young man who asked "where you from?" When I replied London, England, he said: "Ah, Arsenal! Football!".

1 comment:

ChrisB said...

Yeah its wierd there's this crazy bit in a recent Newsnight report on multinationals fixing prices to small Tobacco growers in Malawi through a rigged market (there are only 2 buying processor companies, the buyers are white men, the farmers are black men, its all very South African - in fact at least one of the buyers IS South African and at one point asks the farmer if he is 'being a good farmer'...) anyway there is this bit where the reporter starts talking football with the farmer, who it transpires supports Man Utd - 'I'm from Manchester,' says the reporter, 'but I support City, have you heard of them' - 'YES' says the farmer ' I HATE THEM' then grins broadly - its utterly irrelevant to the film but you can understand why it got left in!