Spurs are playing football tonight. Its a massive game. Probably the biggest and most glamorous match of the season so far as they play FC Dnipro to decide (well, to ‘half-decide’ as its the first of a two-leg tie) who goes through to the last 16 of the Europa League of Teams that aren’t Bad but aren’t Necessarily Quite Good Enough. And I don’t even know if Dnipro is a little town or a local company that sponsors the team. Maybe they make surgical appliances, feminine products, washing machines for Ukranians.

If its not the most important game of the year, its certainly the most dangerous. It will be played 220 miles from Kiev. Where 26 people (and counting) have died in the ‘Russian Spring’ that has caused a month of riots in Ukraine’s capital. Yet the game should indeed go on. It must be played. Football is far more important than Mickey Mouse politics and uprising of the local serfs.

This is not a ‘civil war’, not yet anyway. So its just rioting in a square (how do you ever make a political statement if your town or city doesn’t have a square? impossible) because the government of the Ukraine has basically sold that nation’s future to Russia for 15 billion quid. Which doesn’t sound like a bad deal to me. I’d swap either of my children for a used Nissan, but that’s just me. And basic economics.

The irony, of course, is that it took Ukraine years of Soviet enslavement to finally extricate themselves from the Russian stranglehold, back in the day, when the Wall came down and Pink Floyd ruled europe. So having gained that independence they now want to return to Russian rule once more, financially if not in the previously more totalitarian way.

And the peasants are revolting. Ha, ha, haaaa…

Because the Ukranians see themselves as New Europeans rather than Russian Poor Relations. Though we see them as stocky ugly people with both a distant and recent history of extreme racism, anti-semitism and eating cabbage.

Good question for dinner parties: What’s the most fun you can have with your clothes on?

Great question. Not for Ukranians, necessarily, but we can all play this one.

If you’re dressed (not in rubber/leather/cling-film) and there aren’t any dead fish around and your ferret’s having a day off, what’s the most fun you can have??

I really didn’t want to talk about the Arsenal game because Arjen Robben is indeed a whingeing, diving little Dutch slap-head cry-baby. But if you clatter a whingeing, diving little slap-head Dutch cry-baby to the ground it is still a penalty and you’ll still be sent off if you happen to be the ‘last man’ preventing a goal-scoring opportunity. The fact that the ensuing penalty was missed is irrelevent. The game was dead at that point. I could barely watch the totally one-way traffic and did a crossword.

Another interesting question: is Mezut Ozil the new Emmanuel Adebayor? He comes, he stars, he’s brilliant, then three months later you wish he’d never bothered and you’re stuck with a very very expensive liability.

Happy thursday

I predict a riot

A xxxx