Went to see a movie last night. Called ‘Listen up, Phil’. Yep, this is no Hollywood blockbuster, which is great, I’m sufficiently smug to prefer art-house over ‘blow-up-the-house’ any day. So we went to our local Indy movie-place and took our seats. There were, I reckon, 40 people in there. About 200 empty seats. And they were the lucky ones. The people who didn’t go and see the film. Sitting at home watching Barcelona, out drinking pale ale, those in other cinemas seeing other movies, those jammy 200 bastards.

It started well, a bit Woody Allen, a bit dark, a bit gloomy, about a writer having published his second book and deciding he was ‘a success’ and ‘followed the dream to glory’ even though that patently wasn’t the case. So he went round to anyone who’d ever doubted his abilities or his choice of life and told them what fucking assholes they were. Not in a very nice way. If there is a nice way to do that, Phil didn’t find it. Nasty.

And if you can’t sympathise with the central character who is arrogant, vindictive, vengeful and horrible, then you have to look elsewhere. But wherever you look there are only characters you’d get off a bus to avoid. Yeah there were funny bits, but it was 1/10th Woody Allen and 9/10ths Kim Jong Un. Not great numbers.

Highly recommended.

Meanwhile, in Berlin, Barcelona won the European Champions League final, beating Juventus 3-1. And I’m glad. Even though I haven’t watched it yet. Firstly because I love Barca and, but for a capricious quirk of geographical randomness that had me born in the Tottenham end of Hackney, I would definitely have emerged instead right on The Ramblas (probably in one of the brothels, but Barcelona’s Barcelona, right??) And secondly because had Juventus have won, it would have been only by stifling the entire match into total suffocation and kicking the shit out of everyone. Which, as a tactic, has certain merits, but it should actually be a crime to try and inhibit the creative flair of Iniesta and Messi and Xavi et al.

And at a time when FIFA are showing how fucking ugly our sport can become, Barcelona are the constant reminder of how fantastically fabulous that game can actually be. And for that alone they are the most winners of the biggest prize in football.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx