There was an advert I rather liked. Devastated woman: "I've just seen the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse!" Husband: "Never mind, love, it's not the end of the world."

Behind every footballing tough guy there lurks a mincing aesthete with a love of art for art's sake, football for football's sake. A win without art is somehow less than a victory; less, almost, than a beautiful defeat. In football, the romantic and the pragmatist are ever at war in the same breast. Beauty, it must be understood here, is not Barcelona's aim but their method. And last night they were ready to use this method at every opportunity - quick-fire passing of wit and purpose in the danger areas, seeking always to produce an unlooked-for player in a position of threat.

Acquiring the trick of listening to birds will teach you how better to enjoy life and how better to endure it

What politician ever thinks beyond 4 or 5 years? But such thinking is hopelessly inadequate for the big questions that involve the fabric of the world we live in

There was an advert I rather liked. Devastated woman: "I've just seen the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse!" Husband: "Never mind, love, it's not the end of the world."

Never mind, love, it's not the end of the world.

Football is based on desperation. All clubs are desperate in one form or another - desperate to succeed, desperate to survive, desperate to stay where they are, desperate that things get no worse, desperate to arrest the slide.