Penalties are not football. They are not even as television people keep telling us, great drama. They are cheap melodrama.
Simon BarnesSport is something that does not matter, but is performed as if it did. In that contradiction lies its beauty
Simon BarnesAcquiring the trick of listening to birds will teach you how better to enjoy life and how better to endure it
Simon BarnesIf you are old and you wish to be young again, if only for a moment, try and identify a dragonfly.
Simon BarnesBehind 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.
Simon Barnes