Goodbye Prince

The death of Prince is another legendary figure that we've lost in the world of music this year. What is it about 2016?

I love Prince. He's another artist whose music defined my childhood. His records says a lot about what I'm all about in terms of my own music taste.

When I was growing up, what I loved about Prince was that he was a proper pop star. He wasn't like ordinary people.

There was the glamour, the otherness and of course the music. I loved 1999 which was the first Prince record I remember. I loved the video and the lyrics that spoke about partying like it was 1999. As a 7 year old I imaged we'd be flying in space ships by the time 1999 came round.

As I grew up through the 80s and 90s what I admired most about Prince was that he could do everything. He could play rock, pop, soul, funk and jazz, he could do it all. His versatility was amazing.

Like David Bowie I think I like artists that can tread that fine line between commercial success and artistic integrity. People that are hugely talented but always looking to push the boundaries in terms of their art.

From the reports it sounds like there are hundreds of tracks recorded by Prince that were left in the vaults and never released. Prince may be gone but his music remains and I'm looking forward to hearing his old 'new' material.


A friend on Facebook posted this video which highlights what an incredible guitarist Prince was.

Come on Leicester

Unless you're a Nottingham Forest or Spurs fan you're probably hoping that Leicester City pull off the impossible by winning this season's Premier League.

This is looking more likely following Leicester's 2-0 win today away at Sunderland which leaves them 7 points clear of Tottenham with only 6 games of the season left.

If Leicester win the Premier League it will be the greatest achievement in modern English football history! There's simply no precedent for it. A team that in the space of 18 months have been transformed from relegation certainties to virtual Premier League Champions.

What makes Leicester's story so remarkable is that this simply wasn't meant to happen. The advent of the Premier League followed by the growth of the Champions League meant that mid ranking provincial clubs like Leicester could never compete with the big clubs.

If you want to find the nearest comparison to what Leicester are potentially about to achieve, you have to go back to the 1970s.

Unfashionable Derby County won the league for the first time in 1972 under Brian Clough and again in 1975 under Dave Mackay. In 1978 Nottingham Forest (managed again by Clough) won the league in their first season after gaining promotion from the old Second Division.

The difference between the 70s and now is that there wasn't as much money in the game. The traditional big city clubs couldn't dominate in the way they have done during the Premier League era.

So how do you explain Leicester's success?


The money in the Premier League has created a more level playing field

When the Premier League was created it was partly to ensure that the big clubs could maximise revenues generated from the game. The increased revenue from TV rights allowed big clubs like Man Utd, Arsenal, Chelsea, to dominate the league consistently which is what they've done for the last 25 years.

This season things have started to change. The improved television deals have now meant that mid ranking and smaller clubs now have enough money to buy top players from bigger European clubs and compete with the Premier League's traditional powers. They also are no longer under pressure to sell their better players to raise cash.

In the Premier League, the likes of Stoke, Southampton, Swansea, and Watford can pay bigger salaries than genuine big European clubs such as Marseilles in France or the big clubs in Italy or Spain. There's a limit to how many players any one club can have.

The very best players in the world play for Real Madrid, Barcelona and Bayern Munich. England's big clubs now face a new challenge of mid ranking clubs buying players who in previous eras would have been playing for big European clubs.

It's ended up leveling the playing field which is possibly an unintended consequence of more tv money coming into the Premier League.


The complacency of the big clubs

Leicester's achievement this season is a big wake-up call for the big clubs. For too long they assumed that the so called natural order could never be disturbed. Their wealth and continued presence in the Champions League meant that they never had to think that smaller clubs could ever threaten them.

What Leicester have done and other clubs like West Ham, Watford and Bournemouth have shown that money can only take you so far. Creating a winning and successful team is about recruitment, picking the right type of players, team work and tactics.

Leicester's recruitment in recent years has been superb. How many clubs would have taken a chance on a player like Jamie Vardy who until a few years ago was still playing non league or Riyad Mahrez, plucked from French football obscurity!

Manchester United's Chief Executive summed up the thinking of the big clubs when he said in response to questions on why Leicester were performing so well on such a small budget:

"where there is a bit more pressure perhaps on some of the bigger clubs to bring in players that are going to be hitting the ground running and top players verging on world class almost immediately"

There's nothing stopping clubs like Man Utd buying unheralded players and developing talent but there's this idea that they have to buy players at the very peak or coming close to it immediately. Why?

Leicester's success proves you can pick up unheard of players and developing them into star players. The attitude of big clubs is one where they don't want to do this. One exception is Barcelona and their youth policy but look at Chelsea. Their youth teams continually win trophies but none of their young players ever seem to get the chance to progress into the first team.

On a separate note, earlier this week, I was looking through some of my old Birmingham City programmes and came across the Leicester City Programme from the game I went to at Leicester in March 2012. It's amazing to see names like Wes Morgan and Danny Drinkwater in Leicester's squad.

Leicester missed out on the playoffs that season but those type of players have progressed and improved and that team spirit has been vital to Leicester's success.

Will Leicester be a one off?

Quite possibly. Leicester may finish mid-table next season but I don't think it matters. What Leicester have done is give hope and inspiration to about 97% of clubs in the country.

They are reminding us that success in football doesn't just have to be about how much you pay in transfer fees and player wages. You don't necessarily need billions to compete.

Forgotten virtues like team spirit, clever recruitment, mixed in with tactics that get the best out of the players available reminds us that there's a chance for all us and that's why everyone so wants Leicester to win the league.

Come on Leicester!

Johan Cruyff 1947 - 2016

Football lost one of its all time greats this week with the death of Johan Cruyff.

I knew he was battling against cancer but following his announcement earlier this year that he was '2-0 up' against cancer I assumed he was on the road to recovery.

All the major footballing nations of Europe and South America have their own footballing culture and identity. I would describe Cruyff as being the godfather of Dutch football.

What makes Cruyff an all time great of football is not only how he played the game and what he achieved on the pitch. It's also his legacy off the pitch in terms of his coaching, club management and how he viewed and spoke about the game.


All football fans who know their history know about the great Ajax and Dutch national teams of the late 60s and early 70s. They introduced the world to 'Total football' A style where players where equally comfortable understanding and playing in different parts of the pitch. Cruyff was the leader of that Ajax and Dutch team and in 1974 he lead them to the World Cup final against West Germany.

I wasn't around for the 1974 World Cup but Holland were the team of the tournament and Cruyff the star player but sport doesn't always follow the romantic script and Holland lost in the final to West Germany when everyone expected and hoped they'd win.

Having watched documentaries on the 74 World Cup and read the book Brilliant Orange Perhaps it was a mixture of Dutch arrogance and overconfidence that they thought they would naturally beat a very good West Germany team.

In club football, Cruyff left Ajax after winning 3 European Cups in a row (1971-73) to join Spanish giants Barcelona. It's hard to believe now but when Cruyff joined Barcelona they hadn't won the league since 1960. By the end of his first season in Barcelona they had won the league. When he left Barcelona to go and play in America he was a hero in Catalonia.

By the time I started watching football in the mid 80s Cruyff had recently retired and had become manager of Ajax. My earliest memories of Cruyff was as manager where he was in charge of Barcelona and where he led them to an unprecedented 4 consecutive league titles from 1991 - 1994 and the club's first European Cup in 1992.

When I look back it's his time at Barcelona that you begin to see the legacy of Cruyff. When he returned to the club Barcelona had only won one league title since Cruyff left. That was in 1985 under Terry Venables.

Since the early 90s Barcelona have arguably been the most successful football club in the world in terms of winning trophies, developing youth players and playing a game that is loved by football fans across the world. Johan Cruyff started all of this and his influence can be seen today with the way Barcelona play the game now and you can see the roots and origins of their football if you go all the way back to the glory days of Dutch football at the start of the 1970s. That's what you call a legacy.

One of the great things I've discovered as a football fan in recent years is Youtube. You can now watch old clips of games and players who you may previously have only seen a few familiar clips.

In the past I've watched highlights of Cruyff particularly towards the end of his career in the early 80s when he returned to Ajax and more controversially to Ajax's biggest rivals Feyenoord of Rotterdam. What stands out is how stylish and elegant he was as a player even in his mid 30s. Some of his goals are just beautiful to watch.

Players like Johan Cruyff don't come around very often but when they do they remind you why you love the game of football so much.

The Brussels terrorist attacks

Following this week's bombings in Brussels, I've been thinking what I could possibly say that wasn't already said after last year's attacks in Paris.

The bombings are both shocking but not surprising and raises the question of which European capital will be next. Knowing that in all likelihood there will be another major attack is one of the most depressing aspects of this story.

We've had the show of solidarity for the Brussels victims, the calls for how we must not let the terrorists alter our way of life but after all of this what comes next?

It would appear that the Belgium counter-terrorist authorities have proved a weak link in Western Europe's overall strategy against Islamic terrorism. From what I can tell the Belgium authorities simply don't have the same level of experience of dealing with terrorist groups in comparison to say Britain with our history of dealing with the IRA.

Britain's security forces have been fairly successful in preventing terrorist plots which explains why we haven't had a major attack since 7/7. But as the old saying goes, the terrorists only have to be lucky once while the security forces need to get it right every single time.

Europe will need to improve its overall joint strategy in tackling ISIS and Islamic terrorism. Europe needs to develop its own counter-terrorism network to confront the network of ISIS.

The next issue involves a long-term challenge of tackling Islamic extremism at its roots and targeting those communities in Brussels, Paris and in cities across Britain where young Muslim men turn to violence and extremism.

This will be a slow and long process and if I'm honest I don't know the causes or the answers as to why so many young Muslim men of second and third generation immigrants in their country of birth decide to reject the values of their home country for a violent and destructive ideology of ISIS.

A weekend in Berlin

Last weekend I spent a few days in the German capital Berlin.

It was the first time I'd been to Berlin since spending a day there in 1995. At the time I was inter-railing across Europe. I wasn't there long enough to get a real feel for the city. My lasting memory was the feeling of amazement that only 6 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall I was actually in the city itself standing in front of the Brandenburg Gate!

I remembered looking over towards East Berlin and seeing what looked like a massive building site. I always thought it would be great to come back again one day once all the rebuilding had finished.

Brandenburg Gate

Berlin has a reputation of being a kind of cool hipster capital of Europe, similar to London's Shoreditch and Hoxton. I have to admit it does have that vibe about it. I was surprised at just how chilled and laid back Berlin was for a capital city.

Cities like London, Paris and New York have that feel of places that say to you: 'this is where it's at' They are cities that have the confidence to say we are the biggest and the best. Certainly with London, Paris and even Rome, you also have that European grandeur.

Even though Berlin is an historic capital I get the feeling that it doesn't have those kind of pretensions, it feels like a city that doesn't take itself too seriously which is something I quite liked.

What Berlin does have is a heavy sense of 20th century history hanging over it. No city in the world represented the division between the Capitalist West and Communist East than the Berlin Wall. I remember when the Wall came down in 1989 and realising that I was watching a truly historical event.

Other historical sites include the government parliament the Reichstag which was famously burnt down by the Nazis in 1933, Checkpoint Charlie and The Topography of Terror, both an in and outdoor museum on the site of the ruins of the old Gestapo and SS headquarters.

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.

I wasn't aware of the memorial until my friend pointed it out to me. It was designed by the architect Peter Eisenman and inaugurated in 2005. The memorial is made up of hundreds a grey blocks which have been formed into a grid system which once inside feels like you're in a maze. The slabs are of varying sizes and when you walk inside, can feel quite disorientating.


Berlin isn't all about the darker side of European and World history. Berlin is also famed for its nightlife. I have to admit I found Berlin's nightlife a bit confusing to begin with. The city is very quiet and doesn't have what you could call a traditional city centre, there are different neighborhoods. When you go out in the evening you didn't really come across a row of bars or clubs in the way you might do on a UK high-street.

Berlin's bars and clubs all appear to be quite discreet, its as if you have to stumble across them or know exactly where you are going to find a place. What I liked was that when you do find somewhere there are some really nice intimate chilled out bars to discover. Busy enough to create a good atmosphere but not overly crowded to make the experience tiring. a couple of the bars and clubs we went to had a bell you had to ring to get in before being confronted by a curtain. It was like you were being allowed into an exclusive venue that once inside was pretty chilled and very inclusive.

I realised that's what Berlin is all about, nice bars and cool clubs that you need to hunt down or keep your eye out for. There's no need to dress up, nobody seems to care what you look like and this is what I quite liked about Berlin.

It's definitely a cool place to spend a weekend.

Hertha v Schalke: Hertha Ultras

One of the main reasons for visiting Germany was for the chance to watch a Bundersliga football match. The Premier League may be the richest and most popular league in the world, but Germany's Bundersliga has a growing reputation were fans can watch affordable games in some of the best stadiums in the world and where the fan culture and support is second to none.

Watching Hertha v Schalke was a great experience. Hertha aren't really one of the most glamourous or famous names in German football but they're having an exceptional season. Before the start of the match they stood in 3rd place in the league behind Bayern and Dortmund. They have a great chance of qualifiing for next season's Champions League.

This was an important match as Schalke were one place behind them in fourth; if Hertha could win it would help cement their position in third. It was an good match, fairly even in the first half with Hertha taking the lead just before half time. The second half Hertha were very much the better team and deservedly doubled their lead in the middle of the second half. They had chances to make it three which they failed to take but overall they deserved their win.

Apart from the football what really stood out were the fans. Hertha's ultra supporters behind the goal were superb. They never stopped singing and chanting. It was an impressive sight to see thousands of fans all jumping up and down in unison. I should also give credit to Schalke who also brought some numbers with them as well and contributed to the atmosphere.

One of the things I loved most about Berlin is the graffiti and street art you see on buildings all over the city. I know you find graffiti in many cities but Berlin seems to have taken it to another level and forms part of the city's look and identity.

The legacy of the Wall

In various districts of the city you can find parts of the Wall that still remain. They form part of a memorial to those people who risked and lost their lives trying to cross from East to West Berlin. It's very poignant to see and it's good that they've kept bits of the Wall up, if only to remind people of the destructive nature of building barriers between people.