Ruud Gullit, who has been in town promoting World Cup festivities at the APM mall, in Kwun Tong, is one of the most celebrated footballers of his era. The Dutchman was also famed for his dreadlocks, party lifestyle and music career – but not for his mathematics; he once said, “We must have had 99 per cent of the game. It was the other 3 per cent that cost us the match.” Gullit was the national team captain when the Dutch won Euro 1988, the year after he’d been bought from PSV Eindhoven for a then world record fee of 18 million Dutch guilders by AC Milan’s flamboyant Italian owner, Silvio Berlusconi …
Berlusconi, of course, went on to become the longest serving post-war prime minister of Italy, with a dazzling array of ill-advised quotes to his name. Berlusconi allegedly once referred to German Chancellor Angela Merkel as an “unf***able lard-arse”, denounced the left in Italy as having “no taste” in women; and pronounced himself “in absolute terms” as the “most legally persecuted man of all times”. That last statement, however, may have a hint of truth to it. Pending cases against him include those concerning bribery, embezzlement, perjury, mafia collusion and child sexual abuse. Although some might argue it has been in the wrong direction, he’s come a long way since 1973, when he launched a cable television company, just as a more successful channel was getting going across the Atlantic …
Home Box Office (a name that was supposed to be temporary but has stuck, prominently, as its acronym) had been founded the year before, by Charles Dolan, who wanted to shake up television programming. HBO is now host to some of the most highly regarded shows in broadcast history. Arguably, the channel’s greatest achievement is gritty drama The Wire …