Home and Away | Panama Papers fallout trumps the sports smorgasbord
As a massive weekend of action gets under way, Fifa’s meltdown provides top entertainment
As sporting weekends go, this one is a beast. A sofa-slung laggard in the UK calculated that between 7pm on Friday and 12.30am on Monday, London time, there will be 53 and-a-half hours of live televised sport around the world for those who cannot make it ring, green, pitch or trackside.
Crunch Premier and other European league clashes, the iconic Grand National horse race, Manny Pacquiao and Timothy Bradley in the boxing ring, the Masters golf at Augusta and a Toronto Blue Jays versus the Boston Red Sox baseball showdown are among the offerings.
In the space of just six weeks since becoming the new Fifa president to replace the disgraced Sepp Blatter, Gianni Infantino’s vow to clean up football has lost all credibility
When one contests ends you can point the TV zapper and channel hop to the Paris-Roubaix cycling and then to the Aussie Rules derby between North Melbourne and Melbourne. And there’s always the Hong Kong Sevens to tune into.
Not listed on this redoubtable feast of tourneys is the glorious pursuit of Fifa executives by the law – a must-watch for any diehard sports fan.
What a pity some enterprising TV network or internet giant like Amazon or Google has not thought to complement the weekend’s smorgasbord of competition and stationed a live camera outside the homes and offices of Fifa and Uefa officials.
Witnessing the blazers wriggle, squirm and cuffed during a law enforcement raid has become as compulsive viewing as that of Leicester City proving the Premier League equation of mega money equals titles is fundamentally flawed.
