SocceR 4 CoutuR9

First they came for the Blues and I did not speak out -

Because I was not a fan of Chelsea.

Then they came for the Nerazzuri, and I did not speak out -

Because I was not a fan of Inter.

Then they came for the Gunners, and I did not speak out -

Because I was not a fan of Arsenal.

Then they came for me - and there was no one left to speak for me.

Written today by: Leora Madridista

Inspired by: Martin Niemöller

En una de las arterias principales de Greenwich Village se encuentra el Bar Mr. Dennehy's, un coqueto local que desde 2007 es la sede de la Peña Madridista New York City. La fundó Elena Ponce, una conquense de Villora, pero criada en Valencia, que defiende el sentimiento blanco en el corazón de La Gran Manzana.

Clavo Ardiendo.

"Nacimos ese verano gracias a la euforia vivida con la Liga heroica de Capello. Muchos turistas y extranjeros venían al bar a ver los partidos del Madrid y decidimos fundar la peña. Hemos crecido tanto estos años que para el Madrid-Barça de la final de Copa estamos buscando un local de alquiler, dado que se han apuntado más de 500 fans y no caben en nuestro bar...".

Elena Ponce ha encabezado el viaje a la capital de una veintena de miembros de la peña neoyorquina, que adquirió por internet entradas de la Grada Lateral Baja Oeste, a 200 euros cada una. "Puede parecer caro, pero por ver al Madrid pagamos lo que sea y más si es en Champions", dice orgulloso Sergio Carrasco, número dos de la peña y mexicano enamorado del fútbol y del Madrid gracias a Hugo Sánchez. "Todos somos optimistas. Hemos cruzado el charco para ver ganar a nuestro Madrid al Tottenham por 2-0", apuntilla.

Butragueño les hizo ayer de anfitrión en el Bernabéu. Hicieron el Tour, visitaron el vestuario donde hoy se cambiarán Casillas, Cristiano y Xabi, "¡y me he sentado en el Palco donde lo hace Florentino!", asevera entusiasmada la presidenta. A su lado sonríen Cheryl (Canadá), Leina, Julia e Idali (Puerto Rico), Danny (Perú), Andrea (Uruguay), Oronde (Antillas), Brian, Margie, Debbie, Leora, Jessica y Alfredo (EE UU), Gwendoline (Francia) y Borja y Emilio, la representación born in Spain de la peña.

Emanuel Macedo de Medeiros might not be as prominent a figure in the world of football as Michel Platini or Sepp Blatter, but if proposals that could change the landscape of European football are implemented, then he may well become so in future.

As chief executive of the Association of European Professional Football Leagues (EPFL), Medeiros has revealed how important reforms could be supported at the organisation's general assembly in Manchester on March 30 following a landmark meeting of the EPFL board in Madrid in just two weeks' time.

Medeiros was in London this week for a meeting on intellectual property rights and sports betting issues when ESPNsoccernet caught up with him ahead of the February 11 meeting in Madrid, which will set in motion the final stages of some of the biggest reforms in the history of the European game.

The formation of the Premier League in 1992, the change to three points for a win and the inception of the Champions League have been amongst the most startling changes to the game in the modern era. However, now the relatively new amalgamation of 950 professional clubs across 30 European nations have combined to become the most influential force outside of UEFA and FIFA, further change could be afoot.

Television income might have underpinned the formidable financial standing of the Premier League, but there may be an even bigger pot of gold in sight. The European leagues have united with governments throughout Europe and with the European Union in order to tackle the 'pirates' who use the clubs' intellectual rights on the internet and elsewhere, and the betting industry that uses the copyright of the clubs and the leagues. The EPFL estimates the industry is worth €14 to 17 billion across the continent.

In addition, the EPFL will tackle illegal betting, fraud and corruption, putting into place a universal code of conduct with severe punishments for anyone within football who breaches new, far stricter betting regulations within the game. The global fixture calendar will also be examined, and there will not be a winter World Cup in 2022 if the European leagues do not endorse it.

Medeiros uses the language of a diplomat urging radical change on a united front when explaining the principles upon which his organisation's planned reforms are founded.

He told ESPNsoccernet: "We stand for the future development [and] enhancement of the game, with a social conscience, seeking solutions for challenges of global dimension through global solutions. But we are taking a reformist approach. We are a constructive organisation. Our voice is sober and responsible, but equally we are promoting active reform. Indispensable reform."

So exactly what are the reforms that will change the game as we know it?

This is more of an imminent victory than a fight, as a triumph is within touching distance and ready to be endorsed at the two landmark meetings.

Medeiros explains: "The streaming of matches, logos, data, images and all the clubs' and the leagues' intellectual properties must be legally protected . This is football's main income source and, if duly protected, may form a new and extremely large source of income for the whole of the sport to benefit from. I cannot quantify how much, but it will be a significant amount. Without such ability to generate revenues and ensure its economic viability, how can sport continue investing in grassroots or sporting grounds and pursuing its social function to the full?

"To this end we have lobbied the European Union and all the national governments to open their eyes to the sport's legal rights. We are dealing with all sorts of pirating: people making money from football illegally, an endless number of websites streaming matches. This is all part of the new age digital piracy. We are making progress and we have European Commission and Parliament approval, including the recognition of the urgent need to protect all of football's content, all of these intellectual rights, which are vital to ensure sport's economic viability and social role."

Medeiros argues it is vital that football and other sports have in place proper controls on betting using intellectual rights - fixtures for example - in order that the clubs can profit from income and control illegal betting.

"There are different laws in different countries. Whereas France introduced a new law on May 1, 2010 opening up regulations regarding the ownership of the intellectual rights of the sports authorities and how it relates to the multitude of betting companies, there is at the moment a different and less satisfactory legislative approach in England. However, in England there has been a recent court ruling which recognised the fixture list is under the copyright protection bill. This was a positive development but the need to take legislative action still remains."

The EPFL praised the proactive approach by the French government. On March 2009, the Finance Minister Eric Woerth announced strong measures to protect the integrity of sporting competitions and ensure that organisers get a fair return from betting companies for the commercial exploitation of their fixture list and other property rights. Online sports betting is now permitted in France, but subject to a new licensing and regulatory regime, ensuring the sports authorities' involvement in the licensing process and in the decision as to what type of bets, if any, are to be allowed on their events, as well as ensuring a fair financial return.

Medeiros added: "Equally we need to ensure the integrity of our competitions from the threats posed by unlawful betting, fraud and corruption, to ensure that our sport remains credible and sound. There have been a number of irregular patterns detected around Europe, not in England I should point out, and they have been reported to the proper authorities."

In July 2008, the EPFL signed a memorandum of understanding with the European Sports Security Agency to detect irregular betting patterns and ensure, as much as possible, that professional football remains clean and free of corruption. As a result of that, a number of irregular betting practices have been signalled and brought to the attention of the concerned leagues. A code of conduct is ready to be put into place for the start of next season, once approved at the general assembly. It will include zero tolerance for anyone within football betting on any event they are involved in, directly or indirectly.

"We have all seen the problems of insider betting, and there is an urgent need for a proper code across all of Europe's leagues," Medeiros said. "All the new rules, which should be implemented by the leagues in accordance with their own sphere of competences, will come with the consequences if they are not respected. There is deep concern about betting, and our aim is preventative, but also to establish the proper dissuasive measures to deter it."

This means backing the Platini blueprint for financial solidarity and financial transparency, and seeking to have the highest financial standards throughout all the leagues.

"Financial sustainability is the watchword," Medeiros explained, adding: "this means that even the big leagues, and the most powerful clubs, recognise the benefit of the smaller leagues and the smaller clubs. Interdependence of clubs has always been one of the key features of the European football model and the basis for its success and global appeal. This means collecting selling of rights but also equitable distribution of revenues and financial solidarity.

"We feel that UEFA's Financial Fair Play system is to be welcomed by the clubs to enable the clubs to be sustainable organisations. So we compliment UEFA on driving through club licensing system and sound financial criteria and taking on board our views. At the national level, we also want clearing houses for transfer of players, we want a sustainable and transparent football financial structure."

The EPFL is creating a database and assessing the different regulatory frameworks that concern club ownership and fit and proper persons tests. It hopes to ensure that clubs remain independent and free from any detrimental control and influence.

The size of the leagues, when games are played and when the World Cup takes place are issues that are all high on the agenda. If FIFA still has any lingering thoughts of a winter World Cup in 2022 or any other time, they will need to have the approval of the united European leagues.

All Medeiros would say regarding the World Cup situation is that "there is a board meeting in Madrid in two weeks' time". In other words: watch this space.

As for the Champions League, Medeiros says "it has proved to be the crème de la crème of international club competition, which everyone including the fans are happy with. That doesn't mean that, together with UEFA and the clubs, as ever in a constructive fashion, there cannot be room for dialogue on possible means of improving the distribution of revenues and financial solidarity".

Up 4-0 over Ajax on Tuesday and with advancement to the knockout stage all sealed up, Jose Mourinho and Real Madrid got a little sneaky in their yellow card management.

First, Xabi Alonso earned his second yellow card and was sent off in the 87th minute after wasting time on a free kick in a way that looked like some kind of running seizure (video above). Then, in the 90th minute, Sergio Ramos earned his second yellow and got sent off when he took his sweet time on a goal kick (video below). That rules both players out for Real's final, utterly meaningless group stage match against Auxerre and gives them a clean slate for the knockout rounds.

Though they would never admit that they did this deliberately, you'd have to still believe in Peter Pan to believe that they didn't. To some people -- Champions League commentators included -- this is an outrage and to others it's just another example of Jose Mourinho's genius. After the match, Mourinho had this to say (via the AP):

“I don’t think it was necessary to get those red cards because we were in control,” Mourinho said. “But this is a fantastic result and that’s the only thing that matters.”

Marca thinks Jose used backup goalkeeper Jerzy Dudek in a game of whisper down the lane to pull this off.

UPDATE II: Well, it seems these guys weren't sneaky enough. UEFA has now charged Mourinho, Ramos, Alonso, and even Casillas and Dudek with "unsporting conduct." Their cases will be heard on November 30.

He did not take off his medal and stuff it in his pocket. He wore it proudly. He did not walk away to hide himself, as ostentatiously as a man hiding himself could possibly contrive to do, in the shadows of the dugout. Instead he went straightaway to applaud the fans dancing in ecstasy on the northern face of the mighty Bernabéu, then hugged his players and shook hands with their opponents. He hoisted his son, José Jr, wearing a black and blue No10 shirt, on to his shoulders, before setting him down, picking up the match ball and a Portuguese flag, and making his way to embrace his president.

This time José Mourinho was on his very best behaviour, as he had been all week. Once again he was starring in his own movie. But he was showing the world – and his employers, present and future – that he could also win one of football's biggest prizes with dignity.

There could have been no better setting for this display of his talents than the home of an organisation whose nine victories in the European Cup give them a special identification with the greatest of club tournaments. The near-certainty that it will become Mourinho's own next home only added to the evening's resonance. He will, he said, be meeting Florentino Pérez, the president of Real Madrid, today. He may or may not have been winding us up. Probably not. The contract is said to extend over four years, at €10m (£8.7m) a year, and the pre-season gathering is scheduled for a country-house hotel in County Kildare in the first week of August.

"I don't know this project yet," he replied when asked, long after midnight, about a summer move from Lombardy to Castille. "I'm not the coach of Real Madrid. I'm very, very proud to be the coach of Inter. Should I become the coach of Real Madrid it will be because they are a club of huge dimensions, and they want me to do what I have done at other clubs: to win."

He ran, as he is prone to do with only the slightest encouragement, through his list of achievements in Portugal, England and Italy. "Real Madrid will just be another club who want to win important things," he added. "But to do that, you need spirit and you must be able to build a team that works together. Internazionale has become a wonderful family. Everyone worked hard to achieve that, from the groundsman to the players on the pitch and the ones who had to stay on the bench. We have created a family, and that's the most important thing."

For all his sometimes toxic behaviour, it is undeniable that, wherever he goes, Mourinho wins the respect and affection of his squad and staff, and Saturday night's victory removed the last doubts over his standing as one of the game's great coaches. To have captured the European Cup on slender resources with FC Porto, to have taken Chelsea to their first English league title in half a century, and to make Inter kings of Europe for the first time in 45 years – all in a mere seven years – is an astonishing record.

Against whom do we measure him? Two names constantly come up: those of Helenio Herrera and Brian Clough. Il Mago, the architect of Inter's glory years in the mid-60s, is the most obvious comparison. Mourinho builds his teams on a similar foundation of ruthless defence, but there is always scope for artists – Deco at Porto, Frank Lampard at Chelsea, Wesley Sneijder at Inter – and great strikers, such as Didier Drogba and Diego Milito, to express themselves. Herrera, too, had Sandro Mazzola, Jair, Mario Corso and Luis Suárez.

Like Clough, Mourinho concentrates on the art of counterattacking. Analysing Porto's victory in the 2004 final, he explained how, of the four training days leading up to the match, one was devoted to the transition from defence to attack, and another to the transition from attack to defence. It was part, he said, of his methodology. It seems unlikely Clough or Peter Taylor ever used the terms "transition" and "methodology" at Derby County or Nottingham Forest, but the result was remarkably similar: teams designed to break forward with speed, purpose and a beautiful economy.

In one area above all Mourinho is definitely Clough's superior: for all his volatility, his iconoclasm and his provocations, he knows how to handle the pressures of life in football's penthouse suite. Having shown, with Porto, that he could prosper in a comparatively modest setting, he went on to meet the demands of two men, Roman Abramovich and Massimo Moratti, for whom nothing but the very best would do. Perhaps he is not, after all, inherently as volatile and iconoclastic as he seems, just a very clever man with an unusually wide array of psychological weapons at his disposal.

After Saturday, however, it would be foolish to believe that mind games are his strongest suit. Inter's mastery of the match, after they had soaked up an opening half-hour of constant bombardment, culminated in two of the loveliest goals you could ever see in a European Cup final, the first an example of Route One in excelsis and the second a clean incision through the Bayern defence, each culminating in a perfectly judged finish from Milito.

Mourinho spoke generously of his time at Inter, but left his listeners in no doubt about the crucial nature of his own contribution to their historic treble. The only part of the season he did not enjoy, he said, were the weeks he had to watch their Serie A matches from the grandstands while serving a touchline ban. "In the two months I had to be in the stands," he explained, "I saw my team go from a lead of 10 points to second place. That didn't please me."

Next, it seems, Mourinho will be dealing with Pérez and with Real Madrid's needy afición, who yearn not just to remove Barcelona from their perch at the top of La Liga but for a 10th European Cup triumph. On past form, the challenge of dismantling the club's surviving cliques and building a structure to support Cristiano Ronaldo, Kaká, Gonzalo Higuaín and Karim Benzema should be relatively straightforward.

Like his Porto, Chelsea and Inter sides, Mourinho's Real will play from the back and become experts in the business of neutralising known dangers, but the quality of the forwards is a guarantee of entertainment. And once he has met those targets, perhaps within a couple of years, Old Trafford and the biggest test of all will surely open its arms to this brilliant, restless man.