Source: Daily_Mail
MARTIN SAMUEL: Jowell deserves an Olympic medal in utter madness
Ethnikos Piraeus are a mid-table Greek second division team that has seen better days. It fell out of the top tier ten years ago, has never been back and in 2003-04, spent the season in Delta Ethniki, the Greek fourth division. [LNB]Ethnikos would claim to be rivals to OIympiacos but this is an illusion. Olympiacos have won 37 national titles and the Greek Cup on 24 occasions. Ethnikos held the Greek Cup, once, in 1933.[LNB]In recent years, the club has been noteworthy for another reason. In August 2007, its president, Nikos Pirounias, struck a three-year deal to use the Elliniko Stadium, near Glyfada on the Mediterranean coast. [LNB] Don't turn it into a white elephant: London's Olympic Stadium is still under construction, but what will happen to it after 2012?[LNB]Elliniko was formerly the Helliniko Baseball Centre, and a venue of the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, making it the sole purpose-built structure from that event still in regular use exclusively for sport. The nation that funded this extravagant three-week jamboree is now on the brink of bankruptcy. [LNB] More from Martin Samuel... MARTIN SAMUEL: Brand Tiger is out of a hole, now let the cash tills ring19/02/10 GREAVSIE: England's most prolific goalscorer, but now he prefers rugby19/02/10 MARTIN SAMUEL: Don't be fooled, the BNP is really nothing like you 18/02/10 MARTIN SAMUEL: Memo to keepers - it's better to face the right way 17/02/10 MARTIN SAMUEL: Beckham gets red blooded return his passion deserves17/02/10 MARTIN SAMUEL: Next up, it's Vic and Bob's dodgy wheel to decide the Champions League slots16/02/10 MARTIN SAMUEL: The less you see of David Beckham the better he gets...15/02/10 MARTIN SAMUEL: Canada's lust for glory is to blame for senseless tragedy14/02/10 VIEW FULL ARCHIVE Surveying the wreckage six years on, Sypros Capralos, president of the Hellenic Olympic Committee said that too many venues had been built that did not serve the needs of the country after the Olympics. [LNB]Against the backdrop of an abandoned velodrome, a diving pool that now contains four inches of stagnant water and an empty rowing centre costing in the region of £133m, the message is clear: give the people what they want, not what you think they need.[LNB]This is a hard concept for a person like Tessa Jowell, the Olympics Minister, to understand. She is from a government very used to telling people what to do. Ken Livingstone, the former Mayor of London, was equally pig-headed. From the start, he would not countenance use of the Olympic Stadium for football after the 2012 Games.[LNB]In the present financial climate this is madness. We hear a lot about an Olympic legacy but in Athens that would appear to be the millions paid in maintenance for locations that are fenced off, boarded up and derelict. [LNB]Maintenance on the Helliniko Olympic Complex alone stands at roughly £65m annually.[LNB]Last week, Jowell appeared to dismiss the suggestion the Olympic Stadium could one day be the home of West Ham United. [LNB]'It will be a grand prix athletics stadium, because we need one,' she said. No we don't. [LNB]We need a stadium that can be used for grand prix athletics which is something different entirely. [LNB] Own goal: Olympic Minister Tessa Jowell and Lord Coe insist the Olympic Stadium in Stratford should have an ever-lasting legacy of athletics - not football[LNB]There will be a way, just as there is at the Stade de France outside Paris, for athletics and football to co-exist. Indeed, among the proposals currently being drawn up by West Ham is one that includes provision for football, athletics and, in the summer, Twenty20 cricket. This is working towards serving the needs of a country. No legacy of expensive maintenance, and popular sports that capture the public imagination.[LNB]It would be nice if life was fair and all athletes got the support they merited. It does not seem right that a mediocre left-back at a Premier League football club can be a millionaire, yet Amy Williams has to win an Olympic gold medal to be recognised. Then again, it would be nice if people thought 30 Rock was funnier than My Family and watched BBC Four documentaries about Brian Eno rather than Pop Idol, but what are you going to do? [LNB]Last week, I saw Reading, the best hockey club in England, defeat Beeston to stay top of the Premier League in front of no more than a hundred spectators, most of whom were friends or family. When I asked the price of admission the chap laughed. The programme cost two quid and he must have sold about five. [LNB]Yet the day before, Reading Football Club, who are pretty useless and languish near the bottom of the Championship, drew 18,008 for an FA Cup tie with West Bromwich Albion. In an ideal world, those numbers would be reversed. [LNB] Good to talk: West Ham co-chairmen Gold and Sullivan are keen on a move[LNB]Large crowds would admire the talented hockey players of Reading at the Madejski Stadium, while the town's wretched footballers would languish in anonymity in the corner of a park. Yet what would be the point in erecting structures based on what we thought should happen? This is what the London Olympic Committee wishes to do. [LNB]This is what the Hellenic Olympic Committee did when building a designated hockey stadium, when its national team was so weak it did not even qualify for the Athens Olympics. The Hellinikon Olympic Hockey Centre now hosts mini-football games. Sometimes. [LNB]Ed Warner, the chairman of UK Athletics, says putting a football club at the Olympic Stadium could jeopardise London's chances of hosting the 2015 World Athletics Championships. Big deal. Is that what we are holding on for, then, two international meetings three years apart, and an annual Grand Prix night that will fall off the radar if it coincides with an event people care: about like a big football match? [LNB]There is talk of a legacy for the community, but the best way to ensure that is to get Newham, the local council, and West Ham, the local football club, involved. The club, as private enterprise, would have to pay its way, obviously, and an athletics facility would need to be part of the deal. Beyond that, start with a blank sheet of paper and see what can be achieved. [LNB] Moving on: The Hammers are prime candidates to quit Upton Park for Stratford[LNB]The International Olympic Committee would not be as hostile as is imagined. In a global financial crisis it is bad for their reputation to be held responsible for the impoverishment of major cities. They have already taken note and compromised over Londonby agreeing to revised, cost-cutting measures that allow badminton and gymnastics to take place at an existing venue, Wembley Arena.[LNB]What happens after the Olympic show has left town is every bit as important as controlling costs now. There is a high risk of white elephants, the Olympic Delivery Authority was warned last week. In which case, maybe we could open a zoo. We'll get more through the gate than will watch the athletics.[LNB] Euro refs should be shown red cardTom Henning Ovrebo, of Norway, turned in quite the worst performance many can remember when in charge of Chelsea's match against Barcelona last season, but that has not altered his status within UEFA.[LNB]He was given Bayern Munich's Champions League second-round tie with Fiorentina and celebrated by failing to spot that Munich's winning goal was offside by more than a yard. [LNB] Marching orders: Blunder ref Tom Henning Ovrebo shows Fiorentina's Massimo Gobbi the red card against Bayern Munich[LNB]His errors tend to benefit the bigger team, so maybe he is easily impressed. Ovrebo was certainly overawed by the occasion at Stamford Bridge.[LNB]Then there is Martin Hansson, of Sweden, whose bizarre behaviour around a Portofree-kick contributed to Arsenal's defeat last Wednesday. [LNB]His award of an indirect free-kick when Lukasz Fabianski picked up a back-pass from Sol Campbell was correct and Fabianski's decision to turn his back on the game to run back to his goal having disputed it was idiotic.[LNB] Bizarre behaviour: Martin Hansson was quick to assist Falcao's winner for Porto[LNB]Yet Hansson's position in the middle of the action when he allowed the quick free-kick to be taken was unusual, and his raised-arm signal that play could go ahead came after the Porto restart, not before. [LNB]Arsenal, and in particular Fabianski, compounded the situation, but that does not make Hansson's performance any more convincing than the night he missed the Thierry Henry handball that sent France to the World Cup.[LNB]These calamities are now such regular occurrences that if there is an image encapsulating Champions League football, it is no longer a great goal, or a colourful, noisy, stadium, but another abysmal mistake from an Over-Promoted, Useless, Scandinavian Official (OPUSO). [LNB]There must be a little factory producing them somewhere because they are multiplying.[LNB] And while we're at it...Barred from the Dubai Tennis Championships last year, Shahar Peer, the Israeli tennis player, was this time dispatched to a minor court for her semi-final with Venus Williams. [LNB]POTATO, PATARTO... [LNB]Flavio Briatore has stepped down as chairman of Queens Park Rangers. [LNB]He says he was 'proud to have saved this historical club and to have contributed to paving the way to their future success'. [LNB]Of course, what Briatore will actually be remembered for is 10managers in two years and telling a bloke to drive his Formula 1 carinto a wall. [LNB]Still, potato, potarto.[LNB]Apparently it was for security reasons. She has played surrounded by bodyguards throughout, has had no contact with any player outside court, changed in a small room in a separate block to the other competitors and travelled only between her hotel and the facilities.[LNB]The tournament advertised just one women's semi-final in the local Gulf Times it was not Peer's and her presence and progress has been briefly mentioned, if recorded at all. [LNB]She was not allowed to hold press conferences and one reporter out of the 250 present was permitted an interview in her quarters after each match. [LNB]When asked what she would remember most about the tournament, Peer deadpanned: 'This room.'[LNB]Lovely country, Dubai.[LNB] It's prejudiced to label football as intolerantTalking about the reaction since coming out as a gay man, former British Lions captain Gareth Thomas says he has had nothing but support. [LNB]Plenty of support: Rugby Union star Thomas[LNB]Disappointingly, he also endorses the presumption that it would be harder for a professional footballer to gain acceptance.[LNB]Thomas says he gets wolf whistles from the crowd and ribald banter from his team-mates, but nothing he would term abusive. This is, he says, part of the game. So why would football be different? If we accept that teasing an opposition player is part of the culture and to call what Thomas receives homophobic is akin to saying John Terry is targeted for being heterosexual and that all players are used to the often crude wit of the dressing room, what is exceptional?[LNB]Does anyone imagine a footballer would be sold, sacked, or ostracised by his team-mates because he was gay? [LNB]And is it not unfair to label football in this way and presume its intolerance, rather than wait for the theory to be tested? One could almost call the attitudes prejudiced.[LNB] Now that David Dein has been appointed international president of the England 2018 World Cup bid, is it not time to review the worth of Lord PleasedMan, the Football Association chairman and salaried head of the team. [LNB]He currently receives £150,000 a year for a two-day week. Be generous and say he takes just a fortnight off annually and it still works out at £3,000 per week, or £1,500 a day. [LNB]Extrapolate that to a full-time job and PleasedMan would command approaching £550,000. [LNB]Now that Dein has to pick up the pieces of a bid revived only by David Beckham's one-man show in South Africa, will we admit that PleasedMan's salary is an unnecessary expense?[LNB] Robinho does not want to return to Manchester City. [LNB]'Maybe if Ii had gone to another club it would have been better for me,' he says. [LNB]But he was at another club. He was at Real Madrid, and he stuffed that up, too. [LNB] Happy at home: Robinho does not want to return to City now he is back in Brazil[LNB]Now, with Santos, he seems happy. Could it be that in the increasingly mediocre Brazilian league, shorn of their greatest talent by European money, he has found his level?[LNB] Max Clifford, who we inexplicably need to hear from on a range of topics these days, says that Tiger Woods came across as genuine and sincere in his public address on Friday. [LNB]And, compared to a guy like Clifford, he probably did.[LNB]DON'T MISS MARTIN SAMUEL EVERY MONDAY AND WEDNESDAY - CONTACT MARTIN AT: m.samuel@dailymail.co.uk MARTIN SAMUEL MEETS GREAVSIE: He's England's most prolific goalscorer, but now he prefers watching rugbyOlympics Minister Jowell delivers Hammer blow to West Ham's moveIncompetent! Wenger launches stunning attack on refereeRobinho sells up for good: £32.5m flop has no desire to return to Manchester [LNB]
