Roy Hodgson believes this month’s
Ramadan restrictions will affect his
side more than Watford’s relegation
rivals.
Watford, who are three points from
safety and host Leeds today, have a
number of Muslim players who must
fast during daylight hours until May 1.
“It affects us more than many clubs
because four of our first team regular
players are Muslims and they take
Germans, when Alan Shearer’s cross
comes in and Gascoigne slides in at
the far post and somehow fails to
make contact. Even now, you rise
from your seat certain that he will
score the winner — and perhaps
give the story a different, happier
ending.
Instead, it becomes another chapter
of heartache as Paul Ince tells his
team-mate that one pint or Big Mac
too many has cost him, cost England,
cost all of us. Inches from glory, but
left instead with regret.
Gascoigne married Sheryl that
summer, yet only a few months later
he beat her up (not for the first time)
at the Gleneagles Hotel in Scotland,
turning self-destruction into
something altogether darker. Sheryl
manages to be both a victim of his
violence and, in this telling, a villain;
disliked by the family, a bad influence.
Jane Nottage, Gascoigne’s personal
assistant through the chaotic time in
Rome, bemoans the lack of care for
such a vulnerable individual yet also
wrote a book that disclosed his eating
binges and volatility in his private life.
Who could he trust?
In the eagerness to make a film
about “perhaps the ultimate tragic
footballing hero” — if we are going to
be picky, how about Duncan
Edwards? — it has the ambition to
copy Amy, about the dazzling,
doomed singer Amy Winehouse,
though without the funeral scene.
It drips with moments of poignancy
— including footage with baby son
Regan on Gascoigne’s knee, as he
dabs a finger in a Newcastle Brownthe times | Saturday April 9 2022 1GS 15
Russian boxing president ‘can
attend’ Birmingham Games
The Russian president of
international boxing has caused a
furore after saying he has been
given a visa to enter the UK and
plans to attend the
Commonwealth Games in
Birmingham this summer.
Umar Kremlev this week
rejected calls to resign
from the
International
Boxing Association
(IBA) or to cut ties
with Gazprom, the
Russian energy
giant that is
majority state-
owned and which
has been underwriting
the federation
financially.
Minutes from an IBA board
meeting this week, a copy of
which have been seen by The
Times, state that Kremlev was
issued a UK visa last month —
after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine
— which runs until the end of
August meaning “he will be able
to attend the Commonwealth
Games in Birmingham where
there has been an expectation for
him to be in person”.
The minutes also quote
Kremlev, above, saying: “If I leave,
IBA will go bankrupt. To cease
the partnership with Gazpromwould mean the destruction of
the sport of boxing.”
Chris Bryant MP, the chairman
of the all-party parliamentary
group on Russia, said: “This is all
wrong. Ukrainian boxing stars are
defending their homes and
families with their lives
against Russian war
crimes. British and
international
sporting bodies
cannot keep on
taking blood
money and the
UK should make it
clear that those
who sustain
[Vladimir] Putin in
power are not welcome.”
The government said it
would not discuss individual visa
applications, but that Kremlev
will have to apply for
accreditation to come to the
Commonwealth Games.
A Department for Digital,
Culture, Media & Sport
spokeswoman said: “Any Russian
athlete, coach or sports official
must demonstrate they are not
supporters of, or funded by, the
Putin regime if they want to
participate in sport in the UK.
That applies to anyone attending
the 2022 Commonwealth Games
in an official role.”families w
agains
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cle
who
[[[Vlads week
gnngBA boardpower a
The gove
would not discusBoxing in Paris
There will be an equal number of
male and female boxers at the
Paris 2024 Olympics for the first
time — 124 of each, with seven
weight categories for men and six
for women.
The IOC is close to allowing
the International Boxing
Association back into the
Olympics after it was suspended
in May 2019 after concerns over
governance and the refereeing of
matches.
It has approved the
qualification programme for Paris.Ramadan ruling
Referees in the Premier League
and EFL will allow Muslim
players observing Ramadan to
break their fast during matches
after the sun has set.
Dr Zaf Iqbal, Crystal Palace’s
team doctor and the chairman of
the Premier League Doctors
Group, told the Sport Unlocked
podcast that the referees chief,
Mike Riley, has agreed to allow a
brief pause in matches so players
can quickly eat and drink.
He added that players fasting
during Ramadan, which runs until
May 1, can have an exemption for
away matches due to being a long
way from home.
Qatar labour fearsThere has been more evidence
this week that Qatar is failing to
ensure labour reforms are being
implemented after Amnesty
International reported that
security guards — including at
World Cup stadiums — were
victims of “forced labour”.
Guards often had to work
months, sometimes years, without
a day off and were fined several
days’ salary for taking a toilet
break or wearing the wrong
uniform.
There was also evidence of
African workers being paid less
than those from Asia.
Qatar 2022 organisers insist
their practices are the best in the
region, with seven contractors
blacklisted and more than 220 on
a watchlist, but that some firms
continue to try to beat the system.‘Chelsea worth
£10bn by 2027’
Joe Ravitch, the co-founder of
The Raine Group bank which is
organising the sale of Chelsea,
told The Financial Times this week
that whoever buys the club is
“getting it for a steal” even if they
have to pay £3 billion.
Ravitch claimed Chelsea would
be worth “in excess of $10 billion
in five years” — though exactly
where the extra value will come
from is unclear given the rise in
football’s broadcast income has
slowed dramatically in recent
years.
Anyone would think Raine is in
line for a healthy commission and
so Ravitch was talking up the sale.SPORT
NOTEBOOK
Martyn Ziegler
Chief Sports Reporter
SPORTS JOURNALIST OF THE YEARAle into the infant’s mouth — but
also feels like so much is missed in
failing to grapple with all that made
him unique, on and off the pitch.
Speak to anyone who spent time
with Gascoigne and they talk of a
rare life force. As his old carousing
friend Danny Baker once wrote:
“Everyone at some point in their lives
needs to know someone like Paul
Gascoigne. Someone reckless, chaotic
and utterly magnificent. Someone
seemingly raised by lightning. For
several years
I did, intimately, and I cannot think of
a period in my life where I’ve laughed
more or felt more alive.”
Gascoigne once turned up to
meet Baker and Chris Evans in a
Hampstead pub less than an hour
after finishing an international at
Wembley. He was still in his England
kit, down to his boots.
You can argue that Baker was part
of the problem — that he should have
been advising Gascoigne to have
more quiet nights in — but plenty
tried, with little effect. Would it have
been different if he had played under
Sir Alex Ferguson? Would he have
been so troubled, as one family
member wonders, if he had been an
ordinary footballer?
We are none the wiser. There is
no attempt to understand why
Gascoigne was so bored by the
mundanity of life; why he had such a
constant, insistent need to fight off a
gnawing ennui; a hatred of being
stuck with himself, and his
nightmares, and whatever he must
have felt was damaged within.
There were times with his often
self-inflicted injuries when it was
almost a relief for him to be in
hospital and to be given morphine —
a break from the frenzy of being
Gazza and the bouts of self-loathing
of being Paul Gascoigne.
According to the programme-
makers, and we were left relying on
their word, Gascoigne’s greatest
yearning is for the game itself, though
when he played in a Rangers legends
match recently, the ball had to be
presented to him for a soft tap-in in a
bittersweet moment.
Who, or what, is responsible for
turning Gazza from the young, fresh-
faced, ambitious hero fishing in the
first shot to the battered figure at the
end? The media? Addictions? Of
course many have questioned if
Gascoigne, who won one FA Cup
medal in English football (lasting only
17 mad minutes of the 1991 final
before injuring himself recklessly),
threw it all away.
In his memoir, Gascoigne gave a
response: “I think I’ve achieved far,
far more than I ever expected to
achieve, considering I’m me, stuck in
this body and in this head with all this
going on.”
Perhaps the question is too
complex to have one simple answer,
but it would have been good to have
sought a fresh perspective from the
man himself. It would have been
good to have seen him at all.
6 Gazza is on BBC2 and iPlayer, April
13 and 20, at 9pmRamadan affects us more, says Hodgson
Jon West
Ramadan very seriously so they follow
all the rules and regulations,” Hodgson
said. “It means they are not in an ideal
position to train in the morning or play
games, which we have to live with.
“It’s not an ideal situation during
Ramadan to work with your players,
even if you work in Muslim countries,
as I have done. It’s a tall order for them
to do the physical output that they need
to do to train and play while not eating
and drinking in their normal manner.”
Moussa Sissoko, Imran Louza and
Hassane Kamara are three Muslimplayers Hodgson regards as first-choice
picks, with Ismaïla Sarr also from an
Islamic background in Senegal.
Muslim players have been allowed to
break their fasts during evening match-
es, with fasts that begin between 4am
and 5am scheduled to end between
7.30pm and 8.30pm.
“I saw [Abdoulaye] Doucouré was
able to take a drinks break during the
[Everton] game [against Burnley],”
Hodgson said. “I take my hat off to my
players for dealing with the situation as
well as they have done.”NEIL MUNNS/PA; ACTION IMAGES/REUTERS