It's that old Red Devil called José again

I have to admit, I felt some pity for Louis van Gaal on Saturday evening. As he sat before his "friends" of the press, the FA Cup ostentatiously placed in front of him, it was impossible not to feel sympathy towards the Dutchman for not even being allowed his moment for winning the most famous national trophy in the world without being upstaged by José Mourinho, who was on the diametrically opposite side of London, apparently watching a boxing undercard at the O2 Arena.

Without Mourinho even opening his mouth he managed to install himself as the new manager of Manchester United, before the old one had even been told he wasn't anymore. The finger of blame pointed squarely at Mourinho's people, from whom Machiavellian games have been afoot ever since the Portuguese left Chelsea in December. Mourinho was seen to be after the United job from the minute he was fired for a second time by the club. Some even think that he was gunning for the job when he left Madrid, but ended up back in the arms of Chelsea as a consolation prize. With José you wouldn't put anything past him.

Even though I think it best for all concerned for van Gaal to move on, his palpable bitterness on Saturday night was understandable, even if he still can't see why he just hasn't been good enough. But, no matter how bad a season he's had, no matter how badly his relationship with some players has sunk, and no matter how turgidly Manchester United have played at times, van Gaal had, at least, delivered some silverware of merit, and with a side of exciting young players who should do the club well in seasons to come.

This is football's cruel streak laid bare, or at least 'corporate' football. Despite the cup, Van Gaal's Manchester United has, simply, not delivered on expectations. Consecutive seasons outside the Champions League, dry, stifled, defensive football, and single-goal wins that make Mourinho's celebrated pragmatism look quite lary.

The question is, will Mourinho do any better? Will his win-at-any-costs, defend-at-any-costs philosophy deliver any more expansive football than the snoozefests that van Gaal was serving up at the nadir of his tenure? At Chelsea Mourinho got away with it: successive managers have been called on by Roman Abramovich to deliver sexy, free-flowing, high-scoring football. Probably the only one of the Russian's ten coaches to have delivered on this expectation was Carlo Ancelotti, who says in his autobiography that even when Chelsea were winning by telephone number scores he was still getting bollockings from Abramovich. But Mourinho prevailed because, for the most part, he seemed to deliver the success that the club and its fans craved (though never the Champions League, the honour of which went to Roberto Di Matteo).

So, as sales of red-coloured Mourinho scarves start to do brisk businesses on the streets around Old Trafford, the phase "be careful of what you wish for" should be the cautioning guidance to all who have championed his succession to the job at United. Don't get me wrong: Mourinho brought to Chelsea success on a scale I could never have imagined as a teenager as I watched mid-table mediocrity (and relegation) from the cold, exposed terrace of The Shed. I have robustly defended the theatrics and imagined conspiracies, and most of the nonsense that came with Mourinho's time at Chelsea because, well, to be utterly mercenary about it, it won us trophies. It won the very thing that all football fans crave (spare me the 'ever-so-'umble routine of 'pure' fans who claim they're just happy to turn up).

© Simon Poulter 2015

But there is something unhinged about Mourinho, which this season now past brought out into the open, almost from the very beginning. It was the preening, pouting, petulant Mourinho, losing the plot within the first 90 minutes of the season by admonishing Dr. Eva Carneiro and physio Jon Fearn towards the end of that game with Swansea at Stamford Bridge.

We all lose it now and then, and one would hope that most of us would say sorry when we do so without reason. But Mourinho compounded the problem by publicly demoting Carneiro three days later, losing - in my view at least - the dressing room in the process, before the entire house of cards came tumbling down in the ensuing weeks as the 2014-15 Premier League champions slumped ever closer to the relegation zone. There was only one outcome. Yet again, Mourinho departed a club under a cloud in his third season with them.

Manchester United's board will be aware of all this. And the conservatives amongst it who still have a voice will have expressed the view that Mourinho is too much of a liability, too much of a threat to the traditions that, actually, the club upholds to its credit. As much as I loathed Sir Alex Ferguson's overbearing nature, especially towards referees and officials, and the concept of time itself, he produced successful teams over successive seasons by building on the club's traditions.

There is, of course, a lot of Mourinho in that behaviour, but whereas Ferguson maintained it until the last, it vanished for Mourinho, exemplified by Diego Costa's bib-toss at White Hart Lane, just two weeks before the manager was sacked. Van Gaal is said to have lost his players' respect in similar fashion, with stories of United players ignoring their manager's e-mails, not to mention the smartphone antics on the team bus outside Upton Park, which would have been unthinkable under Ferguson. Mind you, it's highly unlikely that the Manchester United bus would have left it so late to leave for an away ground under Ferguson.

There are also more practical concerns to come, should - as expected - United announce Mourinho, possibly tomorrow, as their new manager, with the biggest being United's policy towards youth. It characterised Ferguson's 27-year reign at Manchester United, not the least of which his personal nurturing of the 'Class of '92' - Beckham, Giggs, Scholes, Butt and the Nevilles amongst them.

Given how Mourinho patently didn't trust the raw talent at his disposal at Chelsea - Under 18 and Under 21 players who have now won five out of the last seven UEFA Youth League titles, as well as FA Youth Cups - the powers-that-be at Old Trafford will have their work cut out to ensure that the progress made this season by Marcus Rashford, Jesse Lingard, Cameron Borthwick-Jackson and Tim Fosu-Mensah have not been in vain. Questions, too, will be raised over the future of Juan Mata, who Mourinho dispensed with at Chelsea on the grounds that the former two-time club player of the year couldn't adapt to the system he wanted. A penny, now, for the Spaniard's thoughts.

Same goes for Ryan Giggs, given that Mourinho rarely travels alone, and will want to install his own Sopranos-crew of assistants, including Rui Faria, Silvino Louro, José Morais and Carlos Lalin. That said, Mourinho stuck with incumbent coach Steve Holland at Chelsea, and is reportedly considering the same for Giggs for the continuity effect. Giggs may also recognise that appointing José Mourinho is rarely for the long-term, and might choose to bide his time until the inevitable happens and Mourinho moves on - either bored and by his own volition, or because he has, once more, allowed the devil inside to get the better of him, even if it will, by then, be a red devil.

No theory can be ruled out

Image courtesy JetPhotos.net ©Ahmet Akin Diler

At the time of writing, all we can say categorically about what happened to EgyptAir flight MS804 on Wednesday night is that it disappeared from radar. Nothing more. Circumstantial evidence might suggest a "brutal event", to quote the former chief French air accident investigator, but nothing so far has made terrorism a certainty.

And yet it's hard not to speculate. Not just because we want answers - the families of those onboard 804 need to know, the rest of us to satisfy our morbid curiosity - but because aviation is, globally, one of the most common forms of transport. On an average day more than 100,000 commercial flights take off, covering almost 50,000 routes around the world. If 804 was blown out of the sky, it raises serious questions for everyone who gets on a airliner.

The A320 in question is the workhorse of the skies, not just because of its commonality (there are some 7,000 members of the 320 family in use today) but for how much they fly in a given day. We now know that the missing plane had, in the 24 hours prior to leaving Charles De Gaulle airport, flown a number of 'sectors' from its Cairo base, including return trips to Tunis, Asmara in Eritrea and Brussels the day before. Given the association with terrorism these three locations have, one line of enquiry will have to be that a device could have been placed on board the plane at one of these destinations, programmed to detonate at a certain time or position. That might sound far-fetched, given the sectors flown, but it should not be forgotten that in October 2010 terrorists managed to get bombs disguised as printer cartridges on to two cargo planes in Yemen, bound for the United States, but with stopovers in the UK and Dubai. The belief was that the bombs were to be detonated while the planes were eventually in US airspace.

Paris, though, will still be the prime location for suspicion, simply because it was the point of origin of MS804. Questions, too, have been raised about security at Charles De Gaulle and Orly, the two main airports for the French capital. In the wake of last November's terror attacks in Paris, more than 70 people working at the airports had their airside security clearance revoked over suspicions of connections to terrorism or at least radicalisation. When you consider how many people work airside at any major airport, let alone with direct access to a given aircraft, such as baggage handlers and catering staff, safeguards have always been tight. But that doesn't mean watertight.

The cheering thought for those of us who fly frequently is that if MS804's disappearance isn't terror related, what are the other possibilities? The lack of any mayday call from the flight deck, and the 90-degree and then 360-degree turns radar coverage has shown the A320 to have made as it fell into the Mediterranean certainly suggests an abrubt event. A mechanical issue would still have prompted the pilot or co-pilot to issue a distress signal, especially being only 20 minutes out of Cairo, its destination. Last year the world was stunned by the crash of Germanwings flight 9525, another A320, flying from Barcelona to Dusseldorf, which we later learned was flown deliberately into a gulley in the French Alps by co-pilot Andreas Lubitz who, at the time, had been declared "unfit to work" by a doctor because of his mental condition. EgyptAir itself suffered a similar disaster in 1999, when a Boeing 767 crashed into the Atlantic 60 miles off the coast of Massachusetts, killing all 217 people on board. The "probable cause" was given as "deliberate action" by one of the pilots on board.

As we are constantly reminded, flying is still by far one of the safest forms of transport. Last year, according to IATA, the international aviation body, out of 37.6 million flights there were a total of 68 accidents of which just four resulted in 136 fatalities. However, this doesn't include the 150 passengers and crew on the Germanwings crash or the suspected bombing of the Metrojet A321 over the Sinai desert, resulting in 224 deaths. As a result of that - and the latest incident - Egypt's tourist economy is facing ruin.

If MS804's fate was at the hands of terrorism it is unlikely that we will, en masse, be put off flying. But the fact that terrorists continue to hold a fascination with planes as a means of carrying out mass murder on a dramatic scale will and should affect our behaviour. It amazes me even now, 15 years after 9/11, that passengers do not know about or are unprepared for security screening at airports. Removing shoes, belts and laptops may be an inconvenience, especially if you're running late, but it should, in principle, be keeping everyone safe once airborne. The worry is, passengers may only be one part of the problem.

Captain, leader, legend, leaving?

Last week, the Daily Telegraph's Jason Burt put forward the interesting theory that John Terry could end his Chelsea career immediately, rather than next season, to prevent any one manager being seen to be responsible for drawing the curtain on one of the most enduring relationships between a football club, it's fans and a player in recent times. By not offering the centre half another 12-month contract extension, Burt suggested, the club would ensure that incoming head coach Antonio Conte wouldn't have to deal with Terry's departure - after 18 years as a professional at the club - on his watch. And, with Guus Hiddink only in charge for one more game before his interim term ends tomorrow, better that Terry goes now without anyone being left to blame.

Burt's hypothesis may well prove unfounded if Terry accepts the one-year contract extension which, surprisingly, the club yesterday announced it had offered the fan-anointed "Captain, Leader, Legend". The news came after months of silence from the club (not surprising, given its shocking record of transparency) - and, of course, Terry may yet decline it. In a post on Instagram, the defender said: "The contract extension the club has offered me is a different role and I hope everyone will understand I want to take the time to consider it carefully before making a decision."

Quite what makes this role different is not yet clear, though presumably the club is not asking him to take over one of the burger concessions in the East Stand lower concourse. The Times today claims that the "different role" is simply a pay cut and no guarantees of being a first-team starter next season. Still, though, for the player to make such a personal statement like that suggests that there is froideur from a player having to consider a diminished position in exchange for remaining a professional player for a 19th year at Chelsea.

It is understood that Terry met with Chelsea executive Marina Granovskaia and chairman Bruce Buck earlier this week. The last time they all met was back in January, for Terry's "need to know" meeting, an attempt to establish if, per club policy of only offering one-year contracts to players over 30, that he would receive another extension to his. The news - Terry announced, apparently unilaterally, was that there wouldn't be a new contract and that he'd be leaving at the end of the season. "It’s not going to be a fairytale ending, I’m not going to retire at Chelsea," he emotionally announced after Chelsea's 5-1 FA Cup at MK Dons.

Holding the whip hand of his own PR, Terry added: "I’m going to be playing out my career elsewhere, which it took me a couple of days to get over", underlining that his dedication to Chelsea wouldn't change as his career there drew down: "I want to give everything and finish on a high, on 100% good terms with the club". 

However, despite making a clear point about departures, Terry did say that "things might change" though he qualified that by adding "but it’s a 'no' at the minute." Now, though, it is a 'yes...but'. In the intervening period it has seemed as if everyone connected with the club has been walking on large, pterodactyl-sized eggshells over Terry's future. Even after Terry had made his statement in January, the club's own announcement wasn't exactly convincing: "The club has the utmost respect for John and everything he has helped us achieve to date. He is a fantastic servant to Chelsea and a superb captain. As such, the club will keep the channels of dialogue open."

For many seasons that fantastic servitude has been reflected by the "JT - Captain, Leader, Legend" banner, hung on the separation of the lower and upper tiers of Stamford Bridge's Mathew Harding Stand. This screen-printed strip is, of course, wonderful footballing hyperbole - not least that it has been tolerated by the club and not replaced by lucrative advertising. But it has been a distinctive totem of the John Terry cult at Chelsea, one that has fuelled the belief that this last product of Chelsea's youth programme to become a first team regular has had some sort of invincible power at and even over the club.

He has certainly had that effect over the fans, whose devotion has become emboldened, despite the self-styled 'Mr. Chelsea's well publicised transgressions off-field and, in the case of the ugly spat with Anton Ferdinand, on-field. No one, least of all me, will deny that Terry has cultivated a far from spotless image, from the drunken japes at a Heathrow hotel after 9/11, to his relationship with former teammate Wayne Bridge's ex-girlfriend, to repeated parking his Range Rover in disabled bays. And when he hasn't had time to court more controversy himself, members of his family have stepped in to help out. Chelsea, to its credit, have stood by him, especially during the allegations of racially abusing Anton Ferdinand during an away fixture at QPR in October 2011.

John Terry has been with Chelsea since he was 14 years old and has played, to date, 703 senior games for the club, more than 500 as skipper since José Mourinho installed him in the role 12 years ago. His influence within the club has been immense, which makes yesterday's announcement - and Terry's somewhat muted response - all the more indicative of a relationship under strain. If Terry does reject the new offer, he will have played his last game for the club, having been suspended for Wednesday's fixture at Anfield and tomorrow's final game of the season at home to champions Leicester.

© Simon Poulter 2016

If, then, he does leave, it is believed that Chelsea will host a private sendoff for him at Stamford Bridge on Monday. Still, though, following the anti-climactic departures of Frank Lampard, Petr Čech, Ashley Cole and Didier Drogba - arguably the core of Mourinho's successes at the club - the lack of any vocal commitment by Chelsea to resolving Terry's contract has been seen by fans as a slap in the face to the player who has been the hub of that core.

Hiddink, ever the pacifier, has said that the delay in taking any action over Terry hasn't been out of any malice: "People who are making the decisions want to take their time. That's up to them," the diplomatic interim coach as said. "That doesn't mean there's dramatic, bad treatment so far, but everyone has his own approach to deal with this matter," sidestepping anything more controversial by adding: "What the near future is is up to the club, it's not for me to make declarations on that."

Eggshells left untrampled upon. The heart of the matter, however, is clearly in the realm of what Jason Burt was hinting at. Antonio Conte is going to want to stamp his own signature on a team that is in desperate need of rebuilding. Deadwood, like Oscar, needs to be released, with a new group of players built around the revitalised Eden Hazard and, perhaps, Diego Costa. And while Terry himself believes that, at 35 (36 in December), he still has another couple of years left at Premier League level, there has been no shortage of evidence that age is catching up with him.

Where Chelsea do clearly need Terry still, however, is as the fearless leader he has been for more than 500 league appearances. Gary Cahill, too, has looked better playing alongside him, and Kurt Zouma, before his season-ending injury, was brought considerably by playing with him.

What Terry has lacked, clearly, in terms of pace he has always compensated for by easily being one of the best central defenders in a generation. However, as any player in the upper reaches of their careers find, the trouble is always when to quit, or at least (and this may well be the case with Terry) accept a reduced or lesser role. The question is exactly what that role will be. 

There will, no doubt be a job for Terry at Chelsea when he does retire - something, he said in January, which has been discussed ("my legacy") - but between his possible future appointment as a coach or even youth team manager and now there must still be a gap. And that will fuel the internal dialogue John Terry will now be having on whatever offer Chelsea have made. 

So if, after all, it is simply not the offer he wanted, he will be stoic. "The club will move on. No player is ever bigger than the club," he said earlier this year, believing that Chelsea was "moving in a different direction". "I want to come back as a Chelsea supporter in years to come with my kids and see the team doing really well. Unfortunately that’s not going to be with me but I want to see the team do well. It’s going to be my last year and I want to go out at the top."

Outside the Chelsea fanbase, there will be plenty of people who will be glad to see the back of John Terry. But if he does leave the club that took him on as a teenager and turned him in to one of the finest central defenders - and, indeed, skippers - of his generation, I would hope that footballing purists will allow themselves to appreciate the qualities that generated such a reputation, qualities that helped Chelsea - during his time at the club - to four Premier League titles, three League Cups; five FA Cups, a Europa League title and - although he missed the 2012 final due to suspension - the European Cup itself.

And if he has played his last game for the club - the defeat to Sunderland in which he earned a red card and a two match suspension (a "fitting end", the nasty and unwarranted comment of one Sunday Times journalist last Saturday...) - the legacy John Terry seeks from Chelsea will be immense. As will be the gaping hole he'll leave. Chelsea will no doubt add to their ranks of central defenders (yes, those panic buys in last summer's transfer window), and they may even land John Stones, identified by Mourinho as Terry's potential successor. But one thing is certain: if Terry does walk away from the club now, it is unlikely that they will find anyone to truly backfill the vacancy created. Because in the club's long history - yes, haters, that word - there will only ever be a Captain, Leader and Legend like John Terry.

Money and football - it's back to business

Picture: adidas

48 hours ago we were celebrating the closest thing modern professional football has come to altruism - the "fairy tale" (© all newspapers) of Leicester City winning the Barclays Premier League. The common view has been that Leicester, unlike the footballing behemoths they beat to the title, did so on modest funding and a humble team ethic that reflects their genial manager, Claudio Ranieri (best not, though, dwell on events at the end of last season at Leicester and that video...).

We shouldn't too carried away. Leicester don't - and weren't, going into this season - exactly represent a rags-to-riches story. The media may have painted their victory as some sort of David-and-Goliath mismatch, but we're hardly talking about part-time postal workers and milkmen taking on the elite. Certainly the Leicester players will have increased their personal values with this season's unlikely, odds-shattering title win, and no doubt some will progress from millionaire status to multi-millionaires. And that's when the trouble will start.

The Premier League - and the incredible money Sky and other television deals pump into it - has been with us now for 24 years. In that time we have seen the car parks of clubs ostentatiously transformed by the sight of de rigeur Ferraris, Porsches, Range Rovers, Lamborghinis and other symbols of the ridiculous wealth bestowed on young men barely out of school-leaving age. On Instagram we see pictures of their homes, their minor palaces in Oxshott, Weybridge, Wilmslow and Alderley Edge. On social media, commentary of Monday night's party at Jamie Vardy's house has focused as much on the opulent chandelier hanging in his kitchen as the team spirit demonstrated by the Leicester players watching the Chelsea and Tottenham draw.

We are quick to judge: how often have I heard and read people complaining about Chelsea's players this season doing very little to justify the incredible salaries they're paid. But there is justification to it. After all, whether we pay exorbitantly for season tickets (as I do) or we buy the products advertised on the television channels that are paying to show the games, we're paying for all this.

It's a touchy subject. Good, then, of Manchester United's Juan Mata to admit in a Spanish TV intervew that his £150,000-a-week wages are "obscene". Mata is one of the most likeable and intelligent figures in the game. Rather than spending his spare time on the golf course, in card schools or chasing women who are not married to him around nightclubs, he has, since his arrival in England, demonstrated a cultured side to the professional footballer, engaging in his new surroundings and frequently writing eloquently about them on his highly readable weekly blog One Hour Behind. He is also an extremely gifted midfielder - I would still love to see him back at Stamford Bridge - but also one who has been able to burst out of the footballing bubble to view it for what it is.

"With respect to the rest of society, we earn a ridiculous amount," Mata said in the interview with the Spanish programme Salvados. "I'd happily take a pay cut if there was less business involvement in the sport. Football is very well remunerated at this level. It's like we live in a bubble. Compared to the rest of society, we earn a ridiculous amount. It's unfathomable. With regard to the world of football, I earn a normal wage but compared to 99.9 per cent of Spain and the rest of the world, I earn an obscene amount."

Mata said he could sympathise with spectators growing jaded with their clubs, especially if the cost of watching doesn't match the performance delivered by the teams themselves. "I can understand what they're talking about," he told Salvados. "The business side of football makes it seem as though the owners are now more important than the fans. It's not like the football of old; there wasn't as much press coverage before," adding, somewhat tellingly: "or as many interested parties looking for their cut."

"Every player thinks he's Maradona when he joins a big club," Mata went on. "That happens to all of us but then you start to notice it in the younger players. You see kids who think they're rock stars, wearing extravagant clothes and driving fancy cars... and sometimes you have to take them aside and have a word."

Perhaps Mata's wisdom should be imparted to Dominic Solanke, the 18-year-old Chelsea youth team striker who has been on loan this season at Vitesse Arnhem. Solanke has demanded a pay rise to take his earnings from £7,000 per week to £50,000, almost double the average annual salary in the UK - and he's still an Under-21 player yet to break into the first team (much like many of his academy peers at Chelsea).

Understandably, Solanke's demands have been met with outrage. Chelsea, however, may have to consider that they have brought it on themselves, with a reputation for paying high salaries. In the current Chelsea first team, 22-year-old goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois is on £120,000 a week, Cesc Fàbregas is on £156,000, Diego Costa £185,000 and Eden Hazard a whopping £200,000. Even Radamel Falcao is trousering £140,000 a week in his loan deal from Monaco, and no one has seen or heard from him since he came to Stamford Bridge.

According to The Times today, Chelsea are going to stand firm on Solanke's outrageous claim, threatening to demote him to the academy squad unless he adopts a more realistic view of his worth at this stage of his career. The paper claims that Chelsea want to set an example, so that their younger talents don't let money cloud their development as players. It's an admirable approach. Young football players should continue the traditions of apprenticeship, and not simply see their senior peers - some of whom are barely much older - cruising about in exotic cars and expecting to enjoy the same trappings of success so immediately.

We will never escape the vulgarity of money in football. Few fans will have a problem with their favourite players showing off their wealth, as long as they deliver on the investment we all make in them by performing to the best of their ability on the pitch. The clubs, though, have a responsibility. The relationship between them and us fans can only stretch so far.

On top of ticket price hikes, there have been stealthy increases in the subscription costs of the TV companies who cover the games (on top of the advertising revenues that ultimately we pay for). And there are all the other things that make being a football fan a wallet-shredding ordeal: yesterday Chelsea unveiled its new 2016-2017 home kit - not exactly the best design I've ever seen from adidas, coming somewhere between a silk nightie and children's pyjamas, and advertised by a particularly thuggish-looking Diego Costa - for which you could end up paying more than £105 for the full-replica adult shirt with the name of your favourite player on the back. Add another £5 if you also want the official Premier League badge on the sleeve. "Absolute madness. Pure greed," tweeted Stan Collymore.

I may not be an expert on sports clothing but I can hardly imagine that a shirt, no doubt made in a Far East, low-wage country, will have a bill-of-materials that adds up to that sort of money, not even a shirt with adidas' proprietary "Adi Zero" technology, whatever that is. One can only hazard a guess at what the profit margin is on the shirt - even more if you consider that you'd also be advertising Yokohama tyres in the process of wearing it, seeing as they paid Chelsea £200 million to be on the front.

Whether you're a fan, a club or a player, football is an expensive business. And you don't always get out of it what you put in. A matchday ticket in the Premier League this season averages £30.68 (for reference, Chelsea's range from £52-87), with season ticket prices averaging at £513.95 for the cheapest and £886.21 in the more expensive categories (and remember, that's average). We Chelsea fans pay some of the highest season ticket prices in the league: £750 for the cheapest, £1250 for the most expensive. And the 18 - yes, just 18 - home league games our tickets have entitled us to haven't exactly given much joy this term.

Which brings me back to Leicester City. They may be owned by a Thai billionaire, but they have achieved their remarkable success this season with equally remarkable modesty. On August 8, the opening day of the season, the entire Leicester squad represented a total outlay of £45 million.

Compare this with the investments of the teams who'll end the season below Leicester: Raheem Stirling alone cost Manchester City £49 million, out of a total spend of £153.50 million. And all that got them was fourth place in the Premier League and a Champions League semi-final. For comparison,  Manchester United spent £108 million and lie fifth while Chelsea spent £66 million - in defence of the 2015 title - and are currently ninth. Interestingly, Arsenal's spend was just £10 million and they're now third. Tottenham shelled out £66 million, but their net spend was only £5.7 million, and they're second. Make of all that, what you will.

Of course, we all accept - reluctantly - that the money in football will never return to something more sensible. The argument about how much a footballer earns versus how much a nurse earns may have its merits, but it is ultimately a pointless exercise, no more so than trying to work out how Tom Cruise earns $25 million per film. It is clearly nuts that football salaries in countries like Italy and Spain are in complete disproportion to the social struggles and high unemployment these proud and passionate footballing nations are currently struggling with.

We know it's all about market forces. We know that if a Chelsea won't stump up the wages, a Real Madrid or a Juventus will. But it would be nice, for once, for our football clubs to stop taking us fans for a ride, and behaving with a little less greed and a lot more modesty. Then we might start buying those shirts again.

As Leicester win the title, the search for Elvis goes on

The conventional wisdom is that the British don't value success, whereas Americans regard it as an attainment to be revered. We islanders apparently find it all a tad vulgar and would much prefer to wallow in failure. Why else would our favourite film be The Great Escape, the story of a brave but doomed POW breakout? And why else would the England football team's unofficial brass band play the film's theme music incessantly and in unwitting irony in an attempt to stir support during matches?

The same reasoning lies behind our tolerance of Eddie 'The Eagle' Edwards, he of the double-glazed spectacles, who truly believed he could fly and became Great Britain's ski jumping hopeful in the 1988 Winter Olympics. At the time (actually, since, too) Britain wasn't exactly a world-beating ski-jumping nation, and Edwards - no sporting failure, by the way - was automatically installed as the underdog. As is the British way, he was obviously unlikely to succeed but gave it it a damn good go. They've now made a movie out of him, too. No doubt the England brass band are learning its score in anticipation of this summer's European championships.

So, while Britain turns its nose up at the desire to be successful, and after a few spins on the pedestal will gleefully find a way to knock off anyone achieving it, we do love an underdog. At Wimbledon we cheer homegrown tennis stars in the face of minuscule chances of them making it to Week 2 (until, of course, Andy Murray comes along and wins it, instantly transmuting himself from "surly Scot" to the greatest Briton since Churchill, Elgar and Henry V). Nearly three-quarters of a century after World War 2 we still watch The Great Escape, The Battle Of Britain and even Dad's Army to remind us of when we were overwhelmingly the underdog. And when we beat nonsensical odds to come out of that period still alive, just.

So what, then, do we now make of Leicester City? Today they are the Barclays Premier League champions. Last season they were nearly relegated from the league itself. At Christmas 2014 they were rock bottom, having only been promoted from the Championship at the end of the previous season, ending a ten-year absence from the top flight. At Christmas 2015 they were on top, and yet at the start of the season bookies would have given you odds of 5000/1 on them actually winning the league. By contrast, you can't get better than 2000/1 for finding Elvis Presley alive.

If ever there was an example of the classic British underdog, Leicester City are it. But more than that. Their success in winning the Premier League with two games to spare is, without succumbing to hyperbole, one of the most remarkable achievements in football and even sporting history. It is hard not sound patronising when describing Leicester's success in such terms, but even their own fans deservedly and raucously celebrating outside the King Power Stadium last night, following Chelsea's tempestous 2-2 draw with Tottenham, were struggling to take it all in. "We're just a small city you've never heard of," said one on Sky News.

When the endearing Claudio Ranieri was appointed Leicester manager, replacing Nigel Pearson after a combustible end to the previous season, there were grave doubts. While he had certainly managed some of Europe's elite sides, including Chelsea, Fiorentina, Atlético Madrid, Juventus, Roma and Inter, it had been without any notable success. His previous appointment, as manager of the Greek national team, lasted barely four months. In his native Italy, Ranieri had endured plenty of critics: football writer Tommaso Pellizzari recently told the Financial Times’ Simon Kuper that Ranieri was “the perfect loser, with a capital L”, adding how “everyone in Italy thought he was very nice, polite, kind, but please never call him to my team”.

Gary Lineker, arguably Leicester’s highest profile supporter, even tweeted "Claudio Ranieri? Really?” on hearing of the Roman’s appointment to the Foxes, later being quoted on BreatheSport.com as saying: "Claudio Ranieri is clearly experienced, but this is an uninspired choice by Leicester. It's amazing how the same old names keep getting a go on the managerial merry-go-round." It’s a missive he now surely regrets, but it would be harsh to single him out entirely. At the beginning of the season numerous pundits had Leicester to be relegated this season, having narrowly missed it before. At the other end of the table, predictions were that this would be a straight back-to-back title for Chelsea, or that Arsenal would finally fulfil their promise. Few - if any - predicted that Spurs would come as close.

That Leicester have confounded the experts is a true testament to the mist of reality that hangs over the Premier League. It's been calculated that Manchester United have spent more on players in the two years that Louis van Gaal has been in charge than in Leicester's entire 132-year history. The gulf in class, they say, between the-now English champions and the usual suspects who "should" win it is enormous.

Jamie Vardy was working in a factory not so long ago, playing non-league football. He was even turned down by Sheffield Wednesday. Sheffield who? Exactly. And today he is the Football Writers' Association Player Of The Year, and there is even talk of a movie about him. Five years ago Riyad Mahrez was in the sixth tier of French football. Last month he was named the PFA's Player Of The Year.

Leicester should probably be named Team Of The Century. Their Premier League victory may have come at the expense of the oligopoly being dismally unable to mount a challenge this year, but they have led from the very beginning. Even allowing for the somewhat phoney war of the opening weeks of the season, Leicester have simply powered through, playing composed, counter-attacking football, with Vardy and Mahrez scoring goals that have been a pleasure to behold, fed by an endeavouring midfield, a sturdy defence and, in Kasper Schmeichel, a world-class goalkeeper to-be.

The more expensively-assembled elite will, when they carry out their season reviews, have to look at Leicester and think hard about how they did it, especially given the meagre funds the club has at its disposal (Leicester's starting line-up on the opening day of the season represented an investment of less than £16 million; by comparison, last summer Manchester City spent £49m on Raheem Sterling alone). However you look at it, this has been a remarkable season in the Premier League.

It’s not that Leicester have merely benefited from Manchesters United and City, Arsenal, Liverpool and Chelsea not being at the races - they have simply been better. With the exception of Tottenham – who have been largely excellent (words I, as a Chelsea fan, struggle to type) – Leicester have outclassed the so-called big-guns: United and City have been beset by their own misfortune – the existing manager in United’s case, the effect of announcing a new one in City’s; Arsenal promised big yet again, and faded by January yet again; Liverpool are still building under Jürgen Klopp, but as Sunday’s Swansea game demonstrated there’s still work to be done there; and Chelsea… Well let’s just look forward to a new season and a new manager, shall we?

Picture: Leicester Mercury

Hopefully they will all conclude that what Leicester have - and they are lacking - is simply the chemistry. And credit for that must go to Ranieri. Look back over the season - the pizza nights for his players, the quiet, dignified man in interviews, none of the histrionics or negativity of his principal rivals. Prior to Leicester, his managerial record wasn’t all bad. He took Sardinian side Cagliari from Italy’s Serie C1 to Serie A in successive seasons, introduced Gianfranco Zola at Napoli, won top flight promotion for Fiorentina plus the the Coppa Italia and Supercoppa Italiana, and took Valencia to Champions League qualification for the first time. After a disastrous spell at Atlético (a club in dire financial peril at the time) he joined Chelsea, building the foundations of the team that José Mourinho would eventually win successive Premier League titles with, as well as signing Frank Lampard and promoting John Terry to central defence. Sure, there were some eccentric performances before he was sacked by Roman Abramovich who bought the club in 2003, and at times the label ‘Tinkerman’ was well deserved. But Ranieri guided the club to its most promising seasons in decades, reaching a Champions League semi-final and knocking out Arsenal along the way. And when the ‘dead man walking’ was eventually fired, Chelsea were in second place in the Premier League.

That Ranieri should have returned to England to manage Leicester after journeying through Europe was seen as an opportunity to complete unfinished business. No one, though, not even the most glass-half-full Leicester fan, could have expected that to mean where the team have ended up. Not even Ranieri: "I never expected this when I arrived," he said in a statement last night. "I’m a pragmatic man, I just wanted to win match after match and help my players to improve week after week. Never did I think too much about where it would take us. The players have been fantastic. Their focus, their determination, their spirit has made this possible. Every game they fight for each other and I love to see this in my players. They deserve to be champions." And they do.

In today's papers, on television last night, in radio phone-ins and all over Twitter, the somewhat condescending phrase “against the odds” has been everywhere. Their Premier League title success, as unlikely as it has been, has not simply been a remake of Cool Runnings. Leicester may not have the wealth of the teams below them, but they're not paupers either. But their underdog status has not been about money, anyway. Their victory has been about a team that isn't one of the so-called "elite" winning it.

Ranieri’s side has shown a refreshing passion, unity and discipline that their rivals, save for Spurs, haven’t. They’ve soaked up the pressure. Some might even say they’ve played pure football. In Vardy they’ve had a player who has even given England fans something to think about as we head towards the Euros in France. In Mahrez, we’ve seen someone to create excitement every time he steps on the pedal. And in Wes Morgan, we’ve seen a true captain’s captain. Captain Morgan - yeah. But most of all, we have seen in Claudio Ranieri a dignified manager who, at 64, has finally achieved premium silverware, and on his terms, too.

It is a fairy tale, and why not? Are we so embittered and cynical in football that only an established order must prevail? Of course not. As I’ve written so many times before, football is an archly tribal sport, but it has been a long time – probably going back to Newcastle under Kevin Keegan – that an entire nation has united to will a team to victory. I can’t even remember the last time a team attracted so much interest from the foreign media before. Even the Americans can pronounce "Leicester" properly now. Feelgood story of the year, eh?

Why the BBC remains a class act

You will already be aware that we Brits can shoehorn class into any debate, such is our obsession with where we sit on the social scale. And so the age-old trope runs, the working class aspire to be middle class but remain fiercely proud of their origins; the middle classes accept that they won't ever be anything other than that and spend their time consolidating their middle classness; and, obviously, the upper classes don't care where they are as they're loaded enough not to worry.

This brings immediately to mind 'The Class Sketch' from The Frost Report, something of a seminal moment in television history. Written by Marty Feldman and John Law, it had John Cleese, Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett capturing the topography of the British social hierarchy, trading off the actual background and physical height of the three performers in the process. Cleese, as the bowler-hatted toff declares that he looks down on Barker, to his left, "because I am upper class". Barker announces that he looks up to Cleese "because he is upper class" but looks down on Corbett "because he is lower class" before proudly stating "I am middle class". Corbett, clearly denoted as working class due to his scarf and flat cap (now in vogue amongst hipsters everywhere...) confesses: "I know my place. I look up to them both. But I don’t look up to him [Barker] as much as I look up to him [Cleese], because he has got innate breeding." Corbett ends up with the punchline, answering Barker's proposition: "We all know our place, but what do we get out of it?" - by looking up to the two next to him and replying: "I get a pain in the back of my neck."

The irony of this is that class has always played an unspoken, yet powerful role in the BBC. Lord John Reith, its fearsome-looking first director-general, shaped the corporation within a highly principled vision of public service broadcasting, one based on a high moral tone and giving equal consideration to all points of view. This, though, was carried through in the post-war years with a hierarchy that saw the corporation run by the officer class and the Oxford and Cambridge elite, and the conscripted class operating it. 

My own father worked for the BBC for the better part of his working life, joining as a studio cameraman in the early 1950s after completing his National Service and working as a telecommunications engineer for the GPO. He didn't go to university, learning his craft in the Royal Corps of Signals and combining it with photography as a hobby. He would later become the head of a camera crew and, before retiring, worked as a coordinator of studio technical operations on shows like Only Fools And Horses, itself a tremendous examination of the aspirational working classes. As a family we would be considered middle class, but quite where in that strata is open to debate: my dad comes from a lineage of railway and agricultural workers; my mum's dad was a civil servant in the Air Ministry. So, lower-middle?

By the 1960s, when the The Frost Report and its predecessor That Was The Week That Was (also featuring David Frost) were leading the era's satire boom, starched post-war Britain was facing an existential crisis. The Profumo scandal and the Great Train Robbery had shaken the establishment to its core. Political, social and cultural change was everywhere. The BBC's upper management was somewhat reluctantly having programming reflect what was going on at a national level as The Beatles, rival ITV's Coronation Street, and a slew of so-called kitchen sink dramas gave greater national visibility to the working classes.

After The Frost Report, Cleese and several of the show's writers - Graham Chapman, Michael Palin, Terry Jones and Eric Idle (Oxbridge graduates all) - went on to form the Monty Python team, freely lampooning the politicians, Whitehall mandarins, army officers and clergy drawn from their own backgrounds. Cleese would further rigorously expose petty British attitudes to class as Basil Fawlty, his prejudices and snobbery barely - if at all - concealed (much the same as Dad's Army did so cleverly). Interestingly, all of these shows were produced by the BBC.

So with this in mind, this week we learned via the Daily Telegraph that the BBC is worried that it is now too middle class, and is asking its employees to disclose details of family income and even upbringing in order to gain a better picture of the corporation's social profile. Staff will be asked various questions about their socio-economic background, including things like whether they received free school meals as children, in order to ascertain how representative of Britain the corporation is.

Without wishing to sound like the Daily Mail, whose eye-swivelling obsession with the BBC regularly means that it runs several negative BBC stories on any given day, only the BBC could come up with a scheme like this. I'm sure that most of the  BBC's regular viewers and listeners don't spend their time worrying that the BBC is too much of anything when it comes to its employees (though readers of the Mail as well as most of the Conservative Party will be unbudged on the view that the Beeb is stuffed full of pinkos and lefties, etc, etc, etc...). 

This is, though, the same BBC which moved its news and sports output to Salford to be less London-centric, such was its self-realised sensitivity to a dominance of Received Pronunciation that had served it well for decades without anyone expressing any notable concern. But, while this hasn't meant Sophie Raworth presenting the Six O'Clock News in Hilda Ogden curlers and addressing Laura Kuenssberg as "chuck", on the BBC World channel there has been a noted regionalisation of accents. And maybe to this Londoner's ears, they just sound odd. 

Possibly, though, the real root of this BBC initiative is that its Royal Charter is up for review. In an ironic role reversal, it is the Conservative government which appears to be pressuring the corporation to be more politically correct in including underrepresented backgrounds for presenting talent as well as backroom functions. In a separate measure, the BBC has even introduced "unconscious bias" in its recruitment processes, whereby recruiters are unable to see an applicant's educational background or even their name in order to ensure a pure and objective opinion of a job candidate's professional qualities. This also follows renewed efforts by the BBC to meet quotas on the proportion of disabled and LGBT employees, as well as a broader range of ethnicities amongst its on-air and backroom staff, specifically to be more representative of the general public.

One newspaper this week quoted a BBC source as saying: "We are already making a real difference to diversity on and off air but we’ve been clear there is more to do. Nothing should be a barrier to thriving at the BBC whether it is where you were born, what school you went to, the colour of your skin, your gender or a disability. “If we’re going to serve audiences even better and be the creative powerhouse for the UK at home and abroad, we need the best people working for us and a workforce that reflects the many communities that exist in the UK – that’s what these plans will ensure."

While no one can fault equal opportunities, there is perhaps too much social engineering going on here. My dad wasn't hired by the BBC because of his background - he built his career with the corporation because he was capable of doing the job. As someone who left school after his A-levels and went straight into journalism, purely on the basis of capability, I've proudly followed in my dad's footsteps. Has my social background been a blessing or a curse? Not at all.

Class is, though, an odd beast within the British media. When broadcasters like Janet Street-Porter and Danny Baker first appeared on television in the late 70s and 80s, viewers were apparently appalled by their strong London accents. 

Even then, viewers and listeners expected TV presenters to sound like the BBC's original radio announcers, broadcasting from Alexandra Palace while dressed in evening wear and speaking with the plummiest, elocution lesson-taught voices possible. 

But here is where class, background and even the appearance of "innate breeding", to come back to the Cleese/Barker/Corbett sketch, can be a misnomer. One of the BBC's poshest-sounding presenters in recent memory has been the intrepid war reporter Kate Adie: born in Northumberland, brought up as the adopted daughter of a Sunderland pharmacist, and who studied at Newcastle University. I wonder what she'll put on her form when Human Resources comes calling?