Nothing decided yet…

So, nothing is decided yet. Yesterday’s Barcelon-Manchester United match didn’t yield any victor and we’ll have to wait until Wednesday to know who will earn a place in this year’s Champions League Final.

Barcelona and Manchester United ended their game 0-0, with Cristiano Ronaldo failing to transform a penalty, which would have changed the course of the game… but only if. Barcelona’s boss said that it wasn’t the best match of the season. Ferguson expressed his satisfaction that the team left the Camp Nou with a clean sheet. Barcelona dominated most of the time, but rarely threatened Van Der Saar. On the other hand, Manchester Utd had more chances to score, but the strikers weren’t lucky. Case in point was Ronaldo, who after the match pledged that he’ll find the net in the return leg at Old Trafford. We’ll see who will book the flight to Moscow.

Made in China, Indonesia or Malaysia

In between the various interesting encounters I had yesterday, I took the time to update my football shirt replicas collection. Near the Milan Duomo, one can find various shops which offer a vast collection of replicas, of all Italian clubs, major European teams and with the imminent Euro championships all national teams that will give life to this summer’s tournament. While looking through these particular shirts one notes , like other clothing, none is made in Europe, with most being produced in Indonesia, China or Malaysia.

Indonesia and Malaysia, together with Australia hosted this week’s stages of the Olympic torch relay, amid high security. In Indonesia, pro-Tibetian supporters were kept away from Jakarta’s main stadium, the venue of what CNN dubbed as “a very sanitised affair”. No major incident took place during the event held earlier this week in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The Australian event was seen as having been more orderly than those in other cities, mainly San Francisco, Paris and London, but still heavy with people demonstrating both for and against China.

It could be that this is the last time that the flame will be going around the world. While no decision hasbeen taken as yet, I read that the Olympic organisers are considering a Britain-only relay for the 2012 Games. The Tibet issue is not the first time when political affairs took centre stage at sport related events.

The photographs of two black American sprinters standing on the medal podium with heads bowed and fists raised at the Mexico City Games in 1968 not only represented one of the most memorable moments in Olympic history but a milestone in America's civil rights movement. The Munich ’72 Olympics served as one of the scenes of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The 1980 and 1984 Olympics were boycotted by the Americans and the Soviets respectively.

Since then, doping took centre stage in derailing the attention from the sport competition. Now it seems we will have political tension re-emerging as a primary actor in the world’s major sport event.