Great sporting occasions I have slept through
Falling asleep on my comfy sofa for the final quarter of that classic encounter between Manchester City v Spurs reminded me of one of the great personalities I have met in my sporting life Morris Lazar.
Morris invariably fell asleep during a boxing bout prompting his autobiography Great Fights I have Slept Through.
Morris was a substantial figure in boxing in the seventies, a noted matchmaker or – as he termed himself in Yiddish – a Ganzer Macher which you might translate as the complete operator.
Yet come the 10th round and, wherever he was, dear Morris was in the land of nod.
Thus it was – like him- that I missed the final controversy of Raheem Sterling’s disallowed goal. I worried – and still do – that VAR would destroy the continuity that is football’s greatest asset but in this game anyway it added to the drama.
The problem is that it could not definitively clarify whether Lorrente handled the ball or not. Praise to the co-analysts who now have the difficult task of immediately having to give a view if the main commentator has not.
Normally they get it right.
In the glowing and deserved praise of this young Ajax side reaching the semi finals of the Champions League I am pleased that the older Chief Executive Edwin van der Sar gets a mention.
I met Edwin when he played for Fulham in goal and has clearly a man of intelligence who was going places.
Now he is linked with the sporting directorship of Manchester United but is yet to commit as this is a diminution in status and may not be a smart career move.
He and Marc Overmars have overseen a return to the Ajax glory days of 1995 in which the two were so prominent as players.
