"Everything is better with a bit of humour." So said Roberto Donadoni, as Italian football manager the incumbent of one of the most pressurised posts in the world, last Monday night in a special seminar organised by Birkbeck College Sport Business Centre. A healthy dose of self-deprecation is a useful asset in a job where your public always let you know who you're working for and what you should be doing: "This happened just......

In football, as everywhere else in 21st century life, the issue of "local versus global" is coming increasingly to the fore. This week the Birkbeck College Sport Business Centre in Bloomsbury, renowned for its research into the business of sport in general and football in particular, is providing a week packed full of education and debate on subjects of pressing concern to all those devoted to the game. Tonight from 6:30pm at the Brunei......

So ex-Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's Milan, deducted eight league points for their involvement in the Calciopoli scandal, provide Europe's club champions, sitting alongside the Italian nation's triumph at last summer's world cup. (Incidentally, anyone who still disbelieves Filippo Inzaghi that Milan practice free kicks such as the one they scored from should have a look at this.) Former Milan CEO Adriano Galliani, banned for five months for his part in Calciopoli, was prominent amongst......

As the morning of the 2007 Champions League final dawns and Liverpool fans throng the streets of Athens, desperate to acquire a seat for tonight's match from amongst tens of thousands of corporate matchgoers, it seems an appropriate moment for the launch of our new series of articles looking at where football is going, particularly regarding off-the-field issues which seem increasingly to dominate newspaper back pages. Liverpool's opponents tonight, Milan, are especially apposite for......

Italian goalscoring star Cristiano Lucarelli (left of picture) told a packed University College London lecture theatre last night that his country's footballing culture had something to learn from the English and that given a choice of where he could play, "If I had supernatural powers I would take Livorno and put it in England!". Lucarelli, a totem for both his home town and their football team as well as a passionate socialist, was speaking......

Next Monday evening you could join Londonist amongst the audience at the JZ Young Lecture Theatre on Gower Street as Cristiano Lucarelli, with 18 goals this season currently second top scorer in Serie A behind only Francesco Totti, joins his agent and biographer Carlo Pallavicino in presenting a seminar entitled "Money, Politics and Violence: Is there any more space for passion in Italian football?". For football fans who are not familiar with Lucarelli the......