Cristiano and Wayne. They are the leading candidates for the presidents of the universe.

According to various news reports,

Sweltering heat made the London Marathon an even bigger test of endurance today as a record number of runners took part.

Runners reported “nightmare” conditions as ambulance staff said they dealt with a higher than usual number of patients.

The BBC reports that the unseasonably hot weather in England caused one death and thousands of heat-related maladies during the London Marathon.

Celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay, who was running his eighth marathon, said the conditions were “extraordinary”.

He said: “It was like running in a desert today. I stopped to help one guy. It was quite bad. They were dropping like flies.”

There were a record number of casualties as

Temperatures hit just below 21C at midday, almost equalling the 1996 record, and rose slightly higher later in the day.

Are those people crazy? 21C ! That’s very nearly 70F !!

My wife tells me that she won’t ever let me play football in hot weather again but, fortunately, it never gets that hot in Morgan Hill.

The best news to come from Manchester all week.

Cristiano Ronaldo signed a new five-year deal that should keep him at Old Trafford until 2012.

GOAL! Man Utd 6 - 0 Roma (Carrick 60) If you’re not watching this live, you simply must watch the highlights. It’s like a goal of the month competition. When nobody made even a token effort to close down Carrick, he stepped forward and guided a gorgeous shot into the top corner. Doni didn’t even bother to move, except for to turn around and slowly bend down to pick the ball out of the net.

Ever have one of those moments where you know that the other guy is gonna kick that chest-high ball but if you were to stick your head in there you would get the ball before him and it would create a counter-attack possibly leading to a goal-scoring opportunity? On the debit side of the ledger, if you stick your head in there, it will almost certainly get kicked.

What would you do in that situation?

I stuck my head in there. It got kicked.

Hey - Pompey are still in top three. I used to go watch them with Kev when they were declared “the worst team ever to play in the top division”.

After the world cup, I said:

I hope beyond hope that Ferguson is able to work his magic and keep Ronaldo at ManU but, even if he does, this year will be extremely difficult for him.

Well, Fergie did work his magic and Ronaldo is still there and just gets better and better every week. He is easily the best player on the team right now. It’s nice to see that other people think so too:

Shirt number all but obliterated with mud, Cristiano Ronaldo’s early departure from the latest instalment of Manchester United’s thrilling renaissance was accompanied by the fans behind Brad Friedel’s goal hissing expletives and flashing V-signs, all presumably in the cause of In-ger-land. There was nothing new there except that on this occasion it was balanced by a scene of near-mutinous proportions. High in the adjacent Jack Walker stand there were Blackburn Rovers supporters applauding, rising to their feet in a show of old-fashioned politeness for a footballer who is wholly unaccustomed to being afforded such manners.

World poverty might be wiped out before some football fans will bring themselves to acknowledge Ronaldo’s more endearing traits but the applause was sustained and perhaps also unprecedented. Supporters the length and breadth of the country have tried to break his soul but, having failed so miserably, this was the first public recognition (outside Manchester) for the strength of character Ronaldo has shown since his World Cup ended with the Sun newspaper superimposing his face on a dartboard and a publicly stated desire to leave behind this country of rain and recrimination.

Sunday’s report in the Guardian

What a pleasant change to read something positive about football fans!

Raph Koster uses an analogy with sports to make a point about structure in multi-player games. He chose the wrong sport though.

First some terminology. Most of the recent online games require you to choose a class (a healer, a warrior, a wizard or whatever) and you are then constrained to learn only those skills that that class is allowed to learn. When you form a group to battle the dragon, you have to choose a balanced mix of classes - a healer to heal, a warrior to fight, a wizard to cast spells - because, clearly, there is no way that a warrior might know some magic or that wizards might learn some first aid. This gives the games, to me, an artificial feel. It takes away opportunities to improvise.

A lot of sports are like that - American football, baseball, cricket, rugby - they have rules about who can throw the ball, who can wear extra padding, who can stand in front of the back foot of the scrum. As a result, the people who excel at those sports start to look a little freaky. All the locks are 8ft 3in tall, all the linemen are 400lbs, all the batters look like they are on steroids.

Soccer is not like that. There are only two classes. The goalkeeper and everyone else. The goalkeeper is a special case (and freaky) but everyone else has the same skills - they all tackle, they all pass, they all score goals, they all cross the ball. They just have different blends of the same set of skills.

Look at Henry. You probably wouldn’t even pick him out as a sportsman. He just looks like an ordinary chap but he is one of the best players in the world. Look at Ashley Cole & Gabriel Heinze. Both defenders by trade but both able to slot in to the attack as well as any world-class winger. Players in the same role often have wildly different skills sets - Rossi, Rooney, Crouch, Adriano, Drogba and Shevchenko are all strikers.
Go to any random city in the world and find a group of 12 years to play some soccer and they will all be able to play in any position. Some will be better goal scorers, some will naturally choose to defend. Sure, they’ll argue over who is going to go in goal because goalkeeping is a different animal altogether. It’s the exception that proves the rule.

Soccer is skill-based. That’s just one more reason why soccer is the beautiful game.

Don’t be expecting these every week now - unless we stay on top

I tried to put twenty quid on a ManU/Saha double at 66-1 but the mean old betting sites wouldn’t take my american money. I would be already counting my winnings about now!