Tonight:
4°c
I spent some time this week with an old sporting hero of mine, the former Arsenal and England captain Tony Adams. He has been asked to guest-edit a forthcoming edition of Radio 4's Today Programme, and I was working with him and the comedian Alan Davies at Television Centre on a report about fandom.
Since his unfair sacking by Portsmouth, after a short, unhappy three months as manager of the impecunious club, Adams has once more entered a period of deep introspection.
'What went wrong?' he keeps asking himself. And does he possess the capabilities to become a successful coach at one of our best clubs?
"There are only five clubs in the Premier League that are worth managing," he told me. That may be true, but how to go from failure at Pompey to, say, managing Arsenal or Chelsea or Spurs?
Next week Adams will travel to Milan to spend two weeks working under Jose Mourinho at Inter. He wants to experience how the club operates at every level, from youth team to the reserves. After that, he will be doing something similar at Saint-Etienne in France. This is all part of what he calls his "footballing education".
Adams told me he was never a football fan and still isn't. He watches football "analytically", not emotionally or with a fan's irrational commitment.
From a very early age, he knew that he could play the game better than anyone around him and that he would become a professional. This knowledge and certainty of future success stopped him from becoming a fan - he seemed genuinely fascinated when Davies spoke about the thrill and camaraderie of travelling to away matches in the Seventies and Eighties.
For Adams it was different. He would be a player, not a spectator; he would be on centre stage, not in the stands or on the periphery. Tall and physically intimidating, with a dark, intense stare, he retains even today after all his struggles with addiction, extraordinary self-possession: the self-possession of one who has achieved something truly great in their lives.
Meanwhile, he and his aristocratic second wife Poppy Teacher, of the whisky dynasty, are preparing for the birth of another child - "number five," Adams said. He is currently working on a follow-up to his book Addicted, on which he collaborated with the journalist Ian Ridley and which told of his dark years as an alcoholic footballer, a "story of sex and drugs and rock * roll", as he describes it now.
That's not quite right, because Addicted is also a study in self-overcoming. It tells of how Adams overcame alcoholism, self-contempt, a poor education, class insecurities and peer pressure to become what he is today. "This new book is all about piano playing, French lessons and theatre," he told me, later, in self-mockery over coffee.
Most importantly, this time he is writing it himself, which in itself is testament to how much he has changed.
But can he cut it as a top manager? It's my feeling that Adams is a natural No2, a technical coach rather than manager of men. The best managers today - Hiddink, Wenger, Ancoletti, Mourinho - are more like sports scientists, polyglot world citizens rather than artisans of the English league.
That said, I'd of course be delighted to be proved wrong about Adams. Let's watch how he goes from here.
Flag on Jenson's mind is chequered
On Sunday morning, as a guest on the Andrew Marr show, Sir Jackie Stewart urged Jenson Button not to sign for McLaren. His argument was that Button was with the right team, Brawn GP, which had the right owner, Ross Brawn.
Button, Stewart went on, had made many “wrong moves” early in his career, and now, having finally won the world championship, was not the time to make another.
“I hope Jenson is watching,” giggled Sophie Raeworth, deputising for the jumpy, hyperactive Marr. If Button was indeed watching, he certainly wasn't listening. This week, as expected, he signed an £18million multi-year contract to join McLaren.
If this is a “wrong move”, I'm sure Button would like to make many more like it.
Should we care about any of this? Formula One is a deeply discredited sport, marred as it is by corruption, incessant tinkering with the rules and continuous, petty bickering. Button attempted to justify his move by saying that he and his new team-mate, Lewis Hamilton, would make Britain proud. “I know that we both fly the flag with pride ... [and] Nothing means more to me than to be able to represent my country.”
Oh, come on! Button, like the tax exiled Hamilton, does not drive for or represent his country, as Steven Gerrard will at next year's World Cup or Andrew Strauss is doing in South Africa.
He represents only himself, and is, therefore, in choosing to join McLaren, doing only what he thinks is right and best for himself, as is his prerogative. The rest is noise.
Reason to be cheerful…
I was excited this week to see the plans for the £400million redevelopment of Lord's, which, with the exception of the Adelaide Oval, remains my favourite cricket ground. And I was delighted that, contrary to earlier reports, the MCC have stated that they will not be selling the naming rights to the 195-year-old ground. It's reassuring to know that not everything in this world has a price.
