Black American Express cards are two a penny , settling the bills for the ludicrously small and expensive bellinis. Best seats are in the mid section of the restaurant
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The 10 London Restaurants with the Hottest Clientele | Restaurant …
.Real Madrid has become the first team in any sport to post revenues in excess of 400 million euros ($602 million) in a single year, according to an annual survey of the richest soccer clubs by accountancy firm Deloitte.
In its survey released today, Deloitte said the figure of 401.4 million euros had been helped by high broadcast revenue.
European and Spanish champion Barcelona overtook Manchester United, which was hit by the weak pound, into second position.
Real topped the “Football Money League” report, which ranks the 20 biggest clubs by revenue, for the fifth consecutive year. The club’s revenue rose by 57 million euros to 366 million euros.
Barcelona posted the largest absolute increase in the Deloitte report, from the 2008-09 season.
“Real Madrid and FC Barcelona have created a clear revenue gap between themselves and their European competitors, and look set to contest the top two positions in the Money League for the foreseeable future, particularly if the pound doesn’t strengthen against the euro,” Alan Switzer, director in the Sports Business Group at Deloitte, said in a statement.
The combined revenue growth for the 20 clubs slowed compared with previous years to over 3.
Top clubs weathered the worst economic crisis in decades thanks to their loyal fan bases and large broadcast audiences, according to the report.8 billion).9 billion euros ($5.
The top 20 was little changed from last year, with Werder Bremen and Manchester City replacing VfB Stuttgart and Turkish club Fenerbahce.
“However, it will not be until 2009-10, the season currently in progress, before we see the full impact on clubs’ revenues,” said Paul Rawnsley, director in the Sports Business Group at Deloitte.
The list was again dominated by European clubs, with seven English clubs, four from Italy, and two each from France and Spain.
The list was again dominated by European clubs, with seven English clubs, four from Italy, and two each from France and Spain. (1) Real Madrid (ESP) 341.
Rankings (position, last year’s position, club, country, revenue in millions of pounds, revenue in million of euros):
1.4
2.9, 401.7, 365. (3) FC Barcelona (ESP) 311. (2) Manchester United (ENG) 278.93.0 4.5, 327.6, 289.6, 289.5 5. (6) Arsenal (ENG) 224.0, 263.06. (5) Chelsea (ENG) 206.4, 242.3 7. (8) Liverpool (ENG) 184.8, 217.0 8. (11) Juventus (ITA) 173. .29. (10) Inter Milan (ITA) 167.4, 196.510. (7) AC Milan (ITA) 167.4, 196.511. (15) Hamburg SV (GER) 124.9, 146.712. (9) AS Roma (ITA) 124.7, 146.413. (12) Lyon (FRA) 118.9, 139.614. (16) Marseille (FRA) 113.5, 133.215. (14) Tottenham Hotspur (ENG) 113.0, 132.716. (13) Schalke 04 (GER) 106.0, 124.517. (n/a) Werder Bremen (GER) 97.7, 114.718. (20) Borussia Dortmund (GER) 88.1, 103.519. (n/a) Manchester City (ENG) 87.0, 102.220. (17) Newcastle United (ENG) 86.0, 101.0 -
.Five players from French rugby league club Catalans Dragons have been arrested following an alleged brawl in Leeds, northern England.
The players were detained by police following the weekend’s 28-20 loss to Wakefield in their opening match of this season’s Super League.
A West Yorkshire police spokesman said nine men in total were on custody and that two were taken to hospital for treatment to head injuries. .
In a statement, the Dragons said: “The club are co-operating fully with the police in their investigations.
The incident came less than three weeks after six players from rival Super League side Huddersfield were arrested and bailed following rape allegations during the club’s preseason training camp in Newcastle, north-east England.”
The Dragons are coached by Australian Kevin Walters and the club has eight Australian players on its books.
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.World number one Serena Williams has withdrawn from next week’s Paris Indoor Open, organisers confirmed.
Williams blamed a leg injury which she picked up on her way to victory in the Australian Open.
Former world number one Mauresmo won last year’s event but has since retired from competition.
The American has lifted the Paris trophy twice in five appearances, winning both her titles in 1999 and 2003 against France’s Amelie Mauresmo. .
Russia’s Elena Dementieva is the now the top player in the tournament, which starts on Monday
.The world economy may not emerge out of crisis in 2010 due to “bubbles” created by the huge injections of money used to keep the financial system operating, World Trade Organisation (WTO) chief Pascal Lamy said Friday.
“You have to be realistic, it is not guaranteed,” the WTO director general said on French radio when asked whether the world economy would recover in 2010. .”
Governments around the world have spent trillions of dollars over the past 18 months avoiding the collapse of the financial system and then trying to claw away from recession.
“In flooding the economic and financial system with public money we have also created bubbles which will have to be absorbed.
“These are the more dynamic, better run, less indebted countries,” Mr Lamy said.
The WTO chief highlighted the dynamism of the emerging economic powers – China, Brazil, India and South Africa – in avoiding the worst of the crisis.
“These are the countries which are from a certain point of view better run than the western economies.”
.Veteran Frenchman Fabrice Santoro has announced he will compete in the Australian Open later this month, making him the first player in four decades to participate in 70 grand slam tournaments.
The 37-year-old – still ranked 68th in the world – had announced his retirement last November following the indoor tournament in Paris.
But he insisted his latest decision did not signal a return to the ATP circuit.
“This is just a very personal thing.
“This decision does not affect my announcement to retire as a professional player,” he said in a statement.”
Santoro, who has been training at Roland-Garros for the past few days, said his intention was not to put away his racquets for good once he retired from the circuit. There is nothing else to it, and it certainly is not a comeback.
“Tennis is my life, my passion,” he said. .
“My decision to retire did not mean I was going to throw my racquets into a cupboard.”
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.Muslim women who wear the full Islamic veil in France will face a possible 750 euro ($1,170) fine, according to a draft bill unveiled by the leader of the parliamentary majority.
Jean-Francois Cope, who heads the governing UMP party in the National Assembly, told Le Figaro newspaper’s weekly magazine that men who force their wives to wear the burqa or niqab could face an even heavier fine.
“The law will address an issue of security,” Mr Cope said in an interview with the magazine.”
The draft legislation will be presented in the next two weeks and should come up for debate in parliament after the March regional elections, he said.
“The proposed measure would prohibit the covering of the face in public places and on the streets, with the exception of special cultural events or carnivals.
“We can measure the modernity of a society by the way it treats and respects women,” he said.
The majority leader, who is also openly campaigning to succeed President Nicolas Sarkozy as the right-wing candidate for the presidency in 2017, said the burqa must be banned to defend women’s rights. .
Many politicians from the left and right have cautioned that a draconian law banning the head-to-toe veil would be difficult to enforce and probably face a challenge in the European rights court.
The burqa debate has heated up ahead of the release at the end of the month of a much-awaited report by a parliamentary panel that has conducted six months of hearings on the issue.
Critics argue that a specific law enacted to ban the full veil would be tantamount to using a sledgehammer to swat a fly.
Mr Sarkozy himself has said that the burqa is not welcome in France but has not stated publicly whether legislation should be enacted.
In the interview, Mr Cope argued that a law would act as a deterrent by sending a “clear message” that France will not allow women to fully cover themselves. Only 1,900 women wear the full veil in France, according to the interior ministry.
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.Thieves have stolen about 30 paintings, including a work by Spanish master Pablo Picasso, from a private villa in the south of France, police say.
The haul, which also included a painting by post-impressionist Henri Rousseau, was worth about one million euros ($1.59 million), a judicial source said.
The owner was on holiday in Sweden at the time and has since returned to France to help the investigation, police said.
The theft was discovered on Thursday by a caretaker at the house in the Provencal village of La Cadiere d’Azur. .
It was the second major art theft in southern France in recent days, although there was no indication the two crimes were linked.
Police said the pastel work, The Chorus, was worth an estimated 800,000 euros.
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.Frenchman Richard Gasquet has been cleared over a positive cocaine test, after sport’s highest court accepted that he was probably contaminated inadvertently by kissing a woman in a nightclub.
“The player has been exonerated from any fault or negligence,” the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) said as it rejected an appeal from the International Tennis Federation (IFT) and World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), who had asked for a ban of between one and two years.
“On a balance of probability, the CAS panel concluded that it was more likely than not that the player’s contamination with cocaine resulted, as Gasquet always asserted, from kissing a woman in a nightclub in Miami on the day before the anti-doping test and that the player had met the required standards of proof with respect to the way of ingestion.
“I am totally relieved,” Gasquet told French television channel Canal Plus.”
The world number 52, who appeared before a CAS hearing in Lausanne in November, was provisionally suspended in May after a sample he provided in March tested positive for benzoylecgonine, a metabolite of cocaine.
“I thought I had more chances to win grand slams, to beat (Rafael) Nadal at Roland-Garros and (Roger) Federer at Wimbledon than to be tested positive. .
“I am happy to be a hundred per cent cleared.
“I am now ready to go to Australia on December 28, to play two tournaments there and to enter the Australian Open. It was very difficult for me, I’m glad it’s over. I could have done without all this but now I’m happy to be back on the tennis courts.
“Mentally, it was very tough.”
Gasquet, who finished 2007 in the top 10 of the ATP rankings, always claimed his innocence and said he had a hair sample tested by an independent lab which showed no trace of cocaine. My goal is to make it back into the top 10.
In July, an independent tribunal set up under the tennis anti-doping program, found the 23-year-old guilty but ruled that he had been inadvertently contaminated.
In July, an independent tribunal set up under the tennis anti-doping program, found the 23-year-old guilty but ruled that he had been inadvertently contaminated.
The ITF expressed its disappointment at the CAS decision to clear Gasquet.
However, the ITF and WADA appealed to CAS in August for a heavier sanction.
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.Angry Irish football chiefs have called on FIFA to order the World Cup play-off with France to be replayed, after France’s Thierry Henry helped knock out Ireland with a clear handball.
Video replays showed Henry used his hand to stop the ball going out of play in extra-time of Thursday’s (AEDT) play-off in Paris, before passing to William Gallas to head the goal which gave France a 2-1 win on aggregate.
“The blatantly incorrect decision by the referee to award the goal has damaged the integrity of the sport,” the Football Association of Ireland (FAI) said in a statement.”
The Irish football body pointed to a precedent – a FIFA decision in 2005 to invalidate the result of a World Cup qualification match between Uzbekistan and Bahrain on the basis of “a technical error by the referee of the match”.
“We now call on FIFA, as the world governing body for our sport, to organise for this match to be replayed.
A FIFA spokesperson said the body had yet to receive a request from the FAI.
The FAI said it hoped FIFA would “act in a similar fashion so that the standards of fair play and integrity can be protected”. It had only just received the official match reports and were in the process of reading them, he added.
“It is impossible to repeat the game,” the experienced Italian said.
Ireland coach Giovanni Trapattoni told a press conference minutes before the statement was released by his employers that he did not believe FIFA would grant a replay.”
Trapattoni also called for extra-time to be scrapped at the end of the two-leg World Cup play-offs, with the second match instead going straight to a penalty shootout in the event of a draw in regulation time.
He urged FIFA to explain how Swedish referee Martin Hansson, who failed to spot the incident, had been chosen for such a high-profile match, saying: “For this important game we needed a stronger referee, an important referee. The player himself admitted handling, but said the responsibility for seeing the incident fell to the match official.
Hansson, who works as a firefighter, failed to spot the Henry handball.
Trapattoni refused to blame the player, saying: “It wasn’t up to Henry to say ‘I touched it with my hand’.
Trapattoni refused to blame the player, saying: “It wasn’t up to Henry to say ‘I touched it with my hand’.
– Outrage –
Questions were asked in the Irish parliament after the Henry incident, with Justice Minister Dermot Ahern also suggesting Ireland appeal to FIFA for a replay.
The draw for the finals is due to be made in Cape Town on December 4, leaving little barely two weeks for a replay to be scheduled in a calendar already crowded by club matches.
“It’s the least we owe the thousands of devastated young fans around the country.
“They probably won’t grant it as we are minnows in world football but let’s put them on the spot,” he told RTE state radio.”
The Irish press were unanimous in their condemnation. Otherwise, if that result remains, it reinforces the view that if you cheat, you will win.
A Facebook page entitled “We Irish hate Thierry Henry (the cheat)” also drew hundreds of comments – some of them unprintable – including a call for an Irish boycott of French goods.
“We were robbed” said the Irish Star, “Le Cheat” added the Irish Mirror, while the Irish Sun splashed with the “Hand of the Frog” – a play on Diego Maradona’s 1986 “Hand of God” goal against England.
One financial expert said Ireland’s failure to make next year’s World Cup finals will cost the already recession-bound Irish economy millions of euros.
“I would say croissant sales will slump today,” said one contributor to the social networking site page.
Reacting to the growing row, shaving company Gillette said it had no plans to axe star striker Henry from its advertising.
Reacting to the growing row, shaving company Gillette said it had no plans to axe star striker Henry from its advertising.
“Thierry Henry has publicly acknowledged that it was a handball… This is not going to affect our relationship with Thierry Henry,” said a spokesperson for Gillette, part of US consumer products giant Procter and Gamble.