Spectator Sport: For the love of Barcelona

Fans of Robert Parker’s indispensable Spenser series of thrillers will be familiar with the character of Hawk.

Fans of Robert Parker’s indispensable Spenser series of thrillers will be familiar with the character of Hawk. Big, bald, black, and always in shades, he is Spenser’s enforcer, an avenging angel of ineffable hardness. Now look at the wide angle shots of President Obama’s touring entourage and you will see Hawk made real in the shape of Reggie Love, the President’s go-to guy for a range of product from painkillers to iPod tunes to the best cheese for a burger. Love was a first-rate college basketball player who wanted to play pro football with Green Bay but didn’t quite make the grade.

So — well, why not? — he got an internship on Capitol Hill, and in the time it takes to clean a pair of Ray-Bans became the innermost member of Obama’s inner circle. When asked what he does, he says, ‘You just go out there and — Take. Care. Of. Stuff.’ But what a pity it’s so hard to imagine anything similar happening here: a dropout from the West Ham academy ending up as one of David Cameron’s most trusted aides? Unlikely.

Anyway, who will you be supporting at Wembley on Saturday night? I do hope that neither the Tebbit test nor any vestigial sympathy for that redoubtable master of the epee Ryan Giggs will mean you are shouting for Manchester United. For pure footballing skills alone, so well chronicled in other places in this journal, we should all be slipping into Barcelona’s agreeable jade change-strip before settling down with some cervezas in front of the telly .

But please don’t let’s over-romanticise Barcelona. It’s not as if they are a bunch of hippies sitting round the campfire singing Kumbaya, helping the poor and needy and occasionally breaking off for a bit of light football.