Early Doors - Your morning briefing blog

Political football

Wed Jun 17 08:42AM

Just when you thought the reputation of politicians couldn't get any worse, El-Hadji Diouf has announced that he wants to become an MP.

As an obnoxious, self-absorbed right-winger who has had legal trouble, can't keep his mouth shut and is an easy hate figure for the public, Diouf would fit in perfectly on the Conservative back benches.

He also owns several properties and probably has a moat somewhere that can be cleaned out on the taxpayer's dime.

Sadly, he is not interested in being elected to the House of Commons, but Westminster's loss will be Senegal's gain as he looks to go into public life in his homeland.

Diouf said: "I love politics and find it interesting. I want to be 10,000 times more responsible when I quit football. I'm thinking about being a candidate for election in 2012."

Well, Senegalese politics must be very different from those in Britain if Diouf thinks responsibility is a prerequisite for a career in parliament.

- - -

If Diouf wants an easy life after football, he could always become a scout.

While there are some notable exceptions, Early Doors has been forced to conclude that a scouting job is just a licence to travel the world, stay in nice hotels and watch some football matches without actually doing any work. A bit like being Tomasz Kuszczak, really.

Groningen striker Marcus Berg scored a hat-trick against Belarus in the European U21 championship yesterday. Whatever the standard of the opposition, it is clear that he is very, very good. Early Doors knows this because the game was broadcast on Sky yesterday afternoon.

ED has never watched Berg play a full match before but lots of people have, because he is a senior Swedish international and has just come off a superb season with Groningen in which he scored 26 goals.

In terms of scouting missions, assessing Berg is pretty easy.

We are not talking remote Ugandan villages here; all you have to do is get the ferry to Holland and watch him in an Eredivisie match.

And he is far from unknown - Berg is a full international and one of the top scorers in a major European league.

In fact, compiling a scouting report is so easy we have done one ourselves.

So why is it that Eurosport-Yahoo!'s spies in Sweden talked to Berg's agent last night and were told 'several' Premier League clubs had registered an interest since full-time?

Why did they not know of the 22-year-old's existence prior to yesterday afternoon? Why did they wait until after he performed brilliantly on a big stage, thereby driving up his market value? Why did they not sort out a deal for him beforehand?

Is it because 'scouting', in most cases, consists of nothing more than spending the day on the golf course before putting your feet up and watching whatever tournament is on the telly?

Another source close to Early Doors (some real sleuthing this morning from ED) has just got back from the Toulon Youth Festival which, despite sounding like a gathering of Boy Scouts from around the world, is actually a football competition.

Our source said the place - conveniently located on the French Riviera - was "absolutely crawling" with scouts at the start of the tournament, all keen to enjoy the hospitality.

They duly shuffled along to a few games and then deserted the place at the end of the first round, claiming they had "seen all they needed to see".

In all probability, it was more the case that their clubs had revoked their minibar privileges and they realised they would learn nothing in person that wasn't entirely apparent watching the games on Eurosport.

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QUOTE OF THE DAY: Wigan chairman Dave Whelan on Michael Owen. Bear in mind he isn't criticising him: "Would we be interested in signing Michael Owen? No. One, his wages are too expensive, and two, has he got the urge, the bottle and the drive to do what the Premier League wants? ... For us to pay someone over £25,000 a week is a hell of a lot of money. That's only my opinion. Everton and Liverpool might think differently. He's looking a bit injury prone, he loves his horses. I'm not criticising the lad."

FOREIGN VIEW: Marca finally gets round to reporting Cristiano Ronaldo's massive pay packet, but ED's eye is taken by the pictures of a mahogany C-Ron wearing small red shorts looking absurdly muscle-bound. If he fails at Real Madrid, a career in the WWE awaits.

COMING UP: The Confederations Cup group stage continues with Spain v Iraq at 15:00 UK time and South Africa v New Zealand at 19:30.

TWEET TWEET! Our superb transfer ticker has got its own Twitter page, which allows you to keep up with the news even when you're... look, ED will come clean. It doesn't really know what the point of Twitter is or who uses it. But it's here if you want it: twitter.com/eurosportmoves

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