The Fiver | 'The best players in the world (and Xavi)'; and Big Billy Windsor | Sean

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<div class="track"><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.22.1/60673?ns=guardian&pageName=The+Fiver+%7C+%27The+best+players+in+the+world+%28and+Xavi%29%27%3B+and+Big+Billy+Wi%3AArticle%3A1487177&ch=Football&c3=GU.co.uk&c4=Football%2CSport&c5=&c6=Sean+Ingle%2CPaul+Doyle&c7=10-Nov-30&c8=1487177&c9=Article&c10=&c11=Football&c13=The+Fiver+%28series%29&c25=&c30=content&h2=GU%2FFootball%2F" width="1" height="1" /></div><p class="standfirst"><a href="http://gu.com/p/2gx44/tw" title="">Click here to have the Fiver sent to your inbox every weekday at 5pm, or if your usual copy has stopped arriving</a></p><h2>CONDUCTOR BATONS AT THE READY FOR GUARDIOLA'S THIRD</h2><p></p><p>There have been many great symphonies throughout history - Beethoven's ninth, Mozart's 41st, Megadeth's ... Of Destruction - but few, surely, have ever been as tuneful as Barcelona's 5-0 castrato of Real Madrid last night. Even Marca, the Madrid-based daily that hasn't written a single nice word about Barcelona since 1817, felt moved to exclaim: "This Barça is a machine ..." adding - in case readers thought it was referring to a clapped-out ZX80 - "Thanks to the football from another galaxy of Xavi, Villa and SuperMessi. A memorable symphony."</p><p></p><p>Indeed it was. This was football so beautiful L'Oreal could have bottled it and given it to the Fiver - and we would have got lucky. Barcelona completed 636 passes compared to Madrid's 279, with Xavi being succesful with 114 out of 117. As Marca put it: "Xavi broke the game with 20 minutes of genius. There is no other like him. Xavi was a cyclone. He dominated all aspects of the game; control, passing, precision, acceleration, pausing, pressure and a goal." He surely deserves the 2010 Ballon d'Or - if only to ram the Daily Heil's <a href="http://bit.ly/h7Y51J" title="">"The best players of the world (and Xavi)"</a> headline in their faces.</p><p></p><p>But while Catalan-based paper Sport's overloaded its front page with excitable adjectives - "5-0. Slap to Mourinho. Thrashing, humiliation and leaders!" - and an advert for a T-shirt commemorating the victory - it's worth remembering that Madrid are only two points behind Barcelona with 25 La Liga games remaining. There is plenty of football left to be played, although probably not much of it by Pepe. And, as Jose Mourinho pointed out afterwards: "Last season I lost here with Inter before returning for the [Big Cup] semi-final. We were the ones who reached the final - they watched it on television." He may yet have the last laugh.</p><p></p><h2>QUOTE OF THE DAY</h2><p></p><p>"My stupidity left me looking like a clown" - Pope's O'Rangers striker Kyle Lafferty apologises to Walter Smith for sustaining finger-snap while gadding about at the club's training ground last week. Either that or he's referring to the instructions he gave his barber.</p><p></p><h2>FI-FA HO-HUM</h2><p></p><p>Look at them. Just look at them. Davids Cameron and Beckham and Big Billy Windsor, spinelessly genuflecting before Fifa snollygosters in a bid to host a tournament that will allow Fifa to get rich, rich, richer on the back of you, you, you! For as last night's Panorama expose revealed, Fifa demands that World Cup host nations do not trouble the global governing body with tiresome tax levies. ZERO PER CENT, that will be Fifa's contribution to the state coffers in return for using British infrastructure to stage their increasingly degraded event.</p><p></p><p>And, in this time of cut-backs and sackings and smug two-finger gestures from fat cats, your government has not only agreed to these terms but has dispatched their top banana to Switzerland to plead "pick me, pick me, pick me!" like some giddy floozy on American's Next Top Model. The Dutch government told Fifa to stick their demands right up their flabby posteriors – the joint Dutch-Belgian bid has suffered but at least their integrity is intact. The British establishment, by contrast, lacks the bottle to do likewise, or perhaps just doesn't think there's anything wrong with big business sh@fting the little guy. After all, it's not as if we're not all in this together.</p><p></p><p>The revelation of Fifa's demands on bidding nations – which in addition to tax exemption for Fifa "and all its subsidiaries" orders that governments suspend their immigration laws for the duration of the tournament - was the biggest scandal to emerge from last night's much-anticipated Panorama feature, even if those demands are not illegal. But there were, of course, also allegations of outlaw behaviour. Panorama accused three members of Fifa's gilded nomenklatura of trousering monstrous bribes as part of a scam involving around $100m of illicit payments. The alleged payments were made over a decade ago, yet although, according to the BBC, big chief Sepp Blatter was aware of allegations of at least some of this chicanery, all three trough-dwellers remain in situ and, indeed, will be among the 23 executive committee members who will decide on Thursday where to stage the 2018 rip-off. There would have been 25 old men voting, of course, but two of them are suspended following previous allegations of corruption by the Sunday Times.</p><p></p><p>Fifa has dismissed Panorama's allegations as worthless old hat, claiming that they were investigated and chucked out by a Swiss court many years ago. The BBC, however, maintains that the specific allegations were new and not considered by any court. Still, Fifa insists: "The investigation and the case are definitely closed." The International Olympic Committee takes a different view.</p><p></p><p>One of the accused, Issa Hayatou, is also a member of the IOC and that body, unlike Fifa, has at least professed to a willingness to examine the evidence by blaring: "The IOC has taken note of the allegations made by BBC Panorama and will ask the programme makers to pass on any evidence they may have to the appropriate authorities. The IOC has zero tolerance against corruption and will refer the matter to the IOC Ethics Commission."</p><p></p><p>Can vigorous last-minute brown-nosing by Big Billy and the Davids convince Fifa's overlords to give the World Cup to England despite its pesky media? Uefa grand fromage Michel Platini doesn't think Panorama's expose will influence the vote: "I don't think it will have any effect on the voting, people took their decision a long time ago … it is not important," he shrugged, as if whether it would influence the vote was all that mattered.</p><p></p><h2>DOUBLE YOUR MONEY WITH BLUE SQUARE!</h2><p></p><p>Open an account with online bookies Blue Square, place a bet of at least £5 and they'll give you a free £10 bet, win or lose! (terms apply). <a href="http://bit.ly/awLJUm" title="">Register now</a>.</p><p></p><h2>FIVER LETTERS</h2><p></p><p>"Fiver Ed is probably just being flippant when saying St Buryan is never an easy place to go (yesterday's Fiver letters). Just ask Dustin Hoffman and Susan Penhaligon about how the locals of St Buryan welcomed them in Straw Dogs" - Rob Mildren.</p><p></p><p>"I can't help but notice that while Madron are getting 55-0 batterings in Cornish Mining Division One (Fiver passim), there is a Madron Reserve Team burning up Cornish Mining Division Three: second place, a point adrift of the leaders with three games in hand.&nbsp;Instead of presenting a stiff upper lip in the face of adversity, why doesn't club secretary Alan Davenport promote a few battle-hardened central defenders and midfielders from the reserves? Or indeed, why not just play the entire reserve team in next weekend's 'save our season game' against Camborne School of Mines?" - Alex Moffett.</p><p></p><p>"I just wanted to thank Tranmere Kev for his link to a for-sale jigsaw of Man Utd's communications director Phil Townsend (yesterday's letters). I've got this one to add to the collection – <a href="http://amzn.to/eztILM" title="">here's one of United assistant secretary Ken Ramsden</a>" - Lee Darbyshire.</p><p></p><p>"Barcelona 0-0 Real Madrid (yesterday's Fiver prediction)? I suppose the Fiver will boast it was half right. Like Mourinho, presumably the Fiver will claim it was not humiliated" - Geoffrey Vine.</p><p></p><p>Send your letters to <a href="mailto:the.boss@guardian.co.uk" title="">the.boss@guardian.co.uk</a>. And if you've nothing better to do <a href="http://twitter.com/TheFiver" title="">you can also tweet the Fiver</a>.</p><p></p><h2>BITS AND BOBS</h2><p></p><p>Liverpool defender Jamie Carragher will be sidelined for three months after the shoulder-knack he sustained against Spurs rendered him physically incapable of doing that thing where he stoops forward at corners, points with one arm, wraps the other around an opponent's waist, then drags them to the ground while the ball is in mid-air.</p><p></p><p>Just six months and seven appearances after joining Wolves, Belgian action hero Jelle van Damme has wobbled out of Molineux and agreed a four-and-a-half-year £2.5m deal with Standard Liege.</p><p></p><p>Everton have registered an interest in signing Subbuteo's Shaun Wright-Phillips, who has been told he's surplus to requirements at Manchester City, just in case he hadn't twigged it already.</p><p></p><p>Blackpool boss Ian Holloway has called for a winter break so that he can watch Raiders of the Lost Ark. "I would rather stay at home with my family and watch a film," he said, apparently oblivious to the fact that the main reason football is played on Boxing Day is to give men an excuse to get away from their families and go down the drinker.</p><p></p><p>Cash-strapped Plymouth Argyle may join Ireland in seeking an EU bailout after confirming their office and playing staff have not received their wages for November.</p><p></p><p>And, quite possibly inspired by Transport for London's efforts, Serie A players have called a strike for the weekend of 11 and 12 December.</p><p></p><h2>STILL WANT MORE?</h2><p></p><p>If you're going to suffer a bout of impotence like Jose Mourinho's Real Madrid, <a href="http://bit.ly/i49e5x" title="">don't do it when Barcelona enjoy the footballing equivalent of an uber-org@sm</a>, Meg Ryans Sid Lowe.</p><p></p><p>It could serve England better not to host the World Cup in 2018 than to be seen as being as obsessed with wealth as Fifa's cash-laden suits, <a href="http://bit.ly/eHUgnF" title="">writes Paul Hayward</a>.</p><p></p><p>We asked for your Gallery entries on the Scottish refereeing crisis and <a href="http://bit.ly/eOaBAu" title="">you sent us monkeys, the Pope and rioting midde-class students</a>. Thanks.</p><p></p><p>The Fiver would like you to laugh at least once today so <a href="http://bit.ly/glJnwL" title="">watch this collection of the 30 most horrendous misses in football and then vote for your very worst</a>.</p><p></p><p>And if you're worried you've spent too much time at your desk doing what you're paid to do, then strike back at The Man by wasting five minutes on <a href="http://bit.ly/i0Ssjl" title="">our Bolton Wanderers quiz</a>.</p><p></p><h2>SIGN UP TO THE FIVER</h2><p></p><p>Want your very own copy of our free tea-timely(ish) email sent direct to your inbox? Has your regular copy stopped arriving? <a href="http://gu.com/p/2gx44/tw" title="">Click here to sign up</a>.</p><p></p><h2><a href="http://youtu.be/HK5qdw8_9bY" title="">FUN AND GAMES IN SOUTH AMERICAN MASTERS FOOTBALL DEPT</a></h2><div class="author"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/seaningle">Sean Ingle</a></div><div class="author"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/pauldoyle">Paul Doyle</a></div><br/><div class="terms"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> &copy; Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds">More Feeds</a></div><p style="clear:both" />
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