Capitol Police shoot, kill man near Capitol campus

(CNN)

Washington.- U.S. Capitol Police shot and killed a man Wednesday afternoon, near the Capitol campus, a Capitol Hill Police spokeswoman said.

After Capitol Police stopped him for a routine traffic stop, the unidentified man fled in his vehicle, spokeswoman Kimberly Schneider said.

As he drove away, the man struck an officer, who was injured, she said.

The man then drove the wrong way down a one-way street. At some point, he produced a weapon and ignored police commands to drop it, according to Schneider.

Police then shot the suspect, killing him, she said.

Visit CNN.com for more details.

The shooting, which occurred shortly after 5 p.m., drew emergency vehicles to the area around the

 

Capitol building and caused police to temporarily seal some entrances to the complex.

 

An e-mail from Capitol police to all staff members of the House of Representatives said the incident was “isolated” and was “unrelated to the security of the Capitol Complex.”

“All buildings are open under normal operations.”

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All through July, The Disputant will be posting breaking news and events that we consider relevant to the day to day routine. The Disputant is still recruiting contributors and writers that will make this blog an important tool for those who crave information, which will lead to knowledge.

Loads of planning and implementing still.

All articles and news posted before August 1st are taken from other websites and sources. We are getting familiar with the system and building our database.

We apologize for any confusion that the posting of external articles may have caused.

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Getty Center, college evacuates due to L.A. fire

(Los Angeles, AP)

The world-famous Getty Center art complex and nearby Mount St. Mary’s College were evacuated Wednesday as a fire burned in thick brush on the steep slopes of the Santa Monica Mountains.

The fire erupted at 12:44 p.m. and quickly grew to 80 acres above parking facilities for the Getty, which has a collection ranging from European paintings to illuminated manuscripts and photographs, including works by Claude Monet and Vincent Van Gogh.

About 350 firefighters worked on rugged slopes and seven helicopters pounded flames with repeated water drops. Some of the helicopters were able to reload from nearby Stone Canyon Reservoir.

Fire Chief Douglas Barry said the fire began about three-quarters of a mile from the Getty and was moving away to the east as winds blew out of the west. The country club community of Mountaingate was notified of potential evacuations, but officials were optimistic.

“We feel very confident we’ll have this fire under control very shortly,” Barry said.

The fire was 20 percent contained shortly after 5 p.m. and officials expected increasingly favorable conditions because of rising humidity.

The origin of the blaze was not known, said Battalion Chief Patrick Butler.

About 800 employees and 1,600 visitors to the J. Paul Getty Museum and other parts of the hilltop complex were shuttled to the center’s south building as a precaution, Getty Center spokesman Ron Hartwig said.

A tram took people down the hill to parking lots so they could drive out the south gate, he said.

The center would be closed for the rest of the day, he said.

Scary day for SoCalifornians.

 

The Getty’s ventilation systems also were shut down to prevent smoke from damaging the priceless artwork, he said.

“The Getty Center was built with a great deal of safeguard,” Hartwig said. “You can never be overly confident, but we’re certainly prepared to handle fires in this area.”

To the north, Mount St. Mary’s College was evacuated as a precaution even though the fire was a mile away and a canyon lay between it and the school, spokeswoman Sarah Scopio said.

College was not in session but 100 staff members were being evacuated along with about 200 other people attending a conference, Scopio said.

The school used campus shuttles to take them out until the all-clear was given, Scopio said.

“Right now the fire is not threatening the college directly,” she said.

City Fire Department spokesman Erik Scott said residents of the area also were being urged to leave, but no homes were immediately threatened.

The Getty and Mount St. Mary’s are prominent landmarks on the rugged mountains above Los Angeles’ tony western neighborhoods.

The 100-acre blaze in October burned up to the backyard patios of multimillion-dollar homes before it was extinguished seven hours later.

The Getty Center opened in 1997 on ridges above Interstate 405, which runs through the Sepulveda Pass. It is world-famous for its gardens, conservation and research work and its museum, which holds a number of famous works, including Vincent Van Gogh’s painting “Irises.”

Mount St. Mary’s campus was damaged by the disastrous Bel Air-Brentwood wildfire of November 1961, which destroyed 484 homes and 21 other buildings.

Ignore The Euro Snobs – GO USA!

(Football365, UK)

After the Confederations Cup final, it should be clear to even the most sour, knee-jerk anti-American cynic, that the USA and their fans have a lot to be proud of in their football and their international progress.

People, eager to put them down, will point out their deficiencies but they are very well aware of the limitations of their side – a self awareness England have lacked until recently – and know that there’s still a long way to go to evolve from a hard-working side to a great football team, but they are enjoying the journey. Their success should be celebrated because it is quite remarkable really.

It’s often forgotten by younger fans that, while America has a long football tradition going to back to a third place finish in the 1930 World Cup, it is only in the last 20 years that the game has been organised and taken seriously enough at all levels to produce high class players capable of playing abroad in top flight teams. The 70s mini-boom fed by importing star players at the end of their careers didn’t last long. 

So USA is really a young country when it comes to producing high class footballers and is learning, expanding and developing every season. Imagine if England had to compete in the NFL; a sport it’s largely unfamiliar with, and had reached a major final, we’d think it was a brilliant achievement for a country without much history in the game. To put down their enthusiasm and achievements in the Confederations Cup, and many do, is narrow-minded bigotry, all too often based in a snooty anti-American attitude so popular amongst some Europeans. 

For a start, the patronising of Americans who call football soccer is getting very tiresome, somewhat pathetic and is seemingly ignorant of the fact that the word soccer was a slang derivation of Association (football) and was used in England as far back as the 1880s and has been ever since. It isn’t some sort of New World gaff to call football soccer, no matter how much you sneeringly say the word in a mock American accent. 

 

US fans demand more respect.

This snobbish attitude to USA is all the more remarkable when you consider the nature of the players who take the field for their national side. In Britain we regularly bemoan the knuckle-dragging ignorant thugs and air-headed boy-men who play our game. Yet the USA national side regularly fields men who are intelligent, articulate, interesting and culturally far more broad-minded than any of the lisping wannabe DJs England turns out. Listen to the likes of Brad Friedel, Casey Keller, Jay Demerit or Clint Dempsey; by contrast to their English counterparts these men are college professors. In short, they are the sort of people who are easy to like and admire. You want to sneer at that?

On top of that they have a tough competitive attitude that was best embodied by Brian McBride who was one of the hardest players in modern times, capable of taking a face-breaking elbow from Daniele De Rossi in the 2006 World Cup without flinching or rolling around, instead he got up, walked calmly off, had stitches put in the wound and played on. Simply magnificent. And still you want to have a pop at USA footballers? 

Increasingly, it looks like the patronising of the USA side is just showing our ignorance. By playing to their strengths, being well drilled and hard working, they ground out a fantastic win against Spain that was clearly well beyond England a year ago and led Brazil 2-0. I can’t understand why anyone would look down on that.

USA is all too often underestimated. They have three CONCACAF wins in the last seven years and before you’re cynical about those achievements ask yourself if England could have done much better in this period regularly playing the likes of Mexico, Costa Rica and Honduras in summer heat.

And then we have the criticism of Americans who ‘support’ English teams such as Manchester United or Chelsea as though this is any more ludicrous than someone from Middlesbrough supporting them. Indeed, in watching them on TV, often at ungodly hours, they are doing no more or less than the vast majority of so-called fans of these sides and as such as merely part of the modern football world. 

The only difference is that as well as following a Premier League club, they will also follow another European club too, especially if they are of European descent, as well as their nearest MLS team, and probably their local amateur club as well. 

What are they supposed to do – ignore European football? If they did, their critics would say they were being insular and were ignorant of the game outside their own shores – a cultural accusation that Europeans love to make about Americans as though we don’t breed insular stupid people in these lands.

Anyone who has spent any amount of time in America will already know that if you meet a football fan, they are almost always dedicated, passionate and well informed about the game. They feast on it all un-blinkered by club loyalties. But still this is not good enough for the snobbish European critics who would love to believe that a typical American football fan is some sort of hayseed in a pair of dungarees, chewing straw and wondering, ‘Why don’t he pick the ball up, bubba.’

Yes, their media articulates statistics in a different way and deploy a different kind of jargon – but that doesn’t make it wrong, just different, as different as how Germans or Italians or Serbians will talk about the game to people from UK. Are you really saying because they don’t talk about football like we do that makes them less serious or passionate about it? Do we really love the way our media talks about our top, top, football anyway? What exactly are we defending here? 

A goalless draw or a shutout – why can’t we just enjoy the language’s adaptability rather than become little Englander, pent up prissy pricks about it and start sniping at them for using different terminology? It’s so conservative and reactionary. 

The English language is an ever evolving organism, which is why you don’t talk about football as people did 100 years ago and why, in a bitter irony, so many English footballers use terminology popularised by American rap and R & B stars.

It’s also worth realising that, unlike us, those who play and follow the game are sporting rebels in American culture. They are non-mainstream and they have to have a strong sense of their own selves and the game to sustain their status in the face of their mainstream media and culture’s huge disinterest which often borders on mockery. Soccer is not your typical jock’s game. They’ve already had to grow some bollocks just to nail their colours to football’s mast. And yet still the boring European sneers come.

Football falls into our cultural lap in the UK, but these people have made a real effort to get into the game, and both they and their admirable national side deserve our respect as equals, not as ignorant new world interlopers. 

Those who already, like me, follow USA as their ‘second’ international side, know why they like them so much, and find it embarrassing that so many on this side of the pond still resort to the old thinking and clichés. 

Go USA!

Saddam Hussein ‘lied about WMDs to protect Iraq from Iran’

(The Telegraph, UK)

Saddam Hussein told the FBI that he misled the world into believing Iraq still possessed weapons of mass destruction because he feared revealing his weakness to Iran, according to declassified interview transcripts.

The late Iraqi dictator also told his interrogators that he regarded Osama bin Laden as a “zealot” and had no contact with the al-Qaeda leader or his organisation.

Despite defeat in the Gulf War at the hands of the American-led coalition, Saddam still regarded Iran, with which Iraq fought a bloody war from 1980-88, as a greater threat than the US, the documents show.

“Hussein believed that Iraq could not appear weak to its enemies, especially Iran,” FBI special agent George Piro wrote on notes of a conversation with Saddam in June 2004.

Mr Piro wrote: “Hussein stated Iraq could have absorbed another United States strike, for he viewed this as less of a threat than exposing themselves to Iran.”

"I am telling you, people...My country is packed with WMDs", explains a poker-faced Hussein.

 

The transcripts, released under a freedom of information request, both undermined the Bush case for war, which was based on the threat of WMD and alleged Iraqi links to al-Qaeda, and underlined the absurd length of Saddam’s desire to convince the world that he held WMD.

In the wake of the March 2003 invasion, no such weapons have ever found and before leaving office in January Mr Bush himself acknowledged that “most of the intelligence turned out to be wrong”.

Saddam, identified as “High Value Detainee Number One,” shared Mr Bush’s hostility towards the “fanatic” Iranian mullahs, according to the records, which were requested by the National Security Archive, a non-governmental research institute.

He also stated that the United States used the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack as a justification to attack Iraq and said the US had “lost sight of the cause of 9/11″.

He asserted that he had never met nor supported Osama bin Laden, though he said “yes” when Mr Piro mentioned two visits to Baghdad by an al-Qaeda ideologue, Abu Hafs al Mauritani, which included requests for “tens of millions of dollars”. It was not clear if that was regarded as confirmation of the visit or acknowledgement of the Americans’ belief they took place.

FBI special agents carried out, in Arabic, 20 formal interviews and at least five “casual conversations” with the former Iraqi leader after his capture in December 2003. He was hanged in 2006.

Saddam revealed that the farm where he was discovered in an underground room was the same one where he hid in 1959 after taking part in a failed assassination attempt on the president.

Michael Owen completes shocking Manchester United move

(Telegraph, UK)

Owen, who finalised his move on Friday after a day of talks with Sir Alex Ferguson at United’s Carrington training ground, admitted he agreed to the move “without a moment’s thought”. The striker will take take a substantial cut to his £110,000-a-week wages at Newcastle, although he will earn a similar figure if clauses related to goals, appearances and success are met.

He said: “I had just begun to talk to other clubs when out of the blue Sir Alex phoned me on Wednesday afternoon and invited me to have breakfast with him the next morning, during which he told me he wanted to sign me. I agreed without a moment’s thought

Shocked Mickey Owen received a call from Sir Alex Ferguson on Wednesday, agreeing on a pay-a-you-play deal.

“This is a fantastic opportunity for me and I intend to seize it with both hands. I am looking forward to being a Manchester United player. I want to thank Sir Alex for the faith he has shown in me and I give him my assurance I will repay him with goals and performances.”

U.S. soccer ‘needs Hispanic talent’ to succeed

(CNN)

LONDON, England – The United States almost provided one of football’s biggest upsets when they were narrowly beaten by Brazil in the final of the Confederations Cup in South Africa.

Goals from Clint Dempsey and captain Landon Donovan had given the U.S. a 2-0 lead at half-time, before Luis Fabiano struck twice after the break and Lucio headed home the winner six minutes before the final whistle to give Brazil the title.

While the presence of the U.S. in the final reflects the significant progress made since the country hosted the World Cup in 1994, it will undoubtedly raise expectation levels for the 2010 World Cup.

Central to this is whether the current crop of players in coach Bob Bradley’s squad possess the credentials to make the next step and become serious challengers to the European and South American elite.

World Soccer magazine columnist and U.S. Soccer expert Paul Gardner felt that while the exploits of the national team were impressive, the country is still some way short of fulfilling their potential on the world stage.

“The way the tournament went it really opened up for the U.S. and certainly the progress made is there for all to see, particularly in the victory over Spain who had been on an good run up until that point,” Gardner told CNN.

 

"So damn close", thinks Watford defender, Jay Demerit.

 

 

“Undoubtedly things have moved on a great deal since the World Cup was staged here in 1994, but if you look at the bigger picture there is perhaps a slight sense of underachievement because of the huge resources available.

“In terms of organization, facilities and sheer participation numbers the U.S. has massive potential which has not quite yet been matched by what has happened at national level.”

Crucially Gardner believes that for the U.S. to shake the tag of nearly men there must be a stronger emphasis placed on tapping into the abundance of talent provided within the country’s Hispanic population.

“The experience that players have gained from playing in Europe has improved the players and Bob Bradley has molded a side which can hold it’s own against some of the bigger nations,” Gardner explained.

“But for the U.S. to become a real force then it must begin to tap into the quality of talent available in the Hispanic community which can be nurtured to take the game to the next level.

“The Major Soccer League has yet to really embrace this idea and I think that needs to change in the first instance to enable the development of players capable of winning matches at the very top.

“MLS side Houston Dynamo is a case in point. Something like 50 percent of their support is Hispanic, 90 percent of their youth talent is Hispanic but have only have a few Hispanic players in the team.

“And that extends to the national team. The composition of the side at the moment is very much the team that Bob Bradley and Bruce Arena built and they — like a number of MLS coaches — have gone for players they can trust and rely on.

“The Hispanic players have the game in their blood and their skill and technical levels need to be embraced rather than maybe having a dependence on players who fit a specific system.”

 

Just like footballers of African origin playing in France and other European leagues, the MLS should start importing talented South Americans.

 

For Gardner, at least, it seems that development of the Hispanic talent must therefore become a keystone policy for the U.S. Soccer Federation to put them into the bracket of serious World Cup contenders in years to come.

But what of their chances at next year’s World Cup in South Africa?

He added: “The U.S. should not get carried way with their performance at the Confederations Cup and the players should not look beyond getting past the group stages in South Africa.

“A good run in Japan and South Korea in 2002 was followed by elimination before the knockout phase in Germany 2006 so they need to be cautious.

“Winning the World Cup will probably be beyond the U.S. next year. Bradley will make them a difficult team to beat, and I don’t think anyone will get an easy game against them so it will be interesting to see how they do.”

Our Brains on Music: The Science

(The New York Times, recommended by The Disputant contributor A.Ray)

TELEVISION REVIEW | ‘NOVA: MUSICAL MINDS’

“Musical Minds,” the season premiere of “Nova” on PBS, is based on the neurologist Oliver Sacks’s most recent book, “Musicophilia,” a collection of case studies of people whose brains have unusual relationships to music, cases in which, as Dr. Sacks puts it, “music gets them going to an extraordinary degree.” A one-hour program can’t approach the depth and texture of Dr. Sacks’s book, but it does get at one question that nags the reader: What do these musical savants sound like? Or put another way: Are they really as amazing as they’re cracked up to be?

British neurologist Oliver Sacks, is now a New Yorker.

 

 

Music isn’t my area, so I’m not going to hazard an answer other than to say that Derek Paravicini, an autistic and blind 29-year-old who is described as an “astonishingly, almost bafflingly brilliant pianist,” and Tony Cicoria, an orthopedic surgeon who began playing classical piano and composing after being struck by lightning, would be awfully impressive at your next party.

“Musical Minds,” which with the season premiere of the newsmagazine “Nova ScienceNow” is inaugurating a Tuesday-night science block for PBS, looks at four cases. In addition to Mr. Paravicini and Mr. Cicoria, a third exceptional performer, Matt Giordano, uses drumming to help control his Tourette’s syndrome.

Anne Barker, however, sits at the opposite extreme: she suffers from amusia, an inability to hear or respond to music. The narrator, the BBC reporter Alan Yentob, mentions that Ms. Barker has the condition despite the fact that her parents own a store specializing in traditional Irish instruments. Viewers are free to draw their own conclusions about cause and effect.

(Those who follow Dr. Sacks’s dispatches in The New Yorker will be disappointed to hear that no mention is made of Clive Wearing, the British musician whose profound amnesia was the subject of a heartbreaking excerpt from “Musicophilia” in that magazine in 2007.)

Dr. Sacks’s trademarks as a writer are evocative storytelling and, just as important, a deep compassion for subjects coping with both the practical difficulties and the alienation caused by brain disorders. When those subjects are packed into 10-minute television profiles, an air of the carnival sideshow can set in, and “Musical Minds” is not immune to this, particularly in its depiction of Mr. Paravicini. His autism has caused speech patterns like those of a particularly loud talk-show host (an impression reinforced by his physical resemblance to the ubiquitous British presenter Graham Norton), and his hands, while striking the keys with impressive speed and precision, have a suspended look, as if attached to a marionette. Unfortunately, those are the impressions a viewer is likely to be left with.

The best moments in “Musical Minds” tend to involve the program’s fifth subject: Dr. Sacks, who not only is interviewed by Mr. Yentob but also enthusiastically submits to having his own brain tested. These scenes are diverting, if not revealing.

In one Dr. Sacks is scanned while listening to his professed favorite, Bach, and then to Beethoven. AColumbia University researcher shows him the scans: many more areas of his brain light up during the Bach, which proves that he indeed prefers the Baroque master to the Classical firebrand. But does it? As the program acknowledges, science still has little idea what those red and green flashes on the M.R.I. screen really mean.

Which, in the meantime, makes Dr. Sacks’s work documenting the strange adaptations of our brains all the more valuable and mysterious. “Musical Minds” may barely scratch the surface, but it’s still full of fascinating information. Like this: Mr. Paravicini and Mr. Giordano each first demonstrated his unusual musical abilities at 2 — one by playing “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina” on the piano, and one by playing “I’m Just a Singer (in a Rock and Roll Band)” on the drums. There’s a dissertation right there.

NOVA: Musical Minds

On most PBS stations on Tuesday night (check local listings).

Produced for PBS by the WGBH Science Unit. Paula S. Apsell, director of the WGBH Science Unit and senior executive producer of Nova; Janet Lee and Alan Yentob, executive producers for the BBC; Louise Lockwood, producer; Ryan Murdock, producer for Nova; narrated and presented by Mr. Yentob.

California government declares fiscal emergency over budget

(Reuters)

SAN FRANCISCO – California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Wednesday declared a fiscal emergency for the government of the most populous U.S. state to force lawmakers into a special session to tackle a $24.3 billion state budget gap.

"We have to pull through!"

 

 

Lawmakers have failed to agree on a spending plan that balances the state’s budget for its new fiscal year, which began early Wednesday morning, and budget talks are at an impasse.

“Though the legislature failed to solve our budget problem yesterday, rest assured that solving the entire deficit remains my first and only priority, and I will not rest until we get it done. I will not be a part of pushing this crisis down the road — the road stops here,” Schwarzenegger said in a statement.

16 Thoughts On Ronaldo’s Madrid Move

(Football365)

* Now the official place of residence for the three best players in the world, Spain is where it’s at. 
From that recognition comes the question of whether the Premier League – which has seen its claim to be regarded as the world’s best suffer a torrid dismantling at the hands at La Liga over the last six weeks – will ever be able to comprehensively trump Spain while Brazil and Argentina continue to produce the bulk of the planet’s greatest footballers. 

Although the Prem is the league of choice in the Far East, America and Africa, all eyes remain on Spain in South America. It’s a sobering thought that Ronaldo is unique as the only player of world-beater repute who has played in the Prem since the league’s foundation almost twenty years ago. Rivaldo, Ronaldinho and the other Ronaldo all spurned England for Spain, and neither Kaka nor Lionel Messi have shown any inclination to buck the tradition. 

The Prem’s best hope of restoring its superiority is if the world’s next superstar is born in downtown Shanghai or Seoul.

* For all his brilliance, distrust will be Ronaldo’s ultimate legacy to the English game.
As The Sunday Times complained of him, ‘He is a cheat who has brought to the British game a new and eclectic level of cheating, a cheat who thinks that cheating has its own beauty’. And after hearing Ronaldo describe his move to Madrid as “a dream”, which is presumably the very same “dream” that he declared “dead” in May, those wise souls who previously promised never to believe a word anyone utters about football ever again will be justified in renewing their vow. 

The world’s most expensive football transfer has made talk the cheapest commodity of all.

 

"I'm on top of the world", thinks Ronaldo.

* ‘Has the world gone mad?’ asked the frontpage of The Times the day after Ronaldo’s world-record transfer fee was announced. The good news is that Ronaldo’s transfer is undisputable proof that it has not, or at least that half of the planet has retained sanity. It’s almost reassuring to learn that even Manchester United don’t turn down £80m. 
The sale of the world’s best footballer is the ultimate proof that every footballer still has his price and none is bigger than any club. Player power still has limits.

* The £17m Antonio Valencia isn’t a quarter of the player that the £80m Ronaldo is. He’s more like eight or nine-tenths of the player he will replace. The discrepancy in their transfer fees is a product of football being a game of fine margins and low scoring. The difference provided by difference-makers is the most valuable commodity and comes available only for the most expensive premiums. 

* Not since David Beckham’s own move to Real Madrid has a football transfer taken over the news bulletins the way that Ronaldo’s did. Another boundary is knocked down: a Portuguese import returning to the Iberian Peninsula is England’s biggest talking point. Our game has become their game.

* The risk that Madrid have taken, and something that may have been a factor in United’s decision to sell, is that not one of the three Rs – the aforementioned Rivaldo, Ronaldo and Ronaldinho – were able to maintain their supremacy for more than a couple of years. Perhaps it’s a symptom of the quickening speed, intensity and physicality of modern-day football that the period of peak the world’s best enjoys seems shorter than ever before. It stands to reason: we’re often told that the modern-day footballer is an athlete and how many athletes prolong their peak beyond the span of two Olympic Games?
At 24, Ronaldo is young enough to have his best days ahead of him. But it’s just as possible that his best days are already behind him: he wasn’t as good last season as he was in the previous campaign and all those kicks are gonna take a toll one day – as might his straight-legged free-kick technique.

 

Ronaldo doesn't want to follow Ronaldinho's example.

* With Liverpool struggling to persuade their two first-choice central midfielders not to leave for Real Madrid or Barcelona and Manchester United suddenly shorn of talent worth in excess of £100m, standing still is the new improving.
Their predicament also speaks of a larger pattern: the Prem losing out to Spain and the two biggest clubs in those two countries hogging the limelight. 2009/10 will surely be a tale of Manchester United v Liverpool over here and Barcelona v Real Madrid over there. And say it quietly, but it’s high time that those two combinations met in the Champions League too.

* The fixture list has brought relief and time for United. Their first three games are against Burnley, Birmingham and Wigan; it couldn’t be more inviting. It means that they should be able to give themselves some breathing space at the start of the season and have plenty points in the bag at the close of the transfer window. 

* The reason that Manchester United remain favourites to win the Prem for a fourth consecutive season is that no top-flight side has conceded fewer goals than the three-times champions since 2006. In that sphere of influence, Ronaldo mattered not a jot; his relationship to defending is akin to Batman’s with the twelve dwarves. 

* Yet Manchester United fans should not lean on that statistic for support with much vigour because it is precarious: In total since the start of 2006-07, United conceded 73 goals, Chelsea 74 and Liverpool 82. 
Instead, the larger, title-winning divide is to be found in the Goals For tally with United on 231, Chelsea on 197 and 201 for Liverpool. And as the scorer of 66 goals since August 2006, no player contributed more to that overwhelming and critical level of superiority than Ronaldo. Both home and abroad, where he scored in every round of the Champions League, Ronaldo was United’s difference-maker. 

* Yet the most illuminating statistic when trying to fathom the significance of United’s loss is that the comparison between United’s form in the games in which Ronaldo played and those he did not: 2.38 with him and 2.0 without. 
That might not sound substantial, but over the course of a season it is the difference between a title-winning 90 and a tally of 76 that would have seen United finish third last season. 

In other, non-statistical words, his loss of influence isn’t quite immeasurable but it comes close. Ronaldo was the difference between United merely being good and almost legendary. For the 2009/10 Premier League campaign, they are still favourites but only just – and even that status is dependent on a degree of faith in Ferguson finding an adequate solution to a massive problem. 

* Manchester United have, of course, faced summer difficulties before but never when their manager has been past the statuary age of retirement. Does Fergie still have the energy – he’ll always have the will until the day he dies – to mould another team?
The old boy will put a brave face on matters but privately he must be aghast. The European champions of 2008 should have been his last team, young enough to span and dominate half a decade. Instead, at the age of 67, he has to rearrange his attack with the impossible task of replacing the world’s best player. 

 

Sir Alex squeezing Ronaldo's arm. He didn't want him to leave.

* Ferguson’s step will surely be to internally promote Wayne Rooney as a centre-forward after sacrificing him as a winger last year in order to provide Ronaldo with centre stage. In which case, 2009/10 must be the defining season in Rooney’s career – and he knows it. “For me personally, next season could be the season that transforms me from someone who could be a great player into someone who is a great player,” the soon-to-be-centre-forward declared in interview last week.
If he is given penalty-taking duties, he’s definitely worth a punt on being next year’s top scorer.

* Some three weeks after the transfer was formally announced by Manchester United the question remains unanswered as to when the deal was agreed. The evidence collected so far is contradictory. 
Normal business practice, including football transfers, tends to involves haggling and negotiation. But according to reports, Madrid’s bid of £80m was their first (and final) offer. That would seemingly indicate that the fee was sorted in advance. 

But if it is the case that the deal was agreed in advance – some reports claim the deal was done as long ago as last summer – then two puzzles emerge. First: how did Ronaldo, the supposed ‘supreme egoist’, manage to resist the temptation of nudge-nudge revelations? For a player whose arrogance is his least edifying characteristic, it was remarkably resilient of Ronaldo to stay silent. Perhaps he realised that his departure wouldn’t spark the sort of adulation and protest from the stands that flattered Carlos Tevez. However, there can’t be anything as flattering to the ego as being asked, “Do you think Manchester United can cope without you next season, Cristiano?” Only the absolute elite are ever offered such an opportunity for smugness.

And the second curiosity has to be Sir Alex’s decision to centralise Ronaldo at the season’s end, making him the first among equals and in the process demoting Dimi Berbatov and Carlos Tevez as well as marginalising Wayne Rooney. Although there were valid footballing reasons for the deployment of Ronaldo as a central striker, there were, in hindsight, compelling political reasons against the switch, not least the effect it had on Tevez and must have had on Berbatov. Moreover, by making Ronaldo United’s main man, their loss becomes all the greater.

How to explain it? Our guess is that, because Real Madrid don’t do normal business practice, they launched an £80m bid without prior notification and, mindful of the player’s wish to go, United and Ferguson then made the calculation that it was an offer too good to refuse. That scenario would at least explain Ronaldo’s modesty, the peculiarity of Ferguson’s centralisation and United’s belated urgency in wooing Carlos Tevez with the offer of a £110,000-a-week salary on a five-year deal smacked of desperation and urgency born of Ronaldo’s unexpected exit. 

* There’s an optimistic school of thought tutoring that Manchester United may ultimately be stronger for cashing in. Replace Ronaldo with £80m of prudently-spent money on two or three players and, hey presto ladies and gentlemen, we have ourselves an improvement. The problem with that theory is twofold: 

1) There is no guarantee that the money United spend will provide value, as some of United’s most very recent signings – specifically Owen Hargreaves, Nani, Anderson and Dimi Berbatov – have unfortunately demonstrated. 

2) The weighting of squad power may but the best team in the league still trumps the best squad in the league. Why? Because any one team can only field eleven players at any one time and, no matter who United sign, Ronaldo’s replacement will be inferior to the Real thing.

* That said, United can break even and even improve if the Ronaldo money is spent on improving different parts of the team – up front and in the centre of their midfield. Yet even then it is hard to see how they will keep pace with the attacking dimensions presented by continental elite. Consider it: Madrid will, most probably, start the season with Kaka, Ronaldo and possibly David Villa in attack. Barcelona should have Messi, Thierry Henry and Samuel Eto’o or Franck Ribery. 
Even if, as expected, United sign Karim Benzema, few outside Old Trafford will regard his partnership with Wayne Rooney as the equal of Steven Gerrard and Fernando Torres at Liverpool, let alone worthy of comparison with the best of Spain.