The best of the many pictures of the scrap between Roberto Mancini and Mario Balotelli showed the Manchester City manager curled into a kind of standing foetal position, clutching his head with his hands. The howl of rage was easy to imagine.

More than a year after the death of Steve Jobs, Walter Isaacson’s authorised biography of the Apple founder remains a fixture on the bestseller lists.

Lionel Messi has gone home to Argentina to fry in the Christmas sunshine with his partner Antonella, infant son Thiago and all the other Messis.

I have never seen a benched player support his team as passionately as Iker Casillas cheered on Real Madrid against Malaga on Saturday night.

Many readers will guess that picking Lance Armstrong as Sportsman of the Year must be a juvenile wind-up. Sports Monster of the Century more like.

Spurs versus Swansea meant Andre Villas-Boas against Michael Laudrup, the two Premier League managers separated by the widest gap in terms of personal footballing pedigree.

One reason why Alex Ferguson is the most successful manager in the history of the English league is that he seldom makes the same mistake twice.

Saturday’s football was a reminder of how unfair it is that top goalkeepers earn less money than top players in other positions and are almost never considered for individual awards, even though they contribute more to the drama of football than any other type of player.

“And Methuselah lived a hundred eighty and seven years, and begot Lamech. And Methuselah lived after he begot Lamech seven hundred eighty and two years, and begot sons and daughters. And all the days of Methuselah were nine hundred sixty and nine years; and he died.”

It didn’t take long for people to start picking holes in Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s miracle goal.