After having recently spent most a blog post cracking jokes at the (considerable) expense of vulgar nouveau riche football clubs, I thought I should even things out a bit by admitting something: tradition, as nice as it is to have, is no better at buying success than good, hard cash. A team that has been demonstrating this over and over again in the last couple of weeks is the Hamburger Sportverein, or HSV. This Hamburg team, with their long and great history, lost by a very poor 0:3 to VfB Stuttgart on the weekend; the week before, they only just limped to a disappointing 0:0 draw against Hannover Sportverein 1896, despite the fact that they were playing at home and that Hannover are supposed to be the smaller and less important HSV from the North German plain.

With a series of company bosses held hostage in their offices in France recently, it would be easy for the casual observer to come to the conclusion that the relationship between the French worker and boss had become somewhat strained.

Monsieur Ribéry, however, provides a refreshing antidote in the current calamitous economic climate. Not only is he a hard worker who happens to be excellent at his job – the little Frenchman even tries his very best to save his bosses’ jobs.

Following his two goals for France to secure two 1-0 World Cup Qualifier wins and his coach’s job, Franck Ribéry set about providing some job security for his beleaguered club coach Jürgen Klinsmann.