Edwin van der Sar will play his final game as a goalkeeper on Saturday at Wembley Stadium. The 40-year-old Dutchman is not short of admirers, including one who could ruin his night.
"For me, he is maybe one of, if not the best goalkeepers in the world," said Barcelona's Dutch winger Ibrahim Afellay.
"He is a great person, too. I played with him in the European Championships in 2008 and he always spoke a lot with the younger players. When a guy like Edwin van der Sar is speaking to you, you listen. I found that he was not only a fantastic player but also a person. He used to say do your best, every day try and give 200 per cent, and I have followed that advice."
Afellay, the former PSV Eindhoven star who joined Barca for just €3 million (Dh15.5m) in November 2010, is expected to be on the bench at Wembley. Should he get on to the field he will forget his friendship with Manchester United's goalkeeper.
"I will try and upset his final game," said Afellay, 25. "When you play football you are no longer friends with anyone for 90 minutes. When you play you try to do everything you have to do to win.
"It will be a great final because there are two teams that want to play football. They play a very good game."
Barca remain favourites but when it was pointed out that one team has Lionel Messi, Afellay hit back. "That is true," he said, "but only one team has Wayne Rooney."
And only one has Van der Sar, at least for one final match.
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TO A LAND UNKNOWN
Director: Mahdi Fleifel
Starring: Mahmoud Bakri, Aram Sabbah, Mohammad Alsurafa
Rating: 4.5/5
F1 The Movie
Starring: Brad Pitt, Damson Idris, Kerry Condon, Javier Bardem
Director: Joseph Kosinski
Rating: 4/5
Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
