Messi, Suarez and Neymar are so good they're boring; Snookie needs O'Sullivan return; DeGale retains title

Ten things we learnt this weekend

Luis Suarez celebrates opening the scoring (Getty Images)

1) Of all the Barcelona forward lines from the past decade, Messi, Suarez and Neymar may just be the best. That was demonstrated amply yet again on Saturday evening, as Neymar scored twice to go with Messi and Suarez goals in a 4-0 dismantling of Real Sociedad. The trio are beautiful to watch. But art requires difficulty to make it worthwhile. So far ahead of the rest of La Liga are Barcelona at the moment that the enormous success of their front three feels decadent and, dare I say, a little boring.

2) The first day-night Test match has, on attendance figures alone, been a roaring success – a crowd of 44,000 turned up to the first day at the Adelaide Oval. And the cricket has been fascinating, too – just look at Brendon McCullum’s growing frustration on Saturday as he realised Australia’s lower-order fight was limiting his chances of batting in daylight. There is a caveat, though. Will the crowds remain strong once the novelty factor wears off? Test cricket in front of an empty stadium is depressing. In a dark, empty stadium, it could become eerily stultifying.

3) Paula Radcliffe has been cleared by the IAAF of doping. That, in and of itself, is a fairly simple sentence. If only it were so simple. For one, what is the IAAF – an organisation under investigation by WADA, the world anti-doping agency, for alleged doping cover-ups, doing exonerating an athlete or ex-athlete. That is WADA’s business. For another, Radcliffe, still the fastest women’s marathoner of all time, is a member of the IAAF athletes committee. In other words, she remains deeply entwined within the organisation. Clearing her name should have been left to an independent body.

4) An early season of polarisation in the NBA, where the Golden State Warriors, the reigning champions, are 17-0 and the Philadelphia 76ers, with a defeat to the Houston Rockets on Friday night, are 0-17. It’s worse than that, really – going back to last season they have lost 27 games in a row. But here’s the funny thing. The Warriors are all flashy fun to watch, quick ball movement and silky skills. But the 76ers are the really interesting story. How does a group of men stick together when confronted with the reality that they are epic losers? Give me that any day over perfection.

5) If a $600 million dollar lawsuit won’t teach you, what will? Case Keenum, the St Louis Rams quarterback, was mystifyingly allowed to remain in the game against theBaltimore Ravens last Sunday despite being ‘knocked loopy’ – his head hitting the hard artificial turf of the Edward Jones Dome following a sack. To the surprise of no one, Keenum is unlikely to play this weekend – he remains in stasis, in ‘concussion protocol’. But after so many years of test cases and legal wrangles, the NFL refuses to learn from its concussion crisis.

6) Stuart Bingham progressed to the third round of the UK Championship in York on Saturday with a near-immaculate clearance of 143, and the British public went… mild. Bingham, remember, is the world champion, a thoroughly nice man of substance and no little style, too, at the baize. But he’s not Ronnie O’Sullivan, who is absent of his own volition from the Barbican Centre. Watching the modest Bingham is excellent fodder for aficionados, but – and this is not his fault – he is not the man to take snooker to a casual audience.

7) Congratulations to James DeGale who retained his IBF super middleweight title with a points victory over tough Canadian Lucian Bute. But the surprise of the evening was found nestling on the undercard, where Amir Imam, the highly touted welterweight prospect. Put down Adrian Granados in the first round only to be harried into submission and an eighth-round TKO. Imam had only taken the fight as a warm-up for a world title shot, a ‘keep busy’ contest. Now he faces a slide down the rankings. Such are the vagaries of the fight game. The defeat could destroy Imam, or serve, as George Groves did to DeGale, to make him stronger.

8) Amid conjecture as to whether Sam Burgess’ move to the South Sydney Rabbitohs will go through, there is a more important, less publicised human issue at stake in New South Wales. On Friday, Dylan Walker and Aaron Gray, two of the club’s players, left hospital after spending two days in intensive care, having overdosed on painkillers together. Both suffered injuries in pre-season. The NRL, Australia’s rugby league governing body, must study the case of the NHL closely – where stars are prescribed vast amounts of prescription drugs to numb the pain of injury. You cannot treat a flesh and blood human as a machine.

9) Two Russian riders – Andrey Lukonin and Ivan Lutsenko – have been given one-year bans by that country’s anti-doping agency over unspecified drugs-testing violations. Not so unusual, but worrying, because the duo ride for Itera-Katusha, the feeder team to Katusha, Russia’s standard-bearers in professional cycling. As with junior and amateur Welsh rugby players, it seems as if the most rampant levels of doping are to be found not at the elite level, but further down the scale. “Take it to make it,” would be the mantra. But if you lose your morals that early, what chance finding them again as a professional?

10) Dean Saunders will be remembered as a fine player. But as a manager, not so much. Saunders’ legacy was sullied again on Saturday when he sacked by Chesterfield, havng lost 11 of his 20 games in charge of the League One club. Last season, he proved unable to rescue Crawley Town from relegation to League Two. Two questions: why is it that lower-league chairmen keep handing him chances to fail? And why do certain talented ex-players find the managerial game so monstrously difficult to succeed in?