Tributes to journalist who changed sports reporting

MEDIA and football luminaries have been lamenting the loss of one of the most significant sports journalists of his generation, former Mail on Sunday reporter Simon Greenberg, who died last week at the age of 52 after a short illness.

Roma manager Jose Mourinho paid a fitting tribute to the man who paved the way for modern sports news reporting with a string of exclusives and awardwinning stories at this newspaper in the nineties.

Mourinho, who became close to Greenberg during his time as communications director at Chelsea, said: ‘Simon was my shadow, my friend and a man of trust during my first spell at Chelsea. We laughed together, we celebrated together and we also disagreed on occasion. But as good as he was, and as hard as he tried, he couldn’t convince me to love cricket. I will miss him. Rest in peace, my friend.’

Prior to his role for Chelsea, it was at The Mail on Sunday where Greenberg came to prominence, working on arguably the biggest sports story of the decade, when, amid rumours concerning bungs in football, he was able to report that then Arsenal manager George Graham was being investigated for a £285,000 gift from an agent.

‘When you think of Simon and everything he did, it’s impossible not to recall the George Graham bung story,’ said Roger Kelly, who was his Sports Editor at The Mail on Sunday. ‘It had massive ramifications at the time, but was also ground-breaking in the way it opened up a whole new world of investigative stories in sport. Simon helped to establish a new way of doing things. I’m sure he’d like to be remembered for that.’