FCBARCELONA.CAT

06.02.2009 19:15

Cannavò praises Barça’s football

Marc Parramón

Candido Cannavò and Roberto Saviano have received this year’s Vázquez Montalbán Award. Cannavò, winner in the Sports Journalism category, thinks that “Barça’s playing the most spectacular football in the world”.

In the midst of extensive security due to the threats received by writer, and, journalist Roberto Saviano and with a heavy media presence, the V Manuel Vázquez Montalbán International Journalism Awards have been presented in the Auditorium at La Pedrera in Barcelona.

Cannavò and ‘La Gazetta dello Sport'

The event was chaired by Catalan President José Montilla and was attended by Joan Laporta and Anna Sallés, Vázquez Montalbán’s widow. The Sports Journalism prize, from the FC Barcelona Foundation and Catalan Journalists’ Association, went to much-respected 78-year-old Italian journalist Candido Cannavò who edited sports paper ‘La Gazetta dello Sport' for almost twenty years.

On picking up his award Cannavò said that “sport is world heritage and it is important that it does charity work like Barça”. As mentioned above, Cannavò also used this opportunity to praise FC Barcelona for their spectacular football this year.

Committed journalist

The jury for the awards, which included Joaquim Maria Puyal, Jordi Basté and Mònica Terribas, said in their citation that Cannavò deserved the prize: “he is a sports journalist who is fully aware of the problems of society and has published a number of books and articles setting out the situation in Italian prisons and about the disabled and the day-to-day problems of the homeless”.