Barcelona remain the best paid team in global sport measured by average first-team wages, with Real Madrid in second place. However, Premier League arrivistes Manchester City continue to close the gap on the Spanish pair according to the latest Sportingintelligence Global Sports Salaries Survey.

Details of the top 278 earners can be found here, but the most striking aspect of the survey is that the best paid sportsmen (on average) can now be found in the major football leagues of Europe.

When the survey was first published in 2010, baseball’s New York Yankees were No 1, and the top 10 included seven American sports teams, six of them from the NBA. A lot has changed in just 2 years, nowhere more so than at Manchester City, where at their current rate of progress (26 per cent salary increase on 2011), the Sheikh Mansour-fuelled spending spree will soon transform the club into the best paid sporting institution in the world.

The NBA remains the best-paid league overall per man, with average annual salaries of £2.65m a year, or £50,883 per player per week on average. Interestingly, the gap between the best and worst paid is tiny. The LA Lakers are the highest paying team in the NBA and the Indian Pacers the lowest, and the difference between the two is a ratio of 1.86 to 1. For all their free market instincts, Americans do, by and large, prefer the sporting arena to be largely egalitarian.

In contrast, and for those of you who’ve ever wondered why Spanish football is always a two-horse race, the ratio between the best paid and worst paid clubs in Spain is an astonishing 22.81 to 1.

Here’s the TOP 10

Rank (last year) – Team – League – Ave player pay, £ per year (week)

1 (1) Barcelona – La Liga £5,260,313 (£101,160)
2 (2) Real Madrid – La Liga £4,724,662 (£90,859)
3 (10) Manchester City – EPL £4,486,580 (£86,280)
4 (6) Chelsea – EPL £4,118,227 (£79,197)
5 (4) LA Lakers – NBA £3,804,441 (£73,162)
6 (3) New York Yankees – MLB £3,748,831 (£72,093)
7 (14) Milan – Serie A £3,699,411 (£71,143)
8 (12) Bayern Munich – Bundesliga £3,579,961 (£68,845)
9 (13) Philadelphia Phillies – MLB £3,525,612 (£67,800)
10 (7) Internazionale – Serie A £3,454,681 (£66,436)

Other English clubs in the top 20 included ManUnited [11th, up from 16th last year], Arsenal [16th from 22nd] and Liverpool in 18th.

With the kick-off to Euro 2012 just 38 days away, there’s a storm brewing in one of the co-hosts, Ukraine.

Today’s Guardian reports that a diplomatic boycott of the event is being mooted by many European leaders.

On Sunday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that she and her cabinet would not attend any games played in Ukraine, which is co-hosting the tournament with Poland, unless the human rights situation under President Viktor Yanukovych improved.

Since then, more politicians have expressed their reluctance to attend unless Ukraine freed the opposition leader, Yulia Tymoshenko.

Tymoshenko, the former prime minister, was jailed for seven years in October after what her supporters claim was a politically motivated show trial.

Even Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s former prime minister, called the campaign to free Tymoshenko “a political battle”.

In a letter published on Sunday in the Messaggero, Berlusconi wrote : “I remain convinced that Kiev authorities have a lot to gain if Ukraine presents itself as host of a large sports event with a decisive step forward in the field of human rights.”

And when Berlusconi starts complaining about the state of human rights in a country, then you know the situation must be grim.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that in the absence of all these European dignitaries, the number of available hotel rooms in Ukraine has literally doubled overnight.

Authorities treat as terrorism series of explosions injuring at least 29 in city of Dnipropetrovsk just weeks before football finals

At least 29 people were injured on Friday in a series of explosions that shook the Ukrainian city of Dnipropetrovsk just weeks before the country is due to co-host the Euro 2012 football championship.

The blasts sent panic through a country unused to the scourge of terrorism. They also raised concerns about the security of the thousands of football fans due to flood the country when the month-long tournament kicks off on 8 June.

The blasts went off in quick succession around noon in Dnipropetrovsk, an industrial city in eastern Ukraine. A first explosion shook a tram stop, smashing windows and scattering the ground with debris. Video uploaded to YouTube by witnesses showed people with bloodied limbs. No one died in the attacks.

Twenty minutes later, there was a second explosion in front of a cinema, followed by a blast near the railway station. A fourth blast targeted the same tram stop as the first.

Witnesses said it appeared that explosive devices had been placed in bins at the blast sites. Some reports said there were as many as 11 explosions. Nine children were among the injured.

England have fallen one place to seventh in the latest world rankings announced by Fifa. The national side, who have not played since the previous rankings were announced last month, return to the place they occupied immediately after the 2010 World Cup and more recently in October last year as a result of Portugal’s rise of two spots to fifth in the table, which is calculated on the basis of results over the previous four years.

England are now the fifth-highest-ranked European nation, but they trail the leaders Spain by a massive 310 points. The world champions have a lead of 97 over second-placed Germany, with Holland, winners at Wembley in February, dropping back two spots to fourth.

The Copa América winners Uruguay (third) are the only non-European team in the top five, with Brazil in sixth.

Of the other Home Nations, both Wales (41st) and Scotland (48th) have risen. However, the fall of Northern Ireland continues, down seven to 100th spot, level with Antigua. The Republic of Ireland have joined Switzerland in joint 18th spot.

In a month in which only 24 international matches were played worldwide, North Korea were the biggest risers, up 24 to 86th, while Georgia dropped 21 places to 95th.

The rankings take account of matches played over the past four years with the greatest weight given to matches in the previous 12 months, and most of this month’s changes were due to teams discarding points relating to matches in March 2008 and depreciation of points from games in subsequent Marches. England, who lost to France in March 2008, have actually risen 11 points while dropping a place. Spain remain No1 but with 119 fewer points than they had last month.

Polish police are yet to update a proposed database of hooligans barred from attending Euro 2012.

“There’s no functioning list in Poland of individuals hit by stadium bans abroad, because the police have been too slow in setting it up,” Jacek Jezierski, head of Poland’s National Audit Chamber was quoted by AFP.

“To date, there haven’t been any agreements with foreign partners and there aren’t any legal norms for this.

“This could hamper police efforts to ensure security at Euro 2012, both inside the stadiums and out.”

Well, it’s certainly not going to help.

UEFA regulations prohibit any fan punished with a stadium ban from entering tournament stadiums throughout the month-long finals in Poland and the Ukraine.