Since showing remorse is such a constipated process for Craig Bellamy, it may be forgivable to wonder if there is a case for employing a golf club as an elongated suppository. The treatment might not seem entirely inappropriate for a footballer who is convincingly alleged to have decided a fairway iron was a legitimate tool of chastisement when a teammate declined to share his enthusiasm for karaoke during a trip to the Algarve that was meant to be a bonding exercise for the Liverpool squad.

It was that crazy scene of 10 days ago that made events in Barcelona on Wednesday night scarcely believable. Bellamy not only put himself on the scoresheet as the author (albeit in collaboration with the Barça goalkeeper) of a vital equaliser but then skilfully set up a second and decisive goal for John Arne Riise, the target of the Welshman’s drink-fuelled rage in Portugal, as a memorable Champions League defeat was inflicted on last year’s winners of the tournament.

However, the evening’s most jolting lurch into the unreal came when Bellamy celebrated his goal with a mimed golf swing and proceeded in after-match interviews to reveal that, far from feeling the slightest twinge of contrition over his behaviour at the training get-together, he was ready to cast himself as somebody whose lively antics had lifted the spirits and burnished the zeal of those around him.

Even modern football in this country would struggle to furnish a more depressing example of offensive, egocentric crassness, and if it did, Bellamy would have a good chance of being the source. He is a virtuoso of insensitivity and tastelessness and a maestro of troublemaking, with a long record of squalid escapades encompassing football clubs and nightclubs, the dressing room and the courtroom. Like many another boorish sportsman, he survives as a high-earning performer because he has a coveted talent.

And with him the ability up for hire is totally genuine. At his sharpest, he is an attacker capable of undermining the best defences, backing the hurtful weapon of exceptional pace by exploiting quick, adroit foot movement and (in spite of his unimposing stature) competitive physicality to create a sense of threatening bustle that often seriously unsettles the men charged with subduing him.

So, as a manager who could never be mistaken for anything other than a pragmatist, Rafael Benitez was always odds-on to persuade himself that fining the serial offender a reported £80,000 was punishment enough and that banishing him to the bench or beyond would damage Liverpool’s cause more than it would the guilty party. The player’s temperament was bound to be a major consideration. We have been told that Bellamy’s past misdemeanours have frequently left him devastated by regret but the overt evidence of that is less than overwhelming and it certainly wasn’t swollen by the smug chirpiness with which he dismissed the Algarve rumpus in the wake of his productive outing in Catalonia.

Having made it clear that the media deserved more blame than he did, he breezily accentuated the positive: “It’s a quiet group and, laugh-wise, this was probably the best week we’ve had together . . . my best week in football.” Hide-wise, he could make that of a rhinoceros look like a negligee. Benitez was safe in assuming there would be no residual sludge of embarrassment, let alone shame, to inhibit Bellamy’s endeavours at the Nou Camp. Psychological complexity was never likely to stop him from thriving amid the disorganisation and comprehensive inadequacy of opponents who confirmed the recent testimony of their form in La Liga that they have become unrecog-nisable, individually and as a unit, as the men who dominated Europe last season. There is justification for praising Benitez’s tactical shrewdness and Liverpool’s habit of raising their game in the Champions League, and specifically for applauding Momo Sissoko’s relentlessly effective contesting of possession in midfield, but the key to this marvellous result was the failure of Barcelona to turn up as anything conspicuously more than a reputation.

By leaving his reputation behind, at least for a night, Bellamy ensured that many who had been his fiercest critics were suddenly festooning him with tributes. That was fine until the eulogising stretched all the way to assertions that his achievements on the park amounted to redemption. How does redemption come into it? Only the foolish demand that leading sports figures should be paragons of morality. But, if antisocial conduct shouldn’t prevent us from identifying remarkable prowess in the arena, it is equally obvious that admiration for a thrilling performance cannot be made the excuse for blanket acceptance of nastiness. Scoring a goal and laying the foundation of another may have softened attitudes to Bellamy’s club-brandish-ing hooliganism of several days earlier but it hardly expunged the episode from an already formidable list of offences, or reduced the likelihood that there will be disturbing additions in the future. Pragmatic priorities alone will encourage Benitez to ponder the advisability of continuing to accommodate such a personification of turbulence. Everybody knows that footballers often dislike teammates, may indeed hate them. Assembling a group of 11 or more driven individuals constantly invites that possibility. But there must be some level of trust, even if it is only the belief that personal agendas will cohere into a powerful alliance on the field, that self-interest will promote coordinated commitment.

If team spirit is, as some would have us believe, a consistently overrated phenomenon, almost a myth, how did Jock Stein make Celtic the first British club to win the European Cup? Are we to imagine that in 1967 the Continent’s best players had all been born within a few miles of Glasgow? Stein’s Celtic had plenty of class but a profound togetherness was their biggest asset.

We can be sure that Benitez values team spirit and that could mean he worries about how much he can trust Bellamy, who is such a loose cannon that nobody can ever predict in which direction he will be firing. It would be a great satisfaction to see an outstanding talent properly fulfilled. But being optimistic isn’t easy.

Women not equal to task

Equal pay for men and women at Wimbledon has long been seen as historically and politically inevitable and the All England Club have shown common sense in deciding to establish parity now and so avoid miring the great summer championships in recurring and pointless controversy.

When the tennis world focuses on SW19 each year there is often as much excitement stirred by the female stars as by the leading men, although that can never be true for me in the era of Roger Federer, whose sublime talent and grace make him the only current champion in sport whose mastery and magnetism are comparable to those of Tiger Woods.

Still, women are so integral to the appeal of Wimbledon that erasing the differential in financial rewards should raise nobody's hackles, even if their male counterparts have, in relative terms, far more hazardous routes to the big money. Bridging the gap won’t mean a great deal practically as far as the top prizes are concerned. Triumph in the women's singles of 2006 brought Amelie Mauresmo £625,000, just £30,000 less than Federer picked up along with his fourth consecutive title.

Of course, the feminist lobby led by such influential figures as Billie Jean King and Martina Navratilova insist that a sacred principle is at stake. It’s always a little disconcerting to find a social justice argument coming from professionals of either gender in sport, since their views on economic matters tend to be to the right of Margaret Thatcher's.

But the usual free-market tenets wouldn't be too helpful in the light of a comment once made by the late Mark McCormack, founder of IMG and the most significant pioneer of sports marketing. “Women tennis players should get down in thanks and pray each day to whomever they believe in that they play the Grand Slams at the same time as the men,” he said. “To sell women's tennis on its own has nowhere near the same attraction.”

He isn’t contradicted by 2006 statistics indicating that the Grand Slams provided 49.2% of total prize money on the WTA circuit.