Martin Volkmar: Expect the unexpected from Niersbach
From journalist to the most important official in German football: Wolfgang Niersbach has never planned his upward career path and would have liked to save the job in the FIFA Executive Committee.
Columnists
Andrew Warshaw: Blatter escapes bruised but not battered from lion’s den
On the surface, sitting in the front row and surrounded by many of those who want him out, Sepp Blatter showed little emotion. On the inside, as the way he has ruled Fifa for 17 years was picked apart by the three candidates bidding for his job, he may well have been seething.
Matt Scott: Why FIFA saw fit this time to give ground to the clubs
“What’s yours is mine and what’s mine is my own.” Jonathan Swift, Polite Conversation
By making assets of men, football has always had a unique relationship with property. In no other walk of life can the right to employ someone be a tradable commodity worth tens of millions of pounds, dollars or euros.
Martin Volkmar: Only Dortmund has disappointed
The Bundesliga has experienced a hard landing in reality over the past week. After the march of the German quartet into the knockout stages of the Champions League, only FC Bayern reached the last eight, while Schalke, Leverkusen and Dortmund have crashed out early.
Lee Wellings: Keepers have lost their value
How many goalkeepers are in the top 100 football transfers of all time?
Has their importance in football become strangely underrated? Has the lack of glamour in the position compared to the twinkletoes of outfield players blinded us, and indeed the transfer market, to the real value of a goalkeeper to a football team?
Matt Scott: QPR’s past failure to cut costs would make life after relegation a real battle
“Economy is half the battle of life; it is not so hard to earn money as to spend it well.” Charles Spurgeon
Charles Spurgeon was the 19th Century preacher whose sermons taught millions of Victorian Londoners how to apply Christian virtues to life in an often-Hogarthian city. His mark was far from permanent: Spurgeon’s famous fondness for self-restraint has hardly left behind a city steeped in self-denial. He would no doubt be dismayed by a nation that has responded to the financial crisis by gorging itself on debt.
Andrew Warshaw: Crash and burn (theatrically), the new English way
He couldn’t resist. He just couldn’t resist. Just when it seemed Jose Mourinho had answered his critics by showing he could lose with good grace – we weren’t good enough, the better team won, congratulations to them etc etc – so, as the television analysts pointed out, he went and spoiled it all.
David Owen: Financial firepower should soon put Premier League clubs back on top of Europe
Chelsea’s dramatic Champions League elimination at the hands of Paris Saint-Germain on Wednesday night makes it likely that next week will bring down the curtain on the participation of Premier League clubs in this season’s flagship European club competition, before even the quarter-final stage. Survival in the other big continent-wide tournament, the Europa League, may last only a further 24 hours if Everton cannot get the better of Ukraine’s Dynamo Kiev over two legs.
Lee Wellings: Champions League – In it to win it?
The Champions League. The pinnacle of European and indeed world football. Oh the glory. That music. Popular in all parts of the globe. And it’s all about winning isn’t it? Isn’t it?
Matt Scott: Leo Messi and his successors can ensure Adidas’s star will rise again
“To be a well-favoured man is the gift of fortune.” William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing.
What sets the superstars of today apart from their forebears of football’s past? Is it their talent? Their drive and determination, perhaps? Or is it something more modern? I for one cannot believe that Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo are any more driven than were Pelé or Diego Maradona. Nor indeed that the latter pair’s talent would not transcend the generations and light up the sky as brightly as those stellar rivals from Barcelona and Real Madrid.
David Owen: Three cheers to the FA for its Olympic ambitions
I don’t often say this, but three cheers to the Football Association (FA) for signalling its desire to continue sending teams to the Olympic football tournament. I just hope that at some point it becomes possible once again for a Great Britain Olympic squad to be genuinely British.
Martin Volkmar: When experts talk like dopes
When it comes to serious doping allegations at the highest levels of the sport there has to transparency and the presentation of as much information as possible. Performances like that of the legendary Mehmet Scholl witnessed on German television this week are surely counterproductive.
Matt Scott: Inglorious failure has proved costly for former Premier League clubs. Who’s next?
“The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling but in rising every time we fall.” Nelson Mandela
In Europe at least, falling is an ever-present risk in the game of football. Relegation makes it so. Every year in four of the top-five leagues in the UEFA jurisdiction, 15% must lose their top-flight status. It is a devastating emotional blow for all who suffer it but, due to the riches available to that division in England,
Mihir Bose: Football’s short term horizons
My father used to say that public memory is notoriously short. He was referring to politics not football but that holds very true for the round ball game as well. And herein lies a contradiction. There is nothing that arouses greater fury in football, both among the fans and the media, than the hire fire policy of chairmen and the board of struggling clubs. The moan is that the money men who always know the price of everything and the value of nothing want instant success and just do not understand that success in football takes times.
Matt Scott: Bundesliga battle to haul back English TV gap looks a lost cause
“If you look at the German TV market, it will not be possible any time soon for the Bundesliga to sell its rights for that much money.” Christian Seifert, Bundesliga chief executive
Investors looking for safe havens for their money in these troubled times have stampeded into German sovereign debt. The rationale is that the strongest economy in Europe will never default on its borrowings and so there is no risk to the investor’s capital.