Columnists Archives - Page 20 of 78 - Inside World Football

Inside Editorial: Whistleblowers, fraudsters and bumboys. Just another day in football

On Monday Insideworldfootball ran a story titled ‘Whistle blown on FIFA whistleblower fraudster Mersiades’. The story was a pick-up from German public broadcaster ZDF’s interview with discredited Australian whistleblower Bonita Mersiades.

To re-cap the important part of the story: Mersiades, one of the FIFA whistleblowers in the FIFA World Cup bid investigation, has Australian court convictions for defrauding an Australian government department that employed her.

Lee Wellings

Lee Wellings: Time to consider Euro expulsions

I don’t envy the position UEFA are in with hooliganism on and off the pitch in their territories. It’s easy to criticise. What would you do? But I know what I’d like UEFA to consider when they read the referee’s report and decide in action. Something radical.

John Yan

John Yan: China breaks its reform mould 改革，挑战的开始

This could be the beginning of a new era for football in China, this could also be a new chapter in the history of football the sport. On March 16, the first Monday after the National Congress, the central government issued this document: The Overall Reform Plan For Football In China. It would be hard for us to find out a similar precedent that the national council would issue a formal policy, which covers up to 50 different issues in the football industry,

Mihir Bose

Mihir Bose: How the Premier League’s ‘second tier’ hurts English football

The Premier League cannot get it wrong? Or can it? You would have thought that with no English clubs in either of the European competitions the Premier League will be just a little bit concerned. But not Richard-Scudamore, soon to move from long standing chief executive to executive chairman.

Archive

David Owen: The Gill and Dyke Show, and why protectionism isn’t the answer for England

Watching developments in English football can be a trying business, whether we are talking on or off the pitch. So it is characteristic that a week which brought a big step forward in manoeuvring a respected English voice on to the sport’s top table should also have featured a proposal from the boss of the Football Association that would, in my opinion, represent a significant backwards step both for the Premier League and the England team he is trying to strengthen.

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.

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

Matt Scott: Why FIFA saw fit this time to give ground to the clubs

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“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

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

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.

Archive

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

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

Matt Scott: Leo Messi and his successors can ensure Adidas’s star will rise again

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“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.