Columnists Archives - Page 29 of 78 - Inside World Football

Inside Insight: Semantic gymnastics at their best

The thing with politicians is that it is in their nature to be opportunistic. When their popularity drops, their preparedness to talk out of their backside increases. Quite a simple equation, really.

Then there is that other phenomenon, best characterised by bandwagon-jumping. Once an issue appears to be safe to populate with general outcries of self-righteous babble, myriads of morons join the party and jump up and down like five-year-olds who have discovered the trampoline.

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David Owen: Financial fine print sees Swans and Magpies fly to top of table

DOtable copy

With the start of a new Premier League season less than three weeks away, I have repeated last year’s exercise drawing on data from the Deloitte Annual Review of Football Finance to compile 26 top-three ‘mini-tables’. These rank the 20 English top-tier clubs in the 2012-13 season according to different financial parameters.

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Inside Insight: ‘For the powerful, crimes are those that others commit’

The Noam Chomsky quote appears to apply to all sorts of societies, businesses and people. One is tempted to add a variation of the theme and say: “For the hypocrites, crimes are those that others commit”. Far too many Brits have been claiming rather jingoistically, and for many years, that Britain could never compete with the massive corruption scandals that “those awful aliens” seem to specialise in.

Matt Scott

Matt Scott: When money can’t buy peace: How history tells us a football revolutions is afoot

“Our properties within our own territories [should not] be taxed or regulated by any power on earth but our own.” Thomas Jefferson

Conflict, throughout the course of human history, has taken on many forms. But whether it be the bronze swords and spears of Homer’s Iliad, the muskets of Jefferson’s American War of Independence or the rockets, bombs and drones of today, some things have been constant.

One constant is the continuous presence of the narrators of current affairs,

Lee Wellings

Lee Wellings: Germany make their own luck

“You make your own luck.” A saying that is sometimes true, sometimes designed to push you to do your best and sometimes…it’s nonsense.

But I’m intrigued by the role luck plays in life, in football, in World Cups.

As football has become a business, so coaching has become increasingly like a game of chess. Coaches posing as grandmasters, players often pawns, the straightforward approach of inviting a player to go out and PLAY looking increasingly over-simplistic,

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2014 World Cup Final: Germany vs Argentina match preview

Christos and maracana

By Andrew Warshaw
July 12 – If a hurt and bruised host nation thought it couldn’t get any worse, the sight of Argentina’s players emerging for Sunday’s World Cup final will dig the knife in even deeper. Especially at Rio de Janeiro’s ‘s iconic Maracana stadium.

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World Cup Final: Germany v Argentina, match preview stats

July 11 – South America vs Europe, The two dominant confederations have found their regional representatives for the final winner takes all match-up in the Maracana this Sunday.

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3rd Place Play Off: Brazil v Netherlands match preview stats

July 11 – It wasn’t meant to be like this. The World Cup was planned to be a triumphal march through Brazil for the Seleção, ending at the Maracana for the grand finale at the grandest of football venues. Instead they meet Holland in Brasilia for the third placed play off Saturday. Wake, party or just time for Brazil to wake up?

Matt Scott

Matt Scott: West Brom’s history of attritional shareholder war shows why one man is at peace

WBAfinishingposition

“The strongest of all warriors are these two – Time and Patience.” War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy

Threaded within a fabulously entertaining Napoleonic soap opera, Leo Tolstoy’s masterwork properly explores the human condition. In short, the greatest of all the Russians tells us, if you think you have any free will of your own you are very much mistaken.

Tolstoy conveys that we mortals are swept along by predetermined currents towards outcomes preordained.

Morning after the Brazilian disaster finds a country in shock and a world open-mouthed

Brazil mourns

By Andrew Warshaw
July 9 – In this most extraordinary and unpredictable of World Cups, nothing even came close to the humiliation of brutal proportions that unfolded in Belo Horizonte. Anyone who has watched Brazil during the tournament knows that the squad, for all the expectations, was full of deficiencies, a far cry from the great Brazilian teams of the past.

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David Owen: Brazil’s year of living dangerously and the death of jogo bonito

Brazil eye

July 8 – The last few weeks, with the tournament in full swing, have been a lot better. But I don’t think anyone could justifiably argue that Brazil’s first of three years in the global sporting spotlight has gone entirely to plan. Today in Belo Horizonte Brazilians must face up to the distinct possibility of more bad news: can their yellow-shirted warriors, shorn of their two best players, feasibly get the better of a typically well-drilled,

Massimo Cecchini

Massimo Cecchini: In Italy, time has stopped

Tempo fermo. L’orologio del calcio italiano non si è mosso da quel triste ultimo 24 giugno, quando l’uruguaiano Godin ha rispedito subito a casa la Nazionale azzurra, togliendola di scena dal Mondiale in Brasile. In realtà sembrava che tutto dovesse cambiare in fretta. Pochi minuti dopo il fischio finale il commissario tecnico Cesare Prandelli rassegnava le sue dimissioni “irrevocabili”, seguito nel giro di una manciata di secondi da quelle del presidente della Federcalcio, Giancarlo Abete.

Osasu Obayiuwana

Osasu Obayiuwana: Africa must find an edge to smash the ‘glorious loser’ tag

With two African teams making the knockout rounds in Brazil, the continent has obviously written a new chapter in tournament history.

Ever since Morocco became the first African team, at the 1986 finals in Mexico, to reach the Round of 16, the continent has maintained a solitary presence there.

Considering that I had, in a previous piece, seriously considered the possibility that its five teams were at risk of being knocked out in the first round,

Andrew Warshaw: Mixed messages on anti-discrimination

It was the most eagerly awaited of FIFA’s daily World Cup media briefings and the questions came thick and fast. Why, asked one highly respected news agency reporter, was FIFA preaching zero tolerance towards racism when zero action on the ground was in fact the reality?

It was a fair point but few, if anybody, expected the two distinguished members of the panel to provide such diametrically opposed responses.

Sometimes, quite fairly,

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David Owen: The French and German football teams have got more similar. Will the nations follow?

Considering they have a common 450km-long border and have together been the beating heart of the European project for nearly 60 years, France and Germany are remarkably dissimilar.

Not so their football teams, which clash in Rio on Friday in what promises to be a fascinating World Cup quarter-final.

Take the goalkeepers: Hugo Lloris and Manuel Neuer don’t exactly look alike; but they are very proactive exponents of their craft, among the quickest to sprint off their lines to snuff out trouble.