Columnists Archives - Page 36 of 78 - Inside World Football

Mihir Bose: Why making changes in football changes can be tricky

Michel D’Hooghe, the long standing FIFA executive member, should have every reason to feel happy. The man who chaired the Belgian football federation for many years, and led the country’s joint bid with the Netherlands for the 2018 World Cup, will travel to Brazil confident that this is the best Belgium side for more than a quarter of a century. “We have,” he tells me “the best generation after the generation of 86,” the one whose deeds in Mexico are still talked about in his country.

Matt Scott

Matt Scott: What is good for PSG is good for France, and the Qataris

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“Plus tard, je serai président du PSG!” Nicolas Sarkozy

Nicolas Sarkozy became France’s most unpopular president in history at the end of his tenure but his nose for a political wind remains pretty keen. It was inevitable that, with French joblessness at record levels, the incumbent Socialists would lose out to his UMP party in municipal elections on Saturday. Cue a clamour for his return to the Elysée palace,

Osasu Obayiuwana

Osasu Obayiuwana: No love for the home boys

Since Mexico ’86, when Morocco’s Atlas Lions became the first African side to reach the second round at the World Cup finals, the continent has managed, in the six tournaments that have followed, to maintain an unbroken presence in the knockout stages.

But on the seven occasions that an African team has reached the second round or the quarter-finals, the managers at the helm have come from every other part of the world except –

Andrew Warshaw: Manoeuvres on the Eastern front

Just as the cavernous conference hall at Astana’s Palace of Independence was being cleared away and the delegates from 54 countries were being chauffeured to the Kazakh capital’s airport past dozens of weird futuristic-looking buildings, in a side room Michel Platini unbuttoned his jacket and leaned back in relaxed, almost triumphant mood.

The president of UEFA knew the job had been done, that he had pressed all the right buttons during his organisation’s annual congress and received the support he needed to carry on leading his flock.

Archive

David Owen: FIFA’s development spending conundrum

FIFA’s new financial report isn’t just the financial story of last year; it also offers a fascinating window on to the future. This is in the form of the governing body’s budget for the 2015-18 business cycle.

Readers shouldn’t look on this as set in concrete; some might say it isn’t even set in custard: not even Madame FIFA can gaze into her crystal ball with anything approaching infallibility.

But it does offer an informative glimpse into how Joseph Blatter and his chums think the medium-term future might pan out.

Lee Wellings

Lee Wellings: Germans still drawing the line at goal-line technology

Were you as surprised as I was that the top clubs in Germany voted against goal-line technology this week?

I’m trying to settle on why I expected a ‘ja, bitte’, and it’s a combination of factors.

The starting point has to be that German club football has enjoyed such a good reputation in recent years that you might have expected them to be trailblazers off the pitch. Instead, emphatically it’s the Premier League and English FA.

Matt Scott

Matt Scott: Time for FIFA to be content with what it has

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“Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have,” Hebrews 13:5, King James Bible

How much is enough? It is a question we should all perhaps ask ourselves in pursuit of happiness. According to several passages in the Bible, having enough is simply when your belly is full, whereafter the leftovers should be given to the needy. Trying to convince yourself of that is probably a bit extreme in a 21st Century consumer society but it is definitely a question that should concern those who work for distributive not-for-profit organisations.

Archive

Inside Insight: You gotta love the old racial profiling game

Not a fan of Qatar and aware of numerous potential and obvious downsides (debilitating summer heat above all), we have always kept an open mind about a World Cup in the Middle East, once the hosting rights were allotted.

The opposition towards the tiny Emirate has always been virulent. Even during the bidding phase, critics from all sorts of corners crept out from all sorts of rocks built on bias. Others, genuine ones without an agenda,

Mihir Bose

Mihir Bose: Qatar 2022 and an Anglo-Saxon conspiracy

That the FIFA decision to award the World Cup to Qatar in 2022 is once again in the spotlight is no surprise but the manner in which it hogged the headlines last week has raised intriguing questions. These are how did the story emerge and is this an Anglo-Saxon conspiracy?

This is not to in any way suggest that the Daily Telegraph did not have a good story about the financial dealings between Jack Warner and Mohammed Bin Hammam just days after both,

Archive

David Owen: From Spain to Asia in a well timed move

You know for sure that the people’s game has become gentrified when luxury Swiss watch brands start sponsoring football clubs.

Now, five and a half years after Hublot set the ball rolling by sponsoring Manchester United, another landmark deal has been unveiled.

Maurice Lacroix has announced a three-year agreement with Barcelona that will see it become the Catalán club’s Official Watch Partner in a deal said to be worth somewhere in the seven figures of euros (ie upwards of €1 million).

Osasu Obayiuwana

Osasu Obayiuwana: Appetites lost for fixing the fixing issues?

When a World Cup host is found to have been involved in match-fixing, not just once (as if that’s not bad enough) but several times, any right-thinking person, concerned about the integrity of the game, would assume that confronting this heinous crime against our sport would be a priority matter.

As Jerome Valcke, FIFA’s secretary-general, repeatedly puts it “match-manipulation is the biggest threat to the game today.”

Unfortunately, the investigation into South African football –

Lee Wellings

Lee Wellings: Qatar 2022: Fact, speculation and balanced reporting

Do I think Qatar was awarded the World Cup fairly? I don’t know for sure. But nor do you.

If you happen not to have read any opinion on Qatar 2022 this week let me help you out with an example, from my country.

“It’s a scorchingly hot Islamic desert hellhole which routinely employs slave labour and has the kind of respect for human rights you might expect from, say, Darth Vader.”

Archive

Inside Insight: Cold War football

What began as a peaceful protest against one deeply corrupt President’s reign – no, I don’t mean some weird country in tropical climes, but rather Ukraine’s Yanukovich – rapidly degenerated into snipers murdering friend and foe alike and paid thugs creating havoc on Kiev’s Maidan Square. What followed were scenes that are reminiscent of a revolution, and subsequently bore the hallmark of a well orchestrated coup d’état.

The phone conversation between one Victoria Nuland,

Mihir Bose

Mihir Bose: Football racism; personal or institutional?

You may think, if you live in England, enough has been said about Sol Campbell’s extraordinary claim that had he been white he would been an automatic choice as England captain. Despite all those who have rubbished his claims he remains adamant, as he told me, that the colour of his face, as opposed to that of Michael Owen, just did not fit with the FA. All Campbell will budge on was that he did not mean to say he would have led the national side for ten years as originally reported but for a long time during the ten year period he played for his country.

Matt Scott

Matt Scott: Yeung experience should show Leeds Cellino is no way forward

“Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters,” Albert Einstein

Football, to paraphrase the former Liverpool manager Bill Shankly, is a very important matter. Most would agree that paying your debts should be at the forefront of everyone’s minds too, but for years some of those involved in the game have played it fast and loose with their obligations to the tax authorities.