Columnists Archives - Page 36 of 78 - Inside World Football

David Owen: Saadi Gaddafi, Libya’s most notorious footballer, and the politics of names

Names can be powerful things, particularly today when almost no-one is beyond the reach of electronic media.

In these superficial times, your name can be one of the most important factors in determining what people think about you and, hence, your destiny.

It is worth bearing this in mind when contemplating the fate of Saadi Gaddafi.

Now in prison in his native Libya having recently been extradited from Niger where he took refuge following the overthrow of his father,

Matt Scott

Matt Scott: India’s passions – cricket, Bollywood and…football

“The song of the future must transcend creed.”   E.M. Forster, A Passage to India

In India, some call it Sachinism. The legacy of Sachin Tendulkar, cricket’s greatest batsman ever to emerge from the South Asian sub-continent, is so great that he has achieved the status of a demigod in what is already a pantheistic culture. The doleful impact on popular consciousness there of the day he was run out for 99,

Massimo Cecchini

Massimo Cecchini: L’Italia e gli stadi di Proprieta

Dicono che i momenti di crisi siano quelli che portano alla rinascita. Si spera davvero che per il calcio italiano l’affermazione abbia del fondamento, visto che nel ranking europeo ormai anche il Portogallo – approfittando della nostra debolezza – si sta preparando al sorpasso. Per questo, dopo gestito con poca oculatezza per quasi un ventennio le enormi risorse provenienti dal mercato televisivo, i club italiani provano a mettersi al passo imboccando decisamente la strada virtuosa da tempo intrapresa da Gran Bretagna,

Osasu Obayiuwana

Osasu Obayiuwana: UEFA’s self interest makes a joke of the ‘global’ solidarity pitch

When UEFA and its member countries take a decision to fundamentally restructure the way in which international football, within its continent, is played, it ought not to concern the rest of the global fraternity.

What European football does within its borders is, in principle, their prerogative.

BUT – and this is a big but, obviously – when a continental decision is taken without any cognisance of the effect that it would have on the WORLD game,

Matt Scott

Matt Scott: What should football care of the child stars who fade?

“Then cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from your door.”  William Blake

When Barcelona received a two-window transfer ban for their trade in minors last week, the reaction among the internet wits was predictable. “Must be horrible,” was the gist of it, “a life at Barça earning millions to play football. Wish I was suffering like them.”

But that kind of commentary misses the target as spectacularly as when Lionel Messi hit the bar from the penalty spot against Chelsea in the Champions League a couple of years ago.

Mihir Bose

Mihir Bose: Fit and proper? But is this ‘test’ hiding the real issue?

Whether Massimo Cellino is allowed to remain an owner of Leeds remains an open question. The board of the Football League meet on Thursday to decide whether to let him run Leeds.

The story has all the makings of a modern soap opera. Cellino buys 75% of Leeds in February. But then he is disqualified by the League under its fit and proper test for owners because of Cellino’s conviction for tax evasion in a Sardinia court.

Lee Wellings

Lee Wellings: You win some you lose some. Accept it

Football. You win some you lose some.

It was only basketball’s Harlem Globetrotters who didn’t do defeats.

Accepting that sometimes things aren’t quite going to plan on the pitch can sometimes require intelligence and immaturity. It’s not always the sign of a defeatist or someone who is past caring.

But have you noticed that all perspective has now gone from football. Every defeat becomes a crisis. Every bad result a surge of speculation over the manager.

Mihir Bose

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

“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

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.

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

“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.

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,