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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.

Lee Wellings

Lee Wellings: CL’s ugly little brother just became more interesting

I haven’t wanted to criticise the Europa League. Honestly I haven’t.

I loved the Cup Winners’ Cup and UEFA Cup. I have soft sports for many clubs who play at Europa League level. And there is undoubtedly something heartwarming about a club breaking through to play in Europe. The potential for fans to dream, to follow team over land and sea. From my country England it’s been Wigan and Swansea this season and you won’t find their fans complaining about European football,

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Inside Insight: And then there was a Brazil World Cup, after all

‘Tourist shot dead on golf course’. ‘Stadia will never be finished on time’. ‘Political mayhem leading up to World Cup’. ‘World Cup will be a failure, local population protests’. ‘Street violence and lacking infrastructure’.

No.

These are not headlines pre-Brazil.

These, and worse, were the headlines prior to the first ever World Cup in an African country, in South Africa, four years ago.

Matt Scott

Matt Scott: Want to get doshed up? Then work the agency gravy train

IWFagentsBigFiveLeaguesTransfersStats

“Friendship is constant in all other things Save in the office and affairs of love… Let every eye negotiate for itself And trust no agent,” Claudio, Act II, Scene 1, Much Ado About Nothing

William Shakespeare seldom got much wrong about life and how we live it. His comedies, his tragedies and his histories contained some fairly implausible scenarios and embellishments at times but the enduring value of his work lies in his ability to skewer all facets of the human character.

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David Owen: Could Neymar’s Brazil play future matches at London’s Olympic Stadium?

What do the following international football matches have in common: Brazil 0 Portugal 2 on 6 February 2007; Nigeria 1 Ghana 4 the same night; and Australia 3 Canada 0 on 15 October 2013?

Right, they were all played in London.

So was an extraordinary encounter last week pitting the Socceroos, once more, against Ecuador, France’s future World Cup opponents. While Roy Hodgson’s England were labouring to beat Denmark at Wembley,

Osasu Obayiuwana

Osasu Obayiuwana: Libya’s Cup of Nations takes some believing

Charity, they say, is supposed to begin at home. Or, at least, in your continent.

But I am wondering whether it is an adage that officials of Libya’s government and the football federation have ever taken to heart.

At the recent laying of the foundation stone, at a stadium to be built in Tripoli, the country’s capital, ahead of the 2017 Africa Cup of Nations they are to host – assuming the war-torn country is peaceful enough –

Lee Wellings

Lee Wellings: Immigration vote a game changer for Switzerland

FOOTBALL TEAM BEFORE

This is how the Swiss national football team lines up, proudly ranked as one of the eight top ranked teams for the World Cup in Brazil…

Massimo Cecchini

Massimo Cecchini: When Italian clubs buy foreign clubs

Il paradosso della globalizzazione selvaggia, in fondo, si nasconde anche nelle pieghe di un calcio specchio dei tempi. Archiviata l’età dell’oro – quella che appiccicava alla Serie A l’etichetta di “campionato più bello del mondo” – proprio in questo periodo di crisi i club italiani stanno scoprendo il gusto dell’espansione estera. Cioè, dalle vere acquisizioni alla semplici partnership – diverse società hanno deciso che per consolidare le proprie posizioni è opportuno scavalcare le Alpi o attraversare il mare.

Matt Scott

Matt Scott: Let the high-flying stars be Pied Pipers for football everywhere

“We bring you the circus, pied piper whose magic tunes greet children of all ages, from six to 60, into a tinsel and spun-candy world of reckless beauty… and high-flying stars. But behind all this, the circus is a massive machine whose very life depends on discipline and motion and speed. A mechanised army on wheels, that rolls over any obstacle in its path.” Narrator, The Greatest Show On Earth

Football today is as the circus of the 19th and early 20th Centuries,