Can politics (though I hesitate to use the word) ‘succeed’ where football has failed?
I raise the question in the context of a referendum on independence that the President of Catalonia, the region around Barcelona, seems keen to hold in November 2014, less than two months after a similar vote in Scotland.
For the moment, it is far from sure this Catalonian referendum will even take place, or be seen as legally binding,
The last person who would ever think of Scottish footballer Frank McKeown as a hero is Frank McKeown.
But to people around him…
He didn’t ask for the spotlight to be on him, but despite his humility, his story needs telling. And the support of everyone around him at one of the world’s oldest football clubs, Stranraer FC, deserves the widest recognition possible.
“First half. Last 10 minutes. Hundred per cent.” Former footballer Sam Sodje appears to promise a yellow card to order.
Betting has a tradition of accompanying football in England in the same way custard goes with English puddings. It just adds a bit of flavour to the proceedings. It is a guilty pleasure, nothing more. No harm done. Gambling is so much a part of the football culture in England that when last week the national-team manager,
Next time you go and watch your local team and you see a totally unnecessary foul or an unexplained provocation leading to a red or yellow card, it might not be because of a rush of blood to the head by the player involved.
Likewise next time you see a crazy penalty or some other ridiculous refereeing decision, it might not be because of genuine if irritating human error.
Sembrava un’iniziativa astuta, ma tutto sommato assai bella. Peccato che – parlando di calcio italiano – sia finita nel modo consueto: tra le polemiche. Ci riferiamo al caso scoppiato dopo che la Juventus aveva aperto gratuitamente le proprie curve a circa 12.000 bambini in occasione del match casalingo contro l’Udinese giocato il primo dicembre.
Inutile dire che a svuotare due settori sempre pieni c’era voluto il giudice sportivo, visto che gli ultrà bianconeri (già recidivi) avevano pensato di continuare le loro squallide performance rivolgendo ai tifosi del Napoli insulti che avevano il sapore della <discriminazione territoriale>,
Tradition versus success; it is a trade-off at the heart of some of sport’s most agonising dilemmas, and it has been spotlighted again by the shenanigans at Premier League new boys Hull City.
As a Bristol City fan of some decades’ standing, I have a certain amount of sympathy with members of the City Till We Die campaign group who oppose owner Assem Allam’s idea to rebrand the club Hull Tigers.
Then again,
Nelson Mandela may not have been a professional sportsman but his understanding of sport surpassed that of most high profile sporting stars. Mandela knew how sport could be used for wider political and social purposes. In his long years in prison, as he closely studied his white oppressors, particularly the Afrikaners, he began to appreciate that sport in general and rugby, in particular, had an extraordinary hold on the white nation.
He also realised that since the rise of international sport in the 19th century white South Africa had used sport to drive forward its hideous racial agenda.
Sometimes the FIFA HQ in Zurich feels more familiar than my own office with the amount of stories I’ve needed to cover there in my role as Al Jazeera Sports Correspondent. The most powerful man in that building, and indeed world football, is of course Swiss, Mr Blatter. And over in Nyon we find UEFA, that powerful continental governing body. Olympic football is run in conjunction with the IOC, based in Lausanne. As football reflects life,
Arsene Wenger is, clearly, not a fan of individual awards for players, such as the FIFA Ballon d’Or, for the reason that the “endorsement of an individual goes against the essence of our sport”, which is about team effort.
“I fight like a mad man against the award, which hurts football… the player is prompted to favour individual performance over that of the team,” he argued during his appearance on Telefoot, a programme on French television.
“He that loves pleasure must for pleasure fall.” Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus.
It might seem to the cynical observer that the best young footballers have made some Faustian pact with the devil himself. Those with the most natural talent for a game they would otherwise play for the fun of it are lavished with riches from their mid-teens. They can enjoy the adulation of an adoring public when donning a shirt for their clubs or,
“It’s better to burn out than to fade away.” Neil Young
Or is it? I remember a time when all rock stars, Young included, were, well, young. And then the music industry discovered irony, and we realised it was no more ridiculous for Jagger to perform Satisfaction at 55 than 25.
I don’t know if the deft through-ball with which Ryan Giggs, then aged 39 years and 363 days,
Andre Villa-Boas may or may not get the sack soon. Certainly the media pressure on him is huge and with the Tottenham board keeping the shutters down in the way the old Soviet-style Kremlin would have envied there is no way of knowing what will happen to Spurs’ Portuguese head coach. Observe I use the words head coach to describe his job, not manager.
The reason is that what is really interesting about this saga is the light it throws on the concept of director of football,
Who actually owns a football club?
“Legally it’s the owner, emotionally it’s the fans.”
A fan of Premier League club Hull City gave me this assessment while discussing his opposition to the owner’s plan. That plan is to change the name to Hull Tigers.
Who’s right and who’s wrong? Can there be any definitive right or wrong? Both have their reasons, both have their wishes and needs and ambitions.
Other than for the slightly mischievous purpose of beginning a discussion, triggered by fellow Insideworldfootball columnist Lee Wellings last week, as he looked at the chances of the African quintet going to next year’s World Cup finals in Brazil, the headline for this week’s piece would, obviously, be silly.
Lee asked me whether “it’s frustrating that people outside Africa talk about [African] nations as ‘representing the continent’, as he wondered whether “the biggest hurdle towards an African side finally winning the World Cup is that we (as in the rest of the world,
“Never was anything great achieved without danger.” Niccolò Machiavelli
Perhaps Machiavelli’s death in Florence in 1527 came too soon for him to have enjoyed the popular 16th Century Florentine game of Calcio but you sense he might have been drawn to its brutal tactics and narrative. His modern kindred spirits certainly seem to enjoy the football we love today. Heck, Henry Kissinger was even a board member on the USA 2022 bid committee.