Columnists Archives - Page 43 of 78 - Inside World Football

Andrew Warshaw: Qatar’s Belounis case is raising questions and damaging reputation

The plight of journeyman footballer Zahir Belounis and his desperate appeal to be paid what he’s owed and leave Qatar could hardly have come at a more inopportune time for the 2022 World Cup organisers.

Just as the Qataris were proudly unveiling details of the design and construction for the first of their state-of-the-art stadia for the finals in nine years’ time, so all the pomp and backslapping co-incided with yet more adverse publicity about a case which human rights organisations are using as an example of the restrictive kafala employment system that prevents foreign workers leaving the country until being “released”

Matt Scott

Matt Scott: United’s overseas commercial empire begins to take on an infinite form

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“Men yearn for poetry though they may not confess it; they desire that joy shall be graceful and sorrow august and infinity have a form, and India fails to accommodate them,” E.M. Forster, A Passage to India

When, four seasons ago, so many Manchester United fans adopted green and gold, the colours of their club’s first-ever kit, it was as a symbol of peaceful protest against the ownership of the Glazer family.

Mihir Bose

Mihir Bose: Racism is not the only problem in football, let us not forget sexism

There is no question we should raise questions about how the football authorities are dealing with or, more accurately, failing to tackle the issue of race. But let us not forget that while skin colour remains a huge problem being a woman in the game is no easy task as Ebru Koksal, Board member of Galatasaray, knows all too well.

She was on the panel I chaired at the recent International Football Arena in Zurich,

Lee Wellings

Lee Wellings: Thursday’s club is full of woe

What is the link between La Liga bottom club Real Betis, French strugglers Lyon, English FA Cup winners Wigan Athletic, now mid-table in the English Championship, and Eintracht Frankfurt, fourth from bottom in the Bundesliga?

Thursday nights. The Europa League.

The ugly little brother of the Champions league gets such bad press one sometimes feels reluctant to criticise it.

Osasu Obayiuwana

Osasu Obayiuwana: Winning is certainly not everything

Over the years, I’ve been forced to develop a rather sceptical, hard-nosed attitude towards the achievements of particular African teams in FIFA’s Under-17 and Under-20 competitions, because some Cup ‘victories’ were certainly achieved by using over-aged players.

In an ‘off-the-record’ conversation I had with an ex-Nigerian player, who captained the ‘Golden Eaglets’ to one of their four Under-17 World Cup wins, he freely admitted to me – long after retiring from the game,

Matt Scott

Matt Scott: Satellite titan should end hostilities before the Sky falls in

BT-Sky 3d share price 7-11 2013

“Mr Watson, come here, I want to see you,” Alexander Graham Bell, March 10, 1876

The first words ever spoken down a telephone line might be laced with a menacing undertone were Sky’s chief executive, Jeremy Darroch, to pick up a handset today and repeat them, this time to his counterpart at BT Vision, Marc Watson.

BT Vision is a subsidiary of the British former monopoly telecoms provider,

John Yan

John Yan: The Age of Tuhao 恒大是现象，还难称模式

All eyes were focused on the match, tagged as ‘The Fly to the Top of Asia’. Quite like the Party’s propoganda protocol, a bit like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest…

On November 9 in Guangzhou, Evergrande were crowned the champions of Asia, grandly. Even though the official TV ratings figures didn’t prove this match attracted a dominant viewership nationally, go through any media outlet, the impression was on that night, nothing could compare to the club’s climb to the top of Asia.

Archive

David Owen: A message for football from a jump-jockey’s big day

On Thursday I went to one of the most uplifting sports events I have attended in a long time.

It took place in a small English town of perhaps 12,000 people with Roman origins. Its apogee came when the sport’s supreme champion of modern times, aged 39, set a benchmark for sustained excellence and endurance on a par with Australian cricketer Don Bradman’s 99.94 Test match batting average, or US swimmer Michael Phelps’s 22 Olympic medals,

John Yan

John Yan: The Most Valuable ACL Final Ever 广州恒大：疯狂的足球节日

On November 9, the second round of the Asian’s Champions League Final will take place in Guangzhou. It is widely reckoned to be the most valuable final ever held for a football competition in Asia. It may become a record that takes a long long time to break.

It is still hard to calculate what the TV ratings will be, because normally TV ratings research in mainland China is not trustworthy, with only a couple of research companies operating in the company currently.

Mihir Bose

Mihir Bose: Why is it impossible to form a WADA to deal with match fixing?

On the face of it seems very easy to find a solution for match fixing. Everyone agrees it is bad and if not controlled it will ruin sport – indeed in China it has all but destroyed Chinese domestic football. But having agreed how dreadful it is we run up against the problem that it is impossible to find a universal system to police it.

How difficult this can be was well illustrated when on Wednesday of this week a conference was held to discuss sport integrity.

Andrew Warshaw: A tricky day for 2014 public relations, but the tickets are selling even if the security stories aren’t

Whoever is being economical with the truth about the reasons for the Soccerex global football convention in Rio being cancelled, the news was timed with a shambolic attempt at promoting Brazil’s World Cup. What started out as a good idea and looked like smart timing for a push to get people to travel to the 2014 party, rapidly went downhill.

When Thierry Weil, FIFA’s marketing director, and Ricardo Trade, head of the local organising committee,

Matt Scott

Matt Scott: Beggars can’t be choosers

“‘Go West, young man, go West…’ ‘That is medicine easier given than taken.’”
Reported conversation between Horace Greeley and Josiah B Grinnell, 1833

Just as the new frontiers of a developing United States were synonymous with new riches in the early 19th Century, in the early 21st Century European football has developed a fascination with lenders registered in exotic locations thousands of miles to the west.

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David Owen: Premiership musings – Moyes’s slow-starting United still look a good bet for title

International breaks have made this a stuttering start to the English Premier League season. With more than a quarter of matches now completed though, the balance of forces is starting to come into clearer focus.

Of the six clubs with genuine, if in some cases remote, title aspirations, Manchester United – with three defeats already and only 50% of matches won – are in the lowest position in the table.

For me,

Massimo Cecchini

Massimo Cecchini: Dall’entusiasmo alla “realpolitik”

Dall’entusiasmo alla “realpolitik”. Ovvero, come i padroni del calcio italiano – in tempi di lotta ad ogni forma di razzismo – hanno scoperto di non poter applicare regole autoprodotte perché i loro stadi risultano ingovernabili. La storia è nota. Sull’onda delle iniziative Uefa, ad agosto la Figc decideva di sanzionare duramente non solo i fenomeni di razzismo, ma anche quelli di “discriminazione territoriale”, definizione esistente nell’ordinamento dalla fine degli anni Ottanta. Non avevano però fatto i conti con gli ultrà,

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Inside Insight: Insulting His Majesty, Whoaa!

So, Ronaldo, the Great Field Marshall, is pissed.

And with him, Ancellotti (Angelotto?) and the whole of Spain, and Portugal, and the Government of Portugal, and – well, I guess GOD and Snow-white, too. Not to mention the Seven Dwarves, Superman, Donald and Daisy Duck and Roadrunner.