Columnists Archives - Page 45 of 78 - Inside World Football

Osasu Obayiuwana: Dyke’s FA scores an own goal

As a veteran of several boardroom battles and high-wire conflict with the British Labour party, as he led a British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) that was extremely critical of the former’s conduct in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, while it was the party of government, one would have thought an English FA chaired by a supposedly media savvy Greg Dyke would be particularly conscious about not embarrassing itself in public.

Resigning in rather dramatic (some would say unfair) circumstances,

Matt Scott

Matt Scott: Crisis, what crisis? Football thrives amid economic turmoil, for now

“With the glamour and opportunity also comes responsibility.” Michel Platini

Those were the words with which UEFA’s president introduced its interim club-licensing benchmarking report. It is a study that makes for fascinating reading and, to a certain extent, Europe’s top clubs have demonstrated they recognise the Platini creed.

Despite the ongoing economic crisis that has seized the global financial system since 2008, club revenues grew almost 7% year on year between 2011 and 2012,

Archive

David Owen: Brazil 2014: England will be hoping for something better than Brazil 1950

It isn’t World Cup fever, but Tuesday night’s win over Poland has left England gripped by what I would diagnose as a mild case of World Cup euphoria.

More than 15,000 fans were said to have registered their interest in going to Brazil; bookies predicted a £100 million betting bonanza; and a much-publicised tabloid story about manager Roy Hodgson’s half-time team-talk seems only to have redoubled the country’s determination to get behind the team.

Mihir Bose

Mihir Bose: Fight against racism is too important to be derailed by tabloid sound bites

The problem with race these days is that the whole subject too often gets reduced to a tabloid presentation with the result that England manager Roy Hodgson, a cultivated man of wide culture and sensitivity, ends up by being absurdly labelled as racist. We can all accept that Roy Hodgson made a mistake in repeating an old NASA joke about the monkey in his half time talk as an illustration to remind English players that they should get Andros Townsend involved in the play as often as possible.

John Yan

John Yan: An insult to the public mood 中国足球，侮辱公众情绪

Away to Indonesia on October 15, the away round of qualification group matches of the Asian Cup, Team China earned an embarrasing draw, 1:1. Indonesia’s FIFA ranking before the match was 170th.

Funny thing happened again. A week before the match, the President of China, Mr. Xi Jinping, was visiting Indonesia, and made some comments about his beloved game of football: “I hope one day that China and Indonesia could meet in the finals of World Cup,”

Osasu Obayiuwana

Osasu Obayiuwana: Is Libya safe for a 2017 Cup of Nations?

As the opening stage of the 2014 World Cup play-offs for Africa ended on Tuesday, another four weeks must pass before knowing, for certain, the quintet that will represent the continent in Brazil.

But Algeria, Cameroon, Cote D’Ivoire, Nigeria and particularly Ghana’s Black Stars, which gave Egypt a surprising 6-1 wallop in Kumasi, will be feeling they are closer to earning their qualification tickets.

Whilst fans were concentrating on the action taking place across the continent,

Lee Wellings

Lee Wellings: World Cup Qualification, a drama you live through over and over again

Apologies to those whose national football teams face a nerve wracking World Cup play-off.

And to those who dreams of reaching Brazil 2014 are already over.

For I’d like to talk about qualification. As in achieving it, sealing the deal.

As an Al Jazeera Correspondent I must be neutral, yet all around me in England there has been the agony, the pain, then the relief at securing a place in the finals.

Matt Scott

Matt Scott: Spanish tuning in to collective bargaining

“Everything was interconnected… This created a blanket that allowed him to dive without fear into the unknown and conquer the challenges that lay before him.” From Together We’re Heavy, The Polyphonic Spree

Against Georgia tonight Spain will likely confirm their qualification to the 2014 World Cup as Group I winners. It will extend the world champions’ playing record over 30 international matches to W22 D7 L1.

As football lovers recognise,

Archive

David Owen: A route to a biennial World Cup?

UEFA’s drive to turn Euro 2020 into a multinational event, rather than a tournament put on by one or two host-countries, seems to have ushered in one of those periods when the structure of numerous elite football competitions is up for debate.

In recent weeks suggestions have surfaced for: non-European countries to be invited to the European championships; a super league of elite European clubs; and friendly internationals to be replaced by a European Nations League.

Lee Wellings

Lee Wellings: La Liga president faces up to match fixing

The autumn international break is a strange period isn’t it. Rightly or wrongly fans are pining for club action while the diet of World Cup qualifying ‘build-up’ is stretched to breaking point.

In England for example the comments of Jack Wilshere – plenty of potential though hardly a glittering star of the world game – on the subject of nationalism.

Everyone conveniently ignored the reality that this young footballer didn’t publish a manifesto,

Archive

David Owen: Why England should not pin their hopes on Adnan Januzaj

Nations over the centuries have found different ways to enhance their prestige.

They have waged wars; they have erected great buildings; they have cultivated institutions of artistic excellence.

We in Britain should take great pride in the fact that today, in the year of the Football Association’s 150th anniversary, one of the most popular ways in which nations strive to achieve this is by excelling in sports many of which were invented by our 19th century ancestors.

Mihir Bose

Mihir Bose: Why Harry’s lost world will never come back

Harry Redknapp could never be accused of being a toff, let alone an intellectual. Yet his autobiography, Always Managing published by Ebury Press, a book that brings his story up to date following on from an earlier book 15 years ago, has some profound observations on how football has changed in this country. It should spark debate, if not some soul searching, among those who follow the people’s game.

What Harry is mourning is how the beautiful game has turned viciously ugly compared to his youth.

John Yan

John Yan: Politicians in club shirts 异乡与故乡

Chinese leaders

When a whole nation just has one club to support, there must be something wrong. Even though the club might become the most successful one ever in China’s football history.

Guangzhou Evergrande, yes, the club from Guangzhou again. After winning convincingly in the Asian Champions League (ACL) semi-final, they took their third successive domestic league title with 4 rounds to spare. This time they won the league at their nearest rival’s pitch, defeating Shandong Luneng FC 4:2 on October 6.

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Inside Insight: Obsessive-Compulsive (FIFA) Disorder, OC(F)D

Definition:

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is an anxiety disorder characterized by intrusive thoughts that produce uneasiness, apprehension, fear, or worry; by repetitive behaviors aimed at reducing the associated anxiety; or by a combination of such obsessions and compulsions. Symptoms of the disorder include excessive washing or cleaning; repeated checking; extreme hoarding; preoccupation with sexual, violent or religious thoughts; relationship-related obsessions; aversion to particular numbers; and nervous rituals, such as opening and closing a door a certain number of times before entering or leaving a room.

Matt Scott

Matt Scott: High stakes game for TV rights will keep UEFA’s club giants content

Languid as a footballer, laid back as a football administrator, Michel Platini has never appeared to be one for grand displays of emotion about anything. Even when captaining the victims of one of football’s greatest-ever injustices, as Germany’s goalkeeper Toni Schumacher put his France team-mate Patrick Battiston into a coma in a World Cup semi-final, Platini confronted the negligent referee with a mild flap of his arms.

But if there is one thing that has got the UEFA president exercised in recent times it is the threat of a breakaway European Super League.