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Inside Insight: Just another day at the Confederations Cup of contrasts

Spain’s Confederations Cup semi-final win on penalties over Italy in Fortaleza was marred by more protests as 5,000 protestors clashed with police who responded with tear gas prior to the game.

Inside the stadium a 58,000 capacity crowd watched Spain break the world record by marching to 29 consecutive competitive matches unbeaten. A match that to the world’s TV audience had drama and celebration of the positive football kind – in abundance.

The vast majority of colour in the stadium was the yellow of Brazil and TV pictures couldn’t resist the image of the parents feeding their baby at half time.

Lee Wellings

Lee Wellings: Is hosting worth it?

Brazil. World Cup hosts. Olympic hosts. 2014-2016. What an opportunity, what an honour, what a privilege and a pleasure.

But during a fraught fortnight off the pitch at the Confederations Cup the Brazilians – and FIFA – have been reminded that hosting is a double edged sword. Underestimating the power of the public can have major consequences, whether or not their ire is deserved, whether or not the event is actually the cause of the trouble.

Mihir Bose

Mihir Bose: Why world football should learn from the Americans

Those in Brazil who are now so angry about staging the 2014 World Cup should blame their fellow South Americans, the Colombians, for making it such a high profile political event.

It was the Colombians in 1973 who both invented modern football World Cup bidding and linked it to politics. Seeking the 1986 World Cup, they entertained a visiting FIFA delegation lavishly and at a reception the president of Columbia, Dr Borrero, made it clear that hosting the competition would prove Colombia had arrived as a nation.

Osasu Obayiuwana

Osasu Obayiuwana: Discovering the art of defending

Whilst working on the BBC’s telecast of the 2002 Africa Cup of Nations, occasionally sharing work space with ‘Match of the Day’ pundits, I couldn’t help but ask Gary Lineker, the former England striker, a nagging question I had – about his memories of that Italia ’90 World Cup quarter-final tie against Cameroon’s Indomitable Lions.

For anyone who watched that nail-biting tie in Naples, 23 years ago, the two penalties Lineker subsequently converted,

Jean Francois Tanda

Jean Francois Tanda: Pieth cuts an unconvincing TV figure

Guido Tognoni is a former high ranked FIFA manager. Today, he is a leading critic of Sepp Blatter and FIFA’s Executive Committee. Mark Pieth called him a “former poodle” of Blatter and “a commodity trader” with no moral right to criticise him.

Canadian governance expert and lawyer, Alexandra Wrage, once was a member of FIFA’s Internal Governance Committee (IGC). She left the group, basically saying it was a waste of time to work for FIFA as the football governing body refused to implement serious steps for a change.

Archive

David Owen: Balancing a £1bn profit with reality

I don’t know about you, but I always thought that company accounts were supposed to reflect financial reality.

Not, it seems, when the value of professional footballers is concerned.

Over the five years between 2008 and 2012, clubs competing in England’s Premier League booked a cool £1 billion-plus in net profits from the sale of players.

This means, in effect, that those players were undervalued by the same amount in the clubs’

Lee Wellings

Lee Wellings: More humiliation for Toon Army

Do any supporters anywhere openly suffer as much as those of Newcastle United Football Club?

No club moves from stability to disruption, from good stock to laughing stock, from hope to despair, like Newcastle. They are world champions at humiliation, and they could probably do with any silverware this brings.

Their latest drama has fallen snugly into the ‘you are joking?’ category they occupy so frequently.

The appointment of Joe Kinnear as ‘Director of Football’,

Archive

David Owen: Protests show it’s time for Big Sport to shake off complacency

Demonstrations in Istanbul; a protest over high ticket prices by football fans in London; demonstrations in Brazil.

Decidedly, the world has changed, but the question is, ‘Have the grandees who run Big Sport taken notice?’

Yes, it is simplistic to bracket these three manifestations of frustration and rage together.

The Istanbul protesters seemed indifferent to, or even mildly positive about, their city’s prospects of hosting the 2020 Olympics – although they have thrown a spanner in that particular works.

John Yan

John Yan: 倒霉的不该只有卡马乔 Sack Camacho or sack football in China

解雇主教练是一种经济省钱的危机公关手段，职业足球环境下绝对如此。

因为当一支球队成绩一塌糊涂的时候，作为管理者，无法解雇一支球队、无法解雇一代球员，于是解雇一名主教练，既能平息民怒，又能转移视线，还能节约人力资源投入成本，不论从管理学角度，还是经济学角度，这都是最容易的解决方案。

哪怕这未必是最正确的解决方案。

Andrew Warshaw: Cup traditions, old and new, play the dating game

Tradition has increasingly taken a back seat in the modern age of football. Sometimes, it has to be said, for the right reasons but not when it comes to the English FA Cup, the game’s oldest domestic knockout competition.

For the last few years, the cup final, watched by billions of armchair fans worldwide despite many of them getting out of bed at some ungodly hour, has been shunted into unfamiliar territory, given whatever end-of-season slot can be found for it –

Archive

Inside Insight: Brazil unplugged

Brazil is rocked by (justified) demonstrations. While numbers vary, it is safe to assume that hundreds of thousands have and are taking to the streets to voice anger, frustration and dissatisfaction. With what, exactly, that remains a question to some. But it is a question that seems to get a wide spectrum of answers, depending on where the writer stands and from where the “independent” observer hails.

It is clear that Brazil’s economy,

Osasu Obayiuwana

Osasu Obayiuwana: Between self-interest, mammon and country

Dealing with the tough demands of earning one’s crust, as a professional in top flight European club football, whilst serving one’s country – regarded as a sacred duty, by compatriots, during World Cup and Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers – has always been a high-wire balancing act for players.

Unlike their European counterparts, who can normally reach any part of their continent within a few hours and return to their clubs rather quickly,

Mihir Bose

Mihir Bose: Why English football will always struggle to get rid of dreadful coaching ideas

It was almost inevitable that the UEFA Under 21 tournament should have once again focussed English discussion on the perennial problem in English football: why is the national team so bad? More so, when the Premier League is so powerful and rules the world, at least in terms of the spectacle it provides week after week, and in its reach, exposure and ability to make money?

This is a problem that seems to be always with us like death and taxes.

Archive

David Owen: Financial fine print makes interesting reading, especially for Arsenal and Villa fans

I have been trawling the fine print of the new Deloitte Annual Review of Football Finance (so you don’t have to).

Since football fans like league tables, I have used the data to put together 26 top-threes ranking English Premier League clubs according to different financial parameters.

I wouldn’t read too much into them without scrutinising the big picture.

However, Arsenal supporters, starved of real on-field success, may have mixed feelings about the north London club’s top ranking for most cash,

Lee Wellings

Lee Wellings: Tahiti the whipping boys

What on earth are Tahiti doing in the Confederations Cup?

They will be the biggest Tahitian whipping boys since Captain Bligh sailed the south Pacific in the 18th century and there was a ‘mutiny on the Bounty’.

It underlines the problem FIFA have had since Australia became part of Asia’s football family, and even they would not be an ideal ‘eighth’ team in a major tournament on current form.

Australia’s departure in 2006 has given opportunities to New Zealand in international and club football that may not be entirely fair,