Columnists Archives - Page 54 of 78 - Inside World Football

Mihir Bose: Can we any longer allow football to regulate itself?

The recent disclosures about the scandals in world football, so graphically documented on this website, not only raise serious questions about football and its lack of morality but also about how such issues are treated in the western media.

That football has become a business is now so taken for granted that it hardly seems worth repeating. However the problem with the football business is that the business is self regulated. That may be true of all sport but no sport is such a huge business that football has become in the last two decades.

Andrew Warshaw interviews Hassan Al-Thawadi on his bid for FIFA’s executive committee

During the increasingly fractious battle in Kuala Lumpur to become President of Asian football, it has been conveniently overlooked amid the political in-fighting that the position is effectively transitionary and only for 18 months.

Potentially far more significant is the other separate vote for a spot on the FIFA executive committee – the most powerful elite gathering in world football. Not least because it is a four-year term as distinct from just keeping the seat warm for possibly someone else.

Osasu Obayiuwana

Osasu Obayiuwana: Football, racism and me…

I had initially planned to do a piece on the parlous state of Cameroonian football, after the humiliating failure of the not-so-Indomitable Lions, four-time champions of the continent, to qualify for the last two Africa Cup of Nations tournaments.

But, when a nosey-parker journalist – me, in this case – ends up in the news, rather than being in the preferred position of reporting it, one is left with no choice than to make the proverbial lemonade out of lemons.

Jean Francois Tanda

Jean Francois Tanda: Could FIFA Museum already be a thing of the past?

FIFA’s media office sent the invitation to media representatives twice. Obviously, the international football federation wanted to make sure that numerous journalists attend the event. On Twitter, FIFA President Joseph “Sepp” Blatter announced a “hugely exciting major project”. Only a few minutes later, he revealed he was talking about the FIFA Museum in Zurich.

The campaign worked well, and in front of numerous cameras and microphones Blatter could tell many journalists about his dream and his gift to the “sports city Zurich”.

Osasu Obayiuwana

Osasu Obayiuwana: What is talent without character?

After watching this pint-sized Uruguayan, on a bitterly cold winter’s night, at Johannesburg’s Soccer City, blatantly cheat his way to the 2010 World Cup semi-final, in front of nearly 90,000 witnesses, as well as have the temerity to subsequently gloat about his act of theft, I have found it very hard to have any regard for Luis Suarez.

And so do many people around the African continent, especially folks that come from Ghana.

Mihir Bose

Mihir Bose: Old Trafford’s Overlords have always picked it right

As Manchester United celebrate yet another Premiership, and a record haul of 20 of the most sought after prize in English football, spare a thought for Dave Whelan. Had things turned out differently the Wigan owner would today not be fearful that his team may not survive in the Premiership. Instead he would be lording it over Old Trafford and joining the celebrations of the fans as the owner of greatest club in the land.

Lee Wellings

Lee Wellings: Biting the hand that feeds you. Are fans cheering the indefensible?

The chances are that at least one of those eleven footballers you are cheering is what English people might call a wrong’un. A ne’er do well. A nasty piece of work. Increasingly you suspect it’s far more than the odd bad apple, but half the team.

I raise this of course because of Luis Suarez, arguably the third best player in the world and with a charge sheet longer than the bite marks in Branislav Ivanovic’s arm.

Archive

Inside Insight: No Irish, no blacks, no dogs.

no irish no blacks no dogs

The most recent spell of hooliganism in England (Millwall-Wigan and Newcastle-Sunderland matches) appears to have rung in a renewed era of primitive and vulgar fan behavior that had led to the ban of English clubs and the England team from international football in the 80s. Hooliganism defaced the English game throughout the 1970s and 1980s: in 1974, a Blackpool fan was stabbed to death at Blackpool’s home match with Bolton Wanderers. In 1985, after vile hooliganism of Liverpool fans led to the deaths of 39 Juventus supporters before the European Cup final at the Heysel Stadium,

Mihir Bose

Mihir Bose: Why football cannot have its cake and eat it

In Britain this has been a great week for turning the clock back promoted by the death of Lady Thatcher and a necessary look back at her legacy.

Yet it is too simplistic to see the riots by Millwall fans at the Wembley semi-final as a return to the old spectre of football hooligan. There is, of course a historical twist to this. With the riots coming just days before Thatcher was laid to rest it was natural to reflect that it was Millwall and their riotous fans back in 1985 filling British television screens with violence which first prompted the Lady to think that the only solution for such behaviour was more stringent police control.

Lee Wellings

Lee Wellings: Tan’s red dawn

So Malaysia will be represented in the boardroom of the world’s most powerful football league next season – even if Tony Fernandes and Queens Park Rangers are relegated as expected.

Tan Sri Dato Seri Vincent Tan Chee Yioun – Vincent Tan to supporters of Welsh club Cardiff City – has taken the club in the capital of Wales into the English Premier League.

I was going to write ‘controversial’ owner but is he?

Osasu Obayiuwana

Osasu Obayiuwana: Nigerian football? It’s a mad, mad world…

As just one of two men in the 56-year history of the Africa Cup of Nations to win the trophy as a player and a manager – the late Egyptian legend Mahmoud El-Gohary being the other – you would assume Nigeria’s Stephen Keshi has earned some well-deserved job security.

But, as mind-boggling as it may sound, the man who managed the Super Eagles to the trophy in Johannesburg might be forced, by a series of bizarre circumstances,

Jean Francois Tanda

Jean Francois Tanda: Brothers in Arms

While FIFA is trying to reform its own organisation, the Swiss government is considering changing the laws – changes that will impact on the (about) 60 international sports organisations that are headquartered in Switzerland. However, the non-governmental sports multinationals don’t have to fear too many new rules and laws as the Swiss administration is working closely with the Basel Institute on Governance – the University institute headed by Professor Mark Pieth, FIFA’s chief reformer. This actually means that FIFA has a direct influence on the decision as to whether Switzerland’s lawmakers will eventually put change into place.

Archive

David Owen: Will Club Protection Programme hand wealthy a bigger slice of the cake?

It was on 23 June 1998 – Sepp Blatter’s 15th day as FIFA President – that it started to dawn on me that the governing body was probably going to have to do something about compensating clubs for players injured on international duty.

In just the fourth minute of what turned out to be a drab group match between Italy and Austria in the Stade de France, Alessandro Nesta, the elegant Lazio and Azzurri central defender,

Osasu Obayiuwana

Osasu Obayiuwana: Good governance requires good information

Two years ago, whilst at the Championship of African Nations (CHAN) tournament in Khartoum, Sudan, I bumped into a FIFA official, often tasked with the duty of firefighting governance problems in various national associations across the world.

When we sat down, for a frank conversation about the challenges of improving football administration in Africa, I made it clear that better methods need to be devised by FIFA, in order to ensure that good governance is prevalent amongst the continent’s national associations.

Lee Wellings

Lee Wellings: Blue storm building in south east Asia

A violent thunderstorm rages while we talk in Singapore, but Chelsea chairman Bruce Buck is a man used to dealing with turbulence. Including the furore over the club’s ruthless attitude to sacking managers.

” I know we have fired what most people would say are a lot of managers – terminated their relationship is a better way to describe it – but we’ve always thought long and hard when we’ve done it,” said Buck.