The timing is quite striking.
On July 3, Bob Diamond resigned as chief executive of Barclays, in the midst of a political firestorm touched off by a £290 million fine meted out to the bank by UK and US authorities.
On July 12, it extended until May 2016 its sponsorship of the English Premier League.
By the end of August (with Chelsea three points clear at the top of the table),
It has been a move so sharp, opportunistic and clinical any of the great strikers would have been proud of it.
Sepp Blatter moving into the space ahead of UEFA and putting himself and FIFA at the forefront of the fight against racism.
A set of apparently tough proposals from FIFA’s Strategic Committee are to be put in front of the Executive Committee late in March, and conceivably ratified by FIFA Congress in May.
The elation of winning the Africa Cup of Nations, being at the top of the continental football summit, is what matters for the ordinary fan; National team triumph, and the accompanying two-year bragging rights, mean everything to them.
But as football federation officials from Nigeria, the newly crowned champions – or the 28 previous winners of the trophy – will bluntly tell you, that is all a nation gets.
Let us assume that all those do-gooders who are so very concerned about mankind (while only paying lip-service to a ‘trend’ that seems worth exploiting for their own advancement) have a tiny remnant of human decency left and, for once, actually mean what they say and not only say what others want to hear.
Let us further assume that the large group of those who are mentally differently abled (i.e. either don’t have a clue or don’t give a hoot),
Is Lionel Messi fitter than other footballers, as well as being a better player? The four-time Ballon D’Or winner played 69 high level games in 2012 scoring a record 91 goals and didn’t appear to be tired for a single minute.
But those ‘unfortunate’ enough to earn their living playing in the English Premier League apparently suffered terribly over the Christmas and New Year period.
Last weekend’s English Premier League match between Sunderland and Arsenal does not on the face of it merit much attention. A regular Premiership match, one of the rare ones played at 3pm on a Saturday, it ended in that classic score: 1-0 to Arsenal, after the Gunners weathered a late Sunderland assault.
By David Owen
So Joseph Blatter doesn’t much care for the “unanimous” package of reform proposals for world football’s governing body published last month by UEFA.
The FIFA President conveyed his disappointment last weekend at a media conference in South Africa just before Nigeria’s triumph over Burkina Faso in the final of the 2013 African Cup of Nations.
I can’t say I am at all surprised.
However,
作者：颜强 网易门户副总编
By：John Yan，Deputy Editor of Netease.com
阿内尔卡完成了他职业生涯第11次加盟。这位行将34岁的前锋，由上海申花转入意甲尤文图斯。这是他17年职业生涯里加入的第11个俱乐部。
消息传出也就两天，德罗巴也宣布离开上海，加盟土耳其加拉塔萨雷。中国职业足球历史上最大牌的两个外援，前切尔西锋线双煞，选择在同一时间回归欧洲，让朱骏将上海申花打造成世界级锋线的计划，迅速成为笑话。不仅中国足球的国际形象受损，申花巨额投入受损，未来申花俱乐部的前途蒙上阴影，上海球市受到的伤害也难以估量。
By David Owen
I came upon a prescient article from the Washington Post today.
It was about a West African country where poverty was said to be fuelling a resurgence of Muslim fundamentalism.
“People want schools, they want medical attention for their children,” a local sociologist was quoted as saying.
“But who is listening to them?
“Islamists, who provide them with water and fertiliser to believe the solutions are found in religion.
By Richard van Poortvliet
Russian’s can be nostalgic. Every so often I will get into a conversation with a taxi driver in Moscow who will reminisce about the benefits of living in the Brezhnev era, which stability ruled over consumer choice. Over the last couple of months that is not the only thing Russian’s have been missing about the USSR as the possibility of resurrecting the Soviet Top Football League or ‘Vyshaya Liga’
The story of match fixing in football is very like the story of Lance Armstrong. The world knew, with the singular exception of UCI, cycling’s world body, that Armstrong was a cheat. The problem was finding enough evidence to prove that he had doped his way to victory. And once the Americans had seen the light it was always a matter of time.
Of course even now the UCI refuses to accept responsibility for the fact that Armstrong cheated right under their noses.
Here’s something to ponder in a week when Brazil are expected at Wembley for a friendly international: for more than half a century, the canary-shirted Brazil playmaker has been the embodiment of all that is best about the game that conquered the world; yet, as the sport has grown rich, the home of o jogo bonito has been reduced to a dusty outpost of the shiny multinational that is Planet Football.
It would be foolish in the extreme to believe that just because the Commons Select Committee on Culture Media and Sport has given the football authorities a bollocking, things will change in the national game. This may be the second verbal lashing the MPs have administered football in two years but just because the MPs wave a big stick it does not mean they will follow up by using it to whack the football authorities if,
For a decade or two now, the leading national cup competitions in Western Europe have been losing their grip on the public imagination.
You might think this would leave the second-string competitions – the league cups – in a seriously bad place.
But for one at least, 2012-13 has brought something of a revival – to the great good fortune of its new sponsor.
The recently released edition of the Deloitte Football Money League raises a few points that are worth taking a harder look at.
The first is about the slipperiness of statistics.
While in euro terms, year-on-year revenue growth among Europe’s 20 highest-earning football clubs is an impressive 10%, a very different picture – of stagnation, basically – emerges if the reference currency is sterling.