Columnists Archives - Page 61 of 78 - Inside World Football

Andrew Warshaw: One can only hope that Euro 2012 doesn’t end in tears

Racist chanting, fans clashing with police, Governments threatening a boycott over Ukraine’s human rights record – and all manner of other negative publicity on an almost daily basis. Nobody can say European football’s governing body weren’t warned.

Later this week, I am travelling to the 2012 European Championship to try to see for myself just how risky UEFA’s decision was in granting the tournament to Poland and Ukraine.

In all likelihood,

Mihir Bose

Mihir Bose: Of Roy, Rio, John, the Euros and the messy FA banana skin effect

The non-selection of Rio Ferdinand for the 2012 European Championship now resembles one of those tragedies where you start with one story and end up with something so different you can hardly recognise the starting point. And to think that Ferdinand should be the one who suffers the most collateral damage when he is not even involved in whatever John Terry may or may not have said to his brother Anton.

However, unlike many others in the game,

Archive

David Owen: Challenges for Europe’s top leagues as Spain polarises and France declines

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European football is proving more resilient than many businesses in the face of the fiscal and economic shadows hanging over Europe.

But, as the new Deloitte Annual Review of Football Finance* makes clear, not everything is rosy in the rose-garden.

Take Spain, home of arguably Europe’s two leading clubs – Barcelona and Real Madrid.

Columnists

David Gold: Montpellier’s success is a heartening tale of a team who have come from nowhere and spent relatively little

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With Manchester City winning the Premier League, Chelsea the Champions League and Malaga qualifying for Europe’s top competition next season, it may feel to some as though football’s soul has been permanently corrupted by the influence of ‘new money’.

Which is why events in Burgundy last night should warm the soul of football purists everywhere. Another of those teams who have reaped the rewards of a wealthy foreign owner, Paris St Germain, were beaten by a team,

Andrew Warshaw: How Spurs’ Champions League spot was unjustly snatched away in the blink of an eye

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Didier Drogba’s Champions League-winning penalty in last Saturday’s heart-stopping shootout in Munich may have been the greatest moment in the history of Chelsea football club but it also exposed arguably UEFA’s cruellest, most unjust regulation.

Just a fortnight ago, Chelsea came sixth in the Premier League equalling their worst, repeat WORST, position for a decade.

Under normal circumstances such a poor return by one of the richest clubs in the world would have relegated them to the Europa League.

Columnists

Emmanuel Hembert: Will Champions League final reflect increasing dominance of German Bundesliga within European game?

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Two European football giants, Bayern Munich (pictured below) and Chelsea (pictured bottom), will meet for the UEFA Champions League final this Saturday evening (May 19) in Munich. The match, pitting two of the biggest football nations, brings to the fore the power struggle we have seen between Germany’s Bundesliga and England’s Premier League, and between two economic powerhouses.

Back in 2009, we identified the Bundesliga as the main challenger to overtake the Premier League as the dominating force in European football.

Mihir Bose

Mihir Bose: Blackburn Rovers fiasco shows football is just too big and too important to self-regulate any longer

This may not come as much comfort to Blackburn Rovers supporters, but one result of their relegation and how Venky’s, their Indian owners, have managed, or rather mismanaged, the club, is that, at last, high profile politicians may be persuaded that self-regulation in football does not work.

This could even lead to legislation. I am given to understand it might it, and if it does, it will mark a significant development in British football.

Mihir Bose

Mihir Bose: The FA should be congratulated, not pilloried, for wisely taking a punt on Hodgson

The conventional view in English football is that the Football Association, in going for Roy Hodgson as the next England manager, has made the safe choice. The argument is the people’s favourite, Harry Redknapp, would have been the bold move.

How utterly absurd. Redknapp (pictured below, on left alongside Hodgson) would have been the easy choice, hailed by the media and the supporters. It is Hodgson who is the brave, unconventional appointment, and the FA ought to be congratulated.

Andrew Warshaw: Will the poisoned chalice of managing England present Roy Hodgson too much pressure?

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Penny for Harry Redknapp’s thoughts. Just when neutral fans everywhere were anticipating an imminent call from the English Football Association to the man dubbed the “people’s choice” to be the next England manager, the favourite to replace Fabio Capello has been overlooked in favour of Roy Hodgson.

The move has inevitably led to a media frenzy and emotion-packed accusations that the FA have bottled it, that yet another major blunder has been made by the inner sanctum responsible for choosing Capello’s successor.

Mihir Bose

Mihir Bose: Beyond the Premier League ‘top table’ clubs should adopt a “realistic” blueprint for survival

Change in football (let alone the wider society) is difficult to predict. It is often best left to historians with their long lenses to look back and tell us when one era ends and another begins.

However, despite the fact that we do not know for sure who will win this season’s English Premier League title, it is my firm belief that this campaign marks a momentous season of change in the Premiership – the third such change since the Premiership started 20 years ago.

Andrew Warshaw: Is the lack of fanfare at the London 2012 football draw a sign of things to come for the tournament?

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There were no oooos and aaahhhs from either the dignitaries or the media seated respectfully in the bosom of the national stadium. Not much of the usual celebrity spotting. In fact, a minimum of razzmatazz.

Compared with the equivalent events preceding the World Cup and European Championships, it was all rather low key.

Yet there was no doubting the significance of today’s Olympic football draw at Wembley for organisers of London 2012.

Columnists

Philip Barker: Time to celebrate Bill Slater, a footballer with a unique British sporting history

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Born in 1927, Bill Slater is the only British footballer who can be mentioned in the same breath as Lionel Messi, Ronaldinho, Michel Platini and Lev Yashin. All have graced the Olympic tournament and the World cup finals, but Slater was the first and so far only Briton to do so.

By 1952, Slater (pictured below left in 1960 and right in 2007) had already appeared in the FA Cup final (as an amateur with Blackpool).

Mihir Bose

Mihir Bose: Leaders of a ‘disreputable’ game have duty to recalibrate its moral compass

This season is turning out to be one in which football has had to look hard at itself. The critical question: is the game capable of examining itself? And if so, would changing things make this a defining football season?

I am afraid I have grave doubts.

The reaction to Bolton Wanderers midfielder Fabrice Muamba’s collapse at White Hart Lane showed that the game has a soul, but much else has happened which indicates that football has a lot to do,

Andrew Warshaw: Turkey’s risky mega-events bidding game could see it drop the ball and lose everything

Over breakfast at an Istanbul hotel a couple of weeks ago, I asked one of Turkey’s leading Olympic officials which was the more important: staging the Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2020 or hosting football’s European Championships the same year.

“What we want above all is to secure one big event,” Ali Kiremitciogly, a prominent member of Istanbul 2020, diplomatically replied, hedging his bets the best he could.

He knows full well that hosting both mega-events in the same summer would be out of the question.

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David Owen: Au revoir but not goodbye Auxerre

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An era may be about to end in French football.

As I write this, AJ Auxerre sit 20th and last in Ligue 1, the French First Division.

There is still time for them to save themselves, but they are three points adrift, six points from safety and the days are getting longer.