Columnists Archives - Page 62 of 78 - Inside World Football

Mihir Bose: Footballers will remain brainless bad boys until clubs step up

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Mario Balotelli (pictured below) is not the only footballer whose antics make you think there is much wrong with the game. Apart from his well publicised problems with his manager, the Manchester City player also managed to set fire to his house after a fireworks display in his bathroom. It is just as well not all footballers are like Balotelli. Not that the inane way they often answer questions on television give you much confidence that they think before they speak.

Columnists

David Gold: Get used to it, Qatar and Al-Jazeera are here for good

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Rarely has a classroom full of 14-year-olds been quite as stunned into silence by the announcement of the departure of their English teacher as mine was about 12 years ago now.

A quite brilliant teacher, poached from us in North London by Qatar, was leaving us. I left the classroom that day asking my friends: “Why Qatar? Who in their right mind would leave England to go to Qatar? Where even was Qatar?

Andrew Warshaw: Until FIFA learns from its tainted past Pieth’s reform proposals carry little weight

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It was billed as a “historic day” for FIFA in terms of its reform process but what happens now? It’s one thing being accused of failing to sufficiently investigate corruption allegations against its members. But it’s quite another actually doing something about it.

Anti-corruption guru Mark Pieth’s eagerly awaited report into FIFA’s recent conduct may have been hard-hitting in its conclusions and suggested firm ways of rebuilding trust. But until and unless FIFA acts on the recommendations the cynics will still swirl around football’s world governing body.

Mihir Bose

Mihir Bose: Muamba outpourings demonstrate football has soul

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Ever since Fabrice Muamba collapsed in the first half of the FA Cup match against Tottenham at White Hart Lane, not a single football event has gone by without some sympathy being expressed for the stricken Bolton player. This has included fans and players, even players in countries far removed from England, wearing T-shirts wishing Muamba a speedy recovery. His progress in hospital has been monitored with the sort of attention that was once accorded to members of the royal family and would nowadays be given to high profile pop stars.

Mihir Bose

Mihir Bose: If FIFA is to reform can British privileges be defended?

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British football’s privileges are under threat. But don’t blame Sir David Richards if Britain loses its unique status in world football. That will be the natural reaction after our Dave’s extraordinary performance in Doha last week. But it will be wrong. Look to wider politics in the world body for the answer.

Not that the Premier League chairman covered himself with glory when he went to Qatar last week. His mission there was to tell the world what it can learn from the Premier League having become the most powerful League in the world.

Andrew Warshaw: Incidents like Saturday’s remind us that football is not more important than life or death

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It was one of those dramatic “I was there” occasions – but for tragic reasons. The day when football took a back seat and the fragility of human life took over.

Anyone who was at Tottenham’s White Hart Lane stadium on Saturday cannot fail to have been emotionally moved by the harrowing scenes of Bolton Wanderers midfielder Fabrice Muamba collapsing with heart failure.

Never in all my years of covering the game have I seen so much collective shock and distress among players,

Columnists

Tom Degun: A bad day in Doha for Sir Dave Richards

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As far as bad days go, March 14, 2012 is one Sir Dave Richards probably wants to forget.

The strange thing is that it all started so innocuously for the English Premier League chairman on the first day of the International Sport Security Conference here in the Qatari capital Doha.

Richards sat down to take part in an interesting if unspectacular panel session titled: “New Frontiers: Rewards and Challenges to Growing a Sporting Brand in New Markets”.

Andrew Warshaw: Will Valcke’s Bagshot Blunder prove to be his final downfall?

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The sudden decision to call off FIFA general secretary Jérôme Valcke’s planned trip to Brazil this week has once again cast world football’s number two in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons.

Valcke was due to make the latest of his many World Cup inspection tours, this time to Recife, Brasília and Cuiabá, but the visit was postponed in what appeared to be a deliberate trouble-shooting exercise by his boss, FIFA President Sepp Blatter.

Mihir Bose

Mihir Bose: Abramovich is like a child with a shiny new train set and he certainly doesn’t want to share

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The easiest way to understand Roman Abramovich, the owner of Chelsea, is to appreciate that he is like a child with a new toy train set. The child knows his shiny new train set is better than anything possessed by the other kids, and while he wants to show off, he does not want to share his toys with anyone else. All he wants is to show how clever and superior he is in possessing this set.

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David Owen: Why football may play a part in the Scottish independence debate

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On February 29 at the bijou Bonifika Stadium in Koper, Scotland take on Slovenia in one of those rather pointless friendly internationals.

The match takes place with Scottish independence high on the UK news agenda and a referendum expected in 2014.

You might think the fortunes of the Tartan Army have little if anything to do with the complexities of Scotland’s constitutional arrangements with the rest of the United Kingdom.

Mihir Bose

Mihir Bose: Despite the turmoil, the racism debate might spark some good progress in English football

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Good can sometimes come out of evil, and the debate on racism that the game is going through could well lead to English football going down the road of America and adopting the Rooney rule. This rule, named for Dan Rooney, owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers and chairman of the league’s diversity committee, was introduced in 2003 so that minority coaches, especially African Americans, were at least considered for high-level coaching positions.

It basically states that,

Mihir Bose

Mihir Bose: Rangers entering administration shows how crazy football is

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Administrators being called into Glasgow Rangers is more than yet another football club living way beyond its means. This is one of those seminal moments when you feel the world has changed and may not be the same again. It illustrates the perils of football commercialism and how dangerous it can be.

No, it is not quite football’s equivalent of the fall of the Berlin Wall; to suggest that would be going a touch too far.

Archive

David Owen: Why English football may need Alan Turing even more than Harry Redknapp

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Here we go again.

England needs a new football manager, setting off a new cycle of speculation, unrealistically burgeoning expectations and disillusionment, as surely as, well 55,000 Twitter-users follow the Anfield cat.

Actually, the speculation bit looks like being much diminished this time, since everyone thinks they know the new man’s identity: step forward Harry Redknapp, cheekie-chappie manager of Tottenham Hotspur, surprise package of the 2011-12 English Premier League season.

Mihir Bose

Mihir Bose: The John Terry affair may be easy to remedy but the scourge of racism is leaving scars on the name of the FA

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Whatever the final outcome of the John Terry case, and Terry must be regarded as innocent until his trial is concluded, it has already had a tremendous impact on the English game.

It has made us look at the role played by the captain in English football, and the relationship between the Football Association and the England manager. But the most long lasting impact of the case could be on how black footballers feel about racism in the game.

Andrew Warshaw: The FA had no choice but to take away Terry’s captaincy

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Under British law, you are innocent until proved guilty. So why, many neutral observers are asking, was John Terry stripped of the England captaincy when his trial doesn’t take place until July?

It’s a fair question and one which will continue to be debated in pubs and at football grounds across the country in the months ahead.

The answer is – there is no easy answer. In fact, the Football Association board was put in an unenviable position.