The national stadium is supposed to represent the maximum a country can offer, an iconic venue that provides the best possible platform for deciding the outcome of the most important fixtures.
A venue that should give players the freedom to express themselves, managers the ability to change tactics without fear of accident and fans the unique experience of watching football at its most expansive.
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“Why are we so enthusiastic about Barcelona and Lionel Messi?
“[It’s] because he is playing like a kid.
“It’s like he is leaving his house and saying to his mum, ‘I’m going to play football, I’ll be back at 9 o’clock.’”
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This year’s FA Cup should have been a classic, one that should have helped to relaunch the oldest cup competition in the world.
This could be a defining week for the Premier League.
By Wednesday no English club may be in the Champions League, the first time since 2003 they would have failed to go beyond the quarter finals. And what is more, the Ofcom ruling that Sky charges its rivals too much for rights could mean that in future earnings from televised rights could be affected.
It has been a good couple of weeks for Joseph Blatter, FIFA’s veteran President.
First, FIFA’s ruling Executive Committee rejected a proposal that might have limited the presidency’s mandate to two consecutive terms of four years.
History may not always repeat itself first as tragedy then as farce, as Karl Marx said, but there are some very curious and interesting similarities in the latest attempt to get West Ham into the Olympic Stadium.
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I’ve been reading about and listening to all the “good judges’”- pundits, players and even some managers – who have recently been talking up England’s chances of leaving South Africa with the golden trophy.
In the 1930s, when the British were trying to hold on to India and defeat Gandhi’s attempt to get rid of them, the province that gave the most trouble was Bengal. The British could not understand that.
By David Owen
Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.
No sooner does England’s accident-prone World Cup bid appear to be getting its act together and heading for calmer seas then the water turns choppy again.
So London is to bid for the 2015 World Athletics Championships. That’s the good news. The not-so-good news is that this has “ramifications” for the future of the Olympic Stadium, which would be used to host the Championships.
What are the chances that the present debt crisis in football will lead to a regulator being appointed to administer the game?
A walk down memory lane is not always a game for the old. But it can be very useful for the football fan.
It is this thought that makes me ask: will the Red Knights plan to buy Manchester United go the way of Project Merlin?
By Andrew Warshaw
It will go down as the day football’s lawmakers decided they knew better than fans, players, managers and referees alike. And you had to be there to believe it.
Just hours before Sir Alex Ferguson won yet another trophy, when Manchester United lifted the Carling Cup beating Aston Villa, there was a very interesting programme on ESPN Classic.
By David Owen
“Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.”