Mihir Bose: Power games require powerful leaders

One match, or even two never define a season, let alone a trend although it is tempting to draw sweeping conclusions from the way the Champions League semi-finals have panned out. Two Spanish clubs in the Champions League final, and that from one city, Madrid, must surely mark a very dramatic shift from the German domination of the League. After all it was only last year we had an all German final. And Bayern Munich was seen as the team that defined everything that was strong and worth emulating in European football.

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Lee Wellings:Moyes dis’nae matter to Americans

Imagine the scene on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.

Shouting and panic, white papers being waved in the air, frantic conversations into cellphones and one lone trader desperately trying to discover the route of the pandemonium.

“What’s the Pwanic?”

“It’s Mwoyes,” says the Wolf of Wall Street, “he’s gahn.”

“Omg get me a cwarfee. Dis is BIG!’

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Andrew Warshaw: AFC political warfare as Shaikh-up hits rails

How much more ugly can the divisions within Asian football become? In a couple of weeks’ time, Jordan stages the latest Soccerex football business conference for the game’s movers and shakers but it does so against the backdrop of festering resentment and unsavoury internecine warfare.

The recent decision by FIFA vice-president Prince Ali Bin Al Hussein, head of Jordanian football, to issue an open letter to the entire Asian football membership denouncing Asian Football Confederation chief Sheikh Salman bin Ibrahim Al Khalifa for trying to mastermind his downfall by playing politics took most observers totally by surprise.

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Matt Scott: Liverpool build means more than just a new main stand

Liverpool stadium build

“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.” John Donne, No Man Is An Island

Liverpool’s time was the 1970s. This is not at all to diminish their achievements or the anguish that great club enjoyed and endured in the 1980s. But the foundations for becoming the club they are today were laid under Bill Shankly in the decade before.

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