Columnists Archives - Page 13 of 78 - Inside World Football

Matt Scott: Wolves’ Morgan has done well on house that Sir Jack built

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“Si monumentum requiris circumspice [If you seek his monument, look around]” Christopher Wren, epitaph on Wren’s tomb

Ever since the Great Fire of London devastated its capital, Great Britain and its inhabitants have had an obsession with architecture. It is a nation that has spawned many Great Builders, such that naming only Wren, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Sir Joseph Bazalgette or Sir George Gilbert Scott is to commit a gross injustice to the others who came before and after them.

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Inside Editorial: The Thinker

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Auguste Rodin’s ‘The Thinker’, also displayed in this week’s cartoon (or, at least a variation of it), best qualifies the goings-on in FIFA, where the top floor stays lit up, even late at night these days.

Andrew Warshaw: For whom the bell tolls

He tried every way he could, for months on end, to distance himself from the ignominy and disgrace that that has snared so many of his former colleagues.

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David Owen: Could Platini end up as the big loser of FIFA’s frenetic Friday?

Friday’s shenanigans at FIFA prompted a number of sporting sages to prophesy the demise of Sepp Blatter well before the February 26 Congress that is supposed to elect a new FIFA President. I wonder though if the big loser might not turn out to be Michel Platini.

Massimo Cecchini

Massimo Cecchini: Conte’s Euro challenge at risk of being derailed by due process

Simply writing that Antonio Conte, coach of Italian national team, risks a process, it could have a wrong meaning. It would be easy to blame this on a wrong formation, or a federation not happy with the results, or public opinion not satisfied with the way the team is playing its football. However, it is none of these. We are talking about a real legal process, as the coach of Italy in early July was indicted by prosecutors in Cremona,

Andrew Warshaw: Can FIFA find life after yet another death?

It was never intended to end up like this. Jerome Valcke always expected to step down after eight years as FIFA’s number two once his boss, Sepp Blatter, announced he was calling it a day next February.

Matt Scott

Matt Scott: Debts are no longer a taxing issue for the big clubs

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“If you owe your bank a hundred pounds, you have a problem. But if you owe a million, it has.” John Maynard Keynes

Like him or loathe him – and he splits opinion as surely as Marmite – John Maynard Keynes was one of history’s greatest minds. His writing has formed the basis of the modern economic system. (Although what he taught has been treated as a piecemeal buffet from which to pick and choose according to political expediency,

Matt Scott

Matt Scott: Managers are too important to hire and fire on a whim. But are they all up to it?

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“Sacked in the morning, your getting sacked in the morning…” Terrace chant

It is one of football’s accepted truths that no employee in a club is more important than the manager. His influence on the most decisive input into the club’s operations – the results on the pitch – makes him so. It follows then that with so much swinging on how they do, there must be some objective measure for the quality of their performance.

Andrew Warshaw: Football’s Lynch mob scent more blood

It was the word “entities” that got tongues wagging. What was the US attorney general referring to when she opened up a fresh can of worms by warning football to expect a another surge of corruption-related arrests, this time involving entities as well as individuals? Companies? Confederations?

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David Owen: Rooney and Charlton – England goalscorers who are creatures of their times

This has been a week when the names of Wayne Rooney and Bobby Charlton have been juxtaposed a million times, making comparisons between these authors of a combined 99 England goals inevitable.

Mihir Bose

Mihir Bose: We need transparency not just at FIFA, but also in club football

If there is one subject everyone agrees on is that FIFA needs to be more accountable and transparent. Yet even as there is unanimity on this subject in one area of football there is so little transparency and information is so tightly controlled that it makes those who run the politburo in China look liberal and media friendly. This is in the area of how clubs communicate to the world.

Matt Scott

Matt Scott: Injuries will drag you down. It is not a question of if, but when

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“If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster and treat those two impostors just the same.” Rudyard Kipling, If

We all want to know who’s hot and who’s not, and in football our assessment of triumph is for the most part a binary process. In these days of blink-of-an-eye judgements, the measure of a man or a manager is made in what is little more than the sixty seconds of a single season.

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David Owen: The migrant crisis gives sport a chance to show it can make the world a better place

Sports leaders are often keen to ascribe a higher purpose to the gloriously trivial pursuits to which they owe their positions. Hence last year’s agreement aimed at strengthening collaboration between the United Nations (UN) and the International Olympic Committee (IOC); hence FIFA President Sepp Blatter’s dogged attempts to use football to help map out a modus vivendi between Israel and Palestine.

Andrew Warshaw: Transfer’s summer window is broken and ‘pay-day’ loan deals just don’t look fair

The mad last-minute scramble is over and the dust is settling but the repercussions rumble on. Clubs being tapped up, chairmen squabbling over staged payments, frustrated coaches, disaffected players, disappointed fans. The summer transfer window may provide excitement and despair in equal measure but is it actually fair in producing a level playing field?

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Inside Insight: That Chung Thing

Ever since the Korean Grandee, Chung Mong-joon (lovingly called MJ by his friends) announced his candidacy for the post of FIFA President, he has been doing what he has done best in the past: throw stuff at people. Whilst “my enemy’s enemy is my friend” was his motto in May of 2009 when he supported Sheikh Salman of Bahrain against Mohamed Bin Hammam, his target, this time, have been broadsides against his former ally and ExCo candidate of 2009 whom he then fervently supported.