Lee Wellings: Let’s Enjoy the Saints’ ‘Miracle’ While We Can
It’s just not the way the Premier League is expected to work is it? What on earth are Southampton doing up in the Champions League qualifying places?
Columnists
David Owen: Why I would be dumbfounded if Prince Ali won
As if events swirling around FIFA needed to get any more surreal, Joseph Blatter was last week challenged for the Presidency of the world football governing body by a man purported to be a direct descendant of the prophet Muhammad.
John Yan: From Three Stripes to Swoosh 装备赞助，中国足球冲出亚洲
The public attention for Team China’s trip to Australia this January has been very high, even though the topics mostly are not related to the potential achievements of this team in 2015 Asian Cup. Alain Perrin, the French head coach of Team China, selected a reasonably young team, with an average age of 24.5 years old, and laid off quite a few settled international players. However, the stories were all about other issues, like a funny Now We Start departure ceremony held on the sports channel of CCTV,
Matt Scott: Five key events for 2015
“It is always wise to look ahead, but difficult to look farther than you can see.” Winston Churchill
Last week this column took a look back over what it had predicted for 2014 to see how they had fared in reality. Now, for the first column of 2015, and as one of history’s great men once said, it seems wise to look ahead, at least as far as we can see.
Andrew Warshaw: Brave Prince on a suicide mission?
A courageous and defiant move by FIFA’s most principled young reformer or a foolhardy risk that could backfire? Reaction to Prince Ali’s overnight announcement that he has decided to take on Sepp Blatter for the FIFA presidency looks certain to move into overdrive in the coming days.
Lee Wellings: Is American soccer really moving forward?
There was a time, when Beckham’s Miami project was first gathering pace and New York and Manchester City first joined forces, that I suggested in this column a crucial period for club football was emerging in the States. Or more accurately franchise football.
But three thirtysomethings from over the Atlantic indicate things haven’t actually changed that much from the 70s. The idea back then was to hire legends like Pele, Beckenbauer and Moore to sprinkle their stardust over the league.
David Owen: Steven Gerrard – Liverpool’s stupendous throwback
Remember the stock line about England World Cup winner Martin Peters? He was, they said, “ahead of his time”. This for the way he would ghost into the opposition penalty area unremarked.
Steven Gerrard always struck me as the opposite: a player “behind his time”; a throwback.
Mihir Bose: Why football management is no different to any other form of management
The season of good will and cheer is always the season of the sack and the managerial changes we are seeing in the Premier League should come as no surprise. However Alan Pardew’s decision to leave Newcastle for Crystal Palace has raised many an eyebrow. The argument, much touted on twitter and the airwaves, is why move from a great club to one whose ambition can be never higher than to hope for a sustainable place in the Premier League?
Matt Scott: Six lessons for 2015 and beyond: what the past calendar year has taught us
“History… is the lesson and the example of the future,” Alphonse de Lamartine, Antar.
This time last year this column carried an annual review of 2013 by pretty much the same title (see related article below). It seems worthwhile 12 months later to recapitulate over what it said and to discover whether any of its lessons were valid.
John Yan: Football is vanishing from Chongqing 一个升级顶级联赛成功的老牌俱乐部
A newly promoted club to the Chinese Super League has suddenly became the club most likely to be bought out. The story surrounding Chongqing Lifan FC, has become the latest major headline in Chinese football.
Dr Laila Mintas: National legislation needed in the fight against match manipulation
In the first of a regular series of columns on sports law and sports integrity, Dr Laila Mintas, CONCACAF Director of Integrity, examines the scale and threat of match manipulation to football globally, the difficulties encountered in effectively fighting it, and the urgent need for countries to bring in national legislation to battle the organised crime syndicates.
Matt Scott: TPO ban is welcome, but now the hard work begins
“There’s not any other profession in the world where investors can buy stakes in a human being.” Theo van Seggelen, FIFPro
Football, said the former England striker Jimmy Greaves, is a funny old game. But so too is the business of it. In no other sector than the sports industry do men willingly agree to become the tradable chattels of others. It is true that the football transfer market has come a long way from the time decades ago when players were instructed to move to a specific club with no input at all into the trade.
Martin Volkmar: 2014, the year of German football. And 2015?
As we settle back over the holidays and watch the pictures of the numerous annual reviews, memories of a grandiose summer come sweeping back.
For six weeks the country trembled, hoped and feared, until the final whistle on the wonderful evening of July 13 in Rio de Janeiro.
Andrew Warshaw: Going bananas but not slipping on the skin
As Sepp Blatter strapped in his seatbelt, lay back and sipped his first drink, alcoholic or otherwise, as he flew out of Morocco following one of the most tempestuous weeks of his 16-year FIFA presidency, he probably allowed him a wry smile.
David Owen: FIFA finances – new $62.7m teaser on the Marrakech express
By David Owen
It was lost – understandably – in the Kafkaesque farce surrounding the Garcia report, but last week’s meeting of the FIFA executive committee in Marrakech has left us business of football types with another financial teaser to savour.