Columnists Archives - Page 28 of 78 - Inside World Football

Andrew Warshaw: Was the pretender to the throne only ever pretending?

Two months ago, when UEFA president Michel Platini was still weighing up whether to run for the top job in world football, it became abundantly clear in the build-up to the FIFA Congress in Sao Paulo that Europe was massively outnumbered in its opposition to a fifth term for Sepp Blatter.

So why did Platini not declare there and then that it was too risky to take on the wily old Swiss? It’s a fair question and one Platini was asked about when he finally announced,

Matt Scott

Matt Scott: Blessed are the weak as enfeebled United now look to inherit the earth

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“Hail, thou that art highly favoured… blessed art thou.” Archangel Gabriel to Mary; Luke 1:28

It has been a purgatorial 12 months or so for Manchester United. So if you are a supporter of theirs it must be tempting to look to a man named Angel Di María as some sort of celestial deliverer for your club. Sure, one Angel does not make a host but it should not be too hard for a £59.7 million player of his quality to make an impact.

Lee Wellings

Lee Wellings: Something for everyone is the ‘pleasing’ new Euro motto

Voila…

So Michel Platini will be staying at UEFA.

And it might be just as well there’s nothing to divert his attention from an important revamp, in which his General Secretary Gianni Infantino has been instrumental.

Archive

Inside Insight: Mackay has nothing to do with football

This publication has a solid track record of fiercely attacking racism in football and beyond and, once again, racism has reared its ugly head in England. And, most disappointingly, at the highest level of the game in terms of ‘mass’ influence. What would be wrong though, is to look at the Mackay case as a one-off, as a singular event that cries out for (meaningless) punishment in case the allegations are proven. Punishment that would be in line with the toothless fines FIFA and UEFA keep issuing in similar cases.

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David Owen: Liverpool and Balotelli: Why Reds set for a summer transfer profit despite £100m+ spree

Liverpool posted the biggest pre-tax loss in the Premier League in 2012-13. The previous year only Manchester City posted a bigger one. In such circumstances, you might have expected the Anfield club to be squirrelling away at least some of its Luis Suárez windfall; to be showing a modicum of restraint in this summer’s transfer market in the interests of its bottom-line. All the more so with UEFA’s Financial Fair Play (FFP) provisions hovering in the background.

Matt Scott

Matt Scott: Third-party ownership – don’t bet your house on it

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“It used to be the norm for people in their early thirties to set up a home of their own, but sadly being ‘priced out’ is rapidly becoming the new norm.” David Orr, UK National Housing Federation

You might think it odd that a football business-to-business column would focus on the UK housing market but there is a lot it can tell us about our game. Not because of what we can learn about club incomes,

Andrew Warshaw: Musical chairs at football’s top table

The recent reshuffle within the corridors of power at the South American confederation, Conmebol, following the death of its FIFA vice-president Julio Grondona, made for interesting reading. Not so much because of the personnel involved but because of the political structure that was put in place with regard to FIFA representation.

Massimo Cecchini

Massimo Cecchini: La ‘Diversita’ Italiana

Il calcio italiano ha un presidente federale e un commissario tecnico. Voi direte: che cosa c’è di strano? Nulla, eppure tanto. Dopo il progressivo affondamento del movimento che ruota attorno al pallone – materializzatosi nei fallimenti degli ultimi due Mondiali, nel progressivo affondamento nei ranking Fifa e Uefa e nella violenza che la fa da padrone – l’11 agosto l’assemblea federale ha eletto il nuovo presidente della Figc. Come ampiamente previsto, il “nuovo che avanza”

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David Owen: 1974 – when British football was whiter than white and QPR briefly looked like the shape of the future

Rummaging through my mother’s garage, I found a mildewed relic: a copy of Shoot! “incorporating Goal”‘s summer special from 1974.

It was not a happy time for English football. The Alf Ramsey era had just fizzled to a close with a goalless draw in Portugal. With the World Cup that England had failed to qualify for about to take place in West Germany, the first article was an assessment of Ramsey’s long reign.

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Inside Insight: Mongering some FIFA rumours

The World Cup is done and dusted. The revolution did not happen, football was televised. Rio remained unaffected by what the nay sayers had predicted to become a nightmare for FIFA. The social unrest prior to the World Cup proved to be against an apparently incompetent and corrupt government and not the governing body of world football. The schools and hospitals remain unbuilt. The roadways and other ways remain unfinished eye-sores, as they were before the Cup,

Matt Scott

Matt Scott: A ghost game and the corruption threat to football in all its forms

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“The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business.” Jacob Marley’s ghost – A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens

In the century-and-a-half since its inception, football has crossed every ocean and taken root in nearly every corner of the globe. It truly is a marvellous business, its success eclipsing almost all of its Victorian contemporaries, surviving the wars and the many technological innovations that put paid to so many once-thriving concerns of the former British empire.

Osasu Obayiuwana

Osasu Obayiuwana: Nigeria’s football Inferno, where chaos has propagated chaos

When it comes to the August 26 elections for the presidency and executive committee of the Nigerian Football Federation (NFF) – if they actually happen on that day – it is evident, to keen watchers of its politics, that the more things change, the more they remain the same. For the fourth successive NFF poll, since 2005, Africa’s most populous nation is caught in the whirlwind of chaos and anarchy that typically accompanies the battle for control of the game’s administrative levers,

Lee Wellings

Lee Wellings: Bayern raids destroy Bundesliga competition

Allow me to pick up where I left off at the end of the World Cup with the big theme in world football – German football dominance. The world champions achieved arguably the most impressive World Cup win of all time. Beating the big two from South America to become the first European nation to lift the trophy on that football-crazy continent. Including that 7-1. And German club football is great too isn’t it. Well isn’t it?

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David Owen: Why doing the right thing over Legia might be in Celtic’s long-term interests

Against my better judgment, I yesterday waded into the lively Twitter debate over Celtic and the Champions League being prosecuted (the bits that I have seen) by those better informed and/or more emotionally engaged than me.

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David Owen: Splashing the cash in the glory game

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Top football clubs are different to other businesses. Whereas most companies exist to generate wealth for their shareholders, football clubs must balance this against the pursuit of trophies. Of course, the two aims are linked, or can be: mountains of silverware will increase a club’s popularity, tending to make it more valuable and, hence, to enable its owners, should they so choose, to sell it at a profit.