The very last subject I’d usually want to talk about is referees.
I mean, have you heard yourselves?
Moaning at the ref, accusing him of bias, pointing to your watches. As if it’s an easy job, as if decisions are not made in the split second under high pressure. As if we actually give credit for the many decisions that are correct.
January 9 – INSIDE World Football is proud to announce our new and groundbreaking partnership with NeEase – www.163.com -and its main sports portal where INSIDE World Football will be a daily feature in Chinese. Launched today, INSIDE World football’s daily content is available to some 500 million Chinese users. NetEase is one of China’s most visited websites and China’s largest email services provider.
“You’ll never have me in your grasp, not in this chariot, a gift to me from my grandfather Helios, to protect me from all hostile hands.” Euripides, Medea
When the infanticide Medea, the original theatrical villain, is lifted with the bodies of her murdered children from the scene of her crime by the sun god’s chariot there is a sense of dissatisfaction about the outcome of Euripides play. It’s a bit of a cop out of an ending,
With roughly five months to the World Cup finals, the burning question of how the African quintet will perform in Brazil and what it might say, about the competitive state of the continental game, will soon be answered.
But what really bothers me, as we begin another year, way beyond whether an African team is able, for the first-time, to reach the semi-finals – as desirable as that is – is when the various countries within the continent will get down to the much-needed business of hammering out sustainable plans for long-term development.
Time was when the third round of the FA Cup produced excitement, surprise, fun and often a touch of magic to keep the winter blues away. Now all it does is produce moans about how the Cup has been devalued and the competition is not what it was back in the old days. The only surprise is this year the moans began even before the third round matches had been played, ignited by comments of Paul Lambert of Aston Villa that the FA Cup did not mean much to Premier League teams.
Driving back from an English FA Cup game in the pouring rain last Saturday, I was listening to a radio phone-in and suddenly became so incensed by a Chelsea-supporting caller, I gripped the steering wheel even more tightly in the treacherous conditions to avoid swerving into the path of another car in my rage.
The caller, displaying an arrogance so common among Johnny-come-lately fans whose clubs have enjoyed unlimited success and who disregard everyone else,
In 2002, I travelled to Sedan in northern France to watch a match against Lens that featured some of the Senegal players likely to represent their country in the opening match of that year’s World Cup against France.
Afterwards I wrote: “If Dakar-born Patrick Vieira were playing for the country of his birth, Senegal would have a real shout at springing the World Cup’s first upset.” I was wrong, of course: Senegal beat the then World Cup-holders,
Brazil 2014 will be the first World Cup dominated by twitter.
Not the first World Cup of the twitter age, but the first since twitter became an unstoppable juggernaut thundering through every town and city on earth.
For those who despair of the idiocy and indiscretion that drag down the positive side of this social phenomenon, a World Cup consumed by twitter commentary could be a depressing thought. It could be yes,
“History… is the lesson and the example of the future,” Alphonse de Lamartine, Antar.
As one year rolls into another there is only the fading memory of what came before and an anticipation of what might be. Football’s cycles work to a different calendar, but it is worth considering how the lessons of 2013 might provide examples for what the future will hold in the second half of the 2013-14 season and beyond.
“Key ECB interest rates will remain at present or lower levels for an extended period of time,” Mario Draghi, ECB president, reaffirming the 0.5% European bank rate on 1 August 2013.
Ever since the financial crisis first struck, central banks across Europe and beyond have been locked in an arm wrestle with the invisible hand of Adam Smith’s markets. There has been much talk of a zero interest rate policy,
Looking back through my Insideworldfootball columns throughout 2013 it struck me that with few exceptions, the subjects are actually bound by a common theme.
Whatever the story, without the angle, whatever the history and characters, and wherever in the world, there is one barely disputable rule of football 2013.
Winning is everything.
Hands up everyone who thought that Liverpool would be top of the Barclays Premier League at Christmas.
In truth, the Merseysiders are precariously perched: their next two games are away at Manchester City and Chelsea respectively. Lose those and they would probably be back below local rivals Everton and out of the Champions League places before the year-end. A New Year’s Day engagement back at Anfield against newly-promoted Hull then has the look of an ideal fixture with which to stop the rot – until you remember that the Tigers claimed their first-ever win over Liverpool on Humberside less than a month ago.
With just days to the end of the year, and his tenure as the chair of FIFA’s Independent Governance Committee (IGC), you would think Mark Pieth is extremely glad to be well rid of an assignment he admitted has been extremely difficult to manage – getting the game’s chieftains to radically change the way they do business.
In the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Pieth was quoted as telling the German newspaper that he “would not take on the task again,
The 2013 edition of China Super League Value Report was recently released by Netease.com and Total Sports. This is the second edition of the annual report on professional football in China.
The report is divided into four parts: the management of the China Super League Company, which is a body like the English Premier League Committee; the second part covers the financial situation of the 16 clubs in the top division; the third part looks at a hot issue –
Much has been made in recent weeks of the terrible working conditions of migrant labour in Qatar. As the hosts for the 2022 World Cup, the spotlight was always going to be on the Gulf state but even then Amnesty International’s report on migrant workers presented a dreadfully bleak picture of the conditions of those involved in the infrastructure projects Qatar is undertaking as it prepares for its historic moment in the sun.
The Amnesty report mentioned that more than 80 migrant construction workers,