Columnists Archives - Page 57 of 78 - Inside World Football

David Owen: Why Platini’s Grande Idée makes sense for Africa

By David Owen

I came upon a prescient article from the Washington Post today.

It was about a West African country where poverty was said to be fuelling a resurgence of Muslim fundamentalism.

“People want schools, they want medical attention for their children,” a local sociologist was quoted as saying.

“But who is listening to them?

“Islamists, who provide them with water and fertiliser to believe the solutions are found in religion.

Columnists

Richard van Poortvliet: Russians like the idea of an old-style Soviet league

By Richard van Poortvliet

Russian’s can be nostalgic. Every so often I will get into a conversation with a taxi driver in Moscow who will reminisce about the benefits of living in the Brezhnev era, which stability ruled over consumer choice. Over the last couple of months that is not the only thing Russian’s have been missing about the USSR as the possibility of resurrecting the Soviet Top Football League or ‘Vyshaya Liga’

Mihir Bose

Mihir Bose: Why match fixing cannot be fixed

The story of match fixing in football is very like the story of Lance Armstrong. The world knew, with the singular exception of UCI, cycling’s world body, that Armstrong was a cheat. The problem was finding enough evidence to prove that he had doped his way to victory. And once the Americans had seen the light it was always a matter of time.

Of course even now the UCI refuses to accept responsibility for the fact that Armstrong cheated right under their noses.

Archive

David Owen: Brazil are coming to Wembley. But will the World Cup really help Pelé’s country to make more out of football’s global money machine?

Here’s something to ponder in a week when Brazil are expected at Wembley for a friendly international: for more than half a century, the canary-shirted Brazil playmaker has been the embodiment of all that is best about the game that conquered the world; yet, as the sport has grown rich, the home of o jogo bonito has been reduced to a dusty outpost of the shiny multinational that is Planet Football.

Mihir Bose

[b]Mihir Bose:[/b] Britain’s government wants change but will it enforce it, and is it asking the right questions

It would be foolish in the extreme to believe that just because the Commons Select Committee on Culture Media and Sport has given the football authorities a bollocking, things will change in the national game. This may be the second verbal lashing the MPs have administered football in two years but just because the MPs wave a big stick it does not mean they will follow up by using it to whack the football authorities if,

Archive

David Owen:How a Cup revival has made a US bank’s surprising sponsorship choice look inspired

For a decade or two now, the leading national cup competitions in Western Europe have been losing their grip on the public imagination.

You might think this would leave the second-string competitions – the league cups – in a seriously bad place.

But for one at least, 2012-13 has brought something of a revival – to the great good fortune of its new sponsor.

Archive

David Owen: What does the Money League really tell us?

The recently released edition of the Deloitte Football Money League raises a few points that are worth taking a harder look at.

The first is about the slipperiness of statistics.

While in euro terms, year-on-year revenue growth among Europe’s 20 highest-earning football clubs is an impressive 10%, a very different picture – of stagnation, basically – emerges if the reference currency is sterling.

Mihir Bose

Mihir Bose: Lies, damn lies and alienating statistics

One important reason why football of all ball games is the most popular game in the world is because it is simple. Its rules are easy to understand and have none of the complexity that, for example, rugby has. Football’s celebrated off side rule may be a diverting after dinner conversation with which to bait those who do not care about the game but it is nowhere near as mind blowing as trying to work out why a penalty is given in rugby.

Archive

David Owen: Pep’s next step, why Germany may have been the logical choice

I can’t tell you exactly why Pep Guardiola, the hottest property in football management, decided this week to hitch his wagon to Germany’s Bundesliga.

But I don’t think it would have happened had it not been for a choice made by an obscure New Zealand football administrator in Zurich on 7 July 2000.

Andrew Warshaw

Andrew Warshaw: Cypriot football searches for unification across a fractious political divide

When Greek and Turkish Cypriot football officials staged their landmark re-unification talks this week, among the keen observers waiting in the winter sunshine for the eagerly anticipated arrival of the respective federation leaders was 81-year-old Sevim Ebeoglu.

Sevim, perhaps more than anyone else, epitomises what it would mean for the Turkish side of the divided island to be re-integrated with its once friendly neighbour.

Mihir Bose

Mihir Bose: What has the FA done, Daddy?

The 150th anniversary of the Football Association certainly deserves to be celebrated. Any organisation that has reached such a venerable age has the right to celebrate its birthday and no doubt get a telegram from the Queen, or however Her Majesty marks such occasions these days.

But the tipple for the occasion should not be Krug champagne but a glass of Prosecco. For all the warm words that are now being showered on the FA from far and wide the best thing that can be said about the FA is that it still exists.

Mihir Bose

Mihir Bose: Football’s moral quagmire

Let us get this right. Luis Suarez is no more a cheat than most football players. I agree with those that argue that the moral spasm his handball goal has evoked is way over the top if not a touch hypocritical. I wonder if the critics have been to many football matches or if they have perhaps been too busy with other things to concentrate on what they are seeing.

If we are saying Suarez was cheating,

Archive

David Owen: Football authorities need to think through their reaction to Boateng walk-off – and so do we

I hate to be a wet blanket, but I have the tiniest sliver of sympathy for football administrators in the predicament they face following the actions of Kevin-Prince Boateng and his Milan team-mates.

The powers-that-be now have to decide how they are going to respond when a similar walk-off happens in a competitive match – as assuredly it will.

Mihir Bose

Mihir Bose: Why English football will never shake off its Europeanisation

Consider this question. In the next few years Britain may decide to leave the European Union. At no time since this country joined what was then the Common Market 40 years ago has there been such a strong anti-European feeling. And this is a mood that seems to be going beyond the traditional ‘fed up with Brussels’ to ‘get out of Europe’ clamour.

But even should a referendum see the people of Britain vote to leave,

Mihir Bose

Mihir Bose: Why the past will haunt the present in 2013

Those who forget the past, said the great American savant George Santayana, are condemned to repeat it. Football in 2013 runs the same risk. This is because many of the administrators who run the game seem to have forgotten the past. Or perhaps they never cared for the past despite their many references to it in public utterances.

This explains why 2013 will be for the world’s favourite game a question of dealing with issues many thought had long been settled.