In the second to last round of the 2014 CSL season, Beijing Guoan FC went to Guangzhou to play defending champions Evergrande, Before the match, Beijing had 63 points, Guangzhou 69 points. A draw would secure the fourth consecutive title for Guangzhou.
What defines a nation’s football status? Is it the senior-international trophies it has historically won? The depth of its leagues? Its grassroots participation? The quality of its top division, perhaps? Or is it the quality of its national stadium?
The question and answer format is much resorted to in France. To one more versed in the “cut-to-the-chase” school of Anglo-American journalism, however, it can come across as woolly, evasive and self-indulgent.
By relating a conversation word for word as it happened, or purporting to, the convention both implies that every cough and splutter uttered by the protagonists is worthy of the reader’s attention and largely abdicates the editing function.
So, the ECA came up with a brilliant suggestion: the 2022 World Cup should be held in May of that year. Because in May it ain’t that hot yet, they say … A good idea on the face of it.
When UEFA president Michel Platini decided to expand the European Championship finals from 16 to 24 countries, starting in 2016 in his homeland, the purists threw their collective arms up in the air, screamed “Zut alors” – or far worse – and accused the Frenchman of being seriously misguided.
Vuoi vedere che la combinazione tra violenza negli stadi e crisi economica potrebbe provocare novità impreviste?
Who are three biggest names in the Premier League? The three stars, the three headline makers? You’re not thinking of footballers are you? As if they are still important. It’s all about managers now. Wenger this, Mourinho that, Van Gaal the other.
“Connectivity will be an enabler. Transparency for better government, education, and health.” Bill Gates
Eighteen months and 430 pages have gone into Michael Garcia’s report for the FIFA ethics committee into the 2018 and 2022 World Cup bidding, and there have been acres more pages of newsprint produced on the back of it. It was the highest-profile measure to emerge from the Independent Governance Committee’s strategic review of FIFA’s operations.
Well, there will be one on May 29, 2015, and it seems pretty clear who the winner will be.
The bad part is that those who shriek “democracy”, “transparency” and shout for competing candidates, do nothing about it.
Enter football’s new old friend Greg Dyke. It is one thing to decry Blatter’s way of leading world football. And it is similarly easy to jump on the bandwagon but remain an onlooker.
It is impossible to feel any sympathy for Qatar. An oil-rich Gulf state which somehow manages to get the World Cup and then lavishes money to try and convince the world it can not only stage the event but contribute to a better understanding of the world of sport hardly qualifies for sympathy. The immediate response would be there are far worthier subjects to feel sorry for. Yet as Qatar continues to get a bad press we must ask ourselves what is Qatar doing wrong and can they ever get out of this terrible spiral of distrust and dislike?
“When his heart was lifted up, and his spirit was hardened in pride, he was deposed from his kingly throne, and they took his glory from him.” Daniel 5:20, the King James Bible
“Working hard all your life is a talent.” Ryan Giggs
Greg Dyke last week issued the second instalment of his Football Association Chairman’s Commission report and there were a number of welcome developments contained within.
It was in the Fishmongers Hall, yes the Fishmongers Hall, chasing investigator Michael Garcia through tables of lunching American lawyers, that the World Cup bid story reached the level of high farce.
Consider the scene. A lawyer who, perhaps advantageously, knew little of football when he took on the independent investigation into the 2018/2022 bid process. Hired, to its credit, by FIFA. Telling his dining peers endearingly that the only live football he had watched was his daughter’s year 12 games.
I have just returned from Monaco and an absorbing few days at the Sportel convention cum media rights bazaar. Boiling it down, I can recollect three moments worth recording for future reference.
Publish Michael Garcia’s report or be damned. The clarion call to FIFA from a collective raft of influential football powerbrokers, anti-corruption watchdogs and vast swathes of the media intensifies on an almost daily basis.
I have been privileged to receive, in advance of this week’s Sportel sports content media convention in Monaco, a briefing on 2014 World Cup viewing trends from a leading specialist in the field. The briefing – from Kevin Alavy, managing director – mediabrands at Futures Sport+Entertainment, a US-based sports research consultancy – was unofficial in nature. But it gives an idea of what to expect when the official television audience report for the tournament is published by FIFA.