WC thinking
So FIFA’s brilliance has created yet another money-making scheme – after the quietly supported Super League ended in a fiasco and the Saudi-sponsored complete makeover of FIFA a year or so ago didn’t find any takers either.
Columnists
Gold Cup delivers a dramatic return that ticks all the boxes
July 28 – The last time these two teams met Qatar beat the USA 14-8. That was in the vote for the 2022 World Cup hosting in 2010 and it unleashed a storm the like of which the football world has never seen.
Getting to Euro 2020 kick-off is a triumph in itself, now anything could happen
June 10 – Better late than never. One year after its original date, Euro 2020 finally kicks off in Rome on Friday but with a very different feel to anything we have experienced in the past.
Super Leaks: Man, U didn’t – did you?
By James Dostoyevsky
Football and leaks are a bit like cows and milk. One without the other appears to be quite impossible. That’s certainly true for cows. Without udders, there is no milk. And if the cow’s udder is not milked, the cow painfully dies. OK, that’s a worst-case scenario but does happen.
International breakages: Players and clubs feel the twin strains of covid and a heavy schedule
November 20 – It’s been an international break like no other when it comes to the impact of Covid-19 on European and global football and has raised legitimate questions about the folly of the scheduling.
Was Clarke’s stereotyping stereotypical of the English FA?
By Andrew Warshaw
November 11 – As inappropriate gaffes go, they don’t come much more untimely. Just as he was locked in a public and hugely anticipated debate with members of parliament on the subjects of inclusion and diversity, so English football boss (make that EX-football boss) Greg Clarke goes and puts not one but both feet in it.
Infantino is not guilty
At a time where the Swiss are engaged in some legal house-cleaning, having appointed a Special Prosecutor to investigate the former Swiss AG Lauber and his motley crew (as well as the odd birds that flew in from the increasingly legendary Canton of Valais: birthplace of Blatter, Infantino and local celeb AG Rinaldo Arnold), Infantino’s professional defenders have decided unequivocally that they don’t see eye to eye with Swiss Legal Eagles and declare, to anyone who will listen,
FIFA gives Swiss justice system a lesson in criminal law
By Paul Nicholson
Turkeys don’t vote for Christmas. FIFA’s ethics folk don’t do much that isn’t in their own interest either.
Are FIFA Ethics’ teeth in un-repairable decay?
Will FIFA’s so-called independent ethics committee dare show its teeth in arguably its most important test case to date? That is now the all-important question after three days of unprecedented trouble-shooting by the organisation’s administration in defence of its under-fire president, Gianni Infantino.
Did FIFA and Infantino just pull up the drawbridge as criminal investigators circle?
FIFA president Gianni Infantino’s insistence that he will continue in post and brazen it out in face of the criminal investigation into his own behaviour – repeat, CRIMINAL investigation into his own behaviour – is no small thing. On multiple levels.
In a world (cup) of their own. Will Trinidad be left playing Tobago?
By Paul Nicholson
The fate of Trinidad and Tobago’s 2020 World Cup qualifying campaign currently looks to be lieing in the hands of a Port of Spain High Court judge rather than at the feet of a team on the pitch.
£2.2bn – is this the cost of coronavirus for Premier League clubs?
June 5 – Brace yourselves, Premier League bosses. Extrapolating the forecast in yesterday’s Tottenham statement to gauge the possible league-wide revenue loss attributable to Covid 19, does not make pretty reading.
David Owen: Premier League profits; the bubble has burst
June 1 – The bubble has burst. Covid-19 will not stop some Premier League clubs from turning a profit for the current season, even though it now looks set to be played out behind closed doors.
FIFA’s very own Corona-time
The past few weeks openly reflect the insanity of what global football’s governors consider to be intelligent conduct. They also unveil the stench in the trenches of Swiss justice and more so, on the proper administration of justice.
Infantino’s Blatter complaints could become a rod for his own back
By Paul Nicholson
May 4 – FIFA and its president Gianni Infantino’s insistence on the Swiss judiciary pursuing a criminal case against former FIFA president Sepp Blatter could blow back on the governing body and potentially become a PR embarrassment for beIN Sports and PSG boss Nasser Al-Khelaifi.