October 11 – It’s been on the cards for a while and now the decision has finally been made. England captain Wayne Rooney, his country’s most-capped outfield player with 117 appearances, has been dropped for tonight’s World Cup qualifier against Slovenia.
October 10 – The number of national qualified players playing in the first teams of the top league in their country is often said to dictate the health of national team. If that is true then England’s 1-0 loss to Iceland at the Euros might have actually been a good result for the country.
October 10 – Bob Bradley, the first American appointed to coach a top-flight European team, says he aims to disprove those who believe he will find the Premier League too hot to handle.
October 10 – Spanish international defender Gerard Piqué says the 2018 World Cup in Russia will be his final tournament with the national team because he feels he is no longer wanted.
October 7 – If they’re good enough, they’re old enough goes one of football’s well-known sayings.
By Samindra Kunti in Amsterdam
October 5 – FC Barcelona ooze football. They are full-circle precision. Their style has been emulated across the globe with varying success and is the template for possession-based football. In his role as head of the club’s methodology department, Joan Vila Bosch has been at the heart of the Catalan supremacy.
By Samindra Kunti in Amsterdam
October 4 – Portuguese coach Andre Villas-Boas has admitted that managing Chelsea “was too much too soon.” He also blasted Tottenham Hotspur chairman Daniel Levy as an “expert in sacking managers.”
By Samindra Kunti in Amsterdam
October 4 – Marcelo Bielsa is a revered man – for both his philosophy and methodology. The Argentine rarely appears in public, but at the Aspire4Sport Global Summit on Football Performance & Science in Amsterdam he delivered the keynote address and a fascinating insight into coaching theory and practice.
By Samindra Kunti in Amsterdam
October 4 – Ajax’s director of football and former Arsenal player Marc Overmars has said that the time could be right for Arsene Wenger to leave Arsenal and become the England manager. Spanish midfielder Xavi believes that Pep Guardiola can profoundly change English football culture at Manchester City.
October 4 – With the Futsal World Cup having just crowned Argentina as champions in Colombia, the speed of growth of the small-sided version of football has been recognised in the US where the National Soccer Coaches Association of America (NSCAA) and U.S. Futsal have teamed up to create the first online Futsal Coaching Course.
By Samindra Kunti
October 3 – The 2016 Aspire4Sport Congress & Exhibition opened in the Dutch capital Amsterdam today with key stakeholders in the game and performance specialists from clubs and federations around the world gathering at the summit with Argentine coach Marcelo Bielsa delivering the keynote speech.
September 21 – Behind-the-scenes tensions between clubs and agents are commonplace but the impasse between Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola and the representative of Ivory Coast midfielder Yaya Toure has burst into the public domain.
September 15 – The latest FIFA national team rankings shows some significant changes after an international fixture schedule that saw 61 qualifiers played for World Cup Russia 2018, and a further 26 matches in continental qualifying competitions.
By Paul Nicholson
September 14 – While UEFA’s federation chiefs were making their way to Congress and the vote for president in Athens, their team coaches and technical directors were wrapping up their own forum in Paris. At the core of their agenda was an analysis of the EURO 2016 finals and the tactical and technical trends that emerged.
By Andrew Warshaw
September 5 – New manager, same old England – with one sharp difference. A last-gasp stroke of good fortune which perhaps augurs well for the future in terms of team building and confidence.