Columnists Archives - Page 30 of 78 - Inside World Football

Mihir Bose: What does this South American World Cup teach us?

The Uruguayan polemicist and football fanatic Eduardo Galeano once wrote: “Tell me how you play, and I will tell you who you are.”

So now as the World Cup, in the country made for football and made by football, draws to a close it is worth asking what this World Cup has told us about football and about us. That such a question can be raised about what is essentially 22 men in shorts kicking a ball around shows us how football is seen in Latin America.

Lee Wellings

Lee Wellings: Africa’s wait continues

At this rate will an African nation win the World Cup by the end of THIS century?

Pele regularly demonstrates why he was an infinitely better footballer than pundit, but his famous line that an African team would triumph by the year 2000 is quoted more than any of his other theories.

Watching the exciting Cameroon and Nigeria in the 1990s raised hopes that defensive frailties may one day be improved upon,

Matt Scott

Matt Scott: Cameroon corruption claims put a World Cup in commotion, FIFA must prioritise

“Everyone loves a conspiracy.” The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown

With more than 200 million copies of his novels in print, it turns out the Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown had a point. There is something thrilling to be found in the hidden truth that only the beholder can see.

In football it has many guises: from the ‘in-the-know’ reporter or supporter who purveys gossip about a club’s transfer activity,

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Day 20 match preview and stats: ARG v SUI, BEL v USA

July 1 – The final day of the last 16 matches pits Argentina against Switzerland and Belgium against the USA. The winners will meet in the quarter final on Saturday in Brasilia.

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David Owen: Brazil 2014 – another small step, not a giant leap, for soccer in the USA

Twenty-eight years ago I moved to Chicago a month or two before the 1986 World Cup started. A report I wrote then underlines how far soccer has come in the land of the gridiron and the baseball diamond in the intervening nearly three decades.

“Just my luck,” I wrote. “While the rest of the football-mad globe is getting punch-drunk on a ball-by-ball account of the trail to glory, Windy City is more concerned with the size of Bears quarterback Jim McMahon’s close-season midriff.”

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Day 19 Match stat pack: GER vs ALG, FRA vs NIG

June 30 – The might of Africa takes on the old world Europeans with Nigeria facing France, and Algeria breaking new ground for North Africa in the last 16 of a World Cup against Germany.

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Day 18 match previews: NED v MEX, COS v GRE

June 29 – CONCACAF vs UEFA. Mexico are growing in stature, the Dutch are growing in renewed promise. Costa Rica have grown up while Greece have the look of having grown old, and sage in the process. All up for grabs in the battle for places in the quarter finals.

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Day 17 match previews and stats: BRA vs CHI, COL vs URU

June 27 – The peculiar feeling of a rest day has settled around the world before the World Cup gets down to last 16 business, the calm before the storm begins again. The opening two knockout matches are all Latin American affairs featuring two of the most exciting teams in the World Cup so far, Colombia and Chile. Brazil are playing as well. As are a toothless-looking Uruguay.

Lee Wellings

Lee Wellings: CONCACAF shines brightly in Brazil

It was a simple message from the President of their Confederation, Jeffrey Webb, but it said it all:

Very proud of @CONCACAF teams and their quality of play at #WorldCup. Let’s keep going #WeAreCONCACAF

This incredible World Cup of action is likely to end with a South American narrative. It is their tournament, it is their backyard. It is Brazil and Argentina I expect to be there at the end.

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Day 15 Match stat pack: USA vs GER, POR vs GHA, KOR vs BEL, ALG vs RUS

June 26 – The last of the group games complete with the conclusion of Groups G and H. The US vs Germany clash is holding most attention, while Ronaldo will have to produce something extra special to prevent ceding bragging rights this World Cup to Messi. An exciting Algeria will be looking to overcome a dour-looking Russia.

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World Cup shorts: Suarez feasting reaches dizzying new heights

Brazil eye

June 26 – From hero to zero to hero. Suarez provides reasons to be pious as Colombian keeper Mondragon provides inspiration for the older generation.

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David Owen: How I fell out of love with Holland’s 20th century boys

Dear Holland,

I’m sorry, but it’s over between us.

Along with millions of other school kids, I became besotted with you 40 years and a week ago – on 19 June 1974, the day of the Cruyff turn. It was a difficult time: Sir Alf Ramsey’s World Cup-winning team had broken up and England hadn’t made it to the 1974 tournament in West Germany. What is worse, Scotland had. Into this emotional void strode coach Rinus Michels’s team of strutting demigods headed by Johan Cruyff,

Matt Scott

Matt Scott: The £6bn black hole that could bring financial fire for football

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“The fire of God fell from heaven and burned up the sheep and the servants, and consumed them.” Job 1:16, King James Bible

It is very unlikely that, 4,000-odd years ago when Job is said to have walked this earth, there was any such a thing as insurance. Even if there was, and even if the old boy had kept up with his premiums, his sheep and his servants might still not have been covered anyway.

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Day 14 Match stat pack: NIG v ARG, BOS v IRA, HON v SUI, ECU v FRA

June 25 – Groups E and F play to conclusion with Nigeria needing to avoid defeat against Argentina to be Africa’s first, and potentially only, representative in the last 16. Though Iran will be looking to do the same for Asia. The Swiss need a good win over Honduras to beat Ecuador into the next round, assuming the South American can overcome a high flying French team.

Mihir Bose

Mihir Bose: Why the system, not Hodgson, is to blame for England’s problems

One of Roy Hodgson’s favourite writers, Stefan Sweig, killed himself in Petropolis, a town near Rio in 1942 despairing of where European civilisation and culture was headed. Now what has happened to Hodgson in Brazil does not bear any comparison with what Sweig was going through as the fight with Nazism raged in Europe with no definite indication that this evil could be defeated.

Those of us who write about sport often use absurd,