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Lee Wellings: La Liga president faces up to match fixing

The autumn international break is a strange period isn’t it. Rightly or wrongly fans are pining for club action while the diet of World Cup qualifying ‘build-up’ is stretched to breaking point.

In England for example the comments of Jack Wilshere – plenty of potential though hardly a glittering star of the world game – on the subject of nationalism.

Everyone conveniently ignored the reality that this young footballer didn’t publish a manifesto,

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David Owen: Why England should not pin their hopes on Adnan Januzaj

Nations over the centuries have found different ways to enhance their prestige.

They have waged wars; they have erected great buildings; they have cultivated institutions of artistic excellence.

We in Britain should take great pride in the fact that today, in the year of the Football Association’s 150th anniversary, one of the most popular ways in which nations strive to achieve this is by excelling in sports many of which were invented by our 19th century ancestors.

Mihir Bose

Mihir Bose: Why Harry’s lost world will never come back

Harry Redknapp could never be accused of being a toff, let alone an intellectual. Yet his autobiography, Always Managing published by Ebury Press, a book that brings his story up to date following on from an earlier book 15 years ago, has some profound observations on how football has changed in this country. It should spark debate, if not some soul searching, among those who follow the people’s game.

What Harry is mourning is how the beautiful game has turned viciously ugly compared to his youth.

John Yan

John Yan: Politicians in club shirts 异乡与故乡

Chinese leaders

When a whole nation just has one club to support, there must be something wrong. Even though the club might become the most successful one ever in China’s football history.

Guangzhou Evergrande, yes, the club from Guangzhou again. After winning convincingly in the Asian Champions League (ACL) semi-final, they took their third successive domestic league title with 4 rounds to spare. This time they won the league at their nearest rival’s pitch, defeating Shandong Luneng FC 4:2 on October 6.

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Inside Insight: Obsessive-Compulsive (FIFA) Disorder, OC(F)D

Definition:

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is an anxiety disorder characterized by intrusive thoughts that produce uneasiness, apprehension, fear, or worry; by repetitive behaviors aimed at reducing the associated anxiety; or by a combination of such obsessions and compulsions. Symptoms of the disorder include excessive washing or cleaning; repeated checking; extreme hoarding; preoccupation with sexual, violent or religious thoughts; relationship-related obsessions; aversion to particular numbers; and nervous rituals, such as opening and closing a door a certain number of times before entering or leaving a room.

Matt Scott

Matt Scott: High stakes game for TV rights will keep UEFA’s club giants content

Languid as a footballer, laid back as a football administrator, Michel Platini has never appeared to be one for grand displays of emotion about anything. Even when captaining the victims of one of football’s greatest-ever injustices, as Germany’s goalkeeper Toni Schumacher put his France team-mate Patrick Battiston into a coma in a World Cup semi-final, Platini confronted the negligent referee with a mild flap of his arms.

But if there is one thing that has got the UEFA president exercised in recent times it is the threat of a breakaway European Super League.

Andrew Warshaw: More questions than answers in the long ball game

As an autumnal evening sunlight settled over FIFA House in Zurich last Friday and a phalanx of cameramen packed away their equipment after a somewhat anti-climactic Sepp Blatter press conference that focussed almost entirely on Qatar, I found myself humming the lyrics to that 1970s hit, More Questions Than Answers, by Johnny Nash.

Two generations after it was released, I reasoned, one could quite easily apply the title of the reggae ditty to the position we are still in as far as the 2022 World Cup saga is concerned.

Mihir Bose

Mihir Bose: Brussels, not Westminster, may turn the tide for Barry Hearn’s Olympic Stadium bid

Disenchantment with Europe is now so prevalent in Britain that it seems hard to find anyone who looks to Europe to help their cause. Yet Barry Hearn, who has got nowhere in his fight to share the Olympic stadium with West Ham, may find Brussels rather than Westminster is his best bet.

At the moment, having spent three quarters of a million pounds in legal fees over three years and got nowhere –

Andrew Warshaw: Eerie calm before the desert storm

Whatever transpires at the eagerly awaited gathering of FIFA’s top brass in Zurich on Friday, any decision to switch the 2022 World Cup in Qatar from the searing heat of the Gulf summer has suddenly taken on additional intrigue following the revelation that FIFA’s chief corruption-buster is stepping up his investigation into the entire bid process for 2018 and 2022 to find out what, if any, illegal shenanigans took place.

FIFA’s executive committee,

Lee Wellings

Lee Wellings: Is ‘Open Season’ on Qatar fair?

In the three years since Qatar was awarded hosting rights for the 2022 World Cup I haven’t heard their Supreme Committee or anyone with power deny anyone the right to free speech, to question or to criticise the decision.

But what would be helpful is if the critics made sure they were accurate, well researched and fair.

Some chance.

It’s open season on the 2022 hosts, where many ‘commentators’

Matt Scott

Matt Scott: Manchester United – where £50m is not all it seems

Manchester United’s three defeats from their first six Premier League matches have left the reigning champions in 12th place and the jokes are out already. Wags have begun calling them “Port Talbot” because they’re somewhere between Swansea and Cardiff.

This industrial-scale mess has prompted the new manager, David Moyes, to adopt a risky strategy. After defeat to West Bromwich Albion at home on Saturday he said his side lacked the “world-class players” required to win the Champions League.

Osasu Obayiuwana

Osasu Obayiuwana: Jordaan wins – but faces a huge challenge

If “a week is a long time in politics”, as the oft-quoted remark of the late British Prime Minister Winston Churchill reminds us, 202 days is certainly an eternity.

That’s the period between March 10, when Danny Jordaan lost a second successive bid to earn a seat on the executive committee of the Confederation of African Football (CAF) and September 28 when he won, by a landslide, the South African Football Association (SAFA) presidential poll.

John Yan

John Yan: Money Talks EverGrandely

In a resounding match, Guangzhou EverGrande defeated Kashiwa Reysol 4:1 at the Japanese club’s home pitch in the first round of the semi-final of Asian Champions League, a place for Guangzhou in the final is almost a certainty.

This would be regarded as a great breakthrough for Chinese football, some media even described it as the twilight of the dark age. A series of records will be broken if Guangzhou could make it to the final and win it,

Lee Wellings

Lee Wellings: Chewing over the Suarez rehab

It surprised me that Luis Suarez didn’t mark his return to playing for Liverpool against Manchester United after a 157 day absence with a match winning performance. It’s so often the way with comebacks from self-inflicted adversity.

The returning ‘bad boy’ is welcomed gratefully back into the fold straight into the spotlight, and quickly reminds everyone of how much they’ve been missed with a flash of genius.

Most memorably Eric Cantona at Manchester United,

Archive

David Owen: Qatar and the 2022 World Cup – Expect Amazing, perhaps; Expect A Maze, definitely

Expect Amazing. As a writer, I was never a great fan of the Qatar 2022 World Cup bid slogan, on grounds of dodgy syntax.

With the benefit of hindsight, I can now see they were just one syllable away from a formulation that pretty well encapsulates what we have been going through since the Gulf state’s fourth-round December 2010 victory: Expect A Maze.

To summarise – with the third anniversary of Qatar’s moment of moments fast approaching,