Why should it matter if a section of Tottenham supporters chant yids?
I entirely take the point my colleague Andrew Warshaw has made that Spurs fans, “have for years used chants like “yid” and “Yid Army” not as term of abuse but exactly the opposite: as a badge of honour, of identity, of pride, of endearment.”
However I disagree with him that the chanting is now acceptable. Don’t get me wrong.
The proverbial ink had barely dried, after writing last week’s column, when Liberia became the eighth African country to be investigated by FIFA, for using an ineligible player in the 2014 World Cup qualifiers.
Goalkeeper Nathaniel Sherman, who received yellow cards in games against Uganda and Senegal, was fielded in their final qualifier against Angola, which they lost 4-1.
Should they be found guilty, as they most likely will be, the West Africans will be paying a $6,300 fine for their avoidable error.
Search Google News for “Manchester City United” after the Premier League champions’ 4-1 defeat to their local rivals and you will return 12.2 million results. Search the same channel for “Singapore match fixing arrests” and you get back 14,300 articles.
Naturally there is a tremendous amount of tribal braggadocio at stake in any derby between title chasers, and Sunday’s 4-1 win for City was certainly action packed. But in the grand scheme of things it amounts only to 1⁄38 of a single Premier League season for each club.
It’s time to look for solutions to the potential mess that threatens to engulf European football in the season 2022/23.
FIFA and representatives of continents, nations, clubs and players are about to try and harmonise the calendar.
In the spirit of ‘ideas for solutions being more welcome than more problems’ here’s my humble offering to try and ease the disruption and logjam of fixtures.
First let’s remind ourselves of the landscape.
The battle to move the 2022 Qatar World Cup is developing into quite a classic. However, like many such football debates, it is being conducted on false premises.
The argument being presented is that it cannot be moved to winter because it would mean the original terms under which the bidding took place were wrong. It is assumed that when Qatar won the bid back in 2010 they and their rivals competed in a competition where they signed a document saying the tournament would be held in the summer.
Sometimes in football, as in other walks of life, a debate splits public opinion so far down the middle that it seems impossible to reconcile the two sides of the argument.
For once I am not talking about the Qatar 2022 World Cup but a highly complex domestic issue in England that is generating emotion-packed comment and opinion.
Anyone who has suffered from anti-semitism knows how vile, pernicious and hurtful the insults and alienation can be.
The FFA – Australia’s Fabulous Football Association – have started to shout. Sometimes, one gets the feeling that people think the louder they scream, the more their argument rings true. Not so. Content still rules over tactics and style. And Australia’s most recent style is unique, to say the least.
There goes a sore loser. Nearly three years after having secured just a single vote (where two were promised “for sure”, and another 10 at least confirmed with hugs between old men,
“We are financial products. A football club is like a factory, and we are its outputs. You have to be realistic.”
It is not often you hear a human being reduce himself to the status of a balance-sheet item. But with these words that is exactly what Eliaquim Mangala, a France-international defender at the Portuguese champions, FC Porto, has done. Mangala’s words were in response to being confronted with the fact he is not merely an intangible fixed asset belonging to his club but also to two offshore funds whose investors’
How difficult can it really be for the officials of a football association to keep accurate statistics, as well as master the eligibility rules, of players entitled to feature for their countries in crucial international matches?
One would assume it does not take the genius of Albert Einstein to carry out basic record-keeping duties.
But the recurring drama of administrative ineptitude, leading to the cancellation of several World Cup qualifying results across Africa,
Ever since FIFA president Sepp Blatter’s exclusive interview with this website explaining his preference for switching the 2022 Qatar World Cup to winter, time has hardly stopped still over the issue.
Everyone, it seems, is having their say and whilst many stakeholders have expressed intelligent, sensible, well-argued points, many other so-called experts have been jumping on the bandwagon for no other reason than to cynically question Qatar’s right to host the event.
Let’s make a few things clear,
By Paul Nicholson, Editor-in-chief, Insideworldfootball
Disappointing habits are alive and well – actually thriving across all media. Insideworldfootball’s big scoop on Monday set the agenda for the day and a couple of days after – we’re proud of that and stand by every word of the interview as it was printed.
But let’s get this straight from the start. At no point did FIFA’s president ever say that awarding the World Cup to Qatar was a mistake.
Manchester United fans won’t want to hear it, and David Moyes certainly won’t be thinking it…but it might be best for them to write this season off. Give him time.
If they win a big trophy of any description it will be a huge bonus.
This is no ordinary club and Moyes is no short term solution. He has been put in a desperately difficult situation which short term will be a nightmare,
Sometime later this month Michel Platini will tell his fellow UEFA bigwigs, gathered in in Dubrovnik, Croatia’s capital of charm, whether he wants to be President of FIFA. For years the Frenchman has insisted he would never enter a contest against Sepp Blatter. And until recently the confident expectation was that he would not have to. After all, has not Blatter declared that he will not stand again, once his present term finishes.
So it should be all neat and tidy.
From Abidjan to Zagreb this week, after the last of the FIFA World Cup group-stage qualifiers, football fans will have a pretty good idea about their nations’ chances of playing at the finals tournament in Brazil next year.
What awaits those who travel to Brazil might not be the samba and carnival that has been promised by organisers but instead a protest against the corruption and cynicism that a maturing nation’s growing middle class angrily rejects.
How do Real Madrid do it?
No it’s not a rhetorical question, really how do they do it?
For over 100 days the question was when will Gareth Bale join them in a world record deal from Tottenham.
With the deal finally, mercifully done, we now need to ask a more interesting question. How did they do it? I can’t be the only one to believe that world record transfers should be more plausibly made by clubs with oil money behind them.