Columnists Archives - Page 71 of 78 - Inside World Football

Mihir Bose: Scotland should stop acting like victims

Mihir Bose(2)

Manchester United’s match with Rangers in the Champions League was more than a mere group match where the Scottish manager of the English team, Sir Alex Ferguson, was playing the side that had scorned him in his youth in Glasgow.

It was all our footballing pasts rolled together and it illustrated why Scottish football is at such a low ebb and may go even lower before it recovers, if it ever does.

It is also a salutary lesson on how the balance of power between Scottish and English clubs has changed.

Archive

David Owen: Excess baggage – who gave the best gift to FIFA’s globe-trotting inspectors?

If you see a man wearing a glazed expression, a hard hat, a pair of UGG boots and an England shirt signed by Fabio Capello, don’t call the police.

It’s probably just a FIFA World Cup bid inspector.

Harold Mayne-Nicholls and his doughty band on Thursday completed their hectic perambulation around the nine bids and 11 countries still hoping to stage either the 2018 or the 2022 World Cup.

Mihir Bose

Mihir Bose: Frenchie Gerard Houllier has unfinished business in the Premier League

Mihir Bose(2)

Gerard Houllier’s return to the Premier League was, perhaps, one of the most predictable of events of the season. What is more, he will bring to Aston Villa the conviction that his departure from Liverpool in 2004, after six years in charge, left him with unfinished business in England.

Houllier has a mission to accomplish and he sees the Midlands club as his last great chance to leave his mark on the English game.

Andrew Warshaw: Little known ECA ready to bare teeth

Andrew Warshaw

The European Club Association may not be a household name among football fans but Europe’s largest grouping of clubs is beginning to show its teeth.

Unlike its predecessor, the elitist G14, the ECA has no fewer than 197 members across the entire spectrum of the professional game, all speaking with one voice.

Mihir Bose

Mihir Bose: Fabio Capello needs to put a smile back on England’s faces if he is to survive Euro 2012

Mihir Bose(2)

The start of the Euro 2012 campaign also means the re-igniting of the endless inquests on Fabio Capello, the England manager.

Despite his start to the campaign suggesting a similarly easy passage for England to the finals in Poland and Ukraine as with the 2010 World Cup, the eventual disaster in South Africa makes such inquests inevitable.

Archive

David Owen: The mystery of the empty hospitality seats at South Africa 2010

David Owen small(1)

Since returning from South Africa, I have been wondering whether anyone was going to take a bath as a result of empty hospitality seats at the World Cup.

Actually, I’m still wondering, but at least now I have more information to go on following a conversation with Peter Csanadi, Head of Marketing at Match Hospitality AG.

Andrew Warshaw: When being English doesn’t mean being born in England

Andrew Warshaw

Just as the summer transfer window slammed shut across Europe, so a far more significant development took place in the English Premier League which has split experts down the middle.

The new eligibility rule, restricting top-flight squads to 25 players throughout the season – of whom at least eight have to be home-grown – is regarded as a long-overdue revolution by those in favour and a dangerously backward step by those against.

The reality is probably somewhere in between.

Mihir Bose

Mihir Bose: England still searching for winning team to bring home 2018 World Cup

Mihir Bose

Just over ten years ago, after a visit to Downing Street of a FIFA delegation not very dissimilar to the one last Monday, Tony Banks, then the Prime Minister’s special envoy to the 2006 World Cup bid, made one of his exuberant comments.

“You know,” he said, “this visit proves that England is the only country that can defeat South Africa for the 2006 World Cup, Germany is out of it. I am now so close to these FIFA members I feel they are joined to the hip to me.”

Columnists

Tom Degun: The inspiring story of how Haiti’s young footballers overcame tragedy to stand on the brink of Olympic glory

Haiti’s footballers, who travelled to Singapore for the inaugural Summer Youth Olympics cloaked in tragedy and sadness, are riding a massive wave of sympathy to stand on the brink of winning the most unlikeliest gold medal of these Games.

The country’s boy’s footballers brought some much needed joy to their earthquake-stricken nation as they remarkably defied the odds to book their spot in the boy’s final with a 2-0 win over Singapore at the Jalan Besar Stadium last night.

Mihir Bose

Mihir Bose: Welcome to Premier League Two

This Premier League season may well prove to be a seminal one. Not on who wins it, or who qualifies for that modern Holy Grail the Champions League, but marking the moment when the Premier League, in effect, created Premier League Two.

Creating a second division in the Premier League has always been talked about, particularly by the smaller clubs fearful of relegation, but the idea has never found favour in the rest of the Premiership.

Mihir Bose

Mihir Bose: Fans should treat new owners with extreme caution

It is part of the change that has come over football that, as the new season starts, the fans must not only look out for the new players who have walked into the clubs’ changing rooms but the new owners who may now own their clubs’ boardrooms.

In the last few weeks, the football news has been as dominated by the transfers of club ownership as much as player transfers. Or more accurately stories of possible sales of clubs with Liverpool,

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David Owen: Liverpool win the World Cup – sort of

David Owen small(1)

These are tense times to be a supporter of Liverpool Football Club.

But into every life a little sunshine must pour and, after spending two days number-crunching, I think I am in a position to announce a small piece of good news for Anfield-watchers.

The Reds look set to get a bumper share of the $40 million that FIFA has for the first time earmarked for payment to the clubs whose players took part in the recent World Cup in South Africa.

Archive

David Owen: England must fear Russia and US charge for 2018 World Cup

David Owen small(1)

The 2010 World Cup is over.

FIFA’s 2018/2022 inspection team has hit the road.

With less than four months to go, the race to stage the next World Cup but one is finally steaming towards the top of the 24 FIFA Executive Committee members’ in-trays.

Mihir Bose

Mihir Bose: I will believe Chinese whispers when I see it

The Liverpool take-over has long been one of football’s most curious soap operas but the latest twist with the Chinese Government, albeit through its investment arm China Investment Capital, seeking to buy the club, has something of a touch of Dallas combined with that of the East Enders.

Like the best of these soap operas it spins story lines which then turn out to be just that, nice tales that do not reflect reality.

Columnists

Jim Cowan: What lessons can your business learn from England’s World Cup failure?

Jim Cowan

Okay, we’ve all calmed down a little, we’ve had time to consider and reflect and, if we’re honest, most of us have moved on, putting England’s display in South Africa behind us.

But before we do confine it to the annals of historic footballing let downs, let’s look at the experience from a different perspective; what can we learn from the numerous reasons offered for the failure which could improve our own performance in whatever it is we do for a living?