Major sporting events need patience and time. Shortening the cycle would confirm that the game really is all about moneyThere has never been so much football. Every day, someone somewhere plays someone else, and you can follow it all over the world on any device – live, on demand, or just the highlights, on YouTube, DAZN or Twitter. There’s more to come; soon the Champions League will host a hundred more games a year. Our collective attention, as research calls it, is declining in the process, but it’s hard to stop the trend.What Fifa’s president, Gianni Infantino, and his adviser Arsène Wenger now have in mind could finally lead to overconsumption. They want to hold the World Cup every two...
This is about money and power – with Fifa trying to isolate Europe and weaken UefaIt sounds so enticing, doesn’t it? A World Cup or European Championship every summer, allowing us to gorge like a footballing Augustus Gloop almost all year round. Never mind the risk of burnout, of greater TV subscription fees, of the game becoming even more bloated; just listen to the tinkle of nickel and copper swelling Fifa’s coffers.Yet such a proposal is about to sneak up on us, without most people realising, just like the 48-team World Cup – a ridiculous idea that became a reality. On Friday, Arsène Wenger, Fifa’s chief of global football development, even suggested a new football calendar could be decided by...
Arsène Wenger must despair at the inefficiency in the game, embodied by the German midfielder’s omissionThere’s been something strangely disconcerting about seeing Arsène Wenger back on our screens, promoting his new book. Almost every interviewer he has faced has tried to lure him into some sort of indelicacy. Come on Arsène, settle some scores. Shit-talk Mourinho. Shit-talk Arteta. Shit-talk the board. Give us the full-body contact. Yet by and large, Wenger has refused to dance. His book is restrained, measured, high on facts and light on gossip, and has thus inevitably been panned as a crushing disappointment. Occasionally, however – much like his teams – he can still produce a moment of pure transcendence.On Friday night, Wenger was a guest...
Goals should not be ruled out because an armpit was ahead of the last defender but issues with remote refereeing run deeperThank goodness for Arsène Wenger. It is about time someone with a genuine appreciation of the game stepped in to prevent VAR’s remote officials tying themselves in unnecessary knots over something as straightforward as the offside rule.What Wenger is suggesting, in his capacity as Fifa’s head of global development, is a slight variation on the concept of daylight between an attacking player and the last defender. The former Arsenal manager believes that if any part of a player’s body that can score a goal is level or onside – ie anything except hand or arm – he should not...
The former Arsenal manager overstayed his welcome but Unai Emery, who takes a team on a long unbeaten run to Old Trafford on Wednesday, owes Arsène Wenger a lotTowards the end of Arsenal’s north London derby victory on Sunday afternoon it was tempting to look away from the swarming red shirts on the pitch, past the packed-out stands, and catch a glimpse in the corner of your eyeline of a spectral figure in ankle-length quilted gown, a shadow on the touchline, a shape perched up on the highest lip of the stand, fingers fiddling at the zipper of his anorak, a slow smile beginning to spread across his hawk-like features.Arsène: the legacy years. A few months into the reign of...